by Mary Balogh
“I like this room,” she said. “Someone made a home here.”
Lord Ferdinand was looking about too, his eyes pausing on each object, a slight frown between his brows. But he did not comment aloud. He ushered her into the dining room and then upstairs.
The bedchamber took her quite by surprise. Although it was opulently decorated in satins and velvets and had a thick carpet underfoot, it did not look like a typical love nest. Men invariably liked scarlet as an accompaniment to their sensual delights. Lilian Talbot's bedchamber had been predominantly scarlet. This one was decorated in varying shades of moss green, cream, and gold.
One would feel less like a mistress in this room and more like a lover, she thought. She was glad it was here she would spend her last hours with Lord Ferdinand. She would not be his mistress, because she was not going to be paid, but she was glad their surroundings would help her see him as a lover rather than as a client.
The door that must lead into the dressing room, slightly ajar when they entered the bedchamber, was pulled firmly closed from the other side.
Viola turned to look at Lord Ferdinand. He was hovering in the doorway, his hands at his back, his long legs slightly apart. He looked handsome and powerful and slightly dangerous—and very obviously uncomfortable. This, of course, she realized, was all new to him.
“Will it do until I can find something else?” he asked.
“Yes, it will do.”
His eyes shifted away from hers. “You must be very tired,” he said.
“Yes, rather.”
“I will leave you, then,” he said. “I will return tomorrow to see that you have settled comfortably. I daresay the rest of your belongings will arrive within the next few days. I sent a message back to Pinewood yesterday.”
He was going to leave her out of deference to her weariness after two days of travel. She had not expected this. How easy it would be. She could see the last of him forever now, within the next few minutes, before she had time to think. But she could not bear to be alone tonight. It was too soon. She had not had a chance to steel her mind to it. Tomorrow she would be ready, but tonight …
She crossed the room and set her fingertips against his chest. He did not move as she smiled into his face and arched her body inward until she touched him from her hips to her knees.
“I am tired,” she said, “and ready for bed. Are you?”
He flushed. “Don't do that,” he said, frowning. “Don't do it, do you hear me? If I wanted a damned whore, I would go to a brothel. I don't want Lilian Talbot. I want you. I want Viola Thornhill.”
She had donned her other persona without conscious thought, she realized, desperate to shield herself from pain. It was strange, she thought, and just a little frightening, to realize that Lilian Talbot repelled him, that it was Viola Thornhill who drew him to intimacy. It was Viola he wanted as his mistress. She drew away from him and let her arms fall to her sides. Without her customary mask, all her emotions felt naked.
“Let us at least be honest with each other,” he said. “Must there be artifice and tricks and games just because we are embarking on a sexual relationship? You know, do you not? I suppose it was embarrassingly obvious that you were my first woman. Let me be Viola Thornhill's first man, then. Let us look for some comfort from this relationship as well as pleasure. Perhaps even some companionship? Will it be possible, do you suppose?”
But she could only shake her head, while unshed tears balled themselves into a lump in her throat and welled into her eyes.
“I do not know,” she whispered.
“I am not interested in Lilian Talbot,” he said. “She would make me feel gauche and inadequate, you see. And rather dirty. I want you or no one at all. Take it or leave it.”
It was time for the truth. Time to tell him that she had tricked him earlier in the carriage, getting him to agree that she was free to end the liaison at a moment's notice. Time to tell him that she intended to use that freedom tomorrow morning.
She stepped against him again and pressed her face into his neckcloth.
“Ah, Ferdinand,” she said.
17
He was in deep waters. His instinct was to wade out so that he could stand upon the shore H and view the situation from a safe distance. If he went back to his own rooms, he would be able to digest what was happening to him. It was not even late. He could change his clothes and go to White's, find some of his friends, discover what entertainments the evening offered, and pick one or two to attend. Life would be familiar and comfortable again.
Was this how all men felt about their mistresses at first? As if their very souls yearned for union, for comfort, for peace? For love? Did all men suffer from the illusion that the woman was the other half of their soul?
He must be naïve indeed to be feeling as he was feeling. But he knew with blinding clarity that what had happened between him and Viola two evenings ago on the riverbank at Pinewood had merely confirmed what he had known about himself most of his life. He would rather go celibate through life than engage in sex for its own sake.
He wrapped his arms about her and kissed her mouth when she raised her face to his.
“Do you want me to stay?” he asked her. But he set one finger over her lips before she had a chance to answer. “You must be honest. I'll never bed you unless you want it too.”
Her lips curved beneath his silencing finger. “What if I never want it?”
“Then I'll have to find some other solution for you,” he said. “But you are not going back to your old life. I'll not allow it.”
Her smile was purely Viola's, not that other woman's, he was glad to see. It seemed to be tinged with sadness. “Do you have any say in the matter?” she asked him.
“I dashed well do,” he told her. “You are my woman.”
Not mistress—woman. There was a difference. He had spoken without forethought, but he knew that he had spoken a true thing. He was responsible for her. He had no legal obligation to her and no legal right to demand obedience from her. Nevertheless, she was his woman.
