by Julia London
He pushed her hair from her face, lifted her by her hips and guided her onto his cock, sliding deep inside her. Grace gasped at the sensation; she clutched at his shoulders, moving delicately, uncertainly. He kissed her with uncharacteristic tenderness as he helped her to glide on him, showing her the rhythm. When Grace took over, his hands went to her breasts, kneading them, his eyes on hers.
She began to move with more urgency, seeking release; Merryton slipped his hand in between them and began to stroke her. His touch was electrifying—she encircled his neck with arms, watching his face as they moved as one, until she could bear it no longer. She closed her eyes, felt the pleasurable release swirling around in her groin, rising up and up, until at last she splintered as the pleasure swept over her.
In a moment, he had her on her back and was driving into her, racing toward his own climax. He touched her lips with his and pushed into her, faster and harder until she felt his body shudder, heard him growl with the relief of his release as he spilled into her.
Grace wrapped her arms around him. She kissed the side of his head, and smiled up to the canopy, luxuriating in the warm glow of their bodies.
He lifted his head, kissed her cheek tenderly, and her forehead, then gathered her in his arms and rolled onto his side.
Grace had never felt quite so content. Her heart was still beating wildly, and against his chest. His skin was damp, his arms strong in their hold of her. She felt a lightness, as if everything around them shimmered, cocooning them in her bed.
Several moments passed before Merryton put his palm to her cheek and kissed her, softly, languidly. And then he rolled onto his back, still trying to catch his breath.
After a moment, he pushed himself up. “I shall leave you—”
“No,” Grace said, and caught his arm. “Please stay.”
“You should rest.”
“Jeffrey, stay.” She smiled at him and caressed his arm.
He stroked her cheek, then slowly eased back, lying beside her.
Grace smiled and kissed his shoulder and draped her arm across his abdomen as she nestled in beside him. She felt as if some chasm had been crossed tonight. She felt hopeful for the first time since coming to Blackwood Hall. She believed in that moment that she could grow to care for Merryton very much.
But when she awoke an hour or so later and found herself alone in her bed, the warm glow turned cold. She pushed herself up, looking around. Merryton and his clothes were gone.
Grace fell onto her back, her arms splayed wide, and glared at the canopy above her, angry and perhaps even a bit hurt by it. There had to be a way to reach Jeffrey Donovan, but blast it all if Grace knew what it could possibly be.
* * *
JEFFREY HADN’T HURT her. He’d done no harm to her, as evidenced by her request that he remain with her. It was all there, in his mind’s eye, the whole astounding experience. He’d lost himself, had let himself be free, and now, he could rest knowing that his worst fear had not come true.
But he couldn’t rest. He couldn’t sleep. He thought of the card game she’d convinced him to play, of the questions she’d asked. He’d been able to answer them all until she’d asked him about eight.
Jeffrey closed his eyes and banged his fist against his forehead in a futile attempt to knock loose the demon. There was nothing that could relieve him of the terrible desires that so freely and mercilessly inhabited his thoughts other than to count in multiples of eight.
But as his depraved thoughts began to root into his brain, the path of eight steps in his room was not enough. Jeffrey made his way in the dark down the stairs and to the main corridor.
That corridor was a last resort, one he reserved for those rare occasions when the lack of control in his life was raging. He’d not been here in months, perhaps even as much as two years. It was for emergencies only, as the fear of being seen by the servants generally outweighed any other consideration.
Tonight, he would risk it.
The main corridor was precisely eight feet wide and, from one end to the other, thirty-two steps, even forty if he altered his gait. He chose thirty-two. Thirty-two steps to the end, turn, thirty-two steps back. Repeat.
He hadn’t hurt her, he thought as he counted his steps. He had feared the worst, and the worst had not come to pass. The images he was experiencing now—of her naked body on his, of his cock ramming into her—were nothing more than that, nothing more than images.
