The Deception of Consequences

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  She shook her head. Her curls were damp and shrouded the glitter in her eyes. “Definitely not,” she said softly. “Knowing he is alive is – quite enough – for now.”

  The chest sat like a cannon ball in the centre of the room where it had been dropped, and everyone walked around it. As the day passed so they took a breakfast as plentiful as the small hostelry was capable of supplying, and Alfred prepared to travel back to the Strand. Thomas did exactly as he had said, and went to bed.

  After eating, Richard escorted Jemima back to her own tiny bedchamber,

  “Tired, little one?” he asked her.

  The door was closed. The boards in the passage creaked. Jemima looked down at her feet. “I have wet shoes. I’m probably wet to the skin. I’ve been up all night.” She peeped up. “There’s two dead bodies lying out there under the trees, and one of them I knocked down myself. And we can’t tell the sheriff, can we, or he’d know we did it. But I’m not tired. It’s been exciting.”

  “A love of adventure too?” Richard smiled at her. “You inherit that from your father, perhaps.”

  “I prefer to think,” she answered, looking back carefully and modestly at her toes, “that it is simply the delight of doing something so different and so interesting, and succeeding too, after years of constricting failure and boredom. It is what you’ve said about yourself.”

  “No pirate then, my love? Or do you also yearn to sail the oceans and plunder from the Spanish galleons?”

  She giggled slightly, still avoiding his eyes. “Definitely not.”

  “In that case,” Richard replied, very softly, “unlock your door, my little one, and let us enjoy the privacy of speaking together without being overheard. The impropriety of my entering an unchaperoned female’s bedchamber is – since we are adventurers both – something that naturally will not concern us.”

  She whispered, “Not in the least,” and unlocked the door to her bedchamber.

  He went first to the hearth where faggots were already piled, and the tinderbox set beside them. He bent and began to light a fire, heaping and crossing the twigs, and holding the little flame until they sparked. With a sudden flicker and spit, the fire sprang up and Richard unbent and moved back. The warmth was slow to rise, but immediately the bedchamber seemed brighter and possibilities flared from shadow to glimmer.

  Jemima had been watching his back. He was efficient, if incongruous, doing the job of a page, bent there in the fine soft black knitted hose and rich black velvet doublet over a pleated shirt and satin ribbons. His damp cape and boots had been left in his own chamber, and, never flamboyant, his clothes were darkly refined. But the riches of a wealthy man seemed strange for someone kneeling beside her hearth.

  He came back to her, smiling. She thanked him, hoping he wouldn’t leave again too quickly. “I could have called a servant. But you’ve made a wonderful blaze.”

  “I’m a practised scullion myself.” He grinned. “The usual noble belief that no gentleman should pour his own wine, serve his own food, light his own fires or even open his own doors – has never appealed to me. Life is dull enough without never lifting one’s own finger towards achieving one’s own comfort.”

  “You’re – very kind. Will you stay – and talk?”

  “It was my intention,” he told her. “But first there is one thing I want to fetch.” He turned towards the door. “I shall be back directly.”

  Jemima stood in the middle of the tiny room and felt her heart beat like the wind in the trees. Richard wanted her alone. Not in his own chamber where Thomas lay asleep nor the busy hall downstairs. Not in the dining alcove. Not in the corridor or the stables, the grounds beyond or the noisy drinking room. It was her bedchamber, unappealing though it was. She watched the flames rise higher, and listened to the soft rhythmic fizzle, softer than her own heartbeat. She remembered Richard bent there, and the smooth outline of his body, the muscles of his thighs outlined, and the deep curve of his calves within their fine dark hose. She caught her breath and stood closer to the fire, staring into its vivid scarlet.

  Having spent all her life amongst her father’s mistresses, Jemima knew of seduction. She knew how a man smiled when he wanted the woman in his arms. She had heard the soft promises and watched the sidelong smiles. She had laughed as the women ran into her father’s embrace, or fled up the stairs screaming with laughter, their clothes half falling from their shoulders, breasts bare, ankles uncovered. As a child she had found it silly, funny, perplexing, sometimes embarrassing. Now she wondered if she should try and act the same. And most of all she wondered what Richard’s approach would be. What he wanted was clear enough but what he intended to do about it was not.

