A Lady Awakened

by Cecilia Grant

  Finally the woman looked up, and rather sharply at that. “You told him to call with gifts?”

  “Some while ago, yes. But if he hasn’t found the opportunity to do so, I’m sure it’s due to all the other demands on his time. Mr. Granville keeps him busy with a variety of lessons. He does mean well, Mr. Mirkwood.”

  Mrs. Weaver scratched the back of one hand. Both hands were rough and reddened. She would have been busy with laundry since yesterday, soaking and scrubbing and plunging her hands in hot water. Her brow contracted slightly. She reached into the basket and picked up a corner of the cloth, exposing the kitten again. “Carrie’s inside watching the smaller children. I’ll take this in to her. You can hold the baby if you like.”

  Martha let her take the basket, and picked up the howling infant. Well, that bit was done, though perhaps the gift had not softened Mrs. Weaver quite to the point where she would entertain a discussion of schooling. If she could get the baby to sleep again, that might put the woman in a pleasanter frame of mind. “Such lungs your little brother has!” she said to the other children as she walked a path along one clothesline, but the observation was apparently not novel enough to merit any reply.

  Job was quieter, if not exactly quiet, by the time Mrs. Weaver emerged from the cottage’s back door. With a single glance at Martha she set the now-empty basket on the ground—two geese rushed over and poked their heads in—and went to the tub, where she hauled out a sheet and set to twisting it.

  This woman wouldn’t smooth one inch of her way. Henceforward she simply wouldn’t look for that. Doubtless this was how Mr. Mirkwood had felt, in his first few days with her, and doubtless he would laugh if he could see her now, grimly slugging down her own flavor of medicine.

  “She talks of you sometimes.” Mrs. Weaver turned her head halfway, not enough to face her. “Carrie does. Since you came to call.”

  “Does she?” Like an angel’s breath sent down through parted clouds, these few civil words. Yes, Mr. Mirkwood must have felt this too. “I’m so pleased to hear it. She charmed me utterly on that visit. You may tell her I’ve thought of her as well.”

  No answer. But she wouldn’t be stopped by that now. She hoisted Job higher on her shoulder and found a place along the fence where Mrs. Weaver could see her without turning. “I’ve thought of all your children, in fact. I don’t suppose you’ll have had the chance to hear this, but my curate is opening a school. Boys of all ages and young girls will be educated during the week, and Sundays after church he’ll even provide some instruction for older girls. Religious instruction, of course, but in addition to that—”

  “We’ve no use for your church.” Not even raising her head to see how Mrs. Russell took this piece of effrontery, she began to untwist the sheet.

  “Let me help.” Martha hurried forward, baby on her hip, to grasp one end. Gradually the sheet was untwisted, pulled out as flat as possible, and draped over the line, the scent of lye wafting up to trouble her nose. She cleared her throat. “You’re … Methodists … I suppose?” Gingerly she pronounced the word. So many poor families did seem to go that way. “But Mr. Atkins believes in education for all, I’m sure. Why, he’s studied some of Mr. Wesley’s sermons himself.” Yes, studied them in order to build arguments against them. But she needn’t say that.

  Now Mrs. Weaver did face her. She put one hand to the small of her back, and regarded her bluntly. “We’ve no use for the Methodists, either.”

  “Oh. I see.” She could feel her face coloring. Nobody had ever said such a thing in her presence, and in front of children at that.

  And yet it was said, and would not be unsaid, and still she stood here, and Mrs. Weaver stood there, and the children continued untroubled in their work. She might let it pass. She hadn’t come here to examine the state of the woman’s soul, after all.

  “Well, to be perfectly honest, the spiritual instruction is secondary. Our hope is to enroll the older girls, eventually, alongside their brothers in the weekday school. Only that’s a new idea for many parents, to educate young ladies, and so we thought to bring it on gradually.”

  No telling whether Mrs. Weaver attended any of this. She’d hung something else—a child’s dingy smock—and was picking at the neckline, where the drawstring went, to spread the cloth flat. Suddenly she drew a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her hand went to her belly and the color left her face.

