"Yes, sir. But if you have anything else important to do I can always--"
"No, it's all right. You've worked very hard to make all this come about. And as long as I'm up there I suppose I should look in on the boys, see what the school is like. Bring them home for Easter if I can manage to persuade the headmaster to let them have a holiday."
"Very good, sir," Nash said, restraining a smile of triumph.
"In that case I shall take these with me now, have the meeting, and I shall leave in the morning."
He headed back to Millcote as soon as he could, and apologised to his wife at once. "I'm sorry I wasn't able to get to the labour exchange, but I need to leave tomorrow."
"Back to London?"
"No, I'm heading--"
She looked at him expectantly, but the warning bells inside his head forced him to be silent.
She shrugged slightly and returned to her chores, trying to ascertain what had happened to all of the housekeeping money and making a list of what they needed. There was only the bare minimum of everything. Though she did not mind for herself with only two of each item, she had the feeling her husband enjoyed fresh sheets and towels on a regular basis, and he certainly liked his shirts crisp.
He looked at the list and frowned. "I'm not made of money, you know," he complained, for he had already parted with a considerable sum to set up the house in the first place, and had no idea that most of it had been squandered. Since he did not look in the linen closet or cupboards, he thought Juliet was being spoiled and extravagant as per her background as Matthew's sister.
"I'm sorry. Never mind, then," she sighed.
"It's just that the business is--" He caught himself again.
"I said it's fine. I'll go fetch you some supper."
"Why?"
"I assumed you were hungry," she said patiently.
"No, I meant why are you fetching it?"
"You sacked almost all the servants, including Cook."
"What about the little serving maid? Can she--"
"She got dragged away kicking and screaming by one of the men we dismissed. All of twelve, she was. It's disgusting."
"Egad." Lawrence looked genuinely shocked. "I had no idea. What the hell did Nash think he was playing at?"
Juliet wasn't sure, but she could never in a million years voice her suspicions as to his veracity. She would simply have to keep an eye on him. There was something about the way he had looked at her that made her blood run cold.
"All right, if we're to have any food and one decent night in this wretched house at all, we might as well get ourselves organised. Food, hot water, firewood. I'll take care of our chamber upstairs. You bring the food, get the remaining servants to bring up the warming pan and bottles. It's setting in for a fair frost. And have the boy sort my laundry and pack my fresh shirts."
"Oh, but--"
She wasn't sure how fresh they were, and certainly not starched or ironed. The rest which he had brought home were still hanging in the back part of the kitchen designated as the laundry room, dripping dry along with her own single change of clothes.
Well, at least he had more than two shirts, and there would be servants in the inns to tend to them for a few coins. If she had no staff and no money, and no ability to buy more of anything, what else was she supposed to do?
"I'll see to it, Lawrence," she said quietly.
The silence between them grew uncomfortable, and she fled.
Juliet was sad to know her husband was leaving again, but surely he would at least leave her some money to manage with whilst he was gone. When he came back she could have a real home for him.
Yet she was reluctant to ask him for anything, especially when he began to fondle her most boldly. She didn't want him to associate her lovemaking with money in any way.
All rational thought flew out of her head as soon as he began to remove his own clothes in front of the fire in their room. He had her sit in the armchair and hang her legs over each side.
"No, no hands," he commanded, feeling so desirous of her he had all to do not to pounce.
"Lawrence, please," she almost wept.
"You're my wife, and will do as I say, as I desire. There's no use complaining now. You wanted me well enough that first night."
"Yes, but Lawrence, I need--"
He put one finger on her lips. "You know the rules. Not a sound. Not one word."
He was not intentionally being cruel; it was a bedroom game and his attempt to control his raging lust. For Juliet, it was almost torture not to touch and kiss him after so many weeks.
She forced back the hot salt tears of frustration as he raised her arms and draped them over the back of the chair, hooking them there by her inner arms so that they dangled down from the elbows. Starting with her peaked right breast, he licked his way down to her knees, tasting her everywhere except her centre of desire until she thought she would go mad with yearning. Only his tongue and lips touched her, and she had an impetuous urge to shove him back by his shoulders and impale herself upon him.
But just as she began to move her arms to do precisely that, he thrust his tongue deeply inside her, kissing her as eagerly as if it were her mouth. She felt shame and a firestorm of need as she climaxed against him, her flood of desire feeling almost torrential and her body with no other release since she was forced to remain silent.
Juliet expected him to berate or mock her, but he merely chuckled, wiped his chin and slicked his hand over himself before gliding into her.
