by Juliana Ross
Safely hidden from prying eyes, I unfolded the scrap of paper Leo had given me.
Third floor, east wing, old nursery—usual time.
Regards,
L
He hadn’t forgotten me, after all, hadn’t tired of me. That day would come—I knew it as well as I knew my own heart—but for now, for today, he was mine.
The hours that passed were interminable. Correspondence, mending, luncheon, a walk through the gardens, more correspondence, more mending. And then, at last, it was two o’clock.
We retired to Aunt Augusta’s sitting room, where she took to her chaise longue—in her opinion only invalids belonged in bed during the day. I opened Little Dorrit and began to read aloud. Within moments her eyes had closed, but I dared not stop. Sometimes she liked to test me by feigning slumber. I read on until the Meissen clock on the mantel chimed the hour, and only then did I close the book and set it aside.
Taking up my mending basket, I proceeded to the servants’ stairs at the end of the hall, only instead of going downstairs, to the library, I ascended to the third floor. It was but a short walk to the nursery in the east wing.
The corridor was dimly lit, apart from a stray sunbeam peeking from a door that had been left ajar. I approached it, my heart pounding, and pushed it open.
The chamber I entered was ablaze with late-afternoon sun. Even more Spartan than my own modest chamber nearby, the room held but a narrow iron bed, a lone chair and a plain deal wardrobe. The bed had a mattress but no sheets or pillows; a thin, worn counterpane was its only adornment.
Leo stood by the window, his eyes fixed on the door. He still wore his riding boots and breeches but had thrown his coat, waistcoat and stock on the chair. Through the fine white linen of his shirt, now open at the neck, I could see the faintest shadow of hair on his chest.
I tried to swallow, but my throat was parched. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came forth. So I walked toward him, daring to meet his gaze, not looking away.
“I missed you,” he said.
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“And I’m sorry to have been so long in returning. I was delayed. Had no way of letting you know.”
I nodded, not knowing what else to say.
He smiled, and it seemed to me that he really was sorry for it. “Do you forgive me?”
“Yes,” I said, resolving to forget the misery of the past weeks. “There’s nothing to forgive. You’re here now.”
“I am indeed. And I don’t care to waste another minute.”
He walked to the door and wedged something beneath it—a wooden bootjack. “Good thing I remembered there aren’t any locks on the nursery doors.”
And then he was looming before me, his breath warm against my ear. “Do you know how it has tormented me? To be apart from you for so long?”
“Leo, I—”
“Will you disrobe for me? Or do I ask too much of you?”
“I want to,” I confessed, “but what if I disappoint you? I’m no longer young, and compared to other women—”
“Forget them. I think you’re lovely and I’ve certainly told you so before. Why don’t you believe me?”
“But I’m older than you,” I said, although the simple act of saying it aloud pained me.
“And I don’t care, not a whit. When I’m with you, Hannah, I only see a beautiful woman. Albeit one who is encumbered with an excessive amount of clothing.”
I needed no further encouragement, though I reserved judgment on his true feelings in regard to my appearance. It was enough, for now, that he desired me.
He watched me remove my bodice, skirt, petticoats and drawers, offering his assistance when I faltered, kneeling before me to unlace my half boots.
He untied my garters, peeling back my much-darned black stockings with them. And then, somehow, he unfastened the metal busk closure of my corset. Only my threadbare linen chemise remained.
“Open it,” he commanded.
I tried to comply, but my hands were clumsy and slow. So he brushed them aside, loosened the ribbon at its neck and bared my breasts.
“Just as pretty as I remembered. Your tits are beautiful, Hannah. I’ve been thinking about them for weeks now.”
He hefted them in his hands, as if they were fruits to be weighed, then played with my nipples, which were tingling in a way that was almost painful. He pinched them, scraped them less gently with his thumbnails, rubbed them into his palms and finally, just as I was about to beg him, he suckled on them, taking great, greedy mouthfuls that made the room spin and swirl around me.
He pushed my chemise up to my waist, stuffing the fabric into my nerveless grasp. “I want to see your cunny again,” he told me, and a thrill danced up my spine at the sound of his coarse talk.
“I can’t stop thinking about it. You’ve ruined me for anyone else.” This as the rasp of his stubbled cheek burned into the skin of my thighs.
I wanted so badly to believe him.
“Widen your stance.” As soon as I had moved my legs apart, his fingers went to the folds of my sex, spreading them wide, baring me entirely. “Shall we see if you’re ready?” He pushed a finger deep inside me, groaning raggedly as he found the answer he sought.
“Take off your chemise. Go to the bed and lie down,” he ordered, and I shivered at the note of command in his voice.
I obeyed. I shed my chemise, knowing it left me naked before him, and sat on the bed. But instead of reclining, I began to pull the pins from my hair. It was my only true claim to beauty, and I wanted him to see.
