Such absurd torment: never did he tempt her so strongly as when he forgot to be libidinous, and turned all his earnest attention on some responsibility or another. But she must follow his worthy lead, and let other thoughts go. “Of course I’ll come,” she said. “I wouldn’t dream of missing it.”
THE FACT is, I know nothing of dairies but what I’ve read, or heard from others.” Theo sat at the head of his immense dining-room table, elbows on the tabletop and hands shaping the air as seemed appropriate to accompany his words. To stand would probably have lent him a more suitable air of command, but to sit this way encouraged his listeners to be at ease. “Also we must bear in mind that I shan’t be here to oversee things. I hope, at some point, to make my home in London again.” He gave a quick smile to Granville, at the table’s foot. Exile did take on a different cast, now he knew his father had put money aside in expectation of his turning out well. “Therefore the success of this venture will not be in my hands, but in all of yours. That being the case, I should like to hear what you all think of it. No deference, please. If you find it a harebrained scheme you must say so. Mr. Barrow to begin.”
He picked up his tea and sat back. At his right hand Mr. Barrow sat in an armchair brought from the drawing room, a counterpane over his shoulders. Not entirely recovered yet, but nearer every day.
Beyond the old man, who began to speak now of various dairy methods, he had a clear view of the far corner where Mrs. Russell perched in a second conscripted armchair. She’d declined a place at the table, preferring to observe from the periphery. She watched with keen attention, hands folded in her lap, back straight as a fireplace poker. Not really an armchair sort of woman, the widow.
Three weeks ago—hell, even two—he would not have recognized how she was enjoying herself. Her pleasure didn’t look like the pleasure of any other woman he knew. Well, sometimes it did. She’d taken unreserved delight in her callers, if one could judge by her manner on later recounting the visits to him.
“Have you thought of keeping a she-ass or two, in addition to the cows?” Mrs. Rowlandson said, drawing his attention back to the table. “Their milk is the best thing for sickly children, or motherless children, and I don’t believe we have any at all kept in the neighborhood.”
“There, now; I knew I had something to gain by including the ladies.” He set his elbows on the table and leaned forward again. “I’ve never heard of this. Will you tell me more?” From the corner of his eye he could see Mrs. Russell following the exchange. Had he harbored thoughts of her likely approval, in deciding to invite the laborers’ wives? Perhaps. And he wouldn’t be sorry for that. How could he be sorry for anything, watching a roomful of humble people gradually claim their own consequence?
MARTHA SAT all the straighter, her posture sufficing for her and Mr. Mirkwood both. If he had asked, she would have told him not to sit so. Elbows on the table. Back and then forward in his chair, hands flourishing about as though he sat at a club among his fellows, debating the best way to style a cravat. She would have told him authority wore a cloak of cool decorum.
And she would have been wrong.
When had he become this man, as easy about command as though he were born to it? He gave respect in extravagant handfuls, never fearing he might diminish his own store—and indeed he did not. The more he deferred to the expertise of others, the farther they would follow him down any path. One could see that in the way people stepped up to undertake this or that part of his plan. Mr. Quigley and Mr. Weaver would drive to Brighton to survey the market there. Mr. Tinker would write to a drover cousin, investigating where to acquire the Jersey cows. And several of the wives already had ideas as to the best cheese varieties to produce.
He was in prodigious good spirits as the meeting ended, and would undoubtedly have come to speak to her but that he was waylaid by Mrs. Weaver, of all people. The woman put out her hand to him and said something to which he listened, grave-faced, before delivering his answer with a smile and a shake of his head.
“What did Mrs. Weaver have to say?” she must ask when he finally cleared a gauntlet of handshakes and well-wishes to arrive at her side. One couldn’t help remembering the woman’s all-but-certain knowledge of how things stood between them.
“Oh, nothing very much.” His happiness had a charge she could feel, as though he were a tree where lightning had struck and stayed to race through the branches. “We had a misunderstanding, early in my stay here, but we’ve put it to rights. Some other time I’ll give you the details. Just now I’ll see you home if you like, and you can tell me on the way what you thought of everything.”
