“No. But I’ve done as much as I think I ought.” Planting his hands on her chair again, he levered himself up. “Excuse me.” If this were any other woman, they’d be on their way back to bed. Instead he’d have to shift for himself, possibly the minute he got home—but was that allowed? Hell. Even when things went the way he meant them to, this bargain managed to make his life difficult. He went out to the sitting room and sank down on the sofa.
THE WOMAN in the mirror was no woman she recognized. Cheeks flushed with pleasure. Hair tumbling in wanton waves down either shoulder. Eyes empty of all but mindless acquiescence.
Martha pivoted away from the image. She would not be that woman. Weak. Susceptible. Forgetting every vestige of principle the minute a man—a disrespectable man at that, and not even two weeks acquainted!—put his mouth to the back of her neck. A lady of purpose couldn’t afford such frailty. Men ran roughshod over one’s prospects as it was. They didn’t need encouragement.
Over her shoulder she consulted the mirror again, this time with determination. Gradually her eyes came to look like her own eyes, brimming with unreadable thoughts. Her mouth let go its softness in favor of a firm line. She put her hair back behind her shoulders.
They’d established a way of managing, she and Mr. Mirkwood had, and she wouldn’t muddy it with fleshly weaknesses that could benefit no one. She stood, caught up her book, and followed him out to the sitting room.
He slouched in a corner of the sofa, one arm flung across his face. His state was unmistakable, even from this distance. That distraction business had been a bad idea indeed.
She advanced to a spot near his knee and cleared her throat when he didn’t uncover his face. “Are you ready to hear more of Humphry Davy?”
“Not so near, if you please.” With his free hand he made a flicking motion, as if to rid himself of a housefly. “If you will go sit in your chair you may read whatever you like.”
One was not without sympathy, everything considered. She sat and paged through the book. Perhaps Mr. Davy had outlined a lecture on uses of manure, or some other topic suitable for settling a gentleman’s state.
“Before you begin, Mrs. Russell, may I clarify one point of our arrangement?”
She looked up. His elbow bent just over his brow, and beneath the shade of his arm, his eyes were on her. She nodded once.
“If I find myself with needs beyond what we’ve agreed to …” He touched his lips together and consulted the bend of his elbow as though to find the right words there. “Am I permitted to take relief elsewhere?” His eyes came to her again.
Every ounce of blood in her body rushed to her face, roaring past her ears on the way. “With other women, do you mean? Absolutely not. How can you even ask that, when you know the dangers of disease, and of—”
“No.” He held up a hand, his gaze steady on her. “I’m not referring to other women.” His fingers flexed.
“Oh.” She couldn’t blush any harder, but she could drop her attention to the carpet, and speak in the voice of some faint-hearted stranger. “Well, no. You can’t do that either.”
“Please tell me why I cannot.”
“Because I’ve purchased the rights to your seed. All of it. What if you were to spill the bit that would have made my child?”
“Not likely.” He shifted about on the sofa. “I think I need to do it.”
“No. The discomfort is a trial you shall just have to bear.”
“I think I need to do it this minute.”
She looked up from the carpet. His free hand was fingering the first button of his trousers, and his eyes were still on her. Was he teasing her, or was he in earnest? No matter. She would tolerate neither. “I’ve said you cannot. Now put your hand somewhere respectable while I read.”
“You make things worse, you know, when you speak to me that way.” He sat up, finally dropping the arm from his face. “I’ll just go into the bedroom for a few minutes. You can read through the door if you like.”
“No!” She threw down the book and rose to block his path. “For Heaven’s sake, get ahold of—” No. “For Heaven’s sake, what is the matter with you?”
As quick as a striking cobra he caught her hands and pulled her down on the sofa beside him. “This.” He pressed the back of her hand to where his condition announced itself through his trousers. “This is the matter with me. But it’s easily remedied.” His eyes glowed with unadulterated purpose. He’d be good for nothing until he’d had his relief.
“Oh, very well.” His parents, or his governess, had fallen down badly when it came to acquainting him with self-denial. “We can go back to bed, and finish reading afterward.”
“Too much delay. You take an age to undress.”
That stung, surprisingly. She’d never supposed he might decline such an offer.
He turned her hand to cup her palm to his bothersome part. “You could help me.”
Help him? What fresh indecency was this? “I haven’t the first idea how.”
“Fastidious Mrs. Russell.” He spoke caressingly, and idly he was caressing her fingers, too, as though to seduce the hand away from her control. “I’ll show you what to do.”
What choice did she have? If she refused, he would almost certainly go home and disport himself regardless. “I’ll do it if you will end by giving me the seed. I needn’t undress for that.” She rose. “And tomorrow you must take me to call on your laborer families.”
“Laborer families.” He was striving to contain his smile, like an unseasoned gambler who’d just turned up a royal flush. “By all means.”
IF SHE hadn’t already consigned her soul to perdition, she was surely booking its passage there now. She lay flat on her back, overdressed for the occasion, and let him take possession of her right hand.
“We’ll proceed gradually, shall we?” With his thumb and first two fingers he held her at the palm, and grazed her knuckles against his pertinent part. Thin, fragile-feeling skin slid about under her touch, but this was nothing new. In her marriage she’d learned more than she ever cared to know about the properties of the male organ.