Removing the last of my hairpins, I unraveled my plaits. He’d made no sound; perhaps he wasn’t interested in my hair and simply wanted to get on with fucking me. I took a deep breath, steadied myself and looked at him.
He bore the expression of a man transfixed. “Has any man ever seen you like this?”
“No. Not even Charles.”
He moved to the bed, his eyes glittering with surprise and delight, and lifted one heavy, curling lock from my shoulders. “It’s so long.”
“I’ve never cut it.”
“No queen ever wore a more beautiful mantle,” he whispered, and for a moment I thought he might say something more.
Instead, he stepped back, his eyes never leaving mine, and shrugged off his braces. Pulling his shirt over his head, he tossed it on the floor, then sat to pull off his boots. Wearing only his riding breeches, he approached me where I sat on the bed.
“Have you missed me?” he asked, his voice rough and low. “Have you missed this?” He took hold of my hands and pressed them to the front of his breeches.
I nodded.
“Then you know what I want you to do.”
I unfastened his breeches and pushed them down his legs; he wore nothing underneath. His cock was even bigger than I had remembered.
I couldn’t resist. I bent my head and licked him once, twice, like a kitten with a dish of cream, then opened my lips wide, ready to attend to him as I’d done the last time we met. But before I could take him into my mouth, he pushed me away, and I tumbled back on the bed.
He kicked off his breeches, and then he was kneeling between my legs, his hands on my breasts, rubbing, pinching, tormenting. I heard my voice begging him to kiss them, to come closer to me, to please, oh please, press against me.
“First tell me what you want,” he said, unmoved by my entreaties.
“I want you,” I moaned.
“What do you want from me, then?”
“What you said you’d do, before you went away.”
“And what was that? I won’t do anything more until you tell me.”
“I want you to take me,” I whispered.
“Come now, Hannah. You know I’m not a man for euphemisms. What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to fuck me.”
“Good girl. Spread your legs for me, nice and wide. Bend your knees a little. Yes, that’s it.”
He took hold of his cock, bracing his weight with his other arm, and I felt the head of it against the opening of my cunny. I braced myself for the pain to come, for the dreadful dry friction I remembered from the times when Charles had lain with me. But I was as wet as Leo had said I should be, and his cock slid into me so smoothly, it might have been covered in silk.
He was big, though, so big that he was able to advance only a few inches before pausing to let my body accommodate him. He pushed forward but once again halted his advance.
“Christ, Hannah, you’re so tight. This is killing me.”
He pushed forward more, then more, and it occurred to me that I ought to raise my legs and open them a little wider. He groaned, and for a moment I wondered if I’d made a mistake. But then he drove into me, all the way in, and it didn’t hurt at all.
I waited for him to start moving in and out of me, but he made no move to retreat, instead grinding himself against my cunny in precise, controlled circles.
“Tell me what this feels like,” he demanded.
How should I answer? “It’s very nice,” I said, which seemed to fit the moment.
“Nice? That’s all you have to say? Nice?”
“I beg your pardon—”
“It’s more than goddamn nice,” he growled. “It’s bloody perfect, that’s what it is.”
He pulled back a fraction, then pushed into me again, and I felt a twinge of something—what it was I couldn’t quite tell. But it was more than nice.
I wanted to touch him, so I trailed my fingertips through the whorls of hair on his chest. I spied his nipples, flat and almost hidden, and I pinched one lightly, experimentally. It puckered and grew tight, and I wondered if the touch of my mouth there would feel pleasant to him. I flicked my tongue over it, as he’d done to my nipples, and felt absurdly pleased with myself when he moaned in response.
Before I could move to his other nipple, he shifted his weight to one elbow and fondled my breasts, all the while continuing to fuck me with lazy, long thrusts.
And then his hand moved between us. His thumb grazed the pearl between my legs, and it was so good I cried out despite myself. He rewarded me by circling the magic spot, rubbing it, flicking it ever so gently, summoning the orgasm I sought.
It broke upon me, the same miraculous release I remembered, but made more intense and even more satisfying by Leo’s weight upon me and within me.
He abandoned my clitoris, but I didn’t care, because he’d hooked his arm under my knee and was fucking me so deeply that it almost hurt. The long, deep strokes pushed me down into the thin mattress, his weight full upon me.
“I can’t get enough of you,” he whispered. “Can’t stop thinking about you. What have you done to me?”
His orgasm crashed upon him, and I felt every tremor, every ecstatic shiver of bliss, and I kissed his brow and held him tight as he poured out his seed. But then, instead of collapsing atop me, he gathered me into his arms and rolled to his side, holding me close as he dropped kisses on my hair.
He was holding me very tight, as if he were reluctant to let me go, and I realized he was as affected as I. So I murmured soothing words to him, tucked my face against the soft hair of his chest and listened as his heartbeat slowed and steadied.
In that instant I realized I was lost.
I loved him, but this was all we could ever have. Stolen moments, blissful in themselves, but weighed down by the secrets, lies and sordid truths of such affairs.