  Captain Thripp’s cackled, lude comments, reaching fingers and sweaty grabs would surely not be Richard’s style. She hoped he would not be too rough. Nor too slow. She had no idea whether she should confess her virginity, or whether it would be better to encourage his assumption that she, having grown up as she did, was thoroughly experienced. In fact, she was not sure what she hoped at all.

  He returned abruptly. The door was flung open, crashing back with one unshod foot as Richard staggered in, both hands full. He strode in to the middle of the chamber at the end of the bed, and there on the floor before the hearth he dropped the heavy money chest. The thud reverberated and the floor boards vibrated.

  “Well now,” he said standing back, “it’s yours more than anyone else’s, my dear, so here it is.” He shook the dark hair from his eyes, grinning. “And with your permission, I now intend seeing if I can pick the lock.”

  With a loud intake of breath, Jemima stared. “Is that,” she demanded, “what you meant when you said you wanted me alone in my bedchamber?”

  His smile was bemused. “Certainly,” he said, a little startled. “What else did you expect?”

  She gulped, stared, and muttered, “Nothing,” which was clearly untrue.

  Richard added, “I suppose you could object, though I don’t see why. I can promise I’ve no intention of stealing, and the chest and its contents will remain only yours. I can lock it securely again afterwards, but the curiosity to know what lies within seems obvious enough. It’ll be sometime before we hear back from your father.” His grin widened. “And I’m a fairly accomplished lock-picker, as it happens.”

  The sense of surprise and disappointment was profound. Jemima felt a fool, as though she had imagined her own charms, and considered herself somehow but stupidly irresistible. Staring first at the chest, still smelling of stale water and weed, and its small damp ooze across the floor, she then looked up at the man standing before her. She saw the golden flicker in his dark eyes, as though he had lit a fire there too. His smile lifted his mouth beyond its simple hesitant tuck, and the smile was warm. The strong etching of his cheekbones lifted, lightening his whole face. The sense of shame diminished and turned to defiance. Jemima took a very deep breath.

  “This,” she said, and leaned forwards.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  It was not a particularly competent kiss, but she had never kissed anyone before. A household of kisses had never included her own. Chaste and youthful, she had watched but never experienced what had at first seemed remarkably undesirable.

  Not daring to touch him in any other way, Jemima leaned forwards from the waist, stood tiptoe, hands clamped firmly at her sides, tipped her face upwards and pressed her lips, flat, determined and closed, against Richard’s.

  At first nothing much seemed to happen. To her relief, he did not recoil . But nor did he respond. For one brief blink, he stood very still as she sank backwards, not daring to look into his eyes in case she saw shock, repugnance, or anger.

  And then, within just one heartbeat, she found herself brought back and crushed against him, both his arms forcibly around her body, his hands hard on her shoulders and waist. He bent, and kissed her and it was a very different kiss to the one she had dared give him. For some moments she could not breathe at all.

 
Richard did not release her, but he pulled away, gazing down into her eyes with an expression that she had never, ever seen before.

  “Well, my love,” he murmured, very softly, “it seems you return my feelings after all.”

  His embrace was inescapable. His arms entrapped her and his eyes, now lit bright with gold, were just a breath away from hers. She gulped and mumbled, “I’ve been waiting – for ages.”

  He kissed her again. This time he opened her lips with his and she swallowed the heat of his breath and the rich wine taste of his tongue in her throat, and realised that everything she thought she already knew about love-making, had actually been nothing at all. With a delighted crumple of relief, she sank deeply into his arms, and closed her eyes, leaning her cheek against the soft velvet and rigid silver clasps of his doublet.

  “And I wonder,” his voice little more than the rasp of a whisper, “whether I should continue my life of crime, and behave as I have no right, nor should any decently respectable creature behave, and show you, my love, just how much I care. And how I also have been waiting – for ages!?