“You implied there was some urgency to this. Am I to conclude you were deceiving me?”
“Do you know there are men who’d pay handsomely to be scolded so? You might consider that, if you ever find yourself in want of a profession.” He wrapped her hand round the appendage and pressed it with his own.
“You didn’t answer my question. And you need not introduce tasteless subjects.”
“Pardon me. I’ll converse with as much gentility as I can, while showing you how a man pleasures himself.” He shifted her hand to a place higher up and gripped over it again. “And as to the question of urgency, perhaps you’ve felt enough now to judge for yourself.”
There was nothing, really, one could say in reply to that. Urgency throbbed formidably in the palm of her hand.
He took her fingers to the end, where he’d begun to be damp, and drew them through the wetness, one by one. When he squeezed her hand over him again her fingers slid and he drew in a sharp breath. He guided their two hands up and back, slowly, and up and back again. “You see how it’s done.” He closed his eyes and spoke in a near whisper. “Not so hard, is it?”
“Not so difficult.” Since these distinctions mattered.
“No. Not difficult at all.” His hand tightened on hers and he made the movement faster.
She stared straight up at the canopy. This was four hundred kinds of wrong. He ought not to have involved her. She didn’t want to hear his unchaste breaths, or to notice the way his hips moved. With brazen vigor they moved, as though he pushed into a greedy lover instead of one dumb hand clasped in another. She didn’t want to notice that.
The crisis must come soon, surely. Already he sounded near to immolating himself in lust. And finally he did roll toward her, came up on one elbow, and let go her hand.
“Are you ready?” She drew up her skirts with the other hand, and put her knees apart.
She might perish, literally, of mortification. Because she wasn’t a mere passive hand anymore, prodded about by him as by some puppeteer. She was engaged in this, a participant, working to please the man who crouched over her so big and bestial.
He breathed in long, pleasure-drunk draughts, more unchaste than ever. Worse than this, he bent his head to watch her hand on him. And worse, worst of all, he said some words as he watched. She would not hear them. She would refuse to remember them. Soft words, they were, gentle words, all about how well she did the thing she was doing, and each one fell like a firebomb, leaving a swath of devastation that cock and swive and corpse could only dream of.
At last he leaned down and got his arm under her shoulders, to lift her partway from the pillow. “One thing more,” he said, his voice tight and intent. He knelt, pushing his knees under her legs and bringing her hips up in a rustle of skirts. He took her hand off him, finally, only to bring it round, past her own leg and underneath him where it met with the soft weight of another alien part. Parts. “Here,” he muttered against her ear. “Squeeze when I say so. Not too hard.”
Was he serious? “Why on earth would you want me to—”
“Just … please … do it.” With one last grim look he pushed in.
Once, he thrust. Twice. Three times. “Now,” he gasped, mouth at her ear.
Not too hard. Gingerly she compressed her fingers. “Like this?”
He swore, and brought his head down to her shoulder and swore again, ferociously, an alarming string of every curse she’d ever heard uttered by man, and several she had not.
Oh, dear Lord. Too hard. She’d hurt him. His arms convulsed round her and his head fell back in some kind of agony as he pulled her nearly upright. But no, it was the right kind of agony. She could feel a quick rhythmic pulsing where he was inside her, the seed let loose.
He sank down with her to the mattress, and when the pulsing was done he rolled off and dropped to the place beside her, slack and spent, his eyes closed as though ever to open them again would simply be too great an effort.
“Yes,” he said. “Exactly like that.”
Chapter Eight
HOW EXTRAVAGANTLY he enjoyed his pleasure, Mr. Mirkwood. But then he was extravagant in everything. Undisciplined and unconstrained. Generous as well. He might turn that tendency to some more useful end. She might help him to do so.
Help him. Martha felt an inward flinch. She lay awake, some hour after midnight, staring into the darkness of her bedroom. For as mortifying as the memory of what she’d done this afternoon might be, she must admit he’d succeeded in taking her mind from her cares. The specter of Mr. James Russell’s visit had wavered, like morning mist under a climbing sun, once he’d set himself to distract her. Distraction kept it at bay even now.
Her hands ached with restlessness. She lifted one, and stroked her fingertips across her belly. Certain acts ill became a widow in the first weeks of mourning. But mightn’t those same acts serve to blunt a woman’s appetites, and keep her from succumbing so readily to a man’s touch and to his indecent suggestions? She hesitated, and sent her fingers lower.
There was a man she conjured for these occasions. He bore some resemblance, perhaps, to Mr. Atkins. His features weren’t entirely distinct. But he was a man of principle, and conducted himself as a gentleman would who’d not been given to squandering his affections, but rather saved them up against the day he could join himself to a likewise principled woman, and spend all that treasure on her. He knew, without telling, every right place to touch. He gasped and shuddered, all wide-eyed wonder, as he found his bliss in her arms. And he evaporated, dependably, the instant his offices were no longer required.
