The Perils of Pleasure

by Julie Anne Long

  Oh, of course. Madeleine fought a great wave of irritation for the paragon that was Louisa.

  “What is she like?”

  “Louisa?” He looked surprised by the question, which struck her as funny, as he was always so full of questions himself. “Well, beautiful, of course.”

  “Of course. That goes without saying.”

  He knew she was being wry; he threw her a glance. He opened his mouth to say something, decided against it. He folded his arms behind his head and settled into his description. “And you’d think she was gentle and dreamy…for she’s these large, very soft blue eyes, Louisa does. More bluebell blue than sky blue. Every spring you’d notice, when the bluebells bloomed, how like spring she was, with hair like sunshine and those blue eyes. The funny thing is, she’s a very practical girl. And she listens brilliantly. Enjoys reading. Walking on the downs.”

  Louisa, Madeleine thought, sounded dull. But Madeleine knew love could make any picture feel more vivid, and she didn’t happen to love Louisa.

  “Does she make you laugh?”

  He thought about this. “She laughs a good deal when I’m about,” he allowed.

  Did Colin Eversea really want to be laughed at rather than with his entire life? He was the most maddening person she’d ever met, but his humor contained angles; he used it both to deflect and persuade. And if one could see around it, one would see into vulnerability.

  Maybe he didn’t want to be seen, because, after all, it was often uncomfortable to be seen thoroughly. Unless you surrendered to it, and then it was heady and liberating, and before you knew it you found yourself lying on a bed in an inn with the bloody man. He was very good at noticing things. He never ceased, really.

  She smiled to herself. He was exhausting.

  And then she asked, because she couldn’t help it, “Have you…have the two of you ever…”

  “Done things in lofts?” He threw her a sly sideways glance. “No.” He sounded amused. “Of course not. She’s a la—”

  He stopped. Wisely.

  “Ah,” Madeleine said.

  But he had the good sense not to apologize, which would have made it significantly worse. Though an awkward silence did ensue, as it was.

  She didn’t care, she told herself. She did things in lofts. She had, in fact, initiated things in lofts. She’d been married. She could fire a pistol, and a musket. There really wasn’t any undoing what she was, or what she’d become, and she didn’t think she wanted to. And now she was lying on a bed next to Colin Eversea, and with luck they would do things there, too.

  But in a few weeks time, if they found Horace Peele, with the two hundred pounds she would earn from Colin Eversea’s family for returning him, she could be anyone she wanted in America. She was still young enough, and healthy, and beautiful and strong.

  And Colin Eversea had somehow managed to give her back…herself. She went still for a moment, realizing the enormity of that gift.

  “I have kissed her,” he volunteered, which she supposed was intended to make her feel less of a whore.

  “So you’ve said.” The words emerged so testily, Madeleine started. It was if someone else had borrowed her mouth to speak them.

  Colin Eversea’s head swiveled to stare at her. She felt his eyes on her. Felt him thinking again.

  She refused to look anywhere but up. Madeleine took in a deep breath of air, and pretended it was American air, and felt better.

  Or told herself she felt better.

  “What kind of man was your husband?” It was a gentle question.

  She turned to look at him. But his eyes were now fixed on the ceiling. They both seemed to be enjoying that particular view this evening.

  “Kind, and funny, and strong, and stubborn, and entirely himself. We were young when we were married. Sometimes it was though we’d scarcely known each other. We…learned each other, as the years went by.”

  “Learned each other,” Colin repeated quietly after a moment. As though he liked it. “Do you know what I heard about him?” he whispered.

  She tensed a little. Good God, had Colin Eversea actually known her husband?

  “I heard…” He paused conspiratorially. “…that he had a very, very, very long pole.”

  She laughed, which made him laugh.

  And then they lay still for a while. Companionably. And despite the nature of their journey, Madeleine could not recall ever feeling this comfortable in her life.

  “Colin…what if your brother and Louisa have already wed?”