“Stay with me,” she said. “I do not want to be alone tonight. And I do want you.”
She could trust him, he almost told her. Through most of his life he had trusted no one but himself, knowing that even those people nearest and dearest to him could let him down at any moment and make the firm earth beneath his feet feel more like quicksand. He had trusted in himself and had never done anything he considered truly shameful or dishonorable. She could trust him too. He would be the Rock of Gibraltar for her. But how could he say the words without sounding like a foolish, boastful boy?
He would have to show her that he was to be trusted, that was all. Only time would accomplish that.
In the meantime, she had told him that she wanted him. And by God, he wanted her too. She had been pulsing like a fever in his blood all day long. And yesterday too when he had come chasing after her.
He drew her into his arms and kissed her hungrily. She wrapped her arms about him and kissed him back in the same way. But he remembered suddenly that until less than half an hour before she had been sitting in his carriage since their last posting stop.
“Go into your dressing room and make yourself comfortable,” he said. “Come back in ten minutes' time.”
She smiled slowly at him. “Thank you,” she said.
He was glad almost fifteen minutes later that he had done it. He was sitting on the side of the bed, the covers turned back, when she returned. He had stripped down to his riding breeches. She was wearing a nightgown, perhaps the same one she had worn the night he broke the urn. It was white and virginal and covered her from neck to wrists to bare feet. Her hair had been unbraided and brushed until it shone like copper. It was loose and billowed down her back almost to her bottom. She could not have looked more desirable if she had come to him naked. Or if the single candle had been gleaming off the scarlet trappings he had half expected to find in this bedchamber.
She came toward him, and
he spread his knees and reached out his hands so that she could come right to the edge of the bed and stand against him. He set his hands on either side of her small waist and rested his face in the valley between her breasts. The nightgown had a freshly washed smell. So did she. The most enticing feminine perfume, he discovered in that moment, was soap and woman. Her fingers smoothed lightly through his hair.
“Do you want me to undress?” she asked him. “I was not sure.”
“No.” He got to his feet and pulled the bedcovers back farther. “Lie down. Let me see you there before I blow out the candle.”
“You want to blow it out?” she asked him as she lay down and smoothed her nightgown over her knees.
“Yes.”
It was not that he did not want to see her. It was certainly not that he would be embarrassed by his own nakedness. After all, they had been naked together just two nights before in moonlight. He was not quite sure why he wanted darkness. Or why he wanted her to keep her nightgown on. Perhaps there would be more of fantasy in it—the illusion that they were not man and mistress having sex for his pleasure, but a couple, finding warmth and comfort in each other's bodies in the bed where they slept together.
He blew out the candle, removed his breeches and drawers, and lay down beside her. He slid one arm beneath her head, and she turned against him and found his mouth with her own.
“Make love to me, Ferdinand,” she said. “As you did two nights ago. Please. No one else had ever made love to me. Just you. You were the first.”
His hands moved over her warm curves, on top of the nightgown. “I don't know how to please you,” he said. “But I'll learn if you will be patient with me. I want to please you more than anything else in life.”
“You pleased me,” she told him. “More than anyone or anything ever has done before. And you please me now. You feel good. You smell good.”
He laughed softly. He had washed, but he did not have any of his colognes with him. She did not mind his inexperience, he realized. Perhaps it was something that appealed more than expertise would have to Viola Thornhill.
It was Viola Thornhill with whom he was making love. In some strange way she had come virgin to him. He felt gifted—and vaguely disturbed. But he pushed back the latter feeling. It was only as his mistress that he could keep her safe.
She did not mind his inexperience and so he relaxed and did not mind it himself any longer. He explored her with his hands, learning every curve of his woman, while desire heated his blood and tightened his groin and stiffened his erection. He began to discover the places—some of them unexpected—that drew soft purrs of pleasure or slow gasps of desire from her. He began to know her.
And then he slipped his hand beneath her nightgown and moved it upward, along her slim, smooth legs to the heart of her. She was hot and moist. She parted her thighs and her hands fell still on his body as his fingers explored her, learned the folds and the secrets of her, slid inside her. He hardened to almost unbearable arousal as her inner muscles clenched about his fingers.
And then by some instinct the pad of his thumb found a small part of her at the mouth of her opening and rubbed lightly over it. He knew immediately that he had discovered perhaps her most intense pleasure spot. She trembled, her hands gripping his sides, and cried out as she shuddered into what could only be a feminine orgasm.
He laughed softly after she had finished. “Can I possibly be that good?” he asked her.
She laughed with him, her voice breathless and a little shaky. “I think you must be,” she said. “What did you do?”
“That is my secret,” he said. “I find that I have hidden talents. I am one devil of a fine lover, in fact.”
They laughed together as he raised himself on one elbow and leaned over her. They had not drawn the curtains across the window. He could see her faintly, her face surrounded by a cloud of dark hair on the pillow.
“And enormously modest,” she said.
“Well. Enormous, anyway.” He rubbed his nose across hers.
