Improper Arrangements (The Improper Series)

by Juliana Ross

  The hotel’s plumbing was rather primitive, so after Elijah had stepped into the hall and shut the door I changed into my nightgown, brushed out my hair and relieved my bladder in the chamber pot I found in the bottom of the washstand. There was no water in the ewer, so my teeth and face would have to wait until the morning.

  After sliding into bed I called out softly to Elijah. His nighttime preparations were even more perfunctory than mine, though it was difficult to tell exactly what he was doing as I had closed my eyes and turned my face to the wall. His boots thumping to the floor were easy to discern, followed by the less identifiable noises of various garments being shed. At last I heard him extinguish the candle and stretch out on the pallet.

  “Good night, Alice.”

  “Good night, Elijah. Are you sure you’re comfortable? Perhaps you could ask the innkeeper for an extra blanket.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “But you must be so tired, and the pallet seems so thin—”

  “Alice?”

  “Yes?”

  “Go to sleep.”

  I tried. For long minutes, I really tried. But the mattress was lumpy, my pillow smelled musty, and the most desirable man I had ever met lay on the floor only inches away. So I did something very imprudent—I wriggled to the edge of the bed and peered down at him.

  He lay on his back, one arm flung over his eyes to shade them from the moonlight that streamed through the single bare window. Instead of a nightshirt, he wore nothing more than his drawers. Made of thin, fine linen, they hung low on his hips and were nearly translucent in the moonlight.

  I’d seen the naked human form before, naturally, and had even drawn studies of the classical statuary in my father’s house. But that was just marble, cold and lifeless. Inspiring but not in the least enticing.

  Elijah could have been the inspiration for those statues. Hard lean planes of muscle interlocked with one another, beautifully sculpted, warm and alive and enthralling. A fearsome scar ran down his side, faintly livid, but it did little to mar his perfection. Dark hair stretched in an inverted triangle across the breadth of his chest, narrowing to a single tantalizing line as it disappeared beneath the waistband of his drawers.

  I forced my curious eyes to return to his arms, for I’d noticed something unusual about his forearms. Just below his elbows, on both arms, dark bands were painted on his skin, encircling his limbs completely. Or was the color actually incised into his skin—might the bands be tattoos, like those borne by sailors and exotic tribesmen? I longed to ask him about the markings, though that would mean he’d know I’d seen him unclothed. Had ogled his naked chest and arms while he slept.

  A familiar restlessness took hold as I stared at his beautiful form and remembered the gorgeous sensations he’d provoked in me such a short time ago. Had I been alone in the room I could have easily quenched my desire for him, but I dared not engage in such behavior with a witness so close by. Even if that witness were the cause of my unslaked lust.

  The discovery of how to satisfy such feelings had come to me entirely by accident. I’d been sixteen, a happy girl, preoccupied by my attempts to move from watercolors to oil paint, and troubled by nothing more than the recent demise of my elderly spaniel. I’d been woken in the wee hours of the morning by a throbbing sort of feeling between my legs, a wanting or needing that I’d never felt before, and although I’d crept out of bed to use the necessary, the feeling hadn’t abated. After a while I’d investigated—tentatively, of course, because I knew very well that I might only touch myself there when washing, and even then I had better be quick about it.

  That was when it had happened. A rush of startling bliss, followed by the most wonderful languor and bone-deep contentment. At first I hadn’t known what it was, but some careful reading of Lord Byron’s poetry, and even more careful questioning of my eldest sister, Eleanor, who’d been married the year before, had helped me make sense of it.

  I’d never told anyone; it wasn’t, after all, the sort of thing one spoke of in good company. And I was careful not to indulge too often, for I was certain it must be like any other good thing—best enjoyed in moderation, and enjoyed moderately.

  Tonight there would be no respite, no succor for my self-inflicted sufferings. I pressed my legs together, so tightly my aching muscles protested, and stifled a moan against my ill-smelling pillow.