I was lost.
Chapter Six
I couldn’t bear to be apart from him, nor from the pleasure he brought me. My entire existence revolved around Leo, and it was a miracle indeed that I didn’t betray my obsession by some chance remark or deed, or by my utter lack of interest in anything that didn’t pertain to the hours we spent together.
It was my good fortune that the following months were a busy time for the household. Easter had fallen at the beginning of April, and with it came the move to Town for the start of the Season. Aunt Augusta was a whirlwind of energy, immersed in the work of packing and sorting and list making. I helped as best I could, but much of the time she and everyone else ignored me.
While in London, Lord and Lady Dorchester resided at Wraxhall House, their palatial townhouse in Belgravia, while Leo lived in his own, much smaller home around the corner. In the weeks preceding the move, I worried about how I would see him. No longer would he be present at meals, except at formal dinners when I would be banished abovestairs. Unlike Bexington Hall, Wraxhall House had little in the way of secluded corridors or deserted storerooms where we might meet.
Leo was nothing if not enterprising, however, and only two days after our arrival I found a note in my sewing basket that directed me to an address on Wilton Street, only a few minutes’ walk away. He’d taken rooms above a wine merchant, and we were able to meet there once or twice a week without much trouble. I still only had ninety minutes of freedom each afternoon, and sometimes not even that, for Aunt Augusta liked to send me on errands while she napped. And of course Leo was often absent, though rarely for more than a week.
We continued on in this fashion for much of the summer, and in all that time he didn’t seem to be growing tired of me, and evinced no desire to set me aside.
We never spoke of the future, but it haunted my daydreams all the same. How could it not, with Leo’s marital prospects the focus of his mother’s life? Both his sisters were married, and at the beginning of the Season Arthur had acquired a horse-faced and impeccably pedigreed fiancée, leaving only Leo unattached.
All spring and summer Aunt Augusta talked of it to anyone who would listen, and though I was a most reluctant audience I dared not complain. Leo must marry, she insisted, and soon, else he would fritter away his entire life on idle pursuits and inappropriate intimacies.
Of only trifling importance, it seemed to me, were the bride’s feelings for Leo and any attachment he might have for her. She need only be healthy, young and of good noble stock. Ideally she would be the daughter of an earl at the very least, although an ample dowry might remedy a marginally less exalted family tree.
All of the year’s eligible debutantes were assessed by Aunt Augusta and her daughters, and all were found wanting. “A poor crop,” they concurred fretfully, and I held my breath.
Perhaps they wouldn’t find anyone to their liking, I told myself. Perhaps he wouldn’t have to marry, at least not for another year.
And then, one evening in late July, as I helped Aunt Augusta select her jewels for the Duchess of Sutherland’s ball, my delusions crumbled into dust around me.
A suitable candidate had been found. She’d come late to the Season—delayed by an illness in the family that spring. Her name was Lady Alice Cathcart-Ross. She was eighteen, her father was the Earl of Huntington and this was her first Season.
Aunt Augusta extolled Lady Alice’s virtues at some length, oblivious to the dire effect her words were having on me. She talked as her hair was being dressed, as her maids helped her into her gown, as they knelt to slip on her shoes, as they buttoned her gloves, set the tiara in her hair and fastened the garland of Dorches
ter emeralds, some as fat as a quail’s egg, around her neck.
I gave nothing away. Gave no hint of the anguish that threatened to crush me. I simply nodded when appropriate, helped when needed and bid her a good evening when she departed for the ball.
I retreated to my bedroom, formerly a small dressing room attached to Aunt Augusta’s chambers, and began the long wait until she returned. I had no shortage of mending to get through, but my fingers were cold and stiff, and before long I set my sewing aside.
I tried to read, but my eyes skipped sightlessly over the pages of my novel. And so I sat in the battered old slipper chair by my bed, my hands folded in my lap, and waited.
Were they making the announcement now? Or would it be done tomorrow morning? Would he tell me himself or leave it to his mother?
Just then I heard a scratch at the door of Aunt Augusta’s sitting room. I waited, listening intently—servants never knocked, and everyone else had gone to the ball.
Another scratch came, a low knock, really, and then the sweep of the door as it opened.
“Who is it?” I called out. I went to my door and peered into the gloom beyond. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
“Hush,” came the whispered reply. “You know very well who it is.”
Leo stepped out of the shadows and advanced toward me. Instead of the formal attire of a gentleman going to a ball, he wore a plain woolen coat and trousers, a dark waistcoat and necktie, a simple linen shirt. The garments of a man who intended to spend the evening at home.
“You’re meant to be at the ball—why aren’t you dressed for it?”
“Because I’m not going to the ball.”
“But they’re waiting for you, Leo.”
“I told my mother I wouldn’t go. Repeatedly. I cannot be faulted if she chose not to listen.”
“You must go. Lady Alice—”
“Then you do know what my mother has planned for me.” A skein of anger was knitted through his words.