  She felt him go still. And then he snorted a little. “No chance. My mother would never allow it. A wedding celebration she shall have, with every important family from miles around descending upon Pennyroyal Green. She hadn’t planned upon her youngest son either being sentenced to hang or escaping the gallows, but my mother…” He paused, as though just realizing something. “My mother has endured all of us, everything that has happened, and in my family, that’s considerable. My mother will go on, no matter what happens. And there will be a wedding, mark my words. But I’m certain it hasn’t happened yet.”

  And then for a long moment there was only breathing, and the two of them lying together side by side on a bed—a bed!—at last. The problem with beds was that they invited one to do one of two things: sleep or make love. And this, surprisingly, was a very comfortable bed.

  Colin turned to Madeleine and saw her eyelids quivering in a valiant attempt to stay aloft. She would sleep deeply tonight if it killed him, he decided.

  “Shall I sing?” he said suddenly.

  “Sing?” she repeated, as though she’d never heard the word in her life.

  “Why not?”

  “Very well,” she agreed cautiously.

  So he did sing, a lilting Irish tune he’d learned in the army. It was about tragedy and death. Then again, all Irish songs were about tragedy and death, in his experience.

  “Why, you’ve a lovely voice.” She sounded drowsily surprised.

  “I do have a lovely voice,” he agreed complacently.

  Madeleine’s lips curved up a little, but her eyes remained closed.

  Somewhere below them the inn thumped with life. He heard chairs scraped backward across the wood floor. Something metal and quite heavy dropped with a distant clatter. He thought of the Pig & Thistle in Penny royal Green, and the families gathering around the fire, of Culpepper and Cook across the chessboard, and wondered whether Marietta Endicott of the School for Recalcitrant Girls had gone in for a pint that evening. Whether the British army had his family surrounded, and whether his father was amused by it. And wondered whether Louisa stood at a window, searching for his outline coming toward her house from out of the dark, or whether she might be playing the pianoforte for his brother Marcus, who cared nothing for pianoforte music but would gratefully watch anything at all Louisa did.

  He wondered if he would ever be able to think “Marcus” again without a clutch of doubt in his gut.

  Half whimsically, Colin slowly smoothed Mad eleine’s hairline with a single finger, following it to where it rose up to a peak, as lyrical and sharp as the point of a valentine heart. And there was her smile again. And so he strummed his fingers softly, softly, slowly, across her forehead. Again, and then again. In the lamplight he saw the faintest of lines there, a line he couldn’t smooth away, a line life was busy etching into her. Evidence that she was not a green girl. He liked this. He fancied somehow he was smoothing away all of her thoughts of the past and of the future, and perhaps she would have thoughts only of him. He knew he was selfish to want this, but there it was.

  It was really all he wanted in this moment. It occurred to him that this ought to worry him.

  “S’nice.” Her word was a sigh, and a bit reluctant.

  “Mmm.” He offered in return. He seemed disinclined to stop stroking her, so he didn’t.

  “Well?” she said suddenly a few moments later, her voice stronger, startling him.

  “Well, what?”

 
“Will you sing another, then?”

  He smiled, and paused the tips of his fingers against her forehead. He propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at her and waited, pretending to give it some thought.

  “All right, then,” he finally agreed with soft equanimity. “What shall it be? A lullaby? A drinking song? A song of glorious triumph in battle?”

  “The Ballad of Colin Eversea, if you would.”

  Ah, not too weary to banter, was Mad.

  So softly, softly, in a tenor smooth as the best brandy, he turned the bawdy song of his own ignominious demise into a lullaby, and sang it all the way through, watching her smile fade as sleep drew her in. And though he’d intended to make loud, mattress-taxing, acrobatic, thorough love to Madeleine Greenway tonight, instead he sang to her until she fell asleep, her head heavy and warm against his shoulder, her hip snugly pressed against his. He gently closed both arms around her when it was clear she was deep in, really deep in, and with a certain amount of relief and triumph leaned his own decidedly weary head against the top of hers. With every lengthening breath, he took in the scent of her hair, and her breathing became his lullaby, and at last sleep took him under.