  Elijah turned his head toward me. He was awake, had been awake all along. His eyes glittered cold and bright in the pale half-light of the moon, seeing all, missing nothing. I waited for him to say something, even if it were only to chide me for my voyeuristic tendencies.

  He held my gaze as a cat might do, unblinking, unwavering, then he rolled to face me, tucking his right arm under his head for a pillow.

  “Go to sleep, Alice,” he whispered, his mouth softening into a half-smile.

  He closed his eyes and I, not knowing what else to do, did the same.

  Chapter Seven

  “Wake up, Alice. We need to be on our way. Wake up, now.”

  Elijah was standing next to my bed, already dressed for the day. His hair was damp, pushed back roughly from his face. He hadn’t shaved. I was still so tired, my muscles almost unbearably sore, but I dutifully sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

  “Yes, of course. I won’t be a moment. Is there water for me to wash?”

  “It’s in the ewer. I’ll wait in the hall.”

  As soon as the door shut behind him I stripped off my nightgown and washed with the now-tepid water and my scented soap, arranged my hair in a simple plaited bun and dressed in the clothes I’d worn the day before. After brushing my teeth, I packed away my nightgown and toiletries and opened the door to Elijah.

  He carried both rucksacks downstairs, a gentlemanly gesture, and directed me to join him at the communal table. Breakfast was porridge, stewed apples, cheese, more of that dark and nearly indigestible rye bread, and huge mugs of milky coffee.

  “How far are we walking today?” I asked him once he’d obtained more provisions, settled our account and ushered me outside.

  “About ten miles. Steep but not difficult. Pretty scenery.”

  He was right about the scenery. The path wound through pastures and woodland, going fairly steadily uphill. We passed a group of farm outbuildings, more pastureland, then fields wonderfully fragrant with the scent of ripening bilberries.

  We’d been walking for about three hours when the path cut through a farm. A buvette had been provided for the use of walkers, and while Elijah filled the waterskins I sat down on a nearby bench and unlaced my right boot. My heel had begun to ache and I suspected I had the beginnings of a blister.

  It was worse than I’d thought, for the blister was on my Achilles tendon and had already burst, staining my stocking with blood. I rolled off the stocking and bared my foot, grimacing a little because of the pain.

  “What is it, Alice?”

  “A blister. It only just started hurting me, I swear.”

  He knelt down and took my foot in his hands. “It’s not that bad. I’ll clean and dress it for you.” He unfastened one of his rucksack’s exterior pockets and extracted a small metal case. From it he took a roll of cotton lint, a jar of what looked like ointment, and a roll of linen bandages. Working quickly and methodically, he washed the wound with water from the buvette, spread on some salve from the jar and bound up my heel with a length of bandage.

  “What’s in that salve? It smells lovely.”

  “Beeswax, olive oil, herbs. No idea which ones. My neighbor makes it.”

  It was past time we got on our way, so I bent forward to lace up my boot. Just then Elijah, still kneeling, looked up at me. My cheek brushed against his, he steadied me by grasping my shoulders, and without pausing to consider the consequences, I closed my eyes, blindly turned my head and brushed my lips against his.

  We had only left Argentière the day before, and already I was in his arms, my hard-won principles discarded like so much dried-up paint. Sure
ly he would push me away—surely he hadn’t forgotten how much he, too, deplored the idea of a liaison between us, no matter how fleeting.

  Evidently he had forgotten, or perhaps he’d simply changed his mind, for he responded to my kiss as though he were starving, his mouth moving ravenously over mine. Hunger swelled in me, a mindless eagerness to taste, to learn, to know him in every possible way. He pulled me off the bench, one arm around my shoulders, the other urging my pelvis against his, and I gasped as the heat of his erection burned through the layers of clothing and convention that separated us.