  “Mrs. Weaver. Are you quite all right?”

  She gave one quick nod, and set the back of her other hand against her mouth.

  “Forgive me, but you don’t look at all well. Shouldn’t you sit down? Can I fetch you something?” Martha looked to each child, but none sprang forward to help. None showed any sign of concern.

  Behind her hand the woman was breathing deeply again. “It will pass in a moment. It’s always like this, the first few months.”

  “The first few … Are you expecting another child? So soon?” Job, who’d gone nearly to sleep, emitted a fresh wail as though outraged by the prospect.

  “Eight months, minus a week or two. Soon enough.” She turned her hand and pressed her palm to her lips.

  Eight months. For one shameful instant she was all taut, quivering attention, like a gun dog scenting grouse. A child. In eight months. Perhaps a boy. And this family had more than they could manage already.

  How low she’d sunk! Mrs. Weaver’s churchlessness, Mr. Mirkwood’s decadence, were nothing to this vile, covetous design. She must force her attention elsewhere, decisively. “But your baby can’t even be a year old yet.” She lowered her voice, mindful of the children. “Shouldn’t you have time to recover before you’re brought into this condition again?”

  Mrs. Weaver shook her head, finally opening her eyes. Her color was returning, but she looked wearier than ever. “Ask your curate why God saw fit to make it so. Why children are visited upon women who never asked for them. If there’s a divine purpose in it, that’s more than I can tell.” She let both hands fall, and took a wrung chemise from the little boy nearest her.

  Martha bit her tongue. There was something that needed saying, though it was impertinent, and probably not in her interest: if she offended Mrs. Weaver, then she might have no hope, eight months hence, of—

  No. She would not let that hope constrain her words. She would say what deserved to be said. “I should think your question had better be asked of a woman’s husband than of a clergyman.” A step nearer, to spare the children such scandalous talk. “If men could learn to value their wives’ health and comfort above their own appetites, then we would see fewer deaths in childbed, fewer poor orphaned children, and fewer women with bodies worn out before their time. Is it so much to ask of a man that he show some restraint?” Men could fend for themselves, after all. She’d seen how it was done.

  Mrs. Weaver picked and pulled at every gathered place on the garment with fierce concentration as she made her answer. “It’s different for you, I’m sure. But some women are grateful to get a husband at all. Mr. Weaver was very good to marry me. He’s borne a great deal. I’ve nothing to say to him of restraint.” She wiped her hands on her apron and met Martha’s eyes fully. “I thank you for your help with the baby. If you’d be so good as to take him to his cradle, you may give your greetings to Carrie. Mind the pig if you leave by the front door.”

  The woman had thanked her, at least, she reflected on the walk back to Seton Park. She must count that as progress. She might do more, at this cottage and others, now her days were wholly her own. If Mr. Mirkwood’s presence in her bed tonight proved unsettling, she would think bracing thoughts of all she might accomplish tomorrow.

  HE CAME in some time near midnight, on a wave of masculine vigor she could feel even from her place in the bed. She’d sat up reading; now she put her book aside and watched as he closed the door, locked it, and dropped the key into his pocket, one continuous move imbued with the satisfaction of a man who’d passed a day in upright pursuits and would now cap it in debauchery.

>   He took in her bare shoulders with one glance. “Naked already, are you? Very good.”

  She bent her knees and wound her arms about them, careful not to let the sheet fall from her upper body. “I expected you might be too tired to help me undress.”

  “Tired? Ha. Brace yourself.” He dropped into the armchair and started wresting off his boots.

  She hitched the sheet a bit higher. “What did you think of the threshing?”

  “I think it ought to be taken out of human hands as soon as someone can invent a capable machine. Good God.” He abandoned his boots and threw himself back in the chair. “Have you ever seen it done? Backbreaking work, bent over swinging that flail at the floor, and all that chaff flying about getting into everyone’s eyes. Lungs, too, I don’t doubt, despite the cloths they must tie about their noses and mouths. I’m surprised my laboring men aren’t every one of them consumptive.” He leaned forward again and resumed tugging at the first boot.

