“Go away,” I said, wondering if any more of my lunch was going to come up.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. Now go away.”
“You don’t look like you’re all right. Melody, go ask Ellis to bring Tessa something to settle her stomach.”
Melody? She’d gone to fetch Max? I looked up. She stood beside him in the doorway, her face peaked. I had the worst urge to hug her, which I promptly squelched. I might have given in to it earlier, B.C. (Before Cynthia), but not now. It would just hurt that much more when we went our separate ways.
“I don’t want anything to settle my stomach, and I don’t want you, Max Edgerton. So please just go away and leave me alone.”
Max gave Melody a little shove out the door, then turned back to me. “I’m not leaving until we’ve had a chance to talk, Tessa.”
I clutched the chamber pot. “I’m throwing up! Can’t you see that? What are you, some sort of barf fetishist that you want to stay and watch?”
He went behind the screen to the washstand and poured me a glass of water, handing it to me with the command, “Rinse.”
“No.”
“For god’s sake, Tessa, just do as I ask.”
I rinsed out my mouth and spat into the chamber pot. He took it from me, stuffed it behind the screen, then came to stand over me.
I looked at his shoes. “Your feet don’t look like the kind of feet that would two-time me. I guess feet can lie, huh?”
He squatted next to me and tried to take my hands. I sat on them, instead.
“My feet would never lie to you.”
“Oh, really?” I looked up at him, at that handsome long face with the silky black brows, at the little mole on his left earlobe that he loved for me to suck, at his nose that was just a little bit too big, at his obstinate jaw, and the lush curve of his lower lip that could turn a saint into a sinner, and the last few ounces of liquid in my entire body rushed up to my eyes to squeeze out as a few hot tears.
“Tell me you’re not engaged to Cynthia, Max.”
He put his hands on my knees. They felt warm even through my jeans. “I’m not engaged to Cynthia. I never was. I never thought of marriage with her.”
“Tell me you weren’t kissing her.”
“I wasn’t kissing her. She kissed me. She took me by surprise.”
“Tell me she’s not your girlfriend.”
He tucked back a strand of my hair that had come loose from the elaborate curled mop that Ellis had spent half an hour creating with two pairs of heating tongs. “She’s not my girlfriend. She hasn’t been for months; we broke up earlier this summer.”
He looked me dead in the eyes when he said it, his lovely eyes shadowed with emotion. I wanted to believe him. I did believe him.
Kind of. Almost. No, I believed him.
“Tell me you love me.” The words were out before I even knew my brain was thinking them, but by then it was too late. They just hung there in the air between us.
Max looked at me for a minute and life as I know it came to a grinding halt while I waited to see what he would do. He sighed, then pulled me onto his lap, leaning back against the bed. “I love you, Tessa.”
“You don’t sound very happy about it,” I said into his neck, breathing in the wonderful Max scent, wrapping my arms around him, allowing his warmth to sink into my bones.
“I’m not.”
I pulled back and glared at him. “Thanks oodles.”
He gave me a half a smile and brushed a tear off my cheek. “I didn’t intend for this to happen, Tessa. It complicates things.”
“Well, I’ve been called worse than a complication, but still, that’s not quite the lover’s talk I was hoping for.” An odd, pained look crossed his face, and I realized that I must be too heavy. “Am I crushing your balls?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry,” I said, and started to scoot off him.
“No, just let me move you . . . there.” He hoisted me a little to the side, then pulled me tight against his chest. “Tessa, you have to understand, Melody and I have been by ourselves for a long time. I never thought I’d find someone I wanted to share my life with.”
“But now you have?” I asked, feeling it was better to beat a dead horse than to misunderstand.
“Yes.”
“Are you by any chance proposing to me?”
He grimaced. “I guess I am.”
“That was a grimace. You grimaced. I saw it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not supposed to grimace when you propose; you’re supposed to look joyful and happy and thrilled to death by the wonder that is womanhood.”
“Ah. Can you give me a minute? I’ll try to look joyful and happy and thrilled to death then.”
“All right. Where’s your watch?” I pulled back so I could pat his waistcoat, following the gold chain to the small gold pocket watch that was tucked into a pocket. “You changed your clothes.”
“I had to—the other ones were covered in mud.”
“Oh. Um. Sorry about that. OK. You have one minute. I’m timing you.”
He laughed then, hugging me tight, his breath warm on my ear as he pressed gentle kisses to the shivery spot behind it. “Tessa, you are a delight. What would I do without you?”
“Continue on as you are, I suppose.”
He started nibbling on my neck, which sent wonderful shivers of delight down my back and arms.
“Max?”
“Mmm?”
“Your proposal—it was for marriage?”
“Of course.”
“Good, because I like being married, and although I’d just shack up with you if you insisted, I much prefer it being legal and all.”
His lips kissed a line along my jaw, then headed for my mouth.
“Max!”
“What?” he asked when I slid my hand between our mouths.
“You can’t kiss me, I just threw up. I have barf breath.”
“Oh.” He looked at me for a moment with those lovely blue eyes that sparkled like blue topazes in the snow. “Would it prove my undying love to you if I were to kiss you despite your barf breath?”
