The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton

by Miranda Neville

  The mention of the duke suggested that his sentiment had no very deep meaning, let alone a hidden one. But he did call her “dear.” And he’d done so in the icehouse too. In front of other people.

  She wished she had someone to discuss it with, Minerva perhaps. But that rational young lady would no doubt tell her to be direct and just ask Tarquin what he meant. She might know more about parliamentary tactics and the nation’s foreign affairs than any seventeen-year-old on earth, but she’d never been in love. Only one in the throes of that inconvenient passion could understand the wild pendulum swing of her emotions, cleaving her into two personalities.

  Sensible Celia wanted Tarquin only if she could be sure their marriage wouldn’t leave her a sad neglected shadow in his godlike glory. Besotted Celia just wanted him, at any time under any conditions.

  Where is your pride, girl? demanded Sensible Celia. You have no worldly advantages to bring to a union with a man who exemplifies worldliness: no fortune, no family, no beauty.

  But he likes my looks! shrieked Besotted Celia, fastening on the only point she could argue with. Why else would he wish to lie with me?

  Because he’s a man and in both cases you were there, and willing. You think he’ll want you forever, when he has the choice of real beauties?

  Like Countess Czerny, you mean?

  Like Julia.

  If he wants her, he should have her. I only want him to be happy.

  Wait a minute, just now you said you wanted him under any conditions.

  I do! But I want him to have what he wants.

  But if we are being sensible we’ll accept his offer because we’ve just whistled away fifty thousand pounds and we have nothing.

  I won’t be married for pity.

  You’re mad.

  And there both sides of Celia, Sensible and Besotted, agreed. Quite, quite mad in the head.

  There was also the unseemly physical effect Tarquin had on her. When he was in a room she was struck down with a strange kind of partial blindness by which everyone else faded into a blurred grisaille compared to Tarquin’s vividly etched presence. The affliction was getting worse. Just the thought of him now had her hot and bothered.

  The second package arrived as Chantal prepared her for bed, after a long tedious evening playing charades in which they’d been on separate teams and had hardly a chance to exchange a word.

  It contained a book, a very familiar volume. A strip of paper marked a particular page. I fear there may be a rat in your room. She read the passage, one that had been recommended by Minerva, she recalled.

  Apparently charades weren’t over for the night.

  He entered her room to find her seated on a pillow on the floor with her back to the door. The room was well lit by four candles. The scene was, after all, supposed to take place in broad daylight on a river bank. Some of his best moments with Celia had taken place next to running water. Though unfortunately covering her legs, her simple nightgown was quite reminiscent of a fondly remembered shift.

  “May I sit with you, madame?” She nodded without looking up and waved him down onto another cushion, placed on the floor beside her own. Her nose was buried in a small octavo volume covered with a paper wrapper. He tilted his head to examine it. “Pray tell me, what are you studying so assiduously? A work of piety, no doubt.”

  Naughty eyes met his over the top of the open book. “What else, sir?” She showed him the wrapper on which she’d written in ink “Fordyce’s Sermons.” A nice embellishment. His Celia had imagination as well as a sense of fun. He silently commended her success in suppressing her laughter and only hoped he could match her restraint. She’d made quite an impression that evening at charades, displaying a thespian talent he should have suspected. It had given him the idea for the little drama they now enacted.

  Damn it, he loved that she’d understood his suggestive note.

  He removed the book from her hands and arched away in mock indignation. “You, madam, are a hypocrite. Why, these are no sermons! This is that notorious work of depravity, The Memoirs of a Lady of Pleasure by Mr. John Cleland.”

  Celia buried her face in her hands. “Alas! I am discovered.”

  “And I took you for a lady of virtue!”

  “I am so ashamed!” And, just like the pious widow in Featherbrain’s memoirs, she shifted to a kneeling position and buried her face in her cushion. “Alack, sir!” she moaned. “I cannot look at you.”