And yes. That was exactly what she would like.
OH, BUT the meeting had gone well. No one had thought his plan ridiculous, and what was more, he’d known they wouldn’t. This management business was not beyond him, after all. Nothing, perhaps, was beyond him today.
With a stride that could cross subcontinents, he left the house behind. Mrs. Russell kept pace at his side, stealing looks at him in what she must suppose was a surreptitious way. “What is it?” he finally had to ask, turning to face her square. “Why do you look at me as though I’ve suddenly grown a second head?”
For all her attempts to be furtive, she did not look away now. “You’re a leader of men, Mirkwood. I should never have guessed it.”
They were the most thrilling words a woman had ever said to him. What suitable answer could he possibly give? He laughed and shook his head, lengthening his stride to pull a bit in front. “If so, I’ve only just become one. So there wouldn’t have been any way for you to guess.”
“No, I think you always have been.” Her own step quickened. She wouldn’t be left behind. “You only wanted the proper field on which to show it.”
Now that was the most thrilling thing he’d ever heard from a woman. His head felt light and his legs unsteady: who’d have known a man could get drunk on a lady’s good opinion?
The wooded path loomed up before them and as soon as they were under cover he reached for her. He would tell her, without flimsy words, how very much he—
“Please don’t.” She twisted and slipped from his grasp. “Not where we might be seen.”
“Where we won’t, then.” For the love of reason, don’t make me wait until tonight. “Is the bed still made up in that blue room, do you suppose?”
She glanced down his body as though to gauge the urgency of the question. Her glance skittered away. Urgency in spades.
Miraculously, then, she nodded. “I’ve nothing else planned today. Would you like to come for a visit?”
“You’ve had a look. What do you think I’d like?”
More miraculously yet, she smiled, a delicious, secret-keeping smile, and walked on without a word, leaving him to follow.
WITH DISPATCH that would put a lady’s maid to shame he got her down to her stockings and chemise, but he lingered in undressing her hair. She enjoyed that—any man could see—so he gave her a good long while of it, unwinding every plait and combing through the tresses with his fingers. He’d sat her in the middle of the bedroom, on the stool he’d brought in from her dressing room, and he could see her serene, shut-eyed reflection in two different mirrors. His reflection as well. A nearly unclothed woman and a man with intentions for her, the tableau warmed and gilded by a handsbreadth of afternoon light.
He flicked his wrist, and a hairpin skipped and settled on a distant tabletop, its delicate percussion a garnish to the moment’s languorous mood. “I’d like to see you with your cap off under full sun,” he murmured, soft enough that she could take the words for indistinct music if she preferred. “All those plaits bound up, glowing in facets like honey in a cut-glass jar. And then, let down, like honey poured out.”
“You needn’t seduce me with compliments, you know.” She was smiling, eyes still closed. “I’ve already given my consent.”
“Consent doesn’t preclude seduction. What a lot you have to learn.” He worked his fingers in at her hair’s roots, massaging he
r scalp. “Shall I teach you something new today?”
“Yes.” Susceptible girl. What wouldn’t she agree to, with his hands in her hair?
“I advise you to ask what I intend before agreeing to it. Or at least to stipulate a few things you will not do.”
“I don’t have to.” Her eyes opened, their irises like fresh-turned earth, and found his in the mirror. “I trust you, Mirkwood.” And no woman, ever, would say any words more thrilling to him than those.
AS THOUGH he had all the time in the world—perhaps he did—Mr. Mirkwood drew his hands from the roots of her hair to its ends, letting the locks fall in shiver-inducing caresses against her neck. Then he walked deliberately away from her and sat down in the armchair.
He would ask her to do something. She would say yes. He might like to command her, and she might say yes to that too.
His head slanted a bit to one side, considering her as he would a courtesan hired for his entertainment. He sank back in the chair, his hands light on its armrests. One finger drummed speculatively. “Take off your stockings,” he said.
