She was with Matthew, who respected her and admired her. She’d be foolish to hurry through what might be her only experience of making love with a man she respected and admired too.
* * *
A sharp double rap on Christopher Belmont’s door meant he could give up trying to stare polite words onto the blank page before him.
“Come in, Uncle.”
The door opened, and Uncle Axel sauntered into the room. He and Papa had very different walks, but they both arrived exactly where they intended to be, exactly when they intended to be there.
“You have foregone the weekly billiards debacle in favor of your correspondence,” Uncle said, taking the reading chair angled near the fire. “Should I worry about you, Nephew? You’re a university scholar and idle dissipation is your due.”
Latin, Greek, and self-gratification were the subjects Christopher spent the most time on.
“Richard beat me in the first round,” Christopher said, “and if I expect Papa to correspond regularly, then I had best set him a good example.”
Uncle whipped out a handkerchief—wrinkled but spotless—and pulled off his spectacles, which made him look more like Papa. They were both tall, lean, blond, and blue-eyed, but Papa cultivated an approachable quality Uncle didn’t bother with.
“Your father told you to set him that example,” Uncle said. “Just before he hugged you for the last time, swung up on his charger, and rode back up the Belmont House lane, there to ensure the safety of clean laundry and barking dogs throughout his corner of the realm.”
Well, yes, Papa had. Fortunately, he hadn’t looked back, or he would have seen his oldest son blinking madly at his father’s retreating back, again.
“I miss him too,” Uncle said, holding a sparkling pair of spectacles up to the firelight. “I see your correspondence has yet to gain your whole attention.”
Like Papa, Uncle took his turn serving as magistrate. That ability to ask a question by casual observation was probably a parental talent, though.
“I’ve written to Papa,” Christopher said, passing a single folded and sealed page to his uncle. “I’m trying to write to the Capshaws. It’s their week.”
Uncle settled back, and the chair creaked. “You’ve told them your studies progress well, but Virgil is something of a challenge?”
Virgil was a joy. “I used that one last time.”
“You’ve inquired after your aunt’s health?”
“One does.”
“You’ve expressed your longing for your aunt’s cooking?”
Aunt ran a very indifferent kitchen. Her cook tippled, according to Papa, though this was possibly a euphemism for Aunt’s own habits. Christopher had never been quite sure what to make of his aunt.
“One of the reasons I rejoice to leave Sussex is to escape her desserts. They are invariably drowned in some indifferent cordial better used to attract bees.”
Uncle folded his handkerchief—though what was the point of folding a wrinkled handkerchief?—and tucked it away, then set his spectacles on the corner of Christopher’s desk.
“You don’t care for your Aunt and Uncle Capshaw.” A conclusion, not a question.
“They aren’t so bad.” Except, in Axel Belmont’s usual fashion, he’d seized upon the inconvenient truth. Papa was more of a diplomat, while Uncle Axel leaned in the direction of the scholar. Blunt, practical, and willing to sacrifice decorum to necessity sooner than Papa would have.
“Agatha Capshaw is a trial,” Uncle said, “so bored she has nothing better to do than keep track of her neighbors’ peccadilloes when she can rise above her various megrims and chest colds. Emmanuel ignores her, exacerbating the problem, and does little to look after his own interests when he can instead flirt, drink, and strut about, as should be the right of every third son of a baronet.”
“Not politics, Uncle, please.”
Uncle crossed his legs at the ankle, exactly as Papa did—right ankle over left. “I always wind up in the same place: Reform is preferable to revolution. I don’t much care for the Capshaws, and if you asked your papa in a private moment, he’d admit as much, though he’d be oblique about it.”
Becoming an adult wasn’t the unbridled joy Christopher had envisioned as a child. He stayed up until all hours, true, and drank to excess on occasion, and was making new friends at university, but the southerly end of adulthood also meant an unrelenting preoccupation with females, which frequently destroyed a fellow’s dignity.
“I think Papa has met a lady,” Christopher said.
Uncle yawned, closed his eyes, and folded his hands on his flat belly. “Do tell.”