  She peeped up. “I don’t want to be respectable. Teach me everything.” The pause was no more than a crackle from the flames on the hearth, but it seemed interminable. Jemima whispered, “Please don’t stop.”

  Richard laughed. “I may never stop. I doubt I am capable of stopping,” and he took her hand, leading her to the bed. Yet he did not stay there in the chilly shadows away from the fire, simply snatched up the thin and crumpled eiderdown, the pillows and the worn blanket, and dragged them from their mattress. Two steps, and he threw the heap of bedding down on the bare boards before the hearth. The flames were high and hot and the wood burned with dancing and cheerful sparks, golden hearts amid flickers of crimson.

  “Here,” he said, and drew her down.

  She curled there, sitting beside Richard as he nestled her against his side, both wrapped warm in each other’s need.

  He smoothed the loose tousled curls back from her cheeks, no longer damp, and his fingers wandered downwards to her neck, and to the tuck at the base, then around to the tip of her ears, the hollow at the back of her neck and then up again into her hair. He twisted his fingertips there, bringing her head towards his, and kissed her again. His tongue searched hers, tasting her. Then he kissed her eyes, closing her long lashes, then laying her face back against his shoulder. He whispered, “You must know one thing first, my love. What I do, I do from love and not from simple wanting. I have adored you for a long time. This will not be quickly done, nor ever forgotten. I want you for my own.”

  “I told you before,” she whispered back, “I told you I want to be your mistress.”

  “You, my love,” he smiled at her, “are far too accustomed to your father’s way of life. His ways are not my ways.” And he embraced her again, and laid her back downwards on the eiderdown.

  The flames painted adventures across her face, and she closed her eyes again, shutting out the scarlet reflections and the dazzle of the heat. She still felt his breath against her, and reached up, clasping both arms around his neck. Her fingertips found the cropped silk of his hair, the knotted line of his spine below, and then the collar of his shirt, tight tied and permitting no entrance. She sighed.

  Richard smiled. With slow concentration, he began to unlace the back of her gown, easing it down over her breasts. The chemise beneath was fastened with ribbons, and he untied these, pulling the fine linen away. Jemima felt his fingers on her nipples and held her breath. With her eyes firmly shut, she did not see his smile. “Open your eyes,” he ordered her. “Don’t hide, my love. I won’t hurt you. And I won’t take you too fast. But I want to know your reaction in your eyes, and I want to know when I’ve pleased you.” He laughed, very low. “And I’ve an idea you’ll have trouble telling me outright.”

  His hands were warm on her breasts, encircling and pressing, then, suddenly and shockingly warmer still, his breath and the heat of his lips and tongue enclosed her nipples, and she arched her back, responding with a gasp. Nothing was as she had expected. More unreal than distinct, more dream than reality, Jemima floated in kisses and the delight of caresses. The heat of the fire was on her face, then on her back, and then like a furnace on her waist as Richard moved her and undressed her, pulling away the soft wool of her gown and the light pleats of her chemise from her legs.

  She clung to him, naked except for her stockings, hiding blushes behind the tumbled ringlets of her unpinned hair.

  His voice was like a gentle music and almost rhythmic. “Don’t hide from me, little one. Watching you is a pleasure beyond pleasures for me, and the greatest arousal you could offer me. I find you utterly beautiful. There’s no shame in beauty.”

  Jemima whispered, “I know I’m not beautiful. I’m not like Alba or Elisabeth or Penny or Pippa.”

  “You are more beautiful than any of them, my beloved,” he murmured, his voice blending with the chatter of the flames at their side. “But your back and legs are still damp from the rain in the night. Let me dry you.”

  “But I’m hot from the fire. Perhaps it's not rain. It’s just perspiration.”

  He laughed, a low chuckle in the back of his throat. “Then it’s perspiration I shall dry, my love. Lie back, and watch me as I watch you.”

