Freedom to Love

by Susanna Fraser

  “And I can learn to manage whatever I must.” Thérèse lifted her chin, and Henry smiled his most ridiculously sweet smile at her. Surely anyone looking at them must believe they truly were eloping lovers. She could almost believe it herself when he looked at her like that.

  “You have the right spirit, then,” Mrs. Cutler said. “Obadiah should’ve left well enough alone. He never should’ve gone near that girl.”

  “But once he did, he couldn’t abandon her,” Cutler said.

  “She would’ve been better off if he had,” his mother maintained.

  “Surely not. Her father would’ve thrown her into the street.”

  “Not if her mother had any sense. They could’ve sent her away, married her off...”

  Thérèse met Henry’s eyes and saw the same enlightenment she was feeling dawn on his face. Plainspoken, gruff Obadiah Wilson had gotten a rich lady with child? It seemed incredible. She supposed he was handsome enough—although nothing to be compared to Henry—with his combination of dark, mysterious eyes and a gruff character. Together they hinted at fascinating hidden secrets, which might appeal to the sort of woman who liked that sort of thing.

  Jeannette converted a laugh into a choke and drank deeply from her cup of bitter coffee to hide it. Thérèse turned a chiding eye upon her, and Mrs. Cutler shook her head. “It’s no laughing matter, missy.”

  “No, ma’am,” Jeannette agreed, her eyes round and solemn again.

  “Maybe it will be better once the child is born,” Mrs. Cutler said. “Some women do take pregnancy hard. I know I had a worse time of it with Ben here than any of my others.”

  Cutler shifted awkwardly. Thérèse got the impression he’d heard this before.

  “We’ll see soon. I saw her today, and I doubt her time is more than a week or two away. The baby has dropped. But I’m afraid for her...” She shook her head and turned an admonishing eye upon Thérèse. “When your turn comes, don’t take to your bed. Even if you’re tired and sick, try to keep moving, and you must eat. If you lie in bed for nine months and pick at your food, how are you going to make a strong baby or have the strength to push it into the world?”

  Thérèse nodded obediently. It felt good to be mothered again after all these months.

  “I’ve seen more women lose babies from overwork than from too much resting,” Jeannette muttered.

  Mrs. Cutler gave her a sharp look, but followed it with a kind nod. “I’m sure you have—but that isn’t likely to be the case for your good mistress here.”

  Thérèse fought the urge to squirm at hearing herself so characterized.

  “Our family has never held with slavery,” Mrs. Cutler added.

  “No,” her husband added. “If we wanted to be richer, we could go down to the lowlands and grow cotton. I could get a good enough price for this land to make a start, if I borrowed the rest of the money, and leave Ben here a plantation to be master of.”

  “I don’t want that, Daddy.”

  “I know you don’t, son. No, we’ll stay here. Maybe we’ll live poorer, but we’ll live free.”

  Mrs. Cutler smiled at her husband. “In a cabin.”

  “It’s good you’re freeing her,” Mr. Cutler added.

  “I would not have it any other way,” Henry said. “There are no slaves in France.”

  Or England. Thérèse hid a smile. She’d noticed Henry was at his most grandiloquently French when he was really speaking of England.

  “I hope and pray one day the same will be true of America,” Mr. Cutler said. “Though I fear it’ll be left to my grandchildren’s grandchildren to see that day.”

  They all sat in silence for a moment, which Mrs. Cutler broke with a significant glance at her son. “As long as we’re talking of grandchildren, did you hear that Mary Taggart is marrying Jack Carey from over the mountain?”

  “Is she?” Cutler blinked guilelessly. “I hope they’re happy together.”

  And from there the conversation flowed into local gossip, with an emphasis on eligible young women within a day’s ride from the settlement, and how quickly they were choosing other young men. Cutler had two surviving siblings, both women who’d married men from more distant settlements. Though they had provided their parents with fine grandchildren, it wasn’t quite the same as when Cutler would marry, since he would live here by the creek, where his mother could see her descendants every day.