“He sent along his usual report this week, about dreading his ledgers, Cook decamping to Brighton, the hounds being in fine form for the approaching season, and Maida seldom leaving her post by the library hearth.”
“We’ll ride in the local meets,” Uncle said, twirling a wrist. “Tell me about the lady.”
“Papa took the fence at an angle, of course,” Christopher said, as Christopher was doing with his own recitation. “He mentioned that his neighbor’s niece was visiting at Linden, and the child’s equestrian education has been neglected.”
Uncle opened his eyes, his gaze on the fire. “Matthew started both of your cousins in the saddle, and like you lot, they both have a fine seat.”
The Belmont family was small, but close, and very loyal. Christopher unfolded his father’s report and read verbatim.
“With the permission of the girl’s mother, which lady accepted my escort to services this week, I will prevail on old Tut’s good offices to teach little Priscilla a few basics.”
Uncle uncrossed his ankles and recrossed them, left on top, which was Richard’s and Rem’s preferred arrangement. Christopher didn’t cross his legs much of late, because it drew his awareness to parts of his anatomy all too likely to wreck his concentration.
Though sometimes, he’d cross an ankle over a knee.
“You conclude if the girl had a papa,” Uncle said, “then Matthew would gain the father’s permission for these riding lessons rather than the mother’s. The mother is of an age with your father, having a child who can be described as little, but who must be old enough to sit Tut, who is not the smallest of the pensioners. What else do you conclude?”
Experiments and investigations ordered Uncle’s botanical world. Christopher suspected they played a part in managing Uncle’s loneliness too.
“Papa took the lady to services, though if this woman is Lord Sutcliffe’s sister, and biding at Linden, she had no need of Papa’s escort. She could have had John Coachman, Nick, Beck, or even Jamie drive her.”
“Ergo,” Uncle said, “your papa enjoys the woman’s company. Does this bother you?”
“A fellow has no privacy with you, Uncle.”
“I knocked before coming in here,” Uncle said, getting up to poke at the fire. He threw another clump of peat on the flames—Uncle was comparing the effectiveness of various fuels—and took up a lean on the edge of the desk. “Your father has been widowed for some years. That wears on a man.”
Uncle had been widowed even longer.
“I don’t begrudge Papa the company of a woman whom he esteems.”
“You begrudge somebody something, young man.” Uncle stood, the desk creaked, and Christopher realized why the letter to the Capshaws was distasteful—why all the letters to them were a chore.
“Last summer, Papa and I went to Trieshock to pick up my new boots. He wanted me to break them in before I came back to school.”
“New boots can lame a fellow,” Uncle said, nudging the fire screen flush against the bricks with his toe.
Christopher was learning to enjoy the scent of peat, which few people burned in the south. Now, its toasty aroma reminded him of these jaunts out to Candlewood, where for a few days, Oxford scholarship could be forgotten, and a fellow could get a decent meal and sleep in a warm bed.
“My boots fitted me perfectly. There’s a boarding hou
se in Trieshock, or that’s what I’m supposed to think it is.”
Christopher studied his boots, which now fit him better than perfectly. He wasn’t blushing yet, but it was a near thing.
“Mrs. Henderson’s,” Uncle said, stuffing his spectacles in his breast pocket. “A genteel version of a bordello. The gentlemen callers all seem to enter the premises from the rear, mostly after dark, though few stay more than half an hour. The residents socialize only with each other, albeit nothing about their dress or demeanor renders them overtly suspect… but a fellow wonders, how do tenants without visible occupations pay their landlady?”
Christopher was nearly halfway through his three years at Oxford. He knew of young widows who had reputations among the scholars for friendliness. The Oxford taverns boasted barmaids who supplemented their wages with a casual tup, though Papa had cautioned Christopher about the health risks of sampling their wares.
“Uncle has visited that establishment,” Christopher said. “I don’t know if Papa saw him going in the back door. We were cutting through an alley, and plain as day, I saw Uncle letting himself in Mrs. Henderson’s back door.”