  He was six years old, and he’d wedged his wiry body between the bulging roots of the unfathomably old tree that overhung this brook. He’d been forced to dig his boot heels into the muddy bank for balance, however, as this silvery little capillary of the Ouse had proved startlingly frisky and had nearly snatched his fishing pole right out of his hands, which was exactly what his mother or any one of his dozens—they seemed like dozens—of long-legged older brothers would do if they found him here alone. Not only that, they would have promptly turned the pole into a switch and thrashed him. He’d been warned not to come here alone, but it was early days, and the Everseas hadn’t yet fully realized that a warning was tantamount to a dare to Colin, and attempts to frighten would inevitably be interpreted as dares. He’d also been told there weren’t any fish here, but perhaps one rebellious fish would swim away from its family, and he would catch it, and wouldn’t the rest of his family be surprised when he brought it home for the cook to serve up for—

  The tug on his fishing pole in his dream yanked Colin from sleep. He lay still for a moment, disoriented, for oddly, though a bed and not tree roots supported his back, he still heard the trickle of water over stones. His eyes fluttered open and he turned his head toward the sound.

  An ashen light had slipped through the window covers of their inn room, telling him it was just past dawn. Madeleine was standing near the basin of water, and she was trying to quietly bathe herself; he saw her dip the rag into the basin, and wring it, and lift it to her face.

  He resigned himself to the fact that she would know soon enough that he was awake, because she was as attuned to her surroundings as any other wild creature. But he remained motionless apart from deep even breaths, an attempt to steal one luxurious moment in which he could simply watch her.

  Her back was to him. She’d lowered her dress to get at her various parts, and it hovered and clung magically, or so it seemed, in folds about her hips. But there was tension in the way she stood; she kept her elbows tucked closely into her slim body; it was cold in the room.

  Her skin was so white in this dim light, and so soft, he knew. A fleeting, peculiar terror knotted the breath in his lungs. Surely she should be covered in armor instead, or scales, or a hard shell like a tortoise, given the life she’d chosen.

  He was, of course, outrageously, selfishly, grateful she was not.

  Colin slid out of bed and was next to her in two strides. Madeleine went motionless in place, but before she could turn, he reached out, gently uncurled her fingers and plucked the rag from her palm.

  She turned her head a little to look at him over her shoulder, eyebrows pitched high in a question. But she didn’t protest.

  Miniature islands of ice still floated on the surface of the basin of water, and he dodged them as he dipped the rag into it. He twisted it until it no longer dripped, then cupped it in his hands and breathed on it. An attempt, probably a futile one, to warm it for her.

  Matter-of-factly he slid his arm beneath the soft, heavy mass of her hair and lifted it up, then gently scrubbed the back of her neck, while pressing his body against hers. She tipped her head forward, surrendering to his ministrations, and leaned back against him, grateful for his heat. She made a contented little mmm, which made him smile.

  And then, as sensuous as a cat, she tipped her head backward into the palm of his hand. A demand of sorts.

  He obliged. Cradling her head and threading his fingers through the forest of her hair simply for the pleasure of it, he drew gentle, torturously leisurely paths around her ears with the damp rag, giving scrupulous attention to every whorl, and as he did he breathed warm, steady breaths into them. This was a bath; this was a seduction. He wanted to be certain this was clear to her.

  And when he slid the rag over the slim column of her throat and saw her pulse beating swiftly there, saw the flush of her skin, heard the rush of her breath, he knew that it was clear.

  Colin moved to stand before her, and he found her arms were crossed over her breasts—some combination of warmth and modesty, perhaps. He closed his hand over her wrist, arched a brow, and coaxed Madeleine’s arms slowly up over her head.

  His eyes locked with hers, slowly, slowly, he drew the rag from her slender wrist down, down, over her forearm, around her taut little bicep and along the softest, most vulnerable blue-white part beneath, all the way down to the indented shadow of her armpit. He gave her a brisk little scrub there.

