Thomas

by Grace Burrowes

  Well, drat. An ambush. Loris had suspected this was Thomas’s agenda, but had lost track of her caution between one glass of “mostly lemonade” and the next.

  “I hardly know what to make of dancing,” Loris said as they moved into the house. “I have never learned, though the baron has made it a goal to teach me both some country dances and the waltz before the assembly early next month.”

  “A gathering of the locals?” Fairly asked. “I shall make a point to be here.”

  Thomas opened both doors and windows in the music room, then opened the lid of the gleaming Broadwood piano.

  “I shall play, and you, Fairly, will be the dancing master. If he stomps on your feet, Miss Tanner, yell and I will summon the physician.”

  “Who would be yours truly,” Fairly reminded them. “After a fashion.”

  Without further ado, Fairly took Loris by both hands and stepped her through the patterns of the dance. She made wrong turns, bumped into him, and nearly lost her balance more than once, only to find the viscount unerringly righting her, turning her by the shoulders, or twirling her by the hand, though they had to imagine the other dancers who’d complete the set.

  Thomas accompanied them with a casual skill that suggested musical talent buried under the accented downbeats and frequents stops and starts.

  “I must rest,” the viscount declared when Loris had the rudiments reliably under control. “And a drink, Sutcliffe, if you don’t mind. I daresay Miss Tanner could use one too.”

  Their host left them alone, and Loris fell prey to a sudden awkwardness, one the viscount must have sensed.

  “I am utterly harmless, Miss Tanner,” he assured her, leading her to a settee along the wall. “Your expression suggests you might have been thinking otherwise.”

  Fairly had never been harmless, of that she was certain. “I am unused to the company of gentlemen, my lord. I do not converse fluently in your dialect, but neither do I distrust you.”

  “Then my evening is a success. You are a quick study at the dance.”

  “Thank you. You make learning easy.”

  Drawn along by the viscount, Loris found herself comparing upbringings with him, surprised to find his earliest memories were of winters in a Scottish croft.

  “Don’t you two know how to light candles?” Sutcliffe asked.

  Loris advanced on the baron and took the tray from his hands, leaving him free to light the candelabra on the piano and a branch of candles on the mantel.

  The viscount took his proffered glass and strode over to the piano. “As the ranking title in the room, I am handing out a proclamation: By decree of the Viscount Fairly, benevolent, protective ruler of this keyboard, Baron Sutcliffe will now instruct Miss Tanner regarding the waltz. You might find it cooler out on the terrace, and my horrendous banging will certainly be audible halfway across the shire.”

  “Miss Tanner?” Thomas extended a bare hand. “May I have the honor of this dance?”

  Loris popped a curtsy. “You needn’t look like your toes have been scheduled for their execution, my lord.”

  He raised a hand to lead her out. “I do not believe that is the prescribed response.” Neither was, I wondered if you’d ever ask.

  Loris placed her fingers over the back of his hand and processed with him to the center of the floor.

  “The pleasure, my lord,” she recited, “will be entirely mine, though it’s a shame not to simply listen to such lovely music. His lordship plays well.”

  “He’s been getting pointers from Lord Val Windham, who is truly gifted. Your hand on my shoulder if you please, and my hand here.”

  He explained the need to keep a consistent distance between them, both for the sake of propriety and for the sake of their synchrony as dancers. When Fairly swept into the opening bars of the waltz, Loris stumbled at the feeling of being pulled off her feet.

  “I lead, you follow. It isn’t complicated, Miss Tanner.”

  The varlet was laughing at her, despite his polite tones. “Does it need to be so fast?”

  “I heard that,” Fairly called from the piano bench, slowing the tempo considerably. “The answer is no. The waltz can be enjoyed in a variety of tempi.”

  Thomas reestablished their position, but then folded Loris’s hand against his chest and pulled her in closer.

  “Try it this way. One can’t use this position in public, but it might give you the feel of the dance more easily.”

