It Happened One Season

by Stephanie Laurens

  “Call me Cleo,” she said, turning to look at him. “It is short for Cleopatra, but fortunately, no one except my father has ever called me that.”

  He removed his hat and gloves and set them down on the hall table.

  “Cleo,” he said. “I am Jack. Short for John.” He grinned. “But no one has ever called me that.”

  She clasped her hands at her waist and smiled back at him. She had smelled cologne as he passed her—very subtle and very masculine. It had made her feel slightly short of breath.

  “Mrs… . Cleo,” he said, and he looked at her with his very direct gaze. He clasped his hands behind his back. “I have taken the liberty of informing my brother and sister-in-law that I intend courting you.”

  Her eyes widened in shock and some horror.

  “I deemed it necessary,” he said, “since I will not be courting anyone else during the next month or two and I would not have them think that I was not doing what I had promised to do.”

  “Oh,” she said, “you ought not to have told them, Major Gilchrist. They must be horrified.”

  “Not at all. Why should they be?” he said. “They were a little surprised, perhaps, that I have chosen a widow rather than a girl fresh out of the schoolroom. And a little surprised too that they do not know you, though Charlotte did catch a glimpse of you in the park two days ago. Matthew does know Sir Alfred King, your brother, however, and considers him a worthy gentleman. Once I had assured them that I knew and liked you in the Peninsula and that you are, in fact, younger than I, though I do not know your exact age, then they were quite delighted to know that I have already fixed my choice sufficiently to embark upon an actual courtship.”

  “But,” she said, “you are not courting me.”

  “Indeed I am,” he said. “What do you call it?”

  “An affair,” she said.

  She was still, she realized, standing just inside the front door. He was still only a few steps into the hallway.

  “With a view to marriage,” he said. “The proposal has already been made, and you have already given a conditional acceptance. Courtship is the right word. An affair is an open-ended thing, one that either or both the participants fully mean to end as soon as the pleasure has gone. It is a trivial thing, something in which I am not interested. Not with you.”

  “I wish,” she said, “you had not told anyone.”

  “They want to meet you,” he said. “This evening, in fact. They have a private box at the theater and plan to go there this evening. They have invited us to join them.”

  Her eyes had widened again.

  “I cannot go to the theater with the Earl and Countess of Waterton,” she said, aghast. “Not this evening. Not after this afternoon.”

  His eyes looked away from hers for a few silent moments, and then he sighed and looked back.

  “Whatever happens this afternoon,” he said, “need not affect this evening. Not unless, after all, you believe this afternoon will transform you into a fallen woman instead of a widow exercising her freedom to take a lover. But, Cleo, why put that to the test? You told me yesterday that you are not as happy in your aloneness as you led me to believe at Lady Claremont’s ball. You told me you would like to marry me and that you will if I can get you with child before the end of the Season. Why not leave the whole possibility, or probability, of conception and its outcome to nature, as the vast majority of couples do, and marry me anyway?”

  “No,” she said after only a moment’s hesitation.

  She could not give him an explanation. Perhaps she could not even give herself one that made proper sense. If she only liked him, and if she only wanted to be married again, she surely would accept his offer gladly. But she loved him. She was not even sure why that fact made all the difference, for of course, even if she did conceive and did marry him as a consequence, she would still be facing a marriage in which she loved while she was only liked in return. But at least they would both have a child to love equally.

  The fact that she loved him did make a difference, however illogical the idea sounded.

  “No?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “No,” she said again.

  “Well, then.” He reached out a hand for hers, and his eyes moved over her from head to toe.

  She was acutely conscious of her casually dressed hair, of the fact that she was not wearing stays beneath her dress and must look plumper than she normally did, of—

  But she was mortally tired of feeling unattractive and inferior. And he was not Aubrey, who had used her with tedious frequency even while constantly complaining of her lack of all claim to beauty. He was Jack. And if he did not like what he saw or what he got in the bed upstairs, then he could simply go away and she would forge contentment out of the rest of her life alone.

  She set her hand in his, and his fingers closed warmly and strongly about it.

  “Where—?” he asked.

  “Upstairs,” she said. But she took a firm step toward him. This was not in any way going to be like what she had known and endured with Aubrey. “Kiss me first. Before we go up. As you did once in the Peninsula.”

  His eyes looked arrested.

  “You do remember,” he said.

  “Of course I remember,” she said. And then, very rashly, before she could choose her words with more care, “It was my first kiss. And the only one. Ever.”

  His head snapped back as though he had been punched in the chin. And then his eyes softened and moved to her lips.

  “I am so sorry,” he said.

  “I am not,” she assured him. “Kiss me again.”

  And he did, his mouth touching hers, lips slightly parted. And then his arms came about her waist and drew her against him while her arms twined about his neck and clung tightly.

  It was the same and yet different. This time he did not smell of sweat and dust and blood and smoke. He smelled of soap and his subtle cologne. And this time there was none of the fierceness of that first kiss. He kissed her softly, warmly, opening his mouth over hers, tasting her lips with his tongue, exploring inside when she parted her own lips and sliding deep when she parted her teeth, slow enjoyment giving place to something warmer, to the promise of a far greater heat to come.