Yes. She bent forward and felt for the first garter.
“Not like that.” His voice floated, soft and dusky, across the room to where she sat. “Turn profile to me. Lift your foot up before you. Ease the stocking down slowly, and look at me while you do it.”
Like a courtesan, indeed. She turned profile. “Your wife will never be bored.”
“Don’t mention my wife. You’ll make me feel unfaithful.”
“Unfaithful to a wife with whom you’re not yet acquainted?” The garter, untied, fell loose about her thigh and she pushed her stocking down.
“Unfaithful to you both. A little slower, if you please.”
She crept the stocking down her calf while he watched, a lascivious smile playing on his lips. Doubtless he’d enacted this same scene with more women than he could count—but she wouldn’t think of that. The stocking slithered over her toes and off. She folded it loosely and tossed it to him.
His grin spread into something wolfish. “I knew you’d be good at this. Now the second one, please.”
He confounded her from the inside out, directing her in lewdness and peppering the commands with please. One couldn’t be sure, moment to moment, of who exactly was in charge.
“Throw me that one too.” He snatched the second stocking out of the air one-handed. Then he got up and went to the bed, where he laid both stockings across a pillow.
For the first time her pulse quickened. He might have things in mind to which she would not be equal. “What do you intend to do with those?” She folded her arms across her chest.
“I? Nothing.” He turned and faced her, already busy with his cravat. His eyes shone dark and shameless. “You, however, will use them to tie my wrists to the headboard before having your way with me.”
For an instant she felt as though someone had flipped her skin raw side out: she was one furious blush head to toe. Did men really … And how was she to … No. No. This was not a thing she cared to do. She rose to her feet, arms clamped about her ribs in the posture of intransigence. “You must have me confused with some more adventurous lady.”
“I don’t think so.” The cravat fell unheeded to the floor. “Consider a moment, darling.” He tugged his shirt free of his trousers. “I won’t be able to do anything you don’t approve, will I?” The shirt went over his head. “I’ll be entirely in your power.”
Curse his handsome shirtless self. He didn’t doubt for an instant she would comply. And curse her for having agreed to something new.
Refuse him. Tell him to suggest something else. He’ll understand. But stubbornness rose up in strange moments these days, and now it had hold of her tongue. “That doesn’t sound very … diverting for you,” was all the demurral she could make.
“Oh, Mrs. Russell, you’d be surprised at what diverts me.” He’d sat down on the bed to pull off his boots. “Come here and let me show you how to make the knots.”
He showed her—one didn’t like to ask where he’d acquired the knowledge—the sequence of loops and twists round one carved mahogany spindle, and left her to tie the second while he shed his trousers. “Now,” he said, and she felt the mattress dip as he climbed onto the bed behind her, “you’ll do those same knots at my wrists. Not too tight. Not too loose.” With the grace of a prowling animal he crawled to the bed’s middle. He lowered his body to the sheets and turned over, arms snaking up above his head.
She looped the stockings one at a time round his wrists and knotted them. This was madness. For all that he was naked and bound, he didn’t look compliant in the least. His arm-muscles alone were a taunt to her puny soft hands. He lay before her like some creature of catastrophic power, something she ought to have thought twice about capturing. “Take off your chemise,” he said as soon as she’d secured him, and there was nothing of entreaty in his voice.
But her stockings held him fast. She need only obey if she wished to. Did she wish to? Yes. She stripped off the garment and dropped it to the floor.
“Good.” He drank in her nakedness, fervent as a man downing ale after three days in the desert. His eyes, gleaming with unholy intention, came to rest on hers. “Now fuck me.”
The command knocked her back like a handful of dust in the face. But only for a moment. He was the one tied up. She folded her arms again. “If you want my cooperation you had better address me more politely than that.”
“Fuck me.” Like the world’s wickedest elocution pupil he articulated the words, lips and tongue and teeth put to such nefarious use. “Fuck me until I thrash and shout beneath you.”