  Thérèse took a second helping of stew and exchanged amused glances with Henry and Jeannette. It was good to be in a real home, listening to the teasing affection of a family who loved and trusted each other. But she desperately missed her own mother—both of her parents, really. For all of Father’s faults, for all that they’d never had the respectability of a true, legal marriage, he’d stayed with her mother whenever he was in New Orleans, and their home had been a little like this. They’d laughed together, they’d teased her over possible suitors—though Father had insisted she was too good for Gratien and talked of taking her to France long after it should have been obvious his dreams would never become reality.

  She missed her home. She hoped she’d have another home, a real one with a family and permanence, someday.

  Chapter Twelve

  It wasn’t the first time Henry had gone weeks without a bath, but he still felt better pleased with himself and all the world after ten minutes of scrubbing with harsh homemade soap in a tin tub before the fire. And when everyone had taken it in turns to bathe, and he and Cutler had carried the tub outside to empty for the last time, he returned to the cabin to find Jeannette and Mrs. Cutler making up a pallet of blankets and pillows before the fire.

  “A pair of newlyweds shouldn’t have to share quarters with their servant, not when we have room to spare,” Mrs. Cutler said with a broad wink.

  Henry felt his blood stir. They weren’t married and could never be, but they could have another night like that first one after Natchez—weeks of such nights. “Thank you, madame,” he said with his best courtly bow.

  Jeannette kept her face blank, but Henry knew her well enough by now to realize she was longing to roll her eyes at them both.

  He bid them good-night and sought out the little upstairs room he’d been assigned to share with Thérèse. It lacked a fireplace and so was cold, but a nest of patchwork quilts covered the bed where Thérèse sat in a white nightdress he hadn’t seen before, combing out her long, dark hair by the light of a single candle in the windowsill. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, though the words seemed inadequate.

  She smiled, then ducked her head. “We’re alone.”

  “At last.” He sat beside her and held out his hand for the comb. “May I?”

  “If you’re gentle.”

  “Always.” He began working the comb through her hair. He’d never done this for a woman, so he went slowly and carefully. He knew he was doing something right when she sighed with pleasure and leaned back against him.

  “The Cutlers seem like good people,” she said.

  He hadn’t expected such a mundane comment, not when he was already more than half-hard and could sense her desire in the very way she breathed, but if she wanted to talk, he could do that. They had all night. They had weeks of nights to come.

  “I like them,” he said. “Even Jeannette does.”

  Thérèse giggled. “And she doesn’t like many people?”

  “No—but she has reason to be slow to trust.”

  “Mmm. She has good judgment for her age, I think. Though—I was surprised she volunteered to help heat the water. When I mentioned it to her, she just smiled and said, ‘I got to bathe, too, didn’t I?’”

  Henry chuckled. “She knows how to get what she wants.”

  “She also said she was glad to sleep alone for a change—she’d had enough of being crowded together in inns.”r />
  “I’m...glad she feels that way, since that means I can be alone with you.” He set the comb aside and snaked his arms around her waist, drawing her against him.

  “It’s been a long time since that first night,” Thérèse said softly.

  “Too long.” When she didn’t immediately respond, he asked, “Do you—you do still want this?”

  “I do. God help me, I do.”

  “Mmm.” He planted a kiss on the nape of her neck, then slid his hands down to her hips. But she stiffened, and he drew away and sat back. “What’s wrong?”

  She turned to face him. “Every night I’ve been thinking of that night, and how I want more of you. Every night. But now—what are we doing? We can’t marry. We know that. We’ll be obliged to part someday. Isn’t it just making it worse, to do everything short of actual consummation?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I do know I dread the day we must part. But I don’t think that never touching each other again would make it easier. I’d still miss you if I never so much as gave you another kiss.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying that because you’ve got me alone and you want to touch me again.”