  The sight of her well-formed rump drove away the urge to laugh. Dropping to his knees behind her he stroked the taut linen-covered cheeks then pressed a hand between her thighs. Heat and wetness told him she was as excited as he. She might be able to control a laugh, but a happy little gasp escaped her. With a big grin he reached under the skirt and walked his fingers up her long, strong, shapely limbs.

  Zeus, but he loved her legs.

  “Oh, sir!” she cried. “What has happened?”

  “Do you feel something crawling up your legs?”

  She emitted a muted but most convincing shriek. “Yes! For heavens sake, what is it?”

  “I saw a big water rat escape from the river and I fear it’s hiding in your skirts. I think I’d better take a look.”

  Alas, once he got his head under her skirts his recollection of the prescribed scene unraveled. Her smooth skin touching his face, the heat and musky scent of her sex sent his senses swimming and his brain sailing off into the ether. A particularly luscious piece of inner thigh being offered to his mouth, he licked and sucked on it.

  “The rat bit me!”

  That she could still remember elements of the playbook, even when delivered in a squeak, told him she wasn’t yet as crazed as he. He’d have to see about that. With a little vigorous rearrangement he had Celia on her back, gasping with delight as she succumbed to the ministrations of his mouth.

  “Oh lord,” Celia sighed happily. He kept two fingers inside her and she could feel herself continue to convulse around them. “Francis Featherbrain never did that.”

  “Francis Featherbrain was an idiot.” His face lay on her belly and the movement of his mouth tickled. “Also fictional. I am real and therefore my repertoire is unlimited.”

  “But Tarquin,” she began, enjoying her prerogative to toy with his short silky hair. Then she became distracted tracing his ears with her fingers. She’d never noticed how beautiful they were, just the right size for his head, the whorls neat and even.

  “What?”

  “We didn’t finish the bit with the rat. I want to see how the scene ends.”

  His head popped up with conspicuous speed. “I’m ready if you are. Do you mind if we omit some of the dialogue?”

  “It was rather long.”

  “And very badly written.”

  “In this particular work of literature . . .” the word drew a snort from him “ . . . the plot surpassed the quality of the prose.”

  She pushed him off and returned to her previous position on knees and elbows. “You can go hunting under my skirts anytime,” she said, giving her rear a provocative wriggle.

  Her grateful ears detected the rustle of discarded garments. When he pushed up her nightgown and enveloped her from behind she quivered at the touch of warm skin, the rasp of his chest hair on her back, his hard cock pressing against her bottom. Already she ached for its entrance and pushed back against the rock hard muscle. But in addition to the physical excitement generated by the silly, titillating game, her leaping heart answered the strength and protection of his powerful body.

  Two other times he’d held her from behind against his chest: ducking on the hillside, hidden by a boulder, when they first escaped from the cottage, and in the loft in Joe’s barn. And each time she’d been safe in his arms, she realized, even the first time when he was half out of his mind from a blow to the head and she was filled with anger at everyone in the world, including him. Whether Terence Fish or Tarquin Compton, and despite the fact he had every reason to dislike and distrust her, he’d never onc
e let her down. A dozen times over the past weeks he could have washed his hands of Celia Seaton, and more than a few times he’d wished to, she knew. But he’d stayed and met his slender obligation to her without flinching, and she had grown to expect it.

  She had not been nearly as frightened as she should have been in the icehouse that afternoon. In the depths of her heart she’d known Tarquin would come for her.

  Heat welled behind her eyes. Giving an incoherent keen, half laugh and half sob, she reached clumsy arms back to grab hold of a thigh, a handful of buttock, to pull him closer, to embrace the only person in the world who hadn’t failed her. And lost her balance to land ungracefully splayed on the cushions, more laughing than crying. She managed to roll over and throw her arms about his shoulders and neck and tug him close as though to never let him go. “Make love to me, Tarquin,” she whispered fiercely. “Love me.”

