A Lady of True Distinction

by Grace Burrowes

  “Thank you.” She had opened a door Valerian might have pounded on in vain for weeks. He was an earl’s son, but that did not guarantee him any entrée among the merchant classes. Just the opposite, in fact.

  “You didn’t laugh at me,” she said, gathering up her reins. “All of polite society had a great joke at my expense when Mr. Bancroft attempted to waltz with me. Your eyes held only kindness.”

  And then he’d looked away. “I can teach you to waltz, Miss Pepper. I’m accounted something of a dancing master.” The words spoke themselves, but really, how else could he thank her for the invitation to call on her father?

  “Perhaps when I return from Dorset.”

  If she returned from Dorset? “You’re leaving Wednesday next?”

  She nodded.

  “I might see you in Dorset after all, Miss Pepper.” He touched his hat brim, and she guided her mare over to the waiting groom.

  Making love with Margaret in the bluebell wood felt by turns daring, presuming, ridiculous, and perfect. Hawthorne had thought to woo her with a fine meal, or a ride around the prettiest of Dorning Hall’s many views. In his braver moments, he’d contemplated reading her some of Wordsworth’s blatherings. None of those gestures had rung with the sort of authenticity that he wanted for their marriage.

  A picnic amid the flowers had struck him as a place to start, to use Margaret’s phrase, a place to talk and touch.

  That Margaret desired him was reassuring, that she’d peel down to her shift and stockings and undress him was… His mind stopped forming complete sentences when she straddled him.

  “I don’t know what’s normal,” Margaret said. “Charles was ailing, and especially after the first year of marriage, our intimacies were limited.”

  Hawthorne shaped her breasts through the fine linen of her shift. She was wondrously well made, her curves full and round.

  “I’m told relations three times a day would qualify as normal,” he said, undoing the bow that held her décolletage together. “Four, if you’re feeling frisky.”

  “Three times a day?” She looked intrigued rather than amused. “What about at night? I thought—”

  Hawthorne kissed her, because her puzzlement was that dear and because she seemed oblivious to the effect of her proximity to his breeding organs.

  “I am unaware of any rules, Margaret. We make love whenever we please to, though if you summon me to the bedroom morning, noon, and evening, my duties at Dorning Hall will suffer.”

  “Can’t have that,” she said, wiggling her shoulders.

  The neckline of her chemise fell lower, and Thorne spent a few moments acquainting himself with the glory of her bare breasts. Her skin was pale and traced with blue veins. Her nipples smallish and puckered.

  Thorne took a taste. “Flowers.” Rosy, sweet, luscious…

  “What are you…? Is that…? Gracious, everlasting… ” Margaret’s hands fluttered tentatively about his shoulders, then she sank her fingers into his hair. “I like that.”

  Thorne spared a thought for poor Summerfield, who’d apparently been sicker than anybody had known. “What else would you like, Margaret?”

  “Don’t rush me.”

  Thorne switched breasts, letting his palms trail down around Margaret’s waist to her hips, then to her backside. He moved slowly, in part because she had asked him to and in part because this was a beginning to savor.

  She kissed him, hovering above him. “We’ll get freckles.”

  “We could get a baby too.” An inane observation, and yet, this coupling was different for Thorne. As a bachelor, the thought of siring a child had been worrisome. He’d limited his recreations to women who knew what they were about, but still… to think of his progeny being raised under any roof but his own was uncomfortable. To consider marriage to a woman who’d been interested in him only as a passing fancy had been equally unappealing.

  His solution had been to work himself to exhaustion, choose his partners carefully, and indulge in self-gratification as needed.

  With Margaret, what had been a worry became a wonder. To raise children with her, to be not only her lover and husband, but also the father of her children would be a privilege and an adventure.

  “A baby,” she said, folding down onto his chest. “With Charles ailing so badly, a baby would have been a complication. I like babies.”

  “I will like our babies exceedingly,” Thorne said, wrapping her in his arms. I like you exceedingly. Rather than admit that foolishness, he occupied himself with searching for the pins in her hair. A few minutes’ effort and her braid slipped free, brushing against his arm. Desire hummed insistently, but Margaret had asked not to be rushed.