“No,” I said, wiggling out of his embrace and getting to my feet. “It’s just too gross to think about. I have to brush my teeth and my tongue and everywhere else in my mouth. I feel the need to kiss the pants off of you, and I can’t do that with barf breath.”
By the time I came back around the screen from brushing my mouth, Max was standing stark naked in the middle of the room. “Wow, I guess you really take that kissing the pants off you thing seriously.”
Max frowned. “It’s not going to be easy, you know.”
I looked at his arousal. “Oh, I don’t know, we haven’t had too much trouble so far, except last night when you got that wild hare to try stuff out of the Kama Sutra that you found in the library.”
“Tessa—”
“I mean, the Union of the Tiger was fun, but that Donkeys in the Third Moon of Spring thing was a bit harder to manage.”
“Tessa—”
“All the blood ran to my head. I thought I was going to pass out at one point.”
“That’s not—”
“Still, it was fun. I’ve never been a wheelbarrow before.”
“TESSA!”
I looked at him in surprise. He yelled at me! “What?”
“Will you let me say what I want to say without interrupting me?”
“You’re naked, Max. I always get a bit rattled when you’re naked and your penis is waving at me.”
“Waving at you? It’s not wav—” His eyes went a bit wild around the edges. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you? You’re trying to drive me mad purposely, willfully. Aren’t you?”
I smiled and stepped forward, leaning against him, sliding both my hands up his fabulous chest to his fabulous shoulders and his fabulous neck. “Do you know what you are?”
“Barking mad?”
“Fabulous,
” I said, my lips teasing his.
A half an hour later I collapsed onto his chest and gasped into his sweaty neck, “OK, so that’s three Kama Sutra positions we’ve done. Are we going to work through the whole book? Because if we are, we’re going to have to save the more strenuous positions for last. I think I’m going to have to build up my stamina for them. This one almost killed me.”
Max grunted as I slithered around on him. “If you can still talk, I must not be doing something right.”
I kissed the wildly pounding pulse beneath his jaw and pushed back just enough so that I could smile down at him. “Au contraire! You’re doing something very right.”
He grunted again and tugged me back down onto his chest. I sucked on his chin for a few seconds. “I love you when you grunt. It’s such a primitive, I’ve been sated with sex sort of sound. It’s earthy, but not unattractive when done in the right way at the right moment. Now, if you were grunting while you were picking your nose, well, that would be gross, but a grunt of satiation, a grunt that says you’ve been sexed nigh unto oblivion is a good sound. I like it. You may grunt freely.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Why is it that you can talk, putting actual words together in a way that makes sense, when I can’t even work up enough strength to move my leg even though a muscle in my calf is cramping?”
I sat up. “Which leg?”
“Left.”
I slid off him with a slicky wet sound that was almost as good as his grunt and adjusted his legs, rubbing his calf.
“What happened to Cynthia?”
“She left.”
“Ah. I guess she was pretty mad at me. What does Barbara have against me being with you?”
“I have no idea. Barbara is . . . a bit odd at times.”
I decided to let that go. “I suppose we should get dressed and go back down to the party.”
“Mmm.”
“Although they were having fun without us. Maybe they won’t notice we’re not there.”
He didn’t say anything to that, but his toes flexed as I worked his calf muscle. “Better?”
“Yes.”
I ran my hand along his leg, just a little pet, really, nothing sexual, although somehow my hand ended up at his fun zone. He quivered. “Again?”
I giggled at the desperation in his voice. “No, don’t worry, you can just lay there and recover. Here, let me just peel this off. Ew. Gooshy.”
I toddled over to the screened-off area, disposed of the condom, had a quick wash, and came back around the screen, snagging my combinations en route. “So, before we did the Utkalita, what was it that you wanted to say to me?”
Max’s chest rose and fell a couple of times.
“Max? What was so important that you had to say?”
A gentle snore answered my question.
“Poor guy,” I said softly, pulling the blanket up over him. “All tuckered out. Looks like we’ll need to work on your stamina, too.”
Sunday
September 19
7:01 P.M.
Morning room, at the escritoire
There’s just one more dinner to get through and then breakfast tomorrow morning, and the Shooting Party will be officially over. Whew. Never thought it would end. Yesterday wasn’t bad because people (Neil, Harry, and Jean and Dennis, another couple from Ellis’ historical society) didn’t start arriving until just before teatime. I’ve been dreading this weekend for a couple of reasons—the first is because I don’t like blood sports of any kind, hunting in particular, and the second is because things are dicey below stairs again.
Alice knocked on my bedroom door as Ellis was dressing me for lunch. “Tessa, do you have a—oh. Sorry, I didn’t know you were busy.”
“Not a problem. Come on in,” I said, turning so Ellis could button up the back of the blue linen skirt (not too terribly fussy a costume, but with more frills and ruching than I care for).
Ellis froze, giving Alice a look of dislike. “A servant does not refer to her employer by her Christian name.”
“Yeah, yeah, we know that servants and family aren’t supposed to talk to one another, but this is just us, Ellis. No one will know if we’ve breached the almighty class barrier by actually behaving like human beings to one another.”