  I valued the life I had created for myself and had no wish to see it destroyed. I was a modern woman, a woman who took pride in making rational, sensible choices. But that woman had vanished, or perhaps had been vanquished, and in her place was an Alice I scarcely recognized, heedless of consequence, reckless to the point of ruin, deaf to everything save the flame of need his touch had kindled.

  I suppose it was fortunate that Elijah had the sense to put an end to things before our kiss could progress any further. Rising to his feet in one lightning-quick, fluid movement, he set me back on the bench and backed away. He didn’t stop until he’d put nearly ten feet between us.

  “For the love of God, Alice, what do you want from me?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “A liaison between us would be unwise, as we both agreed. And yet...”

  “You’ve changed your mind?”

  “No. It’s only that I wish things could be different. I wish I could be free to indulge in such pleasures without the fear of what might occur.”

  It was a potent fear, nearly enough to outweigh my desire for him. I badly wanted to lie with him again, but the risk was too great. At the very least it would mean weeks of uncertainty, and at the worst it would end with a child who had no father and no name, and the life I loved would never be the same.

  “Is that the only impediment you see?” he asked, his voice softening. “The fear of my getting a child on you?”

  “What could be worse?”

  “Disease, for one.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. To be honest, I wasn’t quite certain what sort of diseases one might contract as a result of intimate relations. But from the look on his face it was clear they were best avoided.

  “Before you ask, no—you needn’t fear that from me,” he added. “You’re the first woman I’ve touched in more than two years.”

  “You? The renowned E. P. Keating? I should think that women flock to you.”

  “Perhaps if I lived in London. But Argentière is a small place. I’d be a fool to go about corrupting the local women.”

  My next words flew out of my mouth before I could halt them. “So why me? I doubt you make a habit of corrupting the tourists.”

  “If I knew, I’d tell you. I don’t know...there was something about you, that’s all. They way you moved, looked around. Looked at me. There I was, half-dressed, filthy, sweating like a pig. And you held out your hand for me to shake as if there were nothing amiss.”

  “It would have been rude to do otherwise.”

  “All the same. You’re a rare woman, Alice.” He cleared his throat, as if embarrassed by the admission. “Enough chatter. Are you ready to continue? We’ve a lot of ground to cover before we reach Champex.”

  “And then...?”

  “We’ll talk again.”

  So we journeyed on, through bright-painted meadows and delicately shadowed woodlands of green-gold beech and downy oak. We hadn’t cleared the air, not precisely, but as we walked, Elijah’s mood seemed to improve, although perhaps I was only imagining things. He would never be a talkative man, but he became sufficiently cheery to ask after my bandaged heel once or twice, and made no complaint when I stopped to sketch a cluster of pale violet Petrocallis pyrenaica nestled in a tumble of scree.

  “I won’t be long,” I promised. “Only a pencil sketch, then some notes on color at the side.”

  “Take your time. That’s why we’re here, after all.”

  The blossoms were a distinctive pale violet color that faded to pink at their center, while their stamens were a bright gold without even a hint of green. Difficult but not impossible to capture.

  Elijah watched me as I worked. “How do you know which colors to draw from?”

  “You mean when I mix the shades?”

  “Yes. I look at your tin of paints and all I see are primary colors. But you take a bit here, a bit there, and you have the exact shade you need. Every time, without fail. How do you know?”

  “Practice. When I first started with watercolors I wasted a lot of paper, and paint, trying to create the colors I saw. Eventually I learned. Isn’t climbing the same?”

  “Practice makes perfect, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “It helps. But you’ll never do it well if you don’t love it.”

  “True,” I agreed. “Why do you love climbing?”

  “That’s a long story. Why do you love painting?”

  I had to think on that for a moment. “I suppose because it lets me capture something beautiful, hold on to the memory of it. And, well, I’m good at it. I doubt I would enjoy it as much if I weren’t.”

  “I expect so. What makes you a good painter? Do you know?”

  Now that was a question I’d never heard before. “I’m not sure...”