  And yet there was the same flaring of what, if she had been forced to put a word to it, she could only have described as joy. Joy and yearning and desire and rightness. The feeling that she was worth this, that she had as much to give as she had to receive.

  That she was an equal partner in the encounter.

  He lifted his head from hers but did not move it back more than a few inches. He gazed into her eyes, his own heavy with … desire. It was unmistakably desire, but not the sort she was accustomed to, the sort that preceded the order to lie on her back and was followed by a swift one-sided journey to grunting, animal satisfaction. This was…

  Well, sometimes there were no words.

  Sometimes there were not really even thoughts.

  “Take me upstairs, Cleo,” he said, his voice a low caress.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Chapter Five

  The bedchamber had been prepared for the occasion, Jack could see as soon as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. The covers had been turned back neatly on the bed, the pillows nicely plumped. The curtains were half drawn across the window. Pots and brushes were lined up in orderly fashion on the dressing table, books pushed into a tidy pile on one of the bedside tables. Nothing had been left lying around, though apparently there were no servants in the house to clean up after her.

  A single shaft of sunlight shone through the window and slanted across the foot of the bed.

  Curtains, carpet, bedcovers, wallpaper—all were in varying shades of green, like a spring garden. It was both surprising and pleasing for a bedchamber.

  But Jack took it all in at a glance. His attention was focused upon Cleo—Cleopatra. The latter was about as inappropriate a name as any her father might have given her. She was all small,
soft womanhood. Strangely appealing. Strangely desirable. Strange because she was not the sort of woman who was obviously beautiful. Though there were, of course, her eyes.

  They gazed into his now a little uncertainly. She did not know what to do next now that she had brought him here. She had had five years’ experience at marriage but did not know how to proceed with a lover.

  She had had a husband who never kissed her. And it was hard to imagine that he had shown her tenderness in other ways instead.

  The man had been a vicious soldier. The sick joke had sometimes circulated in the officers’ mess that Colonel Pritchard had killed more of his own men for various misdemeanors than all of Napoleon Bonaparte’s soldiers combined had done in combat.

  Cleo Pritchard had been kissed only once in her life until a few minutes ago. And she had remembered the embrace and had wanted it repeated.

  Jack framed her face with his hands, ran his thumbs lightly across her lips, and lowered his head to kiss her again. And he was instantly engulfed again in the warm fragrance of her. He was not sure if it was soap or perfume he smelled. It was so faint a scent that it seemed more the fragrance of her.

  He moved his hands over her head while he deepened the kiss, feeling the soft smoothness of her hair. Her hands rested on either side of his waist.

  This was wrong, he knew, even though his treacherous body disagreed with him. He had hoped to prevent it happening by telling Matt and Charlotte that he was courting her and then telling her that they were cautiously pleased. But she had held to her strange sense of honor. She would not marry him unless she could be sure she was capable of bearing his children.

  Though he had the feeling now that there was more than just that. He had the feeling that she needed this, that she craved the touch of a man who would kiss her before he used her. Perhaps it was herself she protected by insisting that they have an affair before they married. Perhaps the fear of another marriage in which there was no tenderness was too much for her to bear.

  He raised his head and gazed into her eyes again. They were deep and defenseless now.

  “There will always be tenderness,” he said softly.

  A small frown of incomprehension creased her brow for a moment.

  “It will never be just for a slaking of appetite,” he said, “and never just for procreation. There will always be tenderness. There will always be you and me, never just me.”

  Her eyes told him that she understood though she said nothing.

  “Let me help you off with your dress,” he said, and she turned obediently for him to undo the hooks at the back of it. He wondered briefly how she had managed to do them up if her maid was not here. She swept her hair forward over one shoulder and bent her head.

  Ah.

  She was wearing no stays, as he had suspected, and nothing else either, beneath her dress. He nudged it off her shoulders, and she held it in place with her hands spread over her breasts. But she released her hold as she turned toward him, and the dress slid to the floor. She was wearing no stockings, either. When she stepped free of her dress and her slippers, she stood naked before him. She looked at him with those large, calm eyes, and he realized for the first time that it was an expression she must have cultivated long ago to hide a tumult of feelings. She was a woman who had hidden very effectively inside herself for a long, long time, he suspected. At least since her marriage.

  His eyes moved over her. She was not excessively slender. She had pleasing curves and sturdy, nicely shaped legs. Her hair was in a thick cloud down her back. He had not noticed her freeing it from the clip at the back of her neck.

  He reached out both hands and slid them lightly down over her breasts before cupping them from the undersides and touching her nipples with his thumbs. Her skin was warm and soft and silky. Her nipples hardened under his touch.

  The blood was humming through his body, catching at his breath.

  “Cleo,” he said softly, “you are beautiful.”

  And he spoke the simple truth.