  She lay on the eiderdown before the fire, the pillows beneath her. Now he reached out and pulled the blanket from its heap, spreading it between his hands. Then he leaned over her and Jemima saw the reflections of the fire, and the golden darts in his eyes, and the smile that tucked the corners of his mouth and lifted his cheekbones, knowing that she had never been happier, and might never be so again.

  He dried her body, gently rubbing down her arms, drawing them out and kissing her palms as he rubbed the blanket up to the hollow of her armpit and then down across her breasts. He dried the swell of her breasts, once again kissing as the cloth passed, moist once more where he had dried. His hands, palms as firm as the woollen blanket, moved down over her ribs to her belly and gently downwards to the curls at her groin. He bent again, kissing where the light hair sprigged at the division of her legs.

  Not probing, but moving further downwards, he took up one of her feet, planting it against his own shoulder. There he unrolled the damp stocking she still wore, untying the garter, and drying from her thigh, across her knee, and down around her calf to her ankle.

  Richard stopped then. “Your foot, my sweet,” he murmured, “still bears the scars of your escape from Babbington. Does it hurt you?”

  She shook her head, mumbling, “Not anymore,” though she could hardly speak. Jemima had left one world and entered another, the hazy, lazy flutter of heat, flame, and the greater blaze Richard had awakened within her. “Nothing hurts anymore.”

  He dried her foot carefully, rubbing gently between her toes and avoiding the raw scrape and scar where she had staggered for miles through ice and the freeze of pebbled paths and undergrowth, and finally along the rough paths of the village which had saved her. Then Richard kissed the tip of each toe, and setting her leg down, took up the other and repeated the same attentions.

  It wasn’t the cold that made her shiver. “Not chilly, my love?” And she shook her head. “Then,” he smiled, “it is arousal, and the same delight I feel myself.”

  He tossed her stockings to the side of the bed and turned back to take her in his arms. Now she was entirely naked, and curled her legs, wondering where he would explore next. But first he stretched back, and began to undress himself. He was quick, and lingered over no ribbons nor clips as he had lingered over hers. Within minutes he wore only his hose. Then he stripped the fine clasp of the shaped wool off, and the reflected firelight danced over the slim sinuous length of his body, the muscled thighs and upper arms, and the spread of his chest, rich cinnabar in the dance of the flames.

  Men often pissed in the gutters and stood uncaring in the doorless privies. Jemima had seen men almost naked and had never thought them beautiful. Now
she gazed at the man bending over her and decided that, at least to her, a man could be more beautiful than a woman. He was looking back at her. “Am I so shocking then, my love? Have you seen no man before?”

  “No,” she whispered back. “Only crude and ugly and dirty and nothing like you at all. You are – glorious.”

  “Glory is for battles, my beloved, and we live in a time when our only enemies are those who rule over us and sit alongside us. I am simply a man, aroused and ready, because I adore you.” He knelt, one knee between hers, and traced her body as though his fingers followed the moving shade and light created by the fire. “Not too hot, my love? Not too cold?”

  “I feel perfect,” she said, still delighted to watch him as he moved, and feel the tremor as he touched her. “I feel perfect because I feel you.”

  “Then feel the rest of me,” he said, and lay abruptly beside her. His muscled length merged to hers and where she had been hot before from the flames of the fire and the flames of arousal, now she was burning from the strength and closeness of his body. She thrilled to the hardness of him, and clung to him, feeling the smooth curve of his back against her fingertips. Once more he kissed her breasts, but his kisses travelled down, over her belly to her groin. And then it was no longer his kisses, although she still felt the heat of his breath, but instead it was his fingers which touched, caressed and gently probed. The touch grew firmer and pressed harder, then pushed and entered, making her gulp and breathe faster.

  His smile broadened and although she could not see him, she felt the curve of his mouth against her thighs, the tickle of his hair and the sensuous soothing warmth of his breath. Then his fingers touched a point that made her pulse quicken and leap, and she mumbled, “Oh, don’t stop,” and gripped his upper arm as though falling, and needing support.

  “Beloved,” he murmured, lips to her inner thigh, “I doubt I could stop, even if you ordered me. I may never stop. Will you lie here with me forever, until we grow old?”