“I will know,” Ellis said righteously, her nostrils going immediately into flare mode.
“You’re making this much harder than it has to be,” I said, turning to face her, my hands on my hips. “I know we’re supposed to be the very model of Victorians, but that’s just for the cameras.”
“No, it’s not. The agreement that you and every one of us signed states that we would live just as our counterparts would in 1879—all day, every day, no exceptions.”
“You’re really cheesing me off, Ellis, you know that, don’t you?”
“My name is Crighton,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Fine. You want to play it strictly by the book, we’ll play it strictly by the book. You’re fired.”
She stared at me in dumb surprise. “What?”
I crossed my arms. “You want me to be the imperious duchess, someone with no consideration for her staff? Well, you got it. I’m firing you. You’re no longer my lady’s maid.”
“You can’t do that! Only Roger d’Aspry can fire me from this project.”
“Ha!”
“You can’t possibly manage without a lady’s maid,” she hissed.
I looked at Alice, standing silent as she watched us. “Alice can be my lady’s maid. You can take her place. Effective immediately. Alice, would you finish buttoning me up, please? I believe I can do my own hair today.”
“You can’t do this,” Ellis cried as Alice buttoned up the skirt. “It goes against every rule. You cannot simply switch our jobs like that!”
“I can do anything I want to do. I’m the duchess, remember?”
She ground her teeth in frustration.
“You know, it doesn’t have to be this way. You were the one who pointed out that I care about the servants— I want to get along with you, Ellis, I really do. But I refuse to make nice only to the upper servants and ignore the rest. I’m not going to be chatty and friendly with you and treat the others like they are dirt under my feet. So if you want your job back, it’s going to have to be on my terms.”
Alice rubbed her nose, keeping her hand in front of her mouth. I suspect it was to hide her smile.
The veins in Ellis’ neck stood out. “Very well,” she spat out, shouldering Alice aside. “I will say nothing about your manner of conducting yourself with the servants when you are not on camera, but I will lodge my protest with Mr. d’Aspry. Such an attitude is in complete disregard of the rules, and is no doubt responsible for undermining the power structure below stairs.”
“Viva la revolution,” I said, then gave in to the urge to grin. “Sorry, Alice, looks like you’re back to head housemaid.”
She laughed. “I prefer it that way, thank you.”
“Good. What was it you wanted to see me about?”
She sighed and sat when I waved her toward the overstuffed armchair before the fireplace. Ellis pushed me to the bench and began to yank a comb through my hair.
“People aren’t happy downstairs.”
Ellis sniffed but didn’t say anything as she started to twist my hair into a complicated coil that would sit low on the back of my head.
“Still? I thought things improved with the garden party?”
“It did, for a bit, but Raven and Easter are at each other’s throats over Bret, Michael has a cold, Mr. Palmer started drinking again, which means Mrs. Peters is a positive hag to him, which in turn means he’s moping around like a melancholy Eeyore, not getting a single thing done. Sally has decided that meat is bad for us and is making us all vegetarians. To top it all off, Teddy, Bret, Shelby, and Raven have all disappeared. We’re running mad downstairs trying to get everything ready for the luncheon with only half the help we need. We have no butler—Mr. Palmer i
s sleeping off the effects of a bottle of posset he found. We have no housekeeper— Mrs. Peters claims she is expecting some sort of enlightening message from her ghosts and has locked herself into the Pug’s Parlor and won’t come out until the spirits speak to her. What’s left of the staff and I are trying to get everything ready for the luncheon, as well as our normal chores.”
“Oh, geez. It sounds like things are awful down there.”
“It is beyond awful, it is a nightmare, but it’s not just this morning. You have no idea because you get your tea when you ring for it, or your hot water, or whatever, and the rooms are cleaned without you ever having to lift a finger, and you don’t see any of the work we do. You can’t possibly understand just how horrid it is to feel trapped in this job without any hope of getting anything better—”
Alice stopped her unexpected outburst by covering up her face with her hands, her shoulders shaking.
“Oh, Alice, I’m so sorry,” I said, going to kneel at her feet with only half my hair coiled. “I know how hard it is for you guys, I truly do know, and I’m deeply appreciative that you all took on such demanding jobs. I can imagine how frustrating it is to be working so hard and yet be expected to blend in to the scenery. What can I do to make things better?”
She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and mopped up the waterworks. “Nothing. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to rail at you. It’s not your fault—you and Max are the best of everyone. It’s just that sometimes it gets to me, the way we’re treated. Everyone else is so rude to us, like we don’t have any feelings. Sometimes it’s a little hard to take.”
“I bet it is. I wouldn’t have been able to take that sort of treatment. Would you like me to talk to everyone upstairs?”
Behind me, I could feel Ellis stiffen.
“No, that wouldn’t be right. Ellis has a point—we did all agree to live our lives like the Victorians, and for the servants, that means we have to take being treated like we are nothing and deal with it.”
I gave her knee a pat and returned to the bench so Ellis could finish my hair. “That doesn’t make it right. OK, so let’s brainstorm this—we need to do something to make everyone happier, but it has to stay within the guidelines of the rules. Any ideas?”
Corset Diaries Page 26