  She bit her lip, and there was uncertainty in her eyes. Vulnerability. She did not believe in her own beauty. Had Pritchard not discovered it? Was that why she had allowed herself to grow plump in the Peninsula?

  “Lie down for me,” he said, “while I undress.”

  And she turned without a word and did as she was told. Unquestioned obedience. He drew a slow breath as he divested himself of his coat and waistcoat and pulled his shirt free of his pantaloons. This was all by her choice. It was what she wanted, what she had insisted upon if he wished her to marry him.

  Why had he accepted her conditions?

  Why had he not simply walked away and found someone else?

  Because it was she, and she alone, whom he wanted? Was he in love with her, then?

  But how could he be? He scarcely knew her. Though he was about to get to know her a good deal better.

  She watched him quietly as he undressed. And finally, as his pantaloons and his drawers dropped to the floor, she spoke, and the illusion of quiet submissiveness went away, much to his relief, though her words both amused him and touched him.

  “You are beautiful too, Jack,” she said. “Truly beautiful. With your clothes and without them. Not many men are, I suspect, though I have not seen many men unclothed, of course.”

  And as she looked up into his eyes, suddenly her own were filled with merriment while he grinned back at her, and they both burst into laughter.

  A certain uncomfortable tension had been broken, and she reached out her arms to him. She had not covered herself with any of the bedclothes.

  “Come, then,” she said. “Be my lover, Jack.”

  And it seemed to him that for the moment she had forgotten why he was to be her lover, that she wanted this merely for the pleasure of it. For the mutual pleasure. It seemed to him that she had accepted her own attractions and believed herself to be beautiful.

  Had he been able to do that much for her? To convince her?

  He lay down beside her on the bed, turned onto his side, and propped his weight on one elbow. He leaned over her and kissed her, and she surged over onto her side to face him, pressed her body against his, wrapped her arms about him, and kissed him back with hot ardor.

  He would have taken it slowly. He wanted to give her tenderness, the experience of knowing a lover who would make the time to give as well as to take. He wanted to make love to her. He wanted to give her all the pleasure of knowing sex as it could be with a man who was not simply a brute. And perhaps he wanted it for himself too, a slow building of sensual pleasure before the driving need of sexual appetite took over. He too was ending a long sexual dearth.

  But she would have none of it, and he understood the reason within moments, for he found that he shared it. She was hungry. Starved, rather. And it was not tenderness she needed. Not now. Not this first time. It was the wonder and power of her human sexuality. She needed to celebrate her own beautiful womanhood.

  And he needed the corresponding affirmation of his own manhood.

  He would not have been able to put all this into words if he had been called upon to do so. But he felt her need and his own instinctively, and because she would be his wife if he could convince her, and also the mother of his children, and because he cared for her, he could give her only what she needed and wanted. What he needed and wanted.

  She was all hot, sensual woman and he was … By God, he was on fire too. It had been a long time. Too long. And never with her. Never with Cleo.

  Tenderness be damned!

  And so within minutes he rolled her to her back and came on top of her, pressed his knees between her thighs—not that she needed any encouragement, slid his hands beneath her buttocks, and pressed deep and hard into her.

  Her arms were iron bands about his body. Her legs twined tightly about his. And firm inner muscles clenched about him, causing sweet, hot agony.

  “Jack.” Her voice was low. “Ah, Jack.”

  He withdrew to the brink of her
and thrust back inside and began to work her as slowly, as thoroughly as his control would allow. There was not a great deal of it left, by God. She met and matched his rhythm and clung tightly to him until incredibly, before his control went, she crashed into release, calling his name again as she did so.

  He plunged gratefully after her, spilling his seed and the last of his energy into her and collapsing his weight onto her while he recovered his breath.

  Good God!

  Like a randy schoolboy.

  And yet not.

  Good God!

  He disengaged from her and lay beside her, waiting for his heart to slow. For his breath to become less audible. He felt cool and slick with sweat. He laid the back of one hand over his eyes—that shaft of sunlight had moved up the bed and found his face.

  He realized a few moments later—though it was probably somewhat longer than just a few moments—that he must have dozed off. He turned his head sharply to look at her.

  She was gazing back, her head turned to the side, her eyes calm again. She had pulled the covers up over them both. Her arms were on the outside, but the sheet decently covered her breasts.

  She suddenly looked like Mrs. Pritchard again.

  “I hope,” she said placidly, “that has done the job, though it would be too good to be true if it happened the very first time, I suppose. Thank you for making it a pleasant experience, Jack.”

  Pleasant? Done the job? What the devil?

  “Pleasant?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “You made it seem,” she said, “as if it was not just about proving whether I can conceive or not, and I am grateful for that.”

  Good Lord, she really was firmly back within her fortified defenses.

  He raised himself on one elbow again and propped his head on his hand.

  “If that was only pleasant, Mrs. Pritchard,” he said, “I think perhaps I ought to go home and shoot myself.”

  Her eyes widened with shock, then clouded with uncertainty, and finally twinkled with merriment. She laughed—that low, merry sound that so attracted him.