"Nice of you to be so warmly and wetly appreciative, my dear. You're so delectable. I have no doubt if I could package your special essence I would make a fortune. And not just there. The lovely delicacy of your cleavage, that wonderful smell behind your ears, the nape of your neck. Even your underarms. More lovely than any perfume."
He began to inhale deeply in each of the places he mentioned, though he never touched her except for the incredible slow, deep rhythmic thrusts between her spread legs.
"I've never seen anything like you. I keep trying to find a flaw. I wish I could. Then maybe I wouldn't want nothing but this, over and over."
She closed her eyes against the rising tide of her own passion. Her lips parted, and she licked them. The sight was too much for Lawrence, who hoist her out of the chair and pushed upwards hard as her feet slid down toward the floor.
She gasped, the first real sound of passion he had heard her utter since their wonderful initial night. He staggered over to the bed and made love to her like a man demented, leaving no inch of her flesh untouched by his tongue, lips, teeth, hands and pulsing manhood.
Juliet was astonished by his ardour, but matched him kiss for kiss, stroke for stroke, though pinned as she was under him much of the time she couldn't explore him with any of the freedom she wished for. She gritted her teeth to remain silent, which only drove him on even more urgently.
Finally even Lawrence had to give up, and admit defeat. He might well feel her quivering and shuddering, but if he couldn't please her now, get her to scream and pant his name, he was never going to.
Juliet collapsed into an exhausted stupor. She had never guessed that such pleasure could exist, and she was boneless with delight, her every sense more alive than it had ever been, sizzling within her.
Curled tightly against Lawrence's huge frame, a sensual somnolence came to her at last. Their breaths mingled as they laced their fingers in each other's hair, and both slept.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lawrence cursed the entire avian kingdom the next morning as he awakened to the sound of birdsong. He opened one bleary eye. Then he cursed Nash for ever having promised him at Liverpool without consulting him.
His good mood was restored briefly as he opened his other eye and saw his wife's ruby lips only a hair's breadth from his own. He kissed her warmly, teasing with teeth and tongue. She glided on top of him as she had done that first magical morning, surrounding him, filling his senses. He felt as though they were in a world without tim
e as she loved and treasured him deep with her lush softness. They both panted and gasped each other's names as she drove them both to a climax that was magnificent in its brilliance.
When he next awoke the sun was high in the sky. He started. He was sure the sensual encounter had been a dream, except that she was still lying on his chest as peacefully as a lamb. He gentled her hair back from her face and planted a kiss on her brow. Damn if he wasn't going to have to drive the team head over neck to get to Liverpool in time, but it would be worth it for one more taste of her luscious charms. For goodness knows when he would next see her.
His anger at himself for going, for not wanting to go, and for missing the little minx so much when he was separated from her, made him more lusty than the occasion warranted. Not that Juliet complained, but she had rather like the gentler Lawrence who had let her have free rein in the early hours of the morning when they had cradled each other so tenderly and every featherlight touch had set off a new explosion of delight leading up to the final cataclysmic one.
When they were both panting and spent, he blustered out of the bed and cupped her rump in a manner which would have earned him a sharp slap and a good setting down if he had been anyone other than her husband.
"Damn, but I'm running late. Bath, and then I must go."
She stiffened but simply nodded.
He sensed his crass error at once, but he didn't know what else to say to make things right between them. He hurriedly bathed and dressed whilst she stuffed his now-dry but untended shirts into his valise and put together some food for his trip in a little basket with a bottle of hot tea.
"Thank you," he said when she handed the items to him, oddly touched by her thoughtfulness.
"Safe trip."
"I'll see you at the end of the month."
Her heart dropped like a stone. Another whole month.... She would go mad.
Juliet nodded again, hoping to keep her expression neutral, when all she wanted was to beg him not to leave.
He reached for her for a quick smacking kiss, and then he was gone, leaving her staring after him out the front door wondering why she felt the entire sun had been eclipsed.
It was only long after he was gone that she realised she never had got to ask him about the housekeeping money.
Lawrence was kept in a continual buzz once he got to Liverpool. The other three cities in the crammed itinerary Nash had given him were no different. It was the middle of April before he could even think about going home, and by then he was so desperate for his wife he thought he would scream if he didn't immerse himself in cold baths twice a day.
It would have been easy enough to find a willing companion; Nash had seen to that. His introductions to the best houses in each city had included some very fine worldly women indeed. Ones more than willing to extend a warm welcome to the traveller in every sense of the word.
Nash had hoped even if Matilda stood no chance with him now, as she had informed him after her last meeting with Lawrence, there might be some other beauty to keep him occupied in the north while Nash gradually set himself up for life in the south.