But tonight her dependable man was possessed by some spirit of mutiny. He had things to say, things that would make any lady blush right down to her toenails. He made dark promises of what he would do with his mouth. He watched everything her hands did, and urged her to do more. And his eyes glinted blue in the moonlight, his hair pale like split wood, as he drove her to extravagant heights.
That was to be expected, maybe. So she told herself afterward. She’d got out of practice, not having done this for a month or more. Next time it would go nearer the usual plan, and in any case she could surely count on its inoculating effect.
She turned onto her side. Tomorrow promised more decorous distractions, with the visit to Mr. Mirkwood’s laborers. She would watch for opportunities to work on his native kindness, and help him turn it into the foundation for responsibility. Her thoughts of him would be virtuous and improving, and she’d take her best satisfaction in thinking of how he’d go back to London a better man than when he’d come.
HE WAITED just inside the familiar copse of trees, eyes on the corner of the house round which she would appear, fingers fidgeting with the clasp of his watch.
Would she be distant today? Cold-mannered, or too embarrassed to meet his eyes? Sorry for what he’d persuaded her to do? That would be cruel to bear, because for his part, he’d never been less sorry in his life. Indeed he could not see how he was to pleasure himself at all in future, his great paw a pallid substitute for the inordinate eroticism of her cool careful grip.
The brown-brick walls of Seton Park glowed warmly in the noonday sun. He flicked his watch open and glanced down at it. When he looked up again, she was there, a small black figure just come into view at the house’s edge.
Why in blazes had he waited until six and twenty to dally with a widow? What a piquant, forbidden pleasure she looked, her black draperies marking her as another man’s property even while they encouraged his eye to linger on her pale, sweet skin. Her skirts swayed in time with her sturdy gait, their fluid motion hinting at the shape of her legs.
He knew the shape of her legs. He knew how it felt to stroke a hand up her shin, with its small soft hairs, over the rounded knee and to her thigh, smooth and silken. He knew which muscles flexed when she drew her thighs apart, and which ones stretched and clenched when she crossed her legs behind him.
He gave himself a quick shake. No profit in this line of thought unless he was intending to back her up against one of these trees, and he was not quite low enough for that.
When she reached the edge of the woods she peered in, a quizzical cast to her eyes, before she discerned him and came on. “So,” she said. She carried a basket, covered with a cloth, and now moved it from one arm to the other. “This is how you go, every day.”
“Didn’t I tell you it was convenient?” He took the basket from her. “Good God, woman. What are you bringing to these people? Bricks and rocks to make an insurrection with?”
“Only some bread and cakes and fruit from my orangery. Perhaps a few books as well, in case they have an interest.”
“I see.” Under his gaze she rather resembled a child caught with her hand in the jam pot, albeit a defiant one. “You aim for the slow and subtle style of insurrection.”
“I do no such thing.” She answered with an ease that seemed nothing short of miraculous. No fretfulness. No blush. No undercurrent of reproach. “I only picked out a few volumes such as I thought the women and children might enjoy. Not Waverley, because I’ve given it to Jenny Everett. Though I will gladly lend it to any of your people, once you’ve finished it yourself.”
What very optimistic hopes she had of this visit, and of his cottagers. A pity Mr. Barrow would be away at work—she wasn’t likely to find much conversation in any other house.
“You said you have families on the parish relief, didn’t you?” Today’s bonnet flared outward, to show more of her face, and as she turned partly toward him he could see her cheeks flushed wit
h happy purpose. “I’d especially like to visit them, if we may. We ought to begin where we can do the most good.”
He’d take her to the Weavers, then. Left to himself, he would have avoided that cottage for the rest of his term in Sussex—but she wished to do good, and residual tender gratitude would bend him to her will.
THE YARD was just as he remembered. Geese and more geese. “Watch your step,” he said to Mrs. Russell, though that implied there was any clean place to set her foot. The pig came jogging from behind the house, clearly scenting opportunity. Through a window, he could hear the baby’s squalls.
A glance at his companion found her to be preparing herself in little ways; ways a man less acquainted might not notice. Shoulders back. Head up. A deliberate deep breath.
“They’ll be honored by your visit,” he said quietly. Could she really be doubting? He touched her elbow once, in case she wanted courage, and came away with new courage himself. They went to the door.
There the farce of the pig repeated itself, to greater inconvenience this time as he was the one doing the introductions, but they got inside—Mrs. Weaver lapsing into this much civility, at least—and the door shut behind them.
“I’m sorry I’ve never called before now,” said Mrs. Russell, all polite determination. “With nobody in residence at the house, one isn’t quite sure what’s proper. But I’ve been speaking with Mr. Mirkwood on some matters of land, and the opportunity finally arose.”
He looked about him as she spoke. The same disposition of children, and—this gave a jolt to his stomach—in the corner, the eldest daughter, her face turned to the wall as though meaning to hide. She must have done that the instant he came in.
“… close to eleven months now, and I know so little of my neighbors. I shall be glad to know more.” She allowed a little pause, which Mrs. Weaver made no move to fill. The baby replied in his usual style. Theo set the basket down on the kitchen table’s one clear spot. Perhaps she’d like to get on with dispensing the gifts and bring this call to a merciful end.
A Lady Awakened Page 13