  “I suppose there’s a certain pride in the work of one’s hands, though, that might be lost if it were given over to a machine.”

  “Bother pride. Bother the work of one’s hands.” The first boot came off. “One of those men is old enough to be my grandfather. I disapprove entirely.” The second boot slipped off and he left it askew, just where it was. “Do you require more of this conversation, or conversation on some other topic? Or may we proceed?”

  What fine funny spirits he was in. She allowed herself to smile. “I think that will do for tonight. Go on and undress.”

  Immediately he was up out of the chair and over by the candles. “You’ll want the light doused, I presume? So you won’t have to cast your eyes here and there to avoid the sight of me?” Candlelight danced in his pale hair like sunshine on the ripples of a lake. His skin looked lit from the inside out, and his eyes told her no more than if they’d been made of glass.

  “Whatever you prefer. I think I’m growing used to the sight of you.”

  “Words to inflame any man.” He licked his fingers and pinched out the candles one by one, leaving the extinguisher where it lay. “We’ll try it in the dark. For the sake of novelty.”

  Another damp hiss and another, and the candles were all out. He was nothing but a shadow then, a shadow among shadows in that dark, dark room. Fabric whispered and rustled as he unclothed himself, and something metal clicked softly—a cuff link striking a button, perhaps. In the narrow space she’d left between the drapes, so they’d know when morning approached, only the faintest cloud-blotted moonlight seeped through. Enough, perhaps, to see his outline once her eyes had adjusted, but not enough to read mood and intention from his face.

  Not that she needed that. She knew what were his mood and intention. She’d seen them often enough. She lay back, and waited.

  * * *

  NOVELTY. HA. With lights out and voices kept low, he might be any man. She could pretend he was another, if she had a taste for such imagining. Perhaps she’d imagine that curate, shy and eager on his wedding night.

  She might respond, then.

  Theo hesitated, wrapping his fingers round the bedpost. Her soft, patient breathing came to him through the dark. He tightened his grip, and relaxed it.

  How would an innocent man approach her? A man who’d saved himself for his wedding night must be ravenous. He might go pell-mell, particularly if his bride was a widow who needed none of that gentle shepherding a bridegroom owed to a virgin on her first time. Rush through it, and save the niceties for a second round. Did she imagine it that way?

  He set one knee on the mattress and gave it his weight, gradually. She’d know she wasn’t alone in the bed now.

  If a man had denied himself all the way to something-and-twenty, though, he would have some skill at self-mastery, and might put it to use tonight. He might like to go slowly, the better to savor each secret disclosed. His knuckles skated up the length of the sheet to the hemmed edge, and he took hold, and drew it slowly down to the foot of the bed. Nothing but air separated his skin from hers.

  This would be his first experience of bare shoulders, the self-mastered man. He got his second knee on the bed and carefully set his palm to the mattress, just where her pillow ended. His free hand wandered—shyly, scarce believing it had the right—down from where it had hovered, and found the soft flesh of her upper arm. He fit his fingers round it. Slid them upward. His thumb felt its way to her collarbone and traced. The hollow above. The graceful ridge. Soon, when he’d plucked up the courage, his whole hand would steal lower. He bent, and pressed his lips to the curve of her shoulder.

  She stopped breathing for several seconds, and started again. Confusion, maybe. Maybe something else. He lifted his knee and brought it gently down between her legs, the better to center himself above her.

  She’d never liked him to kiss her, on the mouth or anywhere else. But the rules might be different tonight. The rules might be different for a man who had everything to learn from her. He brushed his mouth over one wing of her collarbone. Then the other.

  Her breath hesitated again, for a shorter span this time. One hand came up and took a tentative grip on his arm.

