by Evie Dunmore
“I suppose,” he drawled.
“I’m so terribly happy.” She sighed, and again her lips were making the effort to smile.
His throat constricted unpleasantly. “It pleases me to see you happy,” he said.
She patted his hand. “You must take her out.” She glanced back at the letter. “Lady Wycliffe says you reside a few streets away from each other—I understand they settled there to be close to you for the summer, to give you time to become more closely acquainted. And yet you haven’t even had an outing in Oxford.”
He was aghast. They had settled in Oxford because of him? “Lady Wycliffe is very involved,” he said.
“Why, of course. We women are always worried about our charges. And a gently bred lady needs to be wooed, especially”—and now her tone turned a little stern—“when the groom has a past. You must leave no doubt in Lady Cecily’s mind about your affection if you want your sweetheart to rest easy.”
He shifted on his chair. “Right—”
“Why not take them on a picnic? No, I know—take them punting.” She looked visibly invigorated by the thought.
A mental image of him, Cecily the Cat Poet, and the mother of the woman he had recently deflowered, in forced proximity on a wobbly punt, accosted him, and he’d rather enlist in another tour through the Hindu Kush.
“Oh, how delicious the sky looks from here,” his mother said, her eyes now wistful on the slice of blue revealed by the tall windows. “Is it warm outside? I’m of a mind to take a trip.”
“Grand,” he said quickly. “What do you think of, say, India?”
She cast him an amused glance. “I was thinking of the folly.”
The folly. Not even half a mile away from the house.
“Carey,” she addressed the maid, “what do you think of an outing to the folly?”
Carey, who was hovering in the background like a listless ghost, solidified. “I don’t know, milady.” The worry in her voice was palpable. “Perhaps the fountain would do just fine for now?”
The fountain. Two hundred yards from the house.
A sea voyage with an invalid into an only rudimentarily organized future was looking less and less like a master plan. Had it ever been a master plan? Or just the illusory idea that he could do both: keep her safe and escape Rochester’s marriage match?
What if he told her? Mother, your husband is using you as bait and you are not safe in your own home. She might expire on the spot. Already she was deflating before his eyes: too much talk and matchmaking excitement. She barely reacted when her lady’s maid placed the vase next to her bed.
“Carey read me your poetry,” she said when he had already taken his leave and was on his way to the door. “I am proud of you.”
Her meaningful undertone made his nape tickle. He turned back and found that her gaze had blurred, and that she might not see him well at all.
“And Rochester does not hate you,” she murmured. “He is afraid you could become like me.”
Mad like me, were the unspoken words. He stood rooted to the floor.
“What a curious thing to say, Mother.”
It had of course crossed his mind, many times, whether the moods ran in the family.
As though he had spoken out loud, she shook her head. “I have been a great disappointment to your father. To everyone, I daresay. His anger is part fear, Tristan. But you must never fear, my dear—you have all that was best of me, and none of the curse. At your age, I had long been afflicted. Unfortunately, Rochester is not one to recognize nuances; it is all the same to him.”
He took a step toward the bed. “You are hardly cursed. What is the purpose of telling me this?”
She was already drifting into sleep, or pretended to be, and eventually, he left with his instincts for trouble high on alert.
Rochester’s valet, Jarvis, stood lurking in the corridor, yards away from the chamber door. At least Rochester had not sent his spy right into the bedchamber with him.
“Milord.” The hushed female voice made him turn back. Carey, the lady’s maid, had slipped out the door after him. When she spotted Jarvis, she abruptly came to a halt, her dark eyes widening beneath her cap before she quickly dropped her gaze.
Instinctively, Tristan moved his body between the valet and the woman. “Yes, Carey?”
The tops of her ears were crimson. Any number of reasons could be the cause: addressing him without having been spoken to; looking at him; fearing the valet. She glanced up, her gaze not quite meeting his.
“Nothing, milord,” she whispered, mortified. “Congratulations on your engagement.” She hurried past him, her shoulders looking tense.
* * *
The time from Thursday morning to eleven o’clock Friday night had crawled by more slowly than the passing of a woman’s rights amendment. Lucie had had ample opportunity to doubt and revoke her decision to invite a rogue back into her bed, and she had dithered. She had languished in the unfamiliar purgatory of suspense over a man, and she disliked it. Her stomach had somersaulted every time she thought of Tristan stretched out lazily on the blankets in the drawing room again. By the time he did duck through her kitchen door, looking unfazed and smelling deliciously of himself and hints of wood smoke, she had developed a bit of a temper.
He knew after taking one look at her face, for his mouth curved into a wicked smile, and before she could utter a word, his right hand cupped the back of her head and pulled her in close for a kiss.
Her mind was still spinning when he hung his coat and hat on the servants’ rack next to the china cupboard.
“You are quiet,” he remarked as he walked to the sink to turn up the tap. “A little tense, even?” There was a teasing note in his voice.
