by Mary Balogh
He tried to kiss her again, but she cupped his face with both hands, holding it away from her, and gazed into his eyes. An extraordinary thing happened then. Lilian Talbot gradually dissolved into Viola Thornhill. He tried to draw her closer again. He was desperate for her. But she broke from his grasp and turned to run with stumbling steps toward the door.
“Viola—” he called.
But she was through it and gone before he could say any more.
14
IOLA DID NOT STOP RUNNING UNTIL SHE WAS inside her bedchamber, the closed door against her back.
She could have won the wager within the hour. Indeed, he had already conceded defeat.
She had just not been able to do it.
She did not understand why. He was merely one more man; it was merely one more night of work.
She had not been able to do it.
She pushed herself away from the door and moved toward her dressing room, peeling off her gold silk gown as she went. She reached for her nightgown, but her hand stilled before she touched it. She could not bear to lie down here, to try to sleep, knowing that in time he would come up to his own room, not far from hers. She dressed quickly in one of her day dresses. She drew a warm cloak about her shoulders and as an afterthought pulled down the blanket that was always kept folded on top of the wardrobe.
The hard part was leaving her room again. She set her ear to the edge of the door and listened. There was no sound. She opened the door a crack and peeped out. Nothing and no one. She darted along the corridor, her heart thumping, ready to run back to her room if she should see him on the stairs. But they were deserted and she ran down, pausing when she reached the drawing room floor and gazing warily at the closed door. It remained shut. She darted down to the hall, which was mercifully deserted, slid back the bolts on the front doors as quickly and quietly as she could, and slipped outside. She pulled the door closed slowly, trying not to make a sound.
A minute later, she was half running along the terrace and down the sloping lawn until the trees that shaded the river walk hid her from view. Then she slowed. She had to. The moonlight did not penetrate here and she had to find her way to the path by touch and memory. Even the path itself was dark—almost frighteningly so. But she made her way along it, telling herself that ghosts and goblins were preferable to the inside of Pinewood Manor tonight. Soon enough she had walked past the trees and there was light by which to see where she was going. It was even sparkling on the surface of the river.
She sat down in the exact spot where she had made a daisy chain a week or ten years ago. It was not a chilly night, but she wrapped both her cloak and the blanket about her—she was shivering. She hit the black depths of despair as she sat. There was no glimmering of hope left. She drew her knees up, wrapped her arms about them, and rested her forehead on them.
The fight had gone out of her and she did not know how she would ever find the energy to get up from where she was. But it would not take a great deal of energy, she thought fleetingly, to move the few feet from where she was to the riverbank. The water was deep and fast-flowing. All she would have to do …
But even escape into oblivion was not an option. If she died, Claire would have to take her place.…
A twig snapped and her head shot up from her knees.
“Don’t be alarmed,” a voice said. “It’s just me.”
She would have preferred the ghosts and goblins. Far preferred.
“Go away,” she said wearily, returning her forehead to her knees.
He did not answer her. Neither did he go away. She sensed rather than heard him sitting on the bank beside her.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked.
“I saw you,” he said, “from the drawing room window.”
And he had pursued her, his lust unsatisfied. But he was all out of luck. Lilian Talbot was dead. Oh, she would have to be resurrected soon enough, but not tonight. Not here. And never with him.
She sat in silence. So did he. He would go away eventually, she thought, and she would be left to concentrate on her despair. It frightened her. Even at her darkest moments, she had never been much given to self-pity.
And then every muscle in her body tensed. His hand had come to rest on her head, his touch so light that for a moment she was not sure that her senses were not playing tricks on her. But then she felt his fingertips, feather-light, massaging her scalp through her hair.
“Shhh,” he said, though she had not spoken a word.
She dared not move. She did not want to move. His touch felt so very good, so very soothing. She had always been the pleasure giver. None of her clients had ever considered her pleasure. Why should they? Besides, personal gratification had always been the farthest thing from her mind while she had been at work. She let go of despair and accepted the brief gift of the present moment. She was relaxed in every muscle when his hand lifted and brushed her hair over to the side farthest from him. Then his lips were against the back of her neck, warm, soft, light. She should have felt threatened—he had also moved closer to her side—but instead she felt immeasurably comforted.
“I am Viola Thornhill,” she said without lifting her head. She had not intended to speak. But it was as well that he know, just in case he had come with any idea of resuming what she had abandoned in the drawing room.
“Yes.” His voice was a whisper of sound against her ear. “Yes, I know that, Viola.”
The sudden yearning she felt was as piercing, as painful as the despair that had preceded it. She lifted her head and turned her face to him. He was only inches away. She could not see his expression in the darkness.
“I know,” he said again, and then his mouth was on hers.
She hugged her knees and allowed the kiss. She did not participate except to relax her lips and teeth. She stood back mentally and emotionally, rather as she had done the night of the fête, except for different reasons, to observe. And to take the kiss to herself as a gift. She felt gifted.