  Thorne stroked her back and waited.

  “I have been married,” she said, trailing her fingernails through the hair on Thorne’s chest. “I grasp the nature of the institution, and I am all but naked in your arms, and yet… I cannot focus. I cannot think or plan or worry. I am tipsy with some sort of disorientation that I can only attribute—”

  Thorne put two fingers to her lips. “No thinking needed, only loving.” He liked being on his back, liked having his hands free, but he also sensed that Margaret wanted fewer decisions and distractions. He rolled them so she was beneath him on the blankets.

  “Will this do, madam?”

  “I can smell the flowers. When we move, they give up more of their fragrance. This is… decadent.”

  Her smile was decadent. She wrapped her legs around him, boots and all, and Thorne made himself take the time for a deep, carnal kiss. By the time he rested his forehead against her chest, Margaret was moving beneath him in a slow, erotic rhythm.

  “You asked me not to rush you,” he said.

  “I told you not to rush me, and you haven’t.”

  When she moved like that… “Would now be acceptable?”

  She brushed her hand over his chest, her fingertips teasing at his nipple. “Now would be lovely.”

  Thank God.

  Not rushing—specifically and imperatively not rushing—added a layer of arousal beyond the usual restraint Thorne believed his partners were owed. He nearly came undone when Margaret wrapped her hand around him and showed him exactly where she wanted him.

  A slight flex of his hips, and he began the joining. Margaret went still at first, her hands beside her head on the blanket. The only sounds were the whisper of the greenery beneath the blankets and the distant murmur of the stream. All of nature seemed to be holding its breath, the better for Thorne to focus on his lover.

  And then Margaret began to move. She caught the rhythm, then picked up the tempo.

  “Margaret, I’m trying not to—”

  “Hush.”

  Oh, ye blooming pleasures. She locked her ankles at the small of his back and became insistent, then demanding. Thorne focused on the feel of her boots against his backside, then on the sting of her nails digging into his arms. That didn’t help at all, because every sensation somehow became so much more arousal, until his control was a frayed, burning rope tied around rampaging desire.

  “Hawthorne…” His name was nearly a growl as Margaret became a woman possessed by passion. She bucked, flailed, panted, and groaned until Thorne was drowning in a roaring tide of pleasure.

  The phrase to lose one’s wits made a new kind of sense to him as he hung panting over the woman who was to be his wife. Thoughts drifted past, just beyond his mental reach, and cogitation was a series of impressions.

  Her chest is flushed.

  Her chest is lovely.

  Keep your mouth shut lest you say that aloud.

  Maybe she’d like me to say that aloud.

  What fool left my handkerchief in the pocket of my breeches an entire yard beyond my reach?

  Margaret lay beneath him, eyes closed. “I never did take off my boots.”

  Thorne tucked closer, resting his cheek against hers. “I like swiving you when you have your boots on, Margaret.” He liked it perilously much and liked
her even more. Quiet, self-contained, proper Mrs. Margaret Summerfield had not subdued the wild soul of Miss Margaret May Mallory. In all of creation, Thorne was doubtless the only man privileged to know that.

  “And we’re to do this three times a day, Hawthorne? Four, if I’m feeling frisky?”

  He could feel her smiling. He was smiling, too, inside and out. “You mock me when I’m in no condition to defend my manly dignity.” The spring sunshine pleasantly warmed his back, and the beginnings of hunger muted stirrings of renewed arousal. Life could not be any sweeter, and never had a lover been as precious as Margaret was to him then.

  “My womanly dignity went begging into the wilderness. I’m trying to decide if I mind.”

  “Don’t mind,” Thorne said, kissing her temple. “Not with me, Margaret. Not ever.”

  She studied him, her gaze serious. “I wish I had married you first, Hawthorne.”

  Why didn’t you? But then, why hadn’t he asked her to? “We can be married next week, assuming I’ve recovered the ability to walk by then.”