“One mustn’t judge, Christopher. Every marriage is different.”
“He had a key,” Christopher said, wondering what Uncle Axel’s marriage had been like. “In the middle of the afternoon, he let himself into that place with a key. Whenever Emmanuel Capshaw sees me, he asks me—in front of Rem and Richard—if I’ve come across any tasty morsels on the curriculum here. He tells me seasoned game can be the most succulent, but a fresh pullet is always a pleasure. Rem is subject to the same nonsense.”
Uncle Axel resumed his seat. He and Papa moved silently, as if quiet could hide the fact that they were both big, fit fellows who could give a good account of themselves in a dark alley.
“Emmanuel is a gentleman by economic privilege,” Uncle said, “not in the truest sense of the word. He is, unfortunately, unexceptional in this regard, but he’s family, so you wonder where to place him in your social taxonomy.”
“I don’t like him, I don’t respect him, and I’d like to place him in darkest Peru along with Aunt’s desserts.”
What did Axel Belmont know about his brother’s family? Christopher understood the genesis of the marriage between Matthew and Matilda Belmont more clearly than he wanted to, and Uncle Axel was a shrewd fellow.
“And thus you see how difficult the lot of a true gentleman is,” Uncle said, every bit the professor coming to the point of the lecture. “If Emmanuel is a disgrace, he’s a petty disgrace whose private challenges we cannot assess. He means nobody any harm, provided his privileges and funds accrue to him without any effort on his part. My approach to such a fellow is to extend him courtesy at all times and tolerance for his minor transgressions.”
“Do you respect him?”
Uncle stood to bring a branch of candles from the mantel to the desk, which nearly doubled the light falling on Christopher’s blank page.
“I respect snakes, my boy, and poisons, and matchmaking mamas, and thorny roses. I don’t think you’re confused about who is worthy of your respect.”
“Good point. You don’t trust him, then.”
“I don’t enjoy his company, but I trust him to ever be himself. He’s asked me the same questions he’s asked you, about pullets and morsels. Emmanuel spent all of one year at university, he made no Grand Tour, and like your father, he married young, though in his case economic expedience led the way to the altar. It’s as if, having been denied a few years to drink, carouse, and spout Latin, he can’t escape a fascination with those pursuits in others.”
Christopher took up his white quill pen and brushed it over the end of his nose. “If my brothers have sons, I won’t be that sort of uncle.” Christopher would be the sort of uncle Axel Belmont was, a cross between a papa, brother, mentor, conscience, stern tutor, and guardian angel.
“What shall you write?” Uncle asked, refolding the extra blanket at the foot of the bed.
“Dear Aunt and Uncle Capshaw, I have come upon the most riveting translation of Caesar’s Gallic letters. The author has a grasp of the realities of the campaign, and a sensitivity to the perspective of the native Gaul that leaves all other translations begging….”
Uncle scrubbed his knuckles over Christopher’s crown. “A paragraph or two of that should suffice handily and allow you to join the next round of billiards. I don’t intend that we allow your papa to spend his holidays alone, you know.”
Christopher hadn’t figured out how to raise this topic. “He’s alone in that big house, with nothing to do but teach some little girl how to stay awake on old Tut.”
Uncle leveled a look at Christopher that blended amusement with warning. “He’s likely up to more than that, my boy, and we will not judge him for it.”
“No, we won’t,” Christopher said, which left the dilemma of what, exactly, to pass along to Rem and Richard. “But we’ll jaunt down to Sussex and make the acquaintance of this little Priscilla person, and her mother.”
“Perhaps we’ll do just that.”
Uncle was out the door before Christopher had even uncapped the ink.
* * *
Complications loomed, not the least of which was Theresa Jennings’s mulishness concerning her brother’s regard for her. Matthew would get to the bottom of that familial felony later, when he could once again think.
For the present moment, he was too busy rejoicing.
Theresa wore no drawers, and thus when she gave up her grasp of Matthew’s breeding organs, eager flesh met happy flesh, and confirmed that the lady was interested in the proceedings.