He was not fierce and impatient, as he had been earlier in the drawing room. He kissed her slowly and with infinite gentleness, his mouth open, warm, and moist, his tongue tracing the line of her lips and then penetrating slowly, exploring, touching, teasing, sending darting spirals of sensation down into her throat and even into her breasts. One of his hands cupped the side of her face and then smoothed the hair back from her temple.
She had little previous experience with gentleness. She was helpless against it.
“Viola,” he whispered when he finally drew back his head.
“Yes.”
A question had been asked and answered. But she was no longer outside herself, observing. She had spoken the one word from a deep inner need—for someone gentle and tender, for someone who asked the question with her name, for someone who did not demand that she perform for him.
He touched her then, drawing her upward until they were both on their knees, facing each other. He unbuttoned her cloak and let it fall. She lifted both arms as he drew her dress off over her head. He did not immediately remove her shift too. He set his hands on either side of her waist—they were trembling, she noticed—and lowered his head to kiss her beneath one ear, at the base of her throat, on the rise of one breast. When his mouth closed over the nipple and suckled her, she tipped back her head, closed her eyes, and buried her fingers in his hair.
And then she lifted her arms again while he removed her shift.
She was almost a total stranger to physical desire. She felt it now in the almost painful tightening of her breasts and in the raw, pulsing ache in her womb and down between her thighs. She was pressed to him from her waist to her knees, and through the thin silk of his knee breeches she could feel again the hard bulk of his erection.
She would do nothing except surrender. She knew exactly what to do to bring him crashing to pleasure, but she would do nothing. She was Viola Thornhill tonight, not that other woman. But she did not know what to do with her own desire.
Plea
se. Please, please.
“Please.”
He had been suckling her other breast, but he lifted his head at the sound of her voice and gazed into her eyes.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Let me spread your cloak on the grass. And roll my coat for a pillow.”
He was taking it off as he spoke. He arranged their bed while she knelt and watched, and then stood to undress while she lay down and waited for him. He was even more beautiful without his clothes, she saw as first his waistcoat and shirt and then his stockings and breeches came off. But she said nothing and made no move to touch him. She rested her hands palm-down on either side of her naked body. He removed his under-drawers and knelt down beside her. He was large. She could see that even in the near-darkness. A pulse throbbed between her legs. She did not want to wait any longer. She willed him not to want any more foreplay.
“Viola.” He leaned over her and spoke against her lips. “I want to be inside you. Now.”
“Yes.” She spread her legs on the cloak as he came over her. He settled between them and on top of her. He was heavy. His weight was almost robbing her of breath. The ground was hard against her back. She had never before done this anywhere except on a bed, but she was glad the whole experience was to be different. She was glad the ground was hard. She was glad there were stars above. She was glad she could hear the sound of rushing water.
He slid his hands beneath her, and she raised her knees and braced her feet on the ground. He came into her with one deep, hard thrust. He held very still in her for a few moments before sliding his hands away and lifting some of his weight onto his forearms. He looked down into her eyes and touched his mouth to hers.
She was aching and throbbing from her thighs up to her throat. She wanted to wrap her legs about his, tighten her inner muscles about his hardness, and spread her hands against his back so that she could arch upward and touch his chest with her hardened nipples. But she lay still and relaxed.
“Tell me it feels good,” he whispered.
“It feels good.”
“I want to go now,” he said, his voice tense and breathless. “I must go. But I want it to be good for you.”
“It will be good.” She lifted her hands from the cloak and spread them lightly over his buttocks. “It is good.”
He came hard and fast then. It was over within moments. But it did not matter. Her pain reached a point beyond which it could not be borne. She cried out and the stars above her shattered into a million shards of light. At the same moment she heard him call out his own release.
The sense of peace and well-being that followed negated any discomfort the hard ground at her back and his full relaxed weight might have brought. She listened to the water flowing past the bank and watched the stars re-form themselves above her head and hugged the moment to herself with all her will.
He inhaled deeply and released the breath on a sigh before rolling to one side of her. She thought it was over, but he reached for the blanket, pulled it over them, and drew her against him, one arm pillowing her head. She breathed in the scents of cologne and sweat and man and relaxed. His body was warm and damp against hers. She thought she might sleep if she just concentrated upon the moment and did not allow her thoughts to drift to tomorrow or any more distant future. The present moment is, after all, the only moment we ever have, she thought.
She was at the point of dozing when one reality of what had just happened struck her with absolute certainty.
He had been a virgin.
FERDINAND DID NOT SLEEP. He had been a dismal failure, he thought. If he had timed himself—he had not done so, thank God—he would surely have discovered the humiliating truth that the whole thing had been over within one minute. Less than a minute from mount to release. He felt mortified indeed. He just had not fully imagined what it would be like to feel her soft, wet heat sheathing him. He had thought he knew, but his expectations had fallen lamentably short of reality.
He had wanted to be gentle with her. He had wanted her to feel that he was doing something for her, not just for his own pleasure. He had wanted her to feel less like a whore and more like a woman.