  His expression took her breath away and made her feel beautiful. Waiting tears escaped at the sight of such eager tenderness. He kissed away a trickle that damped her cheek.

  “You are crying,” he whispered. “Why?”

  Not knowing how to explain her feelings, or whether it was wise to do so, she shook her head and pulled his head down to hers. Since he was, as she had learned, easily distracted by physical advances, she took control of the kiss, drawing him in, sucking on his tongue, devouring him. He gave up asking questions and kissed her back until the distinction between his mouth, his taste, and hers blurred and she felt as close to him as she had to any living soul. When at last he entered her, through her spiraling frenzy of excitement she felt a never-experienced peace, like a weary traveler who tops the crest of a hill and sees the road home. And her climax, when it came, was an earthy echo of the sentiment.

  Afterward they lay on the carpet, Tarquin on his side propped up on his elbow. With his other hand he finger-combed her hair, spreading it over her pillow with absorbed concentration.

  “Like fire,” he said.

  “Huh?” She basked in the compliment, however absurd. “Ginger, you mean.”

  “You. You warm me.”

  She grinned in delight and was rewarded with a quick kiss. Then a frown creased his brow. For a moment she saw his familiar haughtiness then realized it was something different, an expression she’d never seen on the stern features of the leader of the ton: doubt, anxiety even.

  “Do you forgive me?” he asked.

  “What for?”

  “For comparing you to a vegetable and ruining your life.”

  “You haven’t ruined my life,” she said softly.

  By asking for her pardon, she believed, he offered his own. But she’d wait until he was ready to speak it.

  His smile sent her heart into its usual somersaults. “Good. Let’s go to bed.” Pulling her up with him, he stood, and tossed her onto the mattress. Instead of continuing the conversation she gave a half-suppressed shriek that was still, she feared, loud enough to awaken the deaf cousin in the next room. The pillows from the floor landed beside her, followed by Tarquin himself.

  He’d forgiven her, completely, but he didn’t say so, perhaps because he wasn’t entirely sure why. Her greatest offense had been allowing him to lie with her under the illusion they were engaged. Under the circumstances he could no longer summon even the memory of his previous anger. He was too happy and lazy after the best lovemaking he’d ever experienced. After disposing of her nightgown, which was rucked up and half falling off, he stripped off the covers and they stretched out on the sheets, on their sides facing each other.

  “It’s too hot for blankets,” he said, ogling her from neck to toe.

  She ogled him right back, her gray eyes delightfully lascivious. Idly she trailed her palm along the route from his collarbone to navel. “We still never finished the rat scene.”

  “Give me a little time.”

  “Oh, right. Tiddly pillock.”

  “It won’t stay tiddly for long if you look at it like that.”

  She ran a playful finger along its gradually stiffening length.

  “Or touch it.”

  “You told me you have many books like that.” She gestured in the direction of the discarded volume.

  “A good number.”

  “How did you come to collect such things?”

  He put an arm about her waist and drew her close, her head rested on his shoulder. “I suppose it started by accident. As boys grow up they speculate about these things among themselves. A school friend lent me a volume ascribed to Aretino’s nephew.”

  “Who is this Aretino, anyway?”

  “An Italian poet who wrote some obscene sonnets and a very smutty book called The Dialogues.”

  “And the Genuine Amours.”

  “Definitely not. There are dozens of books ascribed to Aretino’s authorship but written by others. His name on the title page tells the reader what kind of book to expect.”

  “The kind you like.”

  “I’ll never forget that first book. It had the most amazing illustration of a couple on horseback, fully joined.”

  “You cannot be serious! Could one do that?” He loved the awed eagerness in her voice.

  “I wouldn’t like to try, but I wish I could show you the book. I lost it and never found another copy.”

  “How did you lose it?”

  “The nursery maid discovered it hidden under my mattress and gave it to the duchess.”

  “Trouble?”