“It was shocking the first time. It’s not shocking now.”
“Fuck me like the whore I am.”
“That’s not shocking either.” Heaven help her, there was some pleasure in this. In resisting him so. “And I told you your role is closer to that of a stud animal.”
“Indulge me this once.” His whole body twisted and roiled, serpent-like. “Let me be your whore if I want to be.”
Let me. “You mean that as a command, I suppose.” She loosened her arms and touched one finger to his near hip bone.
“Always. Use me, Martha.” His voice invited her into unspeakable things. “Ride me until you’ve got your seed, and then take your pleasure from my mouth.”
Well. Apparently not unspeakable, to him. And not, after all, too terribly distressing. The deeper he went into iniquity, the greater one’s reserves of mulish aplomb.
“You’re considering, aren’t you?” Hopeful to the last, Mr. Mirkwood. “You’re imagining how it would be. You’ve got me captive.” He flexed his hands to remind her. “You could keep me at it all afternoon if you liked. And grip onto the headboard for balance when the sensations grew too strong.”
“I’m reconsidering, in fact.” Without haste she trailed her finger over the hip bone, into the adjacent hollow and among his coarse curling hairs. “I don’t believe I would have agreed to restrain you, if I’d known you would take it as license to be so wicked.”
“Wicked, to be sure.” He repeated the word as though tasting it, his gaze now following her finger’s progress. “Perhaps you’d better punish me.”
Good Lord, what next? “Punish you, indeed.” She advanced her finger just to the base of his erection and stopped. “Suppose I were to walk out of this room and leave you here alone until you remembered your decency. Would that be punishment enough?”
He smiled as though he were teaching her chess and she’d just made a clever move. “Maybe.” His eyes came to her face, and wandered in leisurely, thorough fashion down her body and back to her still finger. “Or maybe you ought to touch yourself. Pleasure yourself, and force me to watch.”
“Now I know beyond question that you’ve confused me with someone else.” Aplomb had company: his every shameless utterance was waking strange—or not so strange—sensations that spiraled from her core on out. “And I doubt you’d take it as punishment, qu
ite.”
“Darling, I would take it as torture.” Again he twisted against his bonds, so much power at her mercy. “Because you’d taunt me with it, wouldn’t you? You’d place yourself where I could nearly reach you. And you’d say things to inflame me, but never touch me at all. I’d have to lie here helpless, watching you give yourself what you won’t take from me.” He sucked in a breath. “Start now, if you would.”
What a dreadful man he was, all intemperate appetites and no decorum to speak of. And what foolish affection she felt for his libidinous excess. She skimmed her finger, and a second and a third, up the length of his appendage while he watched, eyes narrowing at the sensation. “No,” she said. Her hands went to the pillow at either side of his tied-back arms. She let him see her poised above him for a second or two. Then she bent her elbows and brought her mouth to his.
HELL AND damnation. She’d never kissed him before. On the forehead, once. But never for pleasure—and whose pleasure was she about? No matter. No matter. Her lips brushed over his and he lay back to take it. Even without the use of his hands, he might have gained control of this kiss; might have led her through it as through a dance. Not today, though. Today he’d see where they went if she had the lead.
Her mouth was small on his. Her lips were careful and her breath was warm. His pleasure. Almost certainly. She went meticulously along his lower lip, giving attention to every fraction of an inch in light touches and delicate strokes. His mouth softened for her. Invite. Don’t demand. He let his lips part, just the width of a suggestion, and—like a sunbeam through London fog—felt the sweet trespass of her tongue.
A shiver surged through him. Her lips pulled taut as their corners ticked up. Her right hand left the pillow to feel its way to his nipple and torment him there.
Too much. He had to have his hands on her. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said against her mouth. “Untie me.”
She lifted her head enough to look into his eyes. Every inch the terrible uncloaked fairy, at last. “No,” she said, and bent to kiss him again.
A Lady Awakened Page 24