  That earned him a smile. “Let’s restore our energies with some apple tarts. Married by next week sounds lovely, though I warn you, sir, that spring weather does have a tendency to make me frisky.”

  “Then spring just became my favorite season.” He lifted himself off of her and crawled across the blanket to retrieve his handkerchief. Getting dressed was a leisurely exercise punctuated by a wander down to the stream. Margaret apparently liked to hold hands, as did Thorne—who knew?—and what he’d intended as an hour’s respite over a humble meal stretched into the sweetest afternoon of his life.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Making love with Hawthorne Dorning had unleashed a side of Margaret she’d abandoned when she’d agreed to marry Charles Summerfield. From that day forward, no more wandering the fields and hedges. No more losing track of time over a pot still or a new treatise on the medicinal qualities of chocolate. No more blending scents for the sheer pleasure of wearing a fragrance no other woman in the shire—perhaps no other woman in the world—had worn before.

  Charles had needed her close at hand in case his health took one of the sudden turns that had become increasingly frequent the longer she and he were married. Her time had no longer been her own, and her perfumes had been limited to the tame scents that didn’t aggravate Charles’s digestion.

  Week by week, she’d become less the young woman who’d loved storms and delighted in arguing with Hannah over treatment options and more Mrs. Charles Summerfield, a widow-in-waiting.

  Since her picnic with Hawthorne five days ago, she’d spent hours out of doors every day. She’d dusted off her collection of treatises, and she’d even set a pair of footmen to scrubbing out her herbal.

  “Excuse me, ma’am.” The head maid, a petite, energetic young woman by the unlikely name of Calpurnia Higgins, stood in the doorway to Margaret’s office. “You have a caller. Mr. Dorning awaits you in the family parlor.”

  “He doesn’t bite, Higgins,” Margaret said, rising from her desk. “You need not look as if he’s here to steal the silver.” He has merely purloined my wits.

  Higgins had joined the household on a recommendation from the vicar, though she lacked the lilting, characteristic speech of the local populace. Her f’s did not glide into v’s, and when a word began with a vowel, she did not affix a gratuitous w at the front. She might have been an escaped slave, which Margaret considered none of an employer’s business.

  A lady’s past was private, after all.

  Higgins’s expression remained dubious. “Ambers says the Dorning menfolk are long on charm and short on coin.”

  Now what sort of domestic mischief was this?

  Hawthorne had walked with Margaret to the foot of the lane after services on Sunday, a courtesy the neighbors were bound to have remarked. With Adriana and Greta clamoring for piggyback rides, the time spent together had been far from romantic.

  And yet, Hawthorne had kissed Margaret’s cheek before he’d bid her farewell, and both girls had dissolved into peals of giggles. Then he had offered to kiss them, too, which silliness had had Adriana preening for the next hour and Greta looking distracted. Ambers had seen the entire exchange.

  “Ambers knows better than to spread talk,” Margaret said. “Mr. Dorning is a perfect gentleman.” And a very skilled kisser.

  “If you say so, ma’am. Shall I bring in a tea tray?”

  “Tea would be appreciated, and some sandwiches.”

  Higgins looked like she wanted to say more, though Margaret was eager to join her caller. When was the last time she’d been eager to do anything, other than share a walk through the woods with Hawthorne?

  “What is on your mind, Higgins?”

  The maid stared at her boots. “Will things be changing here, Mrs. Summerfield? I know it’s not my place to ask, but Ambers is friends with the Dinwiddies’ housekeeper, and Mr. Dorning has walked you home twice. Now he’s calling again, and you’ve never had a gentleman caller before.”

  That speech was extraordinary, not only for its presumption, but also for its length. Higgins was a quiet soul who made up in industry what she lacked in loquaciousness.

  “I cannot go back to London, you see,” Higgins went on. “I did not do well there. London is too big and busy and… I cannot return.”

  When Margaret might have scolded a domestic for getting above herself, she instead restrained the urge to offer reassurances. How many seemingly contented young women were coping with pasts made difficult by circumstances about which they remained silent? And yet, Margaret had not discussed the details of a shared household with Hawthorne. Perhaps his visit was an occasion to do just that, among other things.