On his third round of counting, Jeffrey could admit to himself that the experience had been very agreeable moments afterward, when he had been persuaded to lay there with her head on his shoulder, her body nestled against his. But he couldn’t stay with her, not indefinitely, not in her bed, not with his many secrets and the rituals he could not forego. He’d felt a bit remorseful for slipping away as she lay sleeping, but he reasoned that he would feel far worse if she knew the truth about him.
As it was, she now knew too much about him. He was intrigued by her, aroused by her. He was angered by her, inconvenienced by her. He’d always been a man who took pride in the fact that he could always find an answer, could always bring order to any situation. Could always control himself. But with Grace, there was no order. There was no control. It was a messy, muddy hole of emotions and secrets and chaos. For the first time in a very long time, the chaos inside him was growing.
He would hurt her. If he hadn’t already, he would.
As the minutes clocked by, Jeffrey was increasingly unable to calm his racing thoughts He was astounded, flummoxed and even a bit frightened. How could she possibly know about eight?
Dr. Linford was the only one to whom Jeffrey had ever confessed his unnatural need. He’d told him in hopes there was some medicine or tincture that would cure him, or at least some plausible explanation for why his world was divided into eights. Dr. Linford had not only been shocked by it, he hadn’t the slightest notion of what could be done.
Jeffrey suspected Cox had guessed at his affliction with the number eight, but he was far too good a butler to mention it. The man quietly and very efficiently incorporated Jeffrey’s foibles into his daily routines.
But to have this woman, a stranger, really, guess at his obsession? To have seen how he relied on eight, how everything in his life came back to it? If she had seen the full extent of his depravity, who else had seen it?
He could not have the world know of his affliction. He’d be made the laughingstock of England.
Worse, even if she did recognize his need for eight and somehow managed to overlook it for the sake of this marriage, she would never overlook his sexual perversion. She would never consent to being bound or to feeling the crop against her skin. She would never understand his desire for more than one woman.
I didn’t hurt her.
She will cry off this marriage and flee to London.
Could he stop her? Would he? Wasn’t he morally bound to let her go if she desired, given that the perversion in this union was within him? She would have every right to flee him, every right to be disgusted by him.
He walked the corridor for hours that wretched night, but the weight of his shame became unbearable. He had to get away, to be somewhere safe where he might think.
To Cox’s great surprise, Jeffrey left the next morning at precisely eight o’clock. He asked Cox to tell his wife that business had called him away to Bath. He did not mention when he would return because he honestly didn’t know.
Jeffrey rode to Bath and his town house there, surprising Tobias, his butler and caretaker. Tucked away there, with its eight steps from study to dining room, and eight panels of wallpapering in his salon, Jeffrey felt at ease for the first time since entering Grace’s rooms the night before.
He was finally able to sleep—so well, in fact, he awoke just before noon the following day. When he arose, Jeffrey sent his footman to inquire if Dr. Linford might receive him.
Dr. Linford returned word that he would be delighted to receive his lordship in his home.
&
nbsp; “My lord,” Dr. Linford said when Jeffrey arrived, coming across his salon, his hand extended, and bowing over it. Mrs. Linford, a dark-haired beauty, was seated on a settee. A young maid who was at work tidying the study stole a look at Jeffrey.
“My lord, you are welcome,” Mrs. Linford said.
Jeffrey nodded. He was struck by the realization that for the first time in recent memory, he could look at the lovely Mrs. Linford and the maid without the image of their hands and mouths on each other appearing in his head. It seemed that his corrupt mind had focused entirely on his wife.
“Perhaps we might speak in my office?” Dr. Linford said, and gestured to the door.
Jeffrey gave Linford’s wife a curt nod and followed Linford out of the room, down the narrow hall and into a small office. He declined the seat Linford offered him, preferring to remain standing, as he was now questioning the wisdom of having come at all.
“How may I be of service, my lord?” Linford asked.
Jeffrey folded his arm so that his hand was behind his back and tapped eight times. “I have...struggled with...peculiar thoughts,” he said.