  “I can still remember the beating,” he said with feeling. “After that I started to buy as many such books as I could, just to get back at her. A foolish defiance, I admit. And it became a habit. At Cambridge I became friends with Sebastian Iverley, who was already a bibliophile. I discovered a taste for poetry and started to collect early editions. But I continued to add to my collection of ‘curious’ books.”

  “The contrast is an odd one.”

  “Between poetry and profanity? You are not the first to point that out.”

  “I meant between your exterior elegance and more . . . earthy activities.”

  He was surprised that had never occurred to him, but also a little offended. “Do you find me disingenuous, then?”

  “Does anyone ever present the whole truth to the world? I shouldn’t think there’s a soul on earth who doesn’t have things they prefer to hide.”

  “Isn’t that dishonest?”

  “How can it be? Are you telling me that you are the way you look and your clothes represent your essential being? If that is so, then you are nothing and nobody without your valet and your tailor, a puppet in fact.”

  The words shook him because he feared they might be true. He removed his arm from her waist and withdrew a little. “You’re very philosophical all of a sudden, Miss Seaton.”

  She twisted her neck to meet him eye to eye. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Compton. I prefer you without your clothes. I liked you in a farm laborer’s smock and I like you even better naked.”

  He hadn’t known how wound up he’d become until he felt the tension snap like an over-tuned fiddle string. With a crack of laughter he rolled her over onto her back. “I like you naked too.”

  She smiled back at him. “You told me it doesn’t matter what I wear so I suppose I may as well wear nothing.”

  “When I said that, I meant it as a compliment.”

  “It didn’t sound like one.” Though her pout was mocking, she sounded cross.

  “When I look at you, I see only Celia. Your exterior trappings are of no importance.”

  She blinked. “Thank you. That may be the nicest thing anyone ever said to me.”

  He’d offered her the truth and found the response alarming. She sounded moved and he wasn’t used to communicating with people on terms of emotional candor. Irony and detachment were his usual currency.

  He watched her face as a look of understanding dawned. Had she read his ambivalence correctly? Even Celia’s expression couldn’t be read infallibly and it occurred to him that he
could just ask her what she was thinking. But as he pondered this novel way of dealing with uncertainty, she turned the weighty moment into a light one. “So it won’t matter if I get dressed again.” She pushed at his chest to escape but a saucy smile sent the opposite message.

  He laughed with relief and gratitude and with . . . something unacknowledged. Snatching her wrists he pinned them to the mattress above her head. “Don’t you dare,” he said into her lips and swooped in for a kiss that grew long and deep and went on and on until he found himself hard again. Celia shook off his restraining hands, reached between their bodies and grasped his pillock, far from tiddly. Fatally weakened by her touch, he let her reverse positions, straddle him, and ride St. George into mutual oblivion.

  She swam in warm waves of happiness as the night passed in talking, dozing, lovemaking. She didn’t know what would happen on the morrow, but for the first time she felt a timid optimism about her future. She knew just what she wanted. And, if she sensed Tarquin hadn’t quite reached the same point, she was willing to ignore the warning in the back of her mind that she deluded herself, believing she knew his feelings better than he did.

  In the weeks they’d passed in varying degrees of intimacy, she’d always been—or felt like—the follower. Poor plain, untidy, helpless Celia, trailing in the glorious wake of Tarquin the tall, the strong, the clever, the moneyed, the well-dressed, the witty, the monarch of society.

  But not tonight. Tonight she was in charge because she knew something he didn’t: that they loved each other and belonged together. And if it turned out tomorrow that she was wrong, at least she’d had this night.

  “What did the duchess do with that book?” she asked idly as they lay entwined, bodies damp. “Do you suppose she acted out the scenes?”

  Tarquin’s body shook with mirth. “I would love to think so. On the other hand, have you seen the duke?”

  It was impossible to imagine Parrot Lady doing any of the things so enthusiastically described by Master Featherbrain, not with her fat little nobleman husband, anyway.