  The feel of the dance? What Loris felt was Thomas’s body, the warm, strong length of him pressed against her, guiding her as they moved around the room. She felt the pull and glide of his muscles beneath her hand, the rise and fall of his chest against her knuckles. She felt the scent of his soap wafting to her awareness, and the cadence of his breath where he rested his chin against her temple.

  Fairly’s playing had become languorous, a delicate twining of melody and rhythm, both soothing and haunting, even as it moved them around the floor. In one smooth turn, Thomas propelled Loris out onto the terrace, where the air was indeed cooler, and scented with lavender.

  Her first impression was disorientation, from the warm and reasonably well-lit music room, out into the cooler darkness of the summer night. Losing Papa had been like that, a complete shift of realities, no warning, no chance to prepare.

  That sense of a life off balance still haunted her, and always might.

  Dancing with the baron, though, Loris floated in a sense of safety. Thomas cradled her against his chest, she rested her head on his shoulder, the darkness, music, and summer air combining to scatter reality like so many stars in the night sky.

  Thomas was aroused. Not flagrantly, but enough that Loris could feel the swell of him against her belly. She was pleased that he was affected thus, though she did nothing to indicate her awareness, nor her pleasure in it.

  Because that desire would go nowhere. Stewarding Linden, Loris held on to propriety by her fingernails, and gentlemanly restraint from the baron would have to be matched by feminine common sense on her part.

  When Loris could not have been more relaxed without losing her footing, the music faded. Inside the music room, the branch of candles was lifted from the piano bench and borne from the room, leaving the terrace in shadows.

  Loris moved as if to step back, but Thomas’s arms kept her right where she was. “I should go, Baron.”

  “You should not, not yet. Tomorrow is soon enough to resume marching around and giving orders, Loris Tanner. Tonight you will allow yourself some time for pleasure.”

  She was already drunk with unanticipated delights. No wonder the assemblies were always well attended.

  “You will provide the pleasure, Baron?”

  “I hope I already have, though I wonder what Fairly said in my absence.” Thomas had turned Loris against his side, and slipped an arm around her back to walk with her toward a pergola at the foot of the gardens.

  “The viscount is protective of you, my lord.” Protectiveness from a friend ought to be acknowledged and cherished.

  “If I am protective of you, madam, my reception is not so cordial.”

  Loris could not afford—oh, bother what she could afford. “Hush. The night is too pleasant to ruin with your chatter.”

  Her senses opened up, to the stillness of the evening air, the scent of honeysuckle, the songs of crickets, and a lone nightingale tootling to his true love in the home wood. Her heart opened up as well, to the knowledge that Thomas was about to kiss her—really kiss her—and she welcomed that, even as she knew this kiss could not change anything between them.

  When they arrived at the pergola, Thomas simply held Loris for long moments, his hands roaming the bones of her back, her hips, the turn of her waist, the nape of her neck.

  “When you wear your hair up,” he said, nuzzling her temple, “I can hardly keep my attention from you. The way you curve and turn is grace personified.” He punctuated his words with kisses to her shoulder, soft, warm, damp kisses that left Loris boneless in
his arms.

  “We need to be seated,” he murmured. “Come.”

  They were inside the pergola in a few steps, the side toward the house covered with a thick growth of honeysuckle. The setting was as private as one—or two—could be out of doors by moonlight. Thomas seated himself first, leaving Loris standing between his legs.

  “Straddle me,” he urged, tugging at her hand.

  “We shouldn’t.”

  She shouldn’t, shouldn’t wish for what could not be, shouldn’t long to set propriety aside and let pleasure have even a moment. The summer night was lovely, though, and in Thomas’s arms, Loris had felt lovely too.

  With the smallest nudge from the baron’s charm, common sense would lose the fight to those lovely feelings, at least this once.

  Maybe the time had come for Loris to permit that defeat.

  “What we shouldn’t do, Loris Tanner, is waste the peace and privacy we have to enjoy each another’s company for the next little while. You may trust me to guard your virtue, if you want it guarded, but I would pleasure you as well.”

  The baron was a brilliant negotiator, making it clear that Loris’s choices were not being taken from her. Only ignorance and loneliness were under discussion, and those she wanted to banish.