  “I’m saying it because it’s true. I do want you, of course I do, but I’d care for you and want you no matter what. So,” he continued, knowing it was selfish but wanting her too badly to stop pleading, “since it won’t make us feel any better when we part if we stop touching each other, why can’t we at least have what pleasure we can here and now? I swear I’ll be careful. I won’t leave you like Wilson’s Sophia.” Henry understood Wilson’s bitter cynicism better now. The man could hardly take encourage someone else’s elopement when his own had gone so horribly awry.

  “It’s not that,” Thérèse said. “It’s just—I’m afraid I’ll get such a taste for you that it will ruin me for any other man.”

  Henry’s heart beat faster, but he made himself speak lightly. “I’m not such a good lover as that. I won’t be your life’s only passion—though I’m glad to be the first.”

  Her expression grew troubled. “Is that how it is? You feel all this—” she waved her hands as if trying to describe something beyond words, which this certainly was “—but then you move on and feel the exact same things for someone else?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never felt anything like this before, either.” He’d always held himself aloof, not wanting to allow himself to get involved beyond the merely physical, but from the day they’d met, his life had entwined with Thérèse’s. Parting from her was going to feel like an amputation to his soul. But staying away from her now wouldn’t help.

  “Oh.” She seized him by the shoulders and pulled him to her for a kiss.

  Caught off balance, he all but fell on top of her. It broke the seriousness of the moment but not his desire. He laughed, and she with him, and they shifted position until they lay side by side, drinking in long, slow, leisurely kisses. When she pressed her body against his, he drew back. “Under the blankets,” he said.

  “Yes. My feet are freezing. But you need to be wearing far fewer clothes.”

  “By all means.” He stood, and while she turned back the three thick quilts and nestled into the bed, he stripped to just his shirt and smallclothes. Then, when he saw her watching him with avid, hungry eyes, he cast those aside, too, and stood before her entirely naked.

  Her eyes widened in fresh appreciation, but then that eyebrow lifted again. “You know just how handsome you are, don’t you?”

  Henry blinked. He supposed he did, but being the best-looking of those handsome Farlow boys hadn’t seemed to count for much in his world. “I think I’d know better if you told me.”

  “Oh, come to bed before you turn blue and I’ll show you.”

  He laughed and sat on the edge of the bed, admiring the way her skin glowed like pale honey against the snowy white nightdress. “I’d like to see you, too,” he said. “If you don’t mind.”

  She studied him for a moment, her eyes lingering on his erection—which he swore grew longer and harder under her gaze—then sat up and squirmed out of her nightdress.

  Henry swallowed. She was so very lovely—slim, but far from frail, long and lean with small high breasts he could hardly wait to touch again. Her skin shone in the candlelight, and he dropped his gaze from her smooth, flat stomach down to the shadowed nest of curls between her thighs. Touch wouldn’t be enough for tonight. He wanted to taste her, too.

  He lifted his head and met her eyes, which were shy yet challenging. “I need you to keep me warm,” she said.

  “Oh, gladly.” He rose up on his knees, pulling one of the quilts with him to wrap around them like a cloak. Kissing her, he stroked his fingers through her hair, drawing handfuls of it forward to drape over his shoulders.

  “You have the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen,” he said.

  She blinked. “It’s just plain. Straight black hair.”

  He shook his head. “Long and straight and thick and soft. Beautiful like the rest of you.”

  She smiled and kissed him, tentative at first, but growing more confident. She buried her fingers in his hair while her other hand stroked his shoulders and arm, shaping the pattern of his muscles.

  He leaned forward, slowly pressing her back until she lay beneath him. His breath was going ragged and his cock ached to be inside her, but he’d made a promise and would keep his word. Instead he kissed his way down her neck to her collarbone, swirling his tongue at its dip. Her breath hitched and she clutched at his shoulders. Henry laughed a little. If she liked this, wait till he showed her how much more he could give.