  She gave a short laugh, husky, distracted. “Thorough of you.”

  “I am,” he concurred on a murmur, “nothing if not thorough.”

  He turned his attention to her other arm and her other armpit, and Madeleine felt the heat rising in her cheeks and then flowing into the rest of her skin. She ached for his touch, so that when he took the cloth to her breasts, she moaned softly, almost in relief.

  And he was, as he’d said, nothing if not thorough. He traced the contours of her breasts with the rough edge of the cloth, lingering over the ruched pink of her nipples with a cloth-covered fingertip, then leaning slowly in to close his mouth over one to suck.

  “Oh…” She sighed it.

  Her fingers combed through his hair, then slid out again as he dragged his kisses down the seam between her ribs, to the soft mound of her belly, and then—

  “It’s your turn to sing for me, Mad.”

  His mouth came to rest between her legs. He pressed his lips gently there once, then pulled back, exhaling softly. His breath was like hot silk against her sensitive flesh; it was a peculiar, exquisite shock, and it sent gooseflesh raining over her; her breath snagged in her throat. His thumbs gently parted her, and then the flat of his tongue, satiny and hot, muscular and wet…stroked hard.

  She nearly left her body.

  That guttural groan, that sound of visceral pleasure: Me, she thought, shocked, struggling to breathe again, for equilibrium. That was me.

  Pleasure nearly blinded her.

  “Ah, lovely song, Mad,” Colin murmured, his voice a buzz against her, a bit of laughter in it. “May I have another verse?”

  He blew a cool breath over where she was most hot and swollen and sensitive, and she gasped, and the gasp gave way to a raw oath when his tongue dove lightly, then stroked again.

  And again.

  “I…stop…Col…” They were more fragments of feelings than words. Dear God, she didn’t mean “stop.” It was just that she didn’t know how she could bear it, and she was half afraid. She’d never before felt this inexorable tearing away of control, this tender, insidious annihilation of thought. A part of her had always been present in every seduction, even as she took her pleasure.

  Colin’s fingers combed up her thighs, over delicate skin and fine hairs, then slipped beneath her buttocks to support her, to press her even closer to his mouth.

&nbs
p; “Come for me, Mad,” he demanded in a low growl against her.

  Her hands fumbled down, her fingers first clutching into his silky hair, then finding the chill tops of his ears, then his bare shoulders. She choked a laugh, a sound of incredulous pleasure, and looked down to watch his dark head ducking and moving between her legs, every clever, considered dart and slide of his tongue, the skill of his lips, pushing her toward a divine madness. The very sight of him elicited another moan from her. It was too much.

  She saw his erection thick and curving up toward his belly, and knew he was mad for her, too.

  And a wildness, a wonder, ripped the last of her breath away. She pulled in tattered, staccato breaths and began to move with him, urging him with hissed syllables of pleasure and the rawest of words and his name. The world was his dark head and his lips and his tongue and what she wanted from him.

  And then she was buckling, screaming out her pleasure, and he caught her before she could fall, and half carried, half threw her back onto the bed.

  He pushed her arms back over her head, clutching her palms in his, and pinned her there, his hard thighs over her. She was defenseless. For the first time in her life she wanted to be—needed to be—defenseless.

  “Mine.”

  The word seemed involuntary, torn like a gasp from him. And then he rose up and with one skillfully angled thrust he was inside her.

  Madeleine cried out from the suddenness of it. The depth and fullness was shocking. And oh God, somehow it was as though it was all she’d ever needed.

  There was no subtlety now, just taking, and she wanted to be taken as hard as he could take her. She was ready, rising up to meet every swift hard dive of his narrow hips, ready to give of herself as he’d given to her, and to take more if she could. She locked her legs around his back, her arms around his shoulders, and their bodies clung and collided, again and again, his eyes fierce, never leaving hers. And they went distant as his own release came upon him and his body went rigid and he gasped out her name.

  “I liked the little scream, Mad.”