But Lawrence never even looked at them, leading to all sorts of rumours about his preferences. He had to be either a eunuch or a bum chum to pass up all they had to offer. His explanation that he was a happily married man they laughed off as being just too absurd for words.
At last he made his way to the small boarding school outside York which his nephews, eight and seven respectively, had been relegated to after his parents had both died. He cursed his own stupidity for not having written in advance to the headmaster to ask how they were and whether he could take them home for Easter.
He cursed his stupidity yet again when he acknowledged that in all the weeks he had been away he could have at least written Juliet one note telling her he was all right, and asking how she was.
He penned a quick letter telling her he was fine, would be home soon, and expected all in readiness when he and the children got there.
"Kill the fatted calf," he wrote with a final flourish, and then added as an afterthought, "From your husband."
No, nothing lover-like about the note, he thought with pride, not wishing her to guess for a moment how much she had wrapped him around her little finger, even though he had done everything he could to maintain the upper hand in their marriage.
Lawrence was shocked and appalled to find the school was little better than a stables. His nephews had been beaten repeatedly for minor misdemeanours by the headmaster's wife. The boys spent more time waiting upon them in their well-appointed home and working in the fields and garden like common labourers than at their studies. Stuart and Andrew showed recent signs of having been locked in the coal hole or in the ice house to 'teach them some manners.'
Their scant two meals a day were comprised of gruel and the most coarse bread. Every single child he clapped eyes on was emaciated, red-eyed, and utterly defeated. Many of them were also infested with vermin of every description.
After meeting with the boys, he roared into the headmaster's palatial study. "I'm appalled. This is what you consider to be a decent education for the sons of gentlemen?"
"Boys will be boys. They have to have the wickedness forced out of them with mortification of the flesh."
Lawrence stared at the corpulent man and his wife. "The only people I see here in dire need of mortification of the flesh are the two of you, you pompous old windbags. You're lucky I don't take a horsewhip to you.
"As it is I'm sending for the authorities and writing personally to every parent to come take their child from this, this chamber of horrors!"
Lawrence was as good as word, removing the boys and their belongings to a good hotel in York and finding school places for those boys whose parents could not move them, or had no one other than indifferent guardians to see to their welfare.
It was the last thing he needed in addition to all his tea duties, taking on the boys as well, but what else could he do? He had never seen such cruelty even in India, and this was supposed to be prosperous England.
The days flew by, with Lawrence scarcely able to rest, so busy was he by day and evening, so longing for his wife was he at night.
Finally, on a cold, blustery April day Lawrence at last began to hurry home, desperate to get back to Juliet for the Easter holidays.
For Juliet, time had hung heavy on her hands until the dark-haired woman she had seen through the window of the library tapped on it one day.
"I'm Eswara Jerome. I had hoped you might come see us by now, but--"
Juliet had disgraced herself by bursting into tears.
"Come now, climb through the window and come home to tea with me."
"I can't. If my husband finds out..."
"Is he likely to come home?"
"No, he's away and--"
"Come. It'll be fine. You'll see." She extended her hand, and Juliet took it in relief.
Over hot tea and sandwiches that tasted like heaven, she confided her circumstances, including her pregnancy.
"I think I've got to know your brother Matthew well, my dear, as well as anyone can really know a person. I'm sure he didn't cheat Lawrence. Why do you not tell your husband the truth, stand up to him. If he's never hit you--"
Juliet shrugged. "He can be so cold and cruel in other ways, there seems little point."
Eswara looked at her fondly. "Bullies pick on easy victims. You need to develop confidence. In bed and out."
She shook her head. "Bed has never been the problem. It's explosive. He's like a man demented. One touch and I go wild. But the rest of my life... No food, servants, money."
"I can-"
She blushed with shame. "No, I couldn't."
"A message to Matthew, then?" her friend suggested, her eyes full of concern.
Juliet shook her head. "It would only make it worse if Lawrence ever found out. Or if Matthew tried to intervene. No, I married my husband even knowing what his conditions were. I must muddle through until h
e admits he was wrong and changes his mind."
"Pride is cold comfort when you're all alone," Eswara warned. "And you need to think about the baby."
"I'm well, really. And I have my work, and the garden. If you would mail all of my chapters and essays for me, I could get paid for them soon."
"Hm, there I can help you. And will give you some petty cash as an advance on them. You will take a couple of pounds now and pay me back when the money arrives. And perhaps also allow me to help you with some clothes?" she asked with a fond smile.
"No, really. I need to do this by myself in my own way. Or with Lawrence if he will ever come home and be a real husband instead of just a businessman."
The Rakehell Regency Romance Series Boxed Set 5 Page 19