“Ah,” Dr. Linford said. “You’ve had another spell of the eight again?”
A spell, as if it was something brought on by the ingestion of too much wine or some such thing. “Yes.”
Dr. Linford eyed him thoughtfully. “Has it to do with your recent nuptials, do you suppose?”
Now he was to name a reason for his degenerate thoughts? That it had been made much worse, far worse, by his marriage to a complete stranger? Yes, of course it had! “Perhaps.”
“As it happens, I’ve done a bit of reading on your unusual situation,” Linford said. “Not yours, precisely, but unnatural thoughts in general. My recommendation is that we attempt to purge the poisons that obviously lead to these thoughts with a bloodletting, and follow that with a course of laudanum to establish calm.”
Jeffrey instantly recoiled at the mention of bloodletting.
“Just here,” Linford said, pointing to his own neck. “To balance the humors and hopefully promote productive thought.”
“No,” Jeffrey said instantly. He recalled with some horror the bloodletting that had been done to his father as he laid on his deathbed.
“My lord, I cannot stress enough that it is entirely necessary. If you want to be free of it—”
“Yes, all right,” Jeffrey said impatiently. If that’s what it would take, he was willing to try it.
They arranged for the treatment to begin the next morning.
The bloodletting itself hardly registered to Jeffrey. Other than the nick where Linford cut him, he didn’t feel anything leaving his body. He felt nothing but a little weak from it.
Dr. Linford left Jeffrey with two vials of laudanum and strict instructions on how he was to take the medicine. Jeffrey ate a bit of luncheon—he really had no appetite—then locked the door of his study, pulled a chair around to face the fire and sprawled onto the seat. He took the dosage Dr. Linford had prescribed and settled back, waiting for the medicine to take hold and calm his thoughts.
An hour or so later, he watched the flames in the hearth—huge, chimney-creeping flames—curve and curl into eights before his very eyes, then disappear, evaporating into smoke. Jeffrey counted sixteen of them. In that altered state, he believed he had been freed, that the eights were disappearing, one at a time. He was quite encouraged by it, even ecstatic. So much so that he took more of the laudanum, wanting to hasten it along.
But then shadows began to creep out of the chimney and march on the walls, on the ceiling, closing in on him, surrounding him. He thrashed at the shadows, but he seemed to have lost the ability to move his body efficiently.
There was no hope for him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GRACE LEARNED OF Jeffrey’s abrupt departure from Hattie.
“Quite a ruckus this morning, mu’um,” Hattie said as she puttered around Grace’s rooms. “Julia Barnhill, she’d not do as Mrs. Garland asked, said she was brought on to clean the earl’s rooms, not the parlors. But Mrs. Garland said that as his lordship’s away, there’s no cleaning for her to do, and she could surely help with household chores. She took the matter to Mr. Cox, and suddenly, Miss Barnhill is charity and grace, ready to serve.” She puffed out her cheeks and shook her head. “Mrs. Garland, she doesn’t care for that Miss Barnhill.”
“His lordship has gone away?” Grace said, startled by the news.
Hattie colored. “Aye, mu’um, to Bath. So says Mr. Cox.”
Grace went immediately to inquire of Cox, who confirmed Jeffrey had left early that morning. “When will he return?”
“His return is indefinite, madam.”
Indefinite? Just like that, he’d up and left her without a bloody word? It made Grace quite angry. So angry that she wanted to kick something. Or scream. But as neither of those was practical, she came up with the idea to change something. She would not allow him to ruin the gains she’d made this week. She would take this opportunity to enhance the music room.
She asked Ewan to come to the attic storage with her and rummaged through stacks of paintings and furniture. In addition to finding some paintings for the music room, she was thrilled to find chairs for the dining room. They were upholstered in rich red velvet—not the plain brown wood of the chairs that she’d sat upon every night thus far. When she inquired why they were in storage, Ewan pointed to a dark stain on the master chair. “Someone spilled a bit of wine.”