  “Come here,”—he tugged on her hand again—“and be with me.”

  Loris put her hands on the baron’s shoulders and awkwardly straddled his thighs. She hovered there, not knowing what to do with herself until Thomas put his hands on her hips and urged her onto his lap.

  “Give me your weight and let me hold you.” His voice held none of the brusque desperation that Hedgedale’s had. If Loris needed all night to find her way to the pleasure Thomas offered, then he’d investigate that night with her.

  She heeded the urging of his hand on the back of her head and rested her forehead against his shoulder. His arms settled around her, and when she was cuddled in his embrace, he commenced a kissing war against her last reservations.

  Don’t think , his kisses whispered. Kiss me back, relax, trust me… All of the entreaties Loris had heard from others, but with none of the sly groping, no hint of force lurking in either the words or the caresses.

  Thomas did not inflict his kisses, he offered them, then waited, inviting Loris to offer hers in return. What had been a matter of enduring a bewildering unpleasantness with others became another waltz entirely with him, a slow, graceful twirl away from cares and worries, and into endless ease.

  Everything in Loris was enthralled. Her list of duties for the next day went drifting away on a breeze, and her misgivings about involving herself with her employer soon followed. If she got up and walked away, intent on being only Linden’s steward for the rest of her days, Thomas would never by so much as a lifted eyebrow allude to her decision.

  Loris was cherished and desired, safe and poised on the brink of folly. Part of her observed these paradoxes from the bows of the honeysuckle, a silent mental nightingale that would regret or rejoice over the night’s adventures later.

  The rest of her realized that Sutcliffe was deftly, systematically, undoing the falls of his breeches, leaving Loris momentarily hovering above his thighs.

  “Thomas? I do want you to guard my virtue, do you understand?” He must do the guarding, for she no longer could.

  “I understand, Loris, and I will not betray your trust. Stop fretting, and prepare to enjoy yourself—to enjoy me.”

  Loris trusted Thomas in this regard, trusted the utter resolution in his voice, trusted the gentleman in him. Still, she held herself a little above him, abruptly as much at sea as if this were some new, intricate dance, and she’d had too much wine.

  “Kiss me,” Thomas said, humor in his voice, “and for God’s sake stop thinking.”

  He put his hands on either side of her face, threaded his fingers through her hair, and touched his lips to hers. He stilled her by means of kisses, soft, little kisses that greeted each of her features in turn, then grazed along her jaw to the tender skin of her neck.

  Loris liked having her neck kissed. When Thomas nuzzled the spot where her shoulder and neck joined, her entire body relaxed. She drifted closer to his lap, only to find a part of him had drifted skyward.

  The night air seeped from Loris’s nape down between her shoulder blades to the top of her chemise. The caress of a breeze on her skin and the little touches of Thomas’s fingers as he freed her from her dress were pleasant, almost as pleasant as the whispery sigh of his hand across the fabric covering her breasts.

  Thank God it was too hot for stays and bindings and voluminous underlinen.

  Thomas’s mouth settled on Loris’s, just as his breeding organs met her most intimate parts.

  “That’s just me,” he whispered, “and simply another part of us kissing. I will not be inside you. Your weight feels good to me, though. Very good, so stop being shy.”

  Loris allowed more of her weight to rest on him, and that contact gratified in ways she could not have described.

  “Better,” Thomas murmured. “More would be better still.”

  He declared an intermission of sorts, to deal with clothing. Loris was soon wearing only her chemise, while Thomas’s shirt hung over the pergola railing, fluttering in the moonlight like a white flag of surrender. His jacket, Loris’s best summer dress, his waistcoat and cravat, all ended up on the opposite bench, so much tidily folded propriety stowed six feet away.

  “Lovely,” Thomas said, resting his forehead against Loris’s throat when they were again entwined on the bench. “A moment, please.”

  A summer-night version of silence descended. The breeze stirred green leaves, livestock shifted and grazed in the pastures at the bottom of the hill, the faint kiss of water over rocks came from the stream that ran behind the stable. Moonlight blanketed the gardens in benevolent shadows, and the scents of a thousand flowers perfumed the moment.