  “I think you’re good because you’re fearless.”

  “You have to be. With watercolors there’s no room for error. If I make a mistake I can’t erase what I’ve done.”

  “It takes courage to work like that.”

  “You exaggerate. It’s only a piece of paper and some paints. It’s not...well, it’s not a mountain. You’re the one who is fearless, climbing as you do.”

  “Some might say foolhardy. Now—are you finished? Can we pack up and move on?”

  “Of course. I won’t be a minute.”

  We walked quite steadily uphill thereafter, so it was a relief when, late in the afternoon, the path began to descend toward our destination for the evening. I loved Champex at first sight, not only because of its quaint buildings and location on a breathtakingly blue lake, but also because Elijah promised he would be able to obtain a room for us at the Pension Trient.

  Like our hotel from the night before, the pension was crowded with travelers, but the proprietor was delighted to see Elijah and gave over her last room to us.

  “What do you want to do now, Alice? Get settled or have supper?”

  All I wanted to do was take off my boots and collapse in a heap on the bed. “Might it be possible to take our meal upstairs?”

  “Let me ask. In the meantime, here’s the key—we’re on the top floor again. Room 12.”

  I dragged myself up the stairs, step by protesting step. It would get better; of course it would. I simply needed time to acclimate to the altitude and the exertion.

  Our room was spacious, with a large double bed at one end and a table and two chairs at the other. Plenty of room for Elijah to stretch out, I thought as I removed my boots and fell onto the bed. Or perhaps I would be the one to sleep on the floor tonight. It was only fair, after what I had put him through earlier.

  * * *

  I woke to flickering candlelight and a darkened room. I sat up in bed, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and looked around me. Elijah was at the table, writing in his notebook.

  “What time is it?”

  “Half past eight. I went out to get a few things in the village, and I’ve fetched us some supper from downstairs. You must be right clammed.”

  “I...what?”

  “Sorry. My northern heritage making itself known. I meant to say hungry.”

  I was, I thought as I smelled the delectable aromas coming from the tray of food on the table. I reached up, conscious that my hair would have become mussed as I slept, but found it was still held back sleekly. I really had been sleeping like the dead.

  “It smells delicious,” I said as I sat opposite Eli
jah.

  “Madame Bayard is known for her cooking. That’s one of the reasons I stay here. She’s given us vegetable soup, with kroute u fre to follow. Cheese toast in English. Only here they soak the bread in wine first.”

  “I approve.”

  “There’s pear cake, too, if you’ve room.”

  We ate in silence, but comfortably so. As if we were old friends who had no need of conversation when there was good food and wine to share.

  I was eyeing the wedge of cake that remained and considering whether I had room to indulge when Elijah cleared his throat and set down his knife and fork.

  “I went into the village to fetch a few things.”

  “You said. Provisions for tomorrow?”

  “Not precisely.” He pushed his chair back and crossed the room to where he’d hung up his jacket. He pulled a paper-wrapped parcel from one of its pockets and returned to sit at the table.

  “What is that?”

  “A possible solution to our predicament.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You fear falling pregnant,” he said. “Understandably so. But there are ways of preventing pregnancy. Or hadn’t you realized?”

  “Well...I’ve heard of such things. I know a man may, ah, withdraw from a woman...obviously I do, since you did so the other morning,” I said, tripping over my words. “But I’ve also heard it’s not always effective.”

  “No method of birth control is infallible. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have so many brothers and sisters. But some methods are better than others.”

  He opened the parcel and set a stoppered glass bottle on the table. Next to it he placed a drawstring bag made of waxed linen. Easing open the bag, he withdrew a small, round item. I leaned closer, the better to see in the flickering candlelight, and realized it was a sea sponge.

  “You soak the sponge in olive oil, then insert it,” he explained. “It acts as a barrier against a man’s seed.”

  “Where on earth did you obtain this?”

  “A friend.”