  Let her be tentative. So would he be. He ventured to set his lips on the column of her throat, lingering to feel her warm pulse. His hand went back to her arm and his fingers stroked reassuring paths from shoulder to elbow and back. You are no more anxious than I, said his touch, and the idea of it, of approaching a woman in trembling wonder, was beginning to be unbearably erotic.

  He brought his other knee between hers and lowered his body carefully, not to overwhelm her, until they lay with skin touching, the shaft of his sex resting against her warm, tender flesh, because he was not so bold as to go straight in. Also because if he pressed against her just so, he might make her go molten at the core.

  Her hand tightened, almost imperceptibly, on his arm. Her other hand settled, butterfly-light, at his shoulder. She made a tiny adjustment of her hips—her first small concession to desire—that brought him more firmly against the place where her pleasure lived. He shifted against her slightly, as though by accident, or as though he were a beginner just working out how to proceed. She flinched and went marvelously supple.

  Good Lord. He’d finally found his way. All it wanted was darkness and silence and infinite restraint. Nothing he couldn’t do.

  He kissed her jaw, dotting a line from under her ear to her chin. Her body rippled beneath him. His thumb marked the corner of her mouth and then his lips took the place of the thumb.

  She didn’t invite his tongue, and he didn’t impose it. Time enough for that later. He went back to her jaw, the side he’d neglected on his first pass. Somewhere between the sounds of his breath and hers, he heard her lips part, and he might have heard her tongue flick out to sample where he’d been.

  “You taste like liquor,” she said. He could feel her muscles stiffen everywhere they touched.

  “Brandy, yes.” He whispered, to make his voice the voice of any man. “I needed it for courage tonight.”

  “Mirkwood.” Her whisper sharpened. “Are you drunk?”

  “Drunk on your scent, I am. Drunk on the feel of your skin.” But even as he fought to keep the game going, he could feel how she was shrinking into her cool, brittle shell. The tilt of her hips changed and she sank into a mere passive posture, her responsiveness gone like an evanescent dream.

  “You’re perfectly acquainted with my scent and skin. I think the brandy has addled your brain.” How badly must she have wanted an excuse to flee her own desire, that she would seize at one so flimsy as a mere drink of brandy?

  He was acquainted with her indeed. He ought to have known better than to suppose he could lure her into pleasure through a pantomime of virtue. She wasn’t the woman for that, and he wasn’t the man. Small wonder she couldn’t believe him in the role. What did he know of innocence? He’d flung his away at fifteen, the very day he’d finally grasped the import of those glances and stares cast his way by a neighbor�
�s dissatisfied wife. It was long gone and irretrievable, and he’d never even thought to regret it.

  Nor would he regret it now. “To business, then?” He didn’t bother whispering anymore.

  “As soon as you like.”

  And that was that. He raised up on straight arms and sought his own pleasure, like the careless wastrel he was. Devil take shyness. Devil take shy men, too. With one hand he clawed to the top of the headboard and gripped there to brace himself, panting or hissing between clenched teeth when he wanted to shout. Climax rushed up to meet him and he threw back his head and shook like a sapling in a gale, silently, because the servants mustn’t be alerted, and he would show her even a brazen man could know something of self-mastery.

  FOOL, SHE reproved herself in time with his carnal rhythm. Fool. Fool. Fool. She’d known, not so long ago, all the reasons to resist a man. All the great and small ways a person could find herself betrayed. Appetite could cause a lady to give herself away until nothing remained but a shell of regret. Everything that had been hers would belong to the man on whom she’d bestowed it, and she would never have it back again. Nor would he prize it at all.

  Trickery. Brandy-fueled trickery had come so close to undoing her tonight, with the crafty sweep of lips along her collarbones, the perfidious machinations of his hips. But she’d pulled up in time, and now she could remind herself of what she did and did not want.

  He finished and lay panting beside her. She waited only until certain he would hear her over his own labored breaths. “I wish and hope you will not come to my bed drunk again.” Her voice sounded stiff; brittle. Of course it did. “That habit offends me.”