She had kissed him this time, after all, and she was kissing him again. Her hands drifted over his features, her touch both curious and delicate. His jaw, his brow, his eyebrows, his hair… she explored Matthew with a thoroughness that brought him awareness of his own dimensions and features.
Since Matilda’s death, he’d not been celibate. A discreet liaison at the occasional house party, an evening with a friendly widow when passing through London… forgettable and vaguely sad, all of them.
Matthew would never forget the sense of homecoming he felt when Theresa eased her weight onto him, and brushed her thumbs over his lips.
“Madam, what are you about?”
“I’m untying your cravat.” She had untied it, in fact, and piled it next to the empty brandy glass. “Now I’m unbuttoning your shirt. Soon, I’ll be moaning in your ear.”
“And I in yours. Very soon.” Not quite yet, though. Matthew had found the woman in whom protectiveness, respect, desire, liking—all the fine, lovely emotions he could feel for a woman—came home.
“You have the most complicated, masculine, attractive scent,” Theresa said, nuzzling his neck. “Have you ever considered wearing a gold ring in one ear?”
“For you, I’d consider wearing a gold dressing ring, and aught else. Damn your blasted corset, madam.”
Her sigh breezed across his throat, her sex glossed over his cock. “I like that you’re swearing. I’ll regret this entire—”
Matthew kissed her to silence, and then simply kissed her for the pleasure of feeling her tongue move in the same languorous rhythm as her hips.
“No regrets, Theresa. I like that I needn’t dissemble with you,” he said. “I needn’t pretend I’m some callow swain unacquainted with honest desire. Make your demands of me, and I will meet them.”
Thank God, she wasn’t a blushing virgin who’d take years to develop the confidence to state her intimate preferences.
She pressed her forehead to his and her hands fell away. “You like that I’m not chaste?”
“You are not ignorant. You are wise, lovely, and for the present moment, mine, as I am yours.”
Theresa did the honors, as Matthew had hoped she would. She took him in her hand and showed him where she needed him to be.
“Move,” Matthew whispered, flexing his hips slowly. “Please, love. Move.”
The sensations were lush and delightful. Heat, desire, the greatest possible physical closeness. A slow, lovely, blissful joining, gilded with yearning and anticipation of greater pleasure.
As Matthew wrapped Theresa close and found a rhythm with her, he buried his lips against her throat, lest he burden her with other intimacies she would not welcome.
He was staring at the male equivalent of spinsterhood, his children had all left home, and his dreams—few though they were—had apparently left with them. Life had stretched before him, an endless manicured landscape of boring meals with boring in-laws, stolen laundry, and interminable assemblies.
With the prospect of Theresa Jennings at his side, the entire vista changed into beautiful, untamed wilderness. He’d been married, raised children, and had his pick of the local beauties should he wish to remarry, but his heart had remained innocent of love shared with a woman who was wholly his to love in return.
Theresa’s breathing changed and her movements became more focused. She shifted the angle of their joining, and Matthew’s self-control suffered a bad moment. His rhythm faltered, and she went still.
“Matthew? Should we stop?” Her question held all manner of worries and topics they ought to have discussed.
He brushed her hair back from her brow. “I will not spend, Theresa. Next time, I’ll use a sheath.”
“There can’t be a next—”
Matthew parried that thrust with a slow, hard, roll of his hips. “Take your pleasure of me, Theresa. I give you my word, we’ll have as many rousing arguments as you please, later.”
The intermission steadied him, which was fortunate, for Theresa Jennings was magnificent in her passion. She went about satisfaction with a silent vigor that ended in only one soft, sighing exhalation after she’d beaten Matthew’s self-restraint to flinders, and done wonders for his self-esteem.
Next time, and all the times after that, they’d use a sheath, unless and until they were married, and Theresa was comfortable with the idea of having another child.
When she was drowsing on his shoulder, two reprises of bliss later, Matthew reached for the handkerchief crumpled next to the empty brandy glass.
Matthew Page 14