She tutted. “I rest my case.”
The laughter was unexpected. And unexpectedly good.
“Give me a moment,” he said, “and I'll show you that I speak only the truth.”
He did not peel her nightgown all the way off. The fantasy felt more erotic than nudity. He moved over her and settled himself between her thighs.
“Show me, then,” she said, “and I'll pass judgment. I think you are merely boasting.”
He thrust hard and deep—and fought the urge to bring himself to a fast completion. But he had known what to expect this time. It was a little easier. He wanted to take his time. He wanted to give her time to enjoy it with him.
“No,” she said, her voice sounding startlingly normal, “it was no boast.”
Minx. Jade. Witch. Woman.
He raised himself onto his forearms and grinned down at her. “Five minutes?” he said. “Or ten? Which do you think me capable of?”
“I do not wager when I have no hope of winning,” she said. “But which do I think you capable of? Let me see. Both added together, I believe. Fifteen.” She laughed.
He moved in her then, settling much of his weight on her, working her with slow, rhythmic strokes, enjoying the feel of her, the smell of her, the sounds of their coupling, the knowledge that she was enjoying the same things about him and what they did together.
Together. It was the key. United. As one. Bodies joined in the deeply intimate, infinitely pleasurable dance of sex. And not just bodies. Not just any man with any woman.
“Viola,” he whispered against her ear.
“Yes.”
They kissed openmouthed without breaking the rhythm of their loving. But she knew—of course she knew—what he had said to her with the single word of her name. She said it back to him timeless moments later.
“Ferdinand.”
“Yes.”
They kissed again. And then he buried his face in the silky fragrance of her hair and quickened and deepened his pace until he felt her tighten every muscle and strain closer to him and closer and closer until…
The thing was, he thought some time later, a moment before he realized he was lying on top of her like a dead weight and lifted himself off—the thing was that there was only a before and an after and a knowledge of a placeless, nameless, eventless somewhere and sometime in between that left one peaceful and exhausted and utterly convinced that it was heaven one had spied and forgotten all in the same eternal momentless moment.
It had happened to them together. He had not consciously heard her, but he knew she had cried out. So had he. He had little experience, but instinct told him that what they had shared was rare and precious. They had glimpsed heaven together.
His friends would cart him off to Bedlam and leave him there if ever he started spouting such embarrassing nonsense in their hearing, he thought. His acquaintances' conversations about women were altogether more earthy and bawdy.
He lowered Viola's nightgown and cradled her against him. He kissed the top of her head.
“Thank you,” he said.
The night had been sweet agony. They had been hungry after making love and had dressed and gone downstairs for a cold supper Ferdinand had asked for earlier. It was late after they had finished and talked for a while. Viola had expected him to leave. But he had asked her, reaching across the small round table to set one hand over hers, if she wanted him to stay, and she had said yes.
They had slept together. They had also made love twice more, once when they went back to bed, once before they got up in the morning. But it was the actual sleeping together that Viola had found most agonizing. She had slept in fits and starts, and every time she awoke she was aware of him, sometimes turned away from her, more often with his arms about her, the bedcovers all tangled about them. Simply being together like that had seemed more intimate to her than the sex. And more seductive.
Her head was aching now as they sat at breakfast. He was wearing yesterday's
clothes and was not turned out as immaculately as usual. His hair was still looking rather tousled, even though it had been combed. He was unshaven. He was looking altogether adorable.
“I have a number of things to do today,” he was saying, “not least of which is to go home and change my clothes.” He grinned and rubbed a hand over his jaw. “And get rid of this beard. Perhaps I'll be able to call in here this afternoon, though. We need to discuss your salary, and then we will be able to forget about it and not mention it again. I do find that part of our arrangement a little distasteful, don't you?”
“But quite essential.” She smiled at him and memorized him with her eyes—the restless, rather boyishly eager manner that was so typical of him, the ready grin, which she had at first thought was rakish, the confident air, tinged with an unconscious arrogance that came from his birth and upbringing, the hint of reckless danger that always saved him from being a soft touch.
“I daresay Jane—the duchess, that is—will invite me for dinner tonight,” he said. “I have promised to call sometime today to see the children—they were sleeping last evening. Or if it is not Jane it will be Angie—Lady Heyward, my sister. She will ferret me out fast enough once she knows I am back in town.”
Viola held on to her smile. He had family, of whose members he was fonder than he realized. His voice told her that he was looking forward to seeing them again. The gulf between her and him was enormous, insurmountable. As his mistress she would be on the very periphery of his life, performing a base, if essential, service. And even that would be just for a few weeks or months, until he tired of her. His family was his forever.
Such thoughts confirmed her in her resolve.
“I won't stay late, though.” He reached across the table, as he had the evening before, and took her hand in a warm clasp. “I won't let them persuade me to go off with them to whatever balls or soirees or concerts are scheduled for tonight. I'll come back here after dinner.” He squeezed her hand. “I can hardly wait.”
“Me neither.” She smiled at him.