She was about to be skin to skin with him again. She was already shamelessly wearing her robe, and her feet were bare. Of course she was tense.
“Not at all,” she said, her first lie in years.
“No? Well, good.” He was looking at her with a soft heat in his eyes while tugging off his gloves, slowly, one finger at the time. By the time the gloves lay side by side on the kitchen counter, warmth tingled in her cheeks and lips. She was familiar now with what he could do with his fingers.
She watched him spread the creamy lather of soap over his hands, watched as a lock of his hair fell over his forehead, and how the gaslight cast his terrifyingly beautiful profile into stark relief, and the sudden force of her desire for him frightened her. A good lover can addle your brain, Annabelle had warned her. He can make you feel things you neither expected nor wish to feel. . . .
He was drying his hands when a growl sounded in the tense silence.
He raised an apologetic brow.
“Are you hungry?” she asked quickly. “Have you not eaten?”
He shook his head. “I came directly from the office in London. Come here.”
She danced closer like a nervous colt. “You should eat,” she told him.
The corner of his mouth tipped up in a small smile. “I shall,” he said. “In a moment. Turn around.” His index finger made a slow twirling motion.
She hesitated, but his smile became a challenge, and so she turned her back to him.
He brushed her hair forward over one shoulder.
“What—” She moaned in surprise when his thumbs expertly pressed into her shoulders.
His lips were warm against the bared side of her neck.
“Lovely,” he whispered. “Do that again.”
“You . . .” she murmured, and her voice faded, because he continued the delicate massage, skillfully manipulating his way to the sensitive hollow of her nape, then down again. He kneaded gently on either side of the pearls of her spine, until her head fell back against his chest. Her eyes were closed; she did not want him to see how much she wished for him to kiss her. How her body was already heavy with long
ing and needed his hands to slide forward over her breasts. . . .
His fingers fanned over her jaw and tilted her face up. She felt his lips against her own and then the heat of his mouth. She moaned, her thoughts dissolving. His other hand skimmed over her breasts, her belly, between her legs, where his fingertips pressed down. Darkness exploded behind her eyes; for a beat, all that held her upright were his hands. And they were bent on destroying her, one clever touch at the time.
His arousal was hard against her backside. At least the madness was affecting him, too. She arched, and he groaned, his grip on her tightening. She was turned in his arms and walked backward, kissing and grasping, and the edge of the kitchen table bumped against the back of her thighs.
He lifted her onto the surface and stepped between her legs.
Her gaze was heavy-lidded. “On the table?” she murmured.
He brushed his index finger over her damp bottom lip and dragged it down over her throat.
“I believe you told me to eat,” he said, and sank to his knees.
A whimpering noise; it must have come from her. She was familiar with the things he could do with his mouth now, too. His hands slipped up her thighs, parting the robe wide, and his fingertips dug into her hips as he pulled her closer to the edge. Her eyes were shut again, but she felt him. He rubbed his face against the downy inside of her thigh, abrading her skin with the grain of his cheek, then the velvet of his lips, back and forth, rough and soft sliding into each other, until her shaking fingers tangled in his hair to try and pull his head to where she needed him.
A low laugh shook his shoulders. He looked up. “Tell me,” he said, his eyes black with lust. “How much do you detest me now?”
She gasped. “This is not fair.”
“Of course not,” he said gently, “love and war, was it not?” He kissed her inches from where she ached. “Say it,” he demanded, his mouth hot against her skin.
“I detest you,” she whispered. “Very much.”
But then he pulled her thigh over his shoulder, and she felt the liquid softness of his tongue, and the deluge of emotion flooding her was markedly far from the war side of things.
Chapter 26
When she woke the next morning in the drawing room, she thought of the kitchen table, and that she would never be able to look at it without blushing ever again. Could she have breakfast there now without her mind wandering back to last night? Leave it to Tristan to despoil a perfectly innocent piece of furniture.
He had again stayed, after he had carried her limp form from the kitchen to have his way with her before the fireplace.
He was awake now, up on his elbow, his chin in his hand, studying her with an expression of lazy satisfaction. His eyes were suspiciously free of guile.
Her own feelings were ambiguous. This was her last morning of waking up with a man. Last times had a touch of nostalgia to them even as they were still ongoing.
Tristan appeared oblivious; his free hand was playing with her hair, looping it between his fingers. “When I was here the first time,” he said, “you said you had read lascivious accounts about lovemaking.”
She blinked slowly. “Yes.”
He tugged on the lock he had caught, and the gentle prick on her scalp sent goose bumps down her back.
“What was it that you read?” His voice was a low erotic rumble.
She gave a little shrug. “I suppose the most lascivious ones were in The Pearl.”
He stilled. “The Pearl,” he repeated. “By the Society of Vice?”
“Yes.”
“Good Lord.” He looked torn between shock and delight. “That is utter smut—the worst you could have chosen.”