  For a procession of instants, Loris was wealthy. She held command over Thomas’s endless patience, his erotic wisdom, his very body, and while tomorrow would come, complete with awkwardness and regret, for the next hour, Loris could own a fortune in satisfaction and pleasure.

  “Move on me, sweetheart,” Thomas said, gently palming Loris’s breast. “You’ll feel better if you move, and God knows, so will I.”

  He abandoned her breast long enough to grasp her hips and show her what he meant. Soon, Loris was sliding her wet sex along the rigid length of his arousal, a slow, push and retreat of her hips toward some goal she could not have pursued without him.

  “Like this.” Thomas held Loris still and ground himself against her in three slow, glorious thrusts of power, heat, and arousal. “That hard, at least. You do it.”

  Loris complied, convinced by Thomas’s example and the pleasure blossoming where their flesh met.

  “Like that,” Loris said, her mouth searching for Thomas’s even as her hands roamed his chest. The sharp edge of frustration melted into the knowledge that whatever she needed to find satisfaction, Thomas would provide for her.

  Loris moved against him, abandoning the last of her caution, because in this, she utterly, absolutely trusted Thomas Jennings. The novelty of that, the sheer relief of it, was as wondrous and seductive as all his kisses and caresses put together.

  * * *

  Was this how a titled gentleman introduced his steward to an evening of fine manners and genteel company?

  That remonstration clamored at Thomas from the edges of an agony of self-restraint. Desire rode him with whips and spurs, while regard for the lady kept a tight grip on the curb reins.

  Loris deserved better. She deserved promises in addition to her pleasure. She deserved… Thomas wasn’t sure what else, wooing, probably, though she’d settle for satisfaction, and that much he could give her.

  He wanted to possess her, wholly and repeatedly; wanted to drive her over the edge while he thrust inside her, but honor forbade that course. Instead, he wrapped one arm around her waist and found a naked
breast with his free hand.

  He’d neglected her breasts, neglected to touch her intimately, neglected so much.

  “Come with me,” he murmured, applying a slight pressure to her ruched nipple. “Let go for me, Loris. Let go for yourself…”

  “Thomas.” An innocent’s question lay behind the simple utterance of his name.He grasped that question, understood it, gloried in it, and lifted his hips to increase Loris’s arousal. At the same time, he fastened his mouth over hers, a plundering kiss that urged her to plunder his treasures as well.

  And by God, she did.

  “Thomas.”

  Wonder became demand, as he bucked against her, until she was keening, clinging, and riding him for long, fraught moments.

  “Gracious, everlasting, eternal… wondrous days,” Loris sighed, folding down to pant against Thomas’s shoulder. The utter amazement in her voice had him smiling, despite his arousal. He stroked her back in slow caresses, and let her literally catch her breath before beginning to move beneath her in lazy rolls of his hips.

  They were both damp with sweat, and Thomas liked that. Liked that Loris had demanded exertions of him, liked that the breeze on his back, chest, and face was a greater pleasure than had Loris been a sedate lover.

  She raised herself off his chest and frowned at him. “You didn’t…?”

  Did she wish he had?

  “I’m about to,” Thomas assured her. “You could again, too.” Though much more self-denial, and Thomas would expire of his damned gentlemanly restraint.

  Loris cuddled down to his chest. “I dare not.”

  “Dare to,” Thomas challenged, sliding a hand between their bodies. He could address this one of his many oversights, if she allowed him to. “You have to relax, sweetheart, and not be in a hurry. Trust me to bring it to you, hmm?”

  He resumed kissing her, sweet, hot, unhurried kisses that soothed as they aroused. Between their bodies, his fingers and thumb insinuated themselves into the damp creases of her flesh.

  Thomas set up a rhythm and pleasured Loris thoroughly, learning when to ease off, when to bear down, until she was poised again on the brink of satisfaction. He’d enjoyed pleasing her, enjoyed the challenge of learning her responses and showing her the path to pleasure.