  He gave due attention to each of her breasts, small and perfectly shaped, the firm nipples that grew harder under his tongue as she squirmed and arched and gave soft little moans. And then he shifted and worked his way inexorably lower, kissing her navel, gently urging her legs apart.

  She tensed as he ran his tongue straight down to the base of her belly. “What are you doing?”

  “This.” With careful fingers he spread apart her folds—so hot and slick and smelling so deliciously of woman—and tasted her.

  She gave a sharp, pleased cry and seized him by the hair, holding him in place. He laughed against her fevered skin and stayed just where he was, just where he wanted to be, delving his tongue as deep as he could inside her, then licking back up to her seat of pleasure again and again until her thrashing hips and gasping breaths told him she was ready and he plunged one finger inside her in time to the rhythm of his licking and sucking until she came apart under his hands with another cry and shuddered into bonelessness.

  He slid up the bed to embrace her, tucking the quilts more tightly around them so she wouldn’t take a chill. “Well?”

  She stared at him, her eyes wide and dark in the faint candlelight. “Henry. My God. I—I didn’t know you could do that.”

  He grinned. “Delighted I could show you.”

  “You are, aren’t you? I—I ought to be appalled, or embarrassed, or something, but—”

  “Don’t be any of those things.” He kissed her gently, and she kissed him back with a certain wary curiosity. He knew she must be tasting herself on him, and he kept his kiss leisurely, letting her adjust to the newness of it even while his cock stood as hard and hungry as he’d ever known it.

  She broke the kiss and fixed him with an assessing look. “What about you?” she asked. “Could I, ah, do what you just did to me?”

  He took a deep breath. “Oh, yes. You can. But—only if you’d like to.”

  It was her turn to chuckle. “Well, then. Fair is fair.” And she pushed him onto his back and slid under the quilts. She explored a little first, licking and nibbling at his chest and torso, but just before he grew impatient enough to push her mouth down where he most wanted it, her lips settled over the head of his c
ock, soft and cautious but wet and maddening for all that.

  Even with her gentle, inexperienced touch, it didn’t take long. A dim thought flitted through Henry’s mind that he’d forgotten to tell her that she wasn’t obliged to swallow, that in his experience most women didn’t, but then he lost himself in the most intense spend he could ever remember and she was sliding back up to curl against his side, looking thoroughly pleased with herself and him. “You liked that?”

  He pressed his forehead to hers. “You need to ask?”

  “Not really. But I want to hear you say it.”

  “It was splendid. You were splendid.” It was on the tip of his tongue to say, I love you, but some remnant of caution held him back. What good would it do them to speak of it? It was one thing to bring each other the pleasures of the flesh, but words were binding.

  * * *

  The next morning Thérèse woke up to Henry’s hardness pressed against her back while he still slept, so she turned over and kissed him to wakefulness. They pleasured each other again, this time with their hands, before going down to Mrs. Cutler’s good breakfast and further exploration of Cutler’s Creek.

  It set the pattern for the next three weeks. After a day or two of informal celebration of Cutler’s and Wilson’s return, the settlement resumed its routine, preparing for the spring planting. Henry and Jeannette both helped with plowing and sowing the earliest crops. Thérèse offered to do the same, but it was universally agreed that a lady like her had no place doing such work. She didn’t press the point. Lady or not, she was too much a child of the city to know what to do in the fields. But she let it be known without revealing where she’d learned that she was handy with a needle and would be glad to help with any dressmaking or other sewing that was needed.

  At first she was given simple work—worn garments to patch, children’s clothing to let out to accommodate a growing child or take in to hand down to a younger sibling. But after a few days her skills were noticed, and she found herself making, of all unexpected things, baby dresses, including a few for Obadiah Wilson’s expected son or daughter. She’d never made a baby’s clothes before—she had more experience with ball dresses and bridal trousseaux—but she enjoyed the delicate work and above all the feeling that she was doing something to repay these people who’d offered her such generous hospitality.