Instead he had gone off half-cocked, like a damned schoolboy.
She had burrowed her head into the hollow between his neck and shoulder and appeared to be sleeping, which was at least a promising sign. He kissed the top of her head and twined his free hand into the luxurious thickness of her hair.
There was a certain feeling of relief despite his embarrassment. He was twenty-seven years old. He had known when he was still a boy that he could never marry, since there was no such thing as marital fidelity among his own class. The idea of marital infidelity had always sickened him. But it was only when he was older—when he was at university, in fact—that he had learned to his alarm that while he had perfectly healthy sexual urges, he could not satisfy them with a whore. He had tried a few times. He had gone to brothels with his friends and ended up paying the girl of his choice on each occasion for nothing more than her time. The thought of the physical act without any emotional component had chilled him. The thought of doing it with a whore, who knew no sentiment at all, gave him the shudders.
He had begun to think there must be something wrong with him. At least now he knew he could do it. In under one minute—he grimaced. He had probably broken some record, for God’s sake.
He wished he could have made it better for her. She had needed comforting, and he had offered comfort. It had been more than just sex. Yes, he was sure it had.
“Mmmm,” she said on a long sigh as she moved and stretched against him.
He felt the stirrings of renewed desire and smiled when she tipped back her head to look up at him, the moonlight on her face.
“Viola.”
“Yes.”
He half expected her to berate him with his inadequacy as a lover, but she looked almost happy. He could feel himself growing hard again. She must feel it too—her body was against his—but she did not draw away. He wanted to be inside her again, to feel that feeling again, to see if he could make it last longer than one minute.
And then she did move—to kneel up beside him. He felt foolish. Once had obviously been more than enough for her.
“Lie on your back,” she said.
At first he felt alarmed. The moonlight showed her in all her glorious beauty—firm, voluptuous breasts, small waist, very feminine hips, shapely legs, her hair a dark, loose cloud about her face and down her back. But the moonlight lit her face too, and there was nothing there of the contemptuous half smile he feared to see. She was not playing the part of courtesan.
He turned onto his back and she came astride him and leaned over him, setting her hands flat on the grass beside his head. Her hair fell about him like a fragrant curtain. He felt the tips of her breasts touch his chest as she kissed him openmouthed, and he hardened into full arousal.
He kissed her back, his hands spread over the outsides of her thighs. He did not know what else to do. He did not know where to touch her or how. Had she been a novice, like him, he could have experimented until he learned what best pleased her. But he was afraid of being gauche.
She knelt upright even as he was thinking it, spread her legs wide, caressed him lightly with both hands, and brought herself down onto him until she was sitting on him, fully impaled. He inhaled slowly, fighting for control.
Then she moved, her fingertips light against his stomach, her head tipped back while she rode to a rhythm that pulsed with the beating of his blood. He bent his legs at the knee to brace his feet on the ground, and he rode with her.
There could be no greater sensual delight. While he pulsed with desire, with the urge to drive up into her until his seed sprang, he also felt powerful, detached from his need, in control of it. He wanted the act to last a long, long time. All night. He wanted this to go on forever. He wanted her forever. He watched her. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted. He was giving her pleasure, he thought, and the realization made him happy. He
was redeeming himself.
He listened to the rhythmic suck and pull of their mating, to her labored breathing and his own, and wondered how she could hold her legs wide for so long without cramping. He massaged his hands over her thighs, and she lifted her head to smile down at him. Somehow it was the most intimate moment of all.
And then she did something that had him gripping her thighs. She clenched inner muscles about him as he reached the peak of his thrust and then relaxed them as he withdrew … and clenched again as he entered. He had never in his life known such exquisite agony. The rhythm became faster and more frenzied until she broke it suddenly, holding still when he expected her to move, relaxing her muscles when he expected her to clench them.
He spilled in one hot thrust and fell off the edge of the world.
Somewhere out in the vast reaches of the universe came the echo of her wordless cry. And two spoken words.
“My love.”
In his voice.
When he awoke, they were both tangled in her cloak and the blanket. His feet were chilly, though the rest of him was warm—he had her for an extra blanket. She was still on top of him. He was still inside her. A strand of her hair was tickling his nose.
“Are you awake?” he asked.
“No.” Her voice was sleepy.
“Well.” He chuckled. “You have won our wager in fine fashion, have you not?”
He knew he had made a mistake as soon as the words were out. She did not stiffen. She did not move at all or say anything. But he knew he had said the wrong thing. He tried again, his voice more gentle.
“Pinewood is yours,” he said. “I could not deprive you of it, you see. I will give you the deed in the morning. I’ll have the legalities attended to in London and then it will be official. Your home is yours, Viola. For the rest of your life. Your nightmare is over.” He kissed the top of her head.
She still said nothing.
“I’ll be relinquishing every claim to Pinewood,” he said. “Winning it at cards does not quite match the promise you were made, does it?”