  “Ambers’s gossip disappoints me,” Margaret said, though it certainly didn’t surprise her. “You may be certain, Higgins, that if my domestic arrangements change, my staff will suffer as little disruption as possible. You are a hard worker, and your conduct has been exemplary. If you’d like to leave, I’ll write you a sincere and glowing character, but I would be sorry to see you go.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Said with a shy smile. “I’ll see about the tea tray.”

  “And the sandwiches.”

  “And the sandwiches.”

  Higgins bustled off toward the steps, though Margaret’s delight at the prospect of spending time with Hawthorne was muted by the issues a simple exchange with a maid had raised: Having Hawthorne join the household would mean changes. The male servants would compete to look after the master of the house’s wardrobe and private rooms. The butler’s consequence would rise more clearly above the housekeeper’s. The nursery staff might be caught up in the attendant drama.

  Something as simple as who sat where in the gig on the way to market would be renegotiated.

  The sight of Hawthorne in riding attire inspired Margaret to set aside those concerns and revel in her intended’s embrace.

  “I’ve missed you.”

  “You saw me on Sunday.” He kissed her on the mouth, an almost-chaste little peck. “I’ve missed you too. I dropped a hammer on my foot yesterday because I was too busy missing you, and this morning I cut myself shaving. You are a force to be reckoned with and a dangerous woman to court, Margaret Summerfield.”

  “Thank you. I haven’t been a force to be reckoned with in far too long.” Margaret detected something earthier beneath his usual lavender, starch, and peppermint scents. “Did you ride a different horse today?”

  “I rode a great slug of a beast whom Oak claims has some relation to the equine. A mastodon under saddle would be more elegant than my brother’s gelding. My own mount was having his shoes reset, and I felt some urgency to see you.” Hawthorne’s tone was more distracted than flirtatious.

  “I take it the special license has yet to arrive?”

  Higgins interrupted with the tea tray, though Cook had apparently mistaken Hawthorne Dorning for a regiment on the march.

  “My compliments to the kitchen,”
Hawthorne said as Higgins curtseyed and withdrew. “As it happens, I am hungry.”

  Margaret was assailed by memories of Hawthorne feeding her bites of apple tart. Hawthorne draping his shirt over her bare shoulders, to preserve her from the near occasion of freckles, while he showered her with kisses. Hawthorne laughing as he’d joined his body to hers for the second time.

  “If you’re hungry, let’s sit.”

  He took the wing chair, which was a disappointment. Margaret took the corner of the sofa nearest to him and poured two cups of tea.

  “I should know how you prefer your tea,” she said, the small awkwardness taking another bite out of her happy mood.

  “The same way you do: a dash of sugar, a dollop of milk. My dear, we have a problem.”

  Margaret set down the teapot. My dear was lovely, but we have a problem had her insides aflutter in the wrong way. “Do we have a special license?”

  “We do, which is fortunate. Valerian tucked in a note along with the license. Bancroft is leaving London today and bringing guests back to Summerfield House. If you seek to be married before Bancroft returns, our nuptials have acquired some urgency.”

  He reached for a sandwich, which was another slightly jarring reminder that life was changing. As a guest, Hawthorne would have waited to be served. But he wasn’t a guest. He was her fiancé, her lover, and soon to become her husband.

  “Bancroft travels in style,” Margaret said. “His coach is enormous and turns into a veritable bed on wheels. I’ve known him to make the journey from London in as little as one long day.”

  “Have you said anything to the girls?”

  “About?”

  “You becoming Mrs. Hawthorne Dorning.”

  “I wanted to wait until the special license was in hand.”

  Hawthorne put down his sandwich, untasted. “You did not trust me to make good on my proposal?” The question was merely curious.

  “I have learned not to count chickens, Hawthorne. Charles was in good spirits and, for him, relatively good health when last I saw him. Three days later, Bancroft sent me a note—a damned, wretched, blasted note—informing me that my husband had died.”