“So I gathered,” she said, “vastly ridiculous, too.”
“Ridiculous?”
“Yes. All these charming parlor maids and dear virginal cousins keen on sharing the unsuspecting male houseguest among them—it appeared to be a common theme in the stories.”
He fell back and erupted in what appeared to be both laughter and a cough.
She sat up. “Are you well?”
He looked up at her, eyes liquid, and shook his head. “It is a recent publication,” he said, his gaze turning calculating. “Either you started your education late, or you are diligently . . . maintaining it.”
“What of it?” she muttered.
He touched her cheek. “Was there anything in those stories that you did like?”
There was a promise in that question. Tell me your desires, your darkest ones.
He would do whatever she asked of him, she understood. She looked down at him, glorious in his nudity, and briefly, she felt drunk on the possibilities that came with having a lover of few principles. It felt peculiarly close to freedom.
But this was their last morning. As it should be.
“You should leave.”
He paused, then glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece.
“You are quite right.” He let her hair slide free. “How rude of me.”
He sat up and leaned in to kiss her forehead, his lips teasing and soft. He had to have a heart of stone, to indulge in such small intimacies and then go on his way without a backward glance.
She watched him as he turned and bent forward to reach his shirtsleeves, carelessly discarded on the floor next to their nest.
The morning light was bright on his back. It revealed a crisscross of faded white lines, from between his shoulders down to the small of his back, and it took her a moment to comprehend the nature of such scars. She laid a hand against his side.
“I thought the army had outlawed flogging decades ago,” she said. “I was, in fact, under the impression that noblemen were not flogged at all.”
Tristan had turned rigid under her palm. “It was not the army,” he then said.
He came to his feet, and the disturbing pattern disappeared beneath a layer of fine cotton. She still felt unsettled. “Your headmaster, then?” she asked, because when she was unsettled, she investigated.
He turned to her, fastening his braces. “He must have dreamt of doing so on occasion, but no.”
A cold sensation spread in her chest. “Rochester.”
He nodded, and when her horror must have shown on her face, he gave a shrug. “Many fathers thrash their sons. Spare the rod, spoil the child.”
“You were not thrashed,” she said, her voice low. “This was cruelty. He must have had you beaten within an inch of your life.”
“Oh, he did it all himself,” Tristan said. “I give him that.”
His expression was entirely untroubled, but she saw a lanky adolescent, who must have been bleeding and in pain, and a fierce emotion surged through her body and launched her to her feet.
Tristan paused in the process of buttoning his waistcoat, his eyes riveted on her, and she realized she stood before him in the nude.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “What Rochester did to you was wrong.”
“What a lovely sight you are,” he murmured. “Furious and debauched.”
Unexpectedly, he reached for her and pulled her up against him.
The sudden feel of his clothed body against her naked length was a shock. She stood still as his one hand smoothed a slow, warm path down her back, then lingered suggestively on her bottom.
He knew what he was doing. He could make her feel things, he could change her moods with a well-placed touch. It was, upon closer inspection, horrifying.
And there was the sad truth of it: she did not want it to be the last morning.
Fleetingly, she wondered whether this was how it began for the wretched souls who ended their days in an opium den—with the thought: only one more time.
She peered up at him.
His lashes had lowered; he looked absorbed in the feel of her. But she sensed he would never ask her. The male f
launts itself, the female chooses.
It would not be sensible to ask him.
“I wish to see you again,” she said.
His eyes opened, and her stomach dipped. She loathed it well enough—asking for things, and him of all people.
His hand flattened against her lower back.
“When?” he asked gruffly.
The tension in her shoulders eased a little. “Soon. But it cannot be here.”
A pause ensued.
“I shall see to it,” he said, and then his fingers came to her chin and tipped up her head, making her look him in the eye. “However,” he said, “it means it is time for some rules.”
Her brows swooped. “More rules?”
“Yes. Two nights can pass as an accident. Three nights are the result of deliberate forethought.”
“And this is a matter of concern?” she asked, for there was an undercurrent of hesitation in his voice.
He shook his head. “No. Sometimes, it may take longer to slake a particular desire. But it requires that you tell me your expectations.”
“What is the advantage, stating them?” She sounded skeptical.
“It may reduce regrettable misunderstandings.”
He had done such things before, and she did not relish the reminder. She slipped from the circle of his arms to pick up her robe.
“Discretion,” she said, turning back to him. “I expect you to be discreet.” Her eyes bore into his in a warning. “My work and my reputation would be ruined if word got out.”
“You are taking a high risk, my sweet.”
She was aware, acutely so. “I am not above holding your books hostage,” she said coolly.
“Charming,” he muttered. “But clear. Anything else?”
She nodded. “Honesty.”
“Honesty,” he repeated, testing the word.
“Yes. Without honesty, there can be no trust.”
“Ah, darling.” His smile was lopsided. “My second rule is: do not trust me. Not in the deep, blind sort of way.”