That was it—the chairs had been banished for a bit of wine. She wondered what else he had banished for being less than perfect. The thought of her mother popped into her head, and Grace’s anger swelled alongside a vague sense of sorrow. How had perfection become so necessary to Merryton? How had he allowed it to rule him in an imperfect world? And how in heaven could she ever bridge the gap between his perfect order and her family? “It can be cleaned,” she pointed out.
“Aye, mu’um. But his lordship said to take them away.”
“Please have them cleaned and brought up to the dining room,” she said confidently.
Cox was a bit disagreeable about it, insisting, when he found her in the music room, that his lordship did not care to have the red chairs. Or the yellow flowers she’d put in the vases. The more he mentioned what his lordship did not care for, the more Grace was determined to have them.
“Does he not?” Grace asked sweetly. “Then perhaps he shall return to his wife and tell her so himself.” She smiled.
“Very well, madam,” Cox said. The poor man appeared resigned to change at Blackwood Hall. “But the paintings,” he said, referring to the two the carpenter was hanging. “He’s been quite adamant that they not be hung. He does not care for them.”
“He does not care for them to be misaligned,” Grace corrected him. “And I haven’t asked you to bring all the paintings from storage. Just these two.” With that, she sat down and began to play the pianoforte, confident that would send Cox from the room.
She was right—he left straightaway.
Grace continued to pound away while Bother fought a feather that had appeared from heaven knew where.
Grace scarcely noticed what she was doing; her mind was swirling around Jeffrey’s strange disappearance. He confounded her so completely! He was as ill-mannered as she’d first believed.
On the second day of his absence, Grace complained of it to Molly Madigan as she’d helped her take cuttings from the garden. “On my word, I don’t understand him,” she’d said as she angrily snipped a stem. “Could he not imagine I’d want to know that he’d gone? To ask him where he might be, what I was to do in his absence, how long he’d be away?”
“Yes, of course he should have imagined it, but I suppose he is not yet accustomed to having a wife to consider,” Molly had said, as if it were all very simple. “For many years he has done as he pleased.”
“Yes, well that is painfully obvious,” Grace had grumbled.
“It may be difficul
t for you to see yet, but he is a considerate man.”
Grace snorted.
Molly smiled and handed Grace a basket of yellow roses. “All men need to be prodded into good manners from time to time.”
“But how? I can hardly scold him.”
“Children often learn when the consequences of bad behavior are plainly evident.”
“He’s not a child,” Grace scoffed.
“Oh, no...but I suppose all men are a bit childish, are they not? Were I you...”
“Yes?” Grace asked quickly, her gaze riveting on Molly, hopeful for any piece of advice.
Molly clucked her tongue and pretended to rummage about in her basket. “I’ve said too much. I would never advise you about such matters that concern your husband.”
“No, of course not,” Grace said, inching closer to her. “But if you were me, you would...?”
“Well,” Molly said, “I suppose I’d go and find him.”
Grace stared at her. The thought had not occurred to her.
Molly colored slightly. “As I said, I would never presume—”
“But you’re absolutely right, Molly!” Grace said, filled with renewed determination. “How else will he know it will not do to leave without a word?” She laughed with delight. “Oh, but I can scarcely wait to see his face when I arrive in Bath.”
Molly smiled uncertainly.
Once again, Cox was reluctant when she asked to have a coach brought around with a team of four and a driver.
“A coach, madam?”
“Yes, Cox. I am to Bath.”
One of his eyes twitched. He cleared his throat, took a breath. “Allow me to inquire of the carriage house if one is available and if we have drivers.”
Grace had anticipated his reluctance. “If there are no drivers, I will drive myself. I’m perfectly at ease driving a coach, did you know? I’ve driven them all over Longmeadow and Hyde Park.” That wasn’t precisely true—what Grace had driven were pony carts, and while Grace wasn’t at all certain she could drive a team of four, she was not going to be put off.
