To Have and to Hoax

by Martha Waters

  She hesitated, unsure whether James would welcome the interruption—but at that precise moment West looked up, noticed her, and arched a brow.

  Violet was nothing if not quick to respond to a challenge, and she did just that. “James,” she called, and the gentlemen looked in her direction as one, five heads craning around to register her presence in the doorway. There was a brief pause, then the cacophony of several chairs scraping the floor at once as their owners all rose respectfully.

  “Please, do sit down,” she said, taking a couple of steps into the room. “I just wished to have a word with my husband, if you can manage without him.”

  “Of course,” James said promptly, dropping his cards without a second glance at them and offering his companions the barest of nods before joining her.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked in a low voice, taking one of her hands in his own. He looked intently at her face, and Violet quickly smiled to reassure him.

  “Everything is fine,” she said. “I just wished to continue our conversation of earlier, and I didn’t really wish to wait. If you’d rather finish your card game, however…” She trailed off and tried to assume a nonchalant air. She disliked vulnerability, and had too little faith in the fragile peace they were forging to display any now.

  In truth, however, his reply mattered a great deal.

  “I think the cards can wait,” James said dryly, his mouth curving up a bit at the corners, and Violet felt a flash of warmth rush through her. James took her by the arm and led her from the room, then paused once they were in the corridor. “Do you want me to send for the carriage?” he asked. “Are you feeling unwell?”

  There was a teasing glint in his eye. Violet let out a sickly cough without breaking eye contact with him. “My health is, of course, always delicate, but I think I can carry on.”

  “I am delighted to hear it.” James led her across the hallway into a room directly opposite. He glanced in quickly, apparently ascertaining that it was empty, and then pulled Violet in behind him and shut the door. They were in the Rochefords’ library—it was dimly lit, but Violet could see floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and some rather uncomfortable-looking armchairs. She wandered deeper into the room, surveying the volumes on the shelves. They did not look heavily worn.

  “I doubt we’ll be interrupted here,” she said, opening a book whose spine cracked with the motion—it had never been touched. “An excellent choice.”

  “If memory serves, I recall it being little used,” James said from behind her, and there was a strange note in his voice—strange enough that Violet set the book back on the shelf and turned to look at him inquiringly. “Have you forgotten?” he asked quietly, taking a couple of steps toward her.

  “Forgotten—oh!” Violet said, and it all came back to her in a rush, her cheeks warming. The year she and James had met, the Rochefords had held their ball much earlier in the Season, before Violet and James had married. They had been engaged at the time, and had managed to sneak away together to the Rocheford library, where they’d been slightly naughty on one of the window seats.

  “I wonder if that window seat is still here,” Violet said, curiosity overtaking embarrassment, as it so often did with her.

  “I can’t imagine they’ve torn out a window seat in a two-hundred-year-old room,” James said wryly, and followed her toward the windows in question. Violet could feel his presence behind her—the warmth of his body against her back raising the hairs at the nape of her neck and causing her arms to break out in gooseflesh.

  They arrived at the window seat, and Violet flung herself down upon it. “We should have one of these installed in our library,” she said, patting the cushions. “It’s extremely comfortable.”

  “Whatever you wish,” James said, but from the way he was looking at her, Violet wasn’t at all sure that he had heard anything she had said. “What was it you wanted to speak about, Violet?”

  “Um,” Violet said, unaccountably nervous, “I enjoyed our waltz this evening.”

  She sounded inane, she knew.

  “As did I,” James said, stepping closer to her. She tilted her head back to peer up at him, his head framed by the dim light surrounding him. “Violet…” He hesitated, and Violet leaned forward. She could see some sort of internal war being waged within him, and in that instant she wished desperately that she could read his thoughts. When he spoke, however, his tone was guarded, and he merely said, “That can’t be the only thing you wished to tell me.”

  “Oh,” she said, striving to keep a note of disappointment out of her voice. “Er—did you enjoy your dance with Lady Fitzwilliam?” That, of course, hadn’t been at all what she intended to ask him.

  “It was invigorating,” he said, raising an eyebrow at her in silent inquiry; he could clearly tell she was working herself up to something and was stalling a bit.

  “I’m certain it was,” she replied, resting an elbow upon the windowsill behind her. “I’m sorry my delicate health wouldn’t permit me to dance as enthusiastically as I normally would.”

  She had noticed that somehow she had begun to use the ruse of her illness as a code—when she wished to say something else to him entirely, she mentioned her failing health. It was a lie they held together, both of them aware of its falseness, neither one admitting as much in words. Rather perversely, it had the effect of making her feel closer to him—and if that wasn’t a sad commentary on the state of her marriage, then she didn’t know what was.

  “Ah yes,” he said, leaning down and bracing his hands on the sill, allowing his arms to bracket her face. “And yet you felt well enough to suddenly interrupt the middle of a waltz?” He shook his head in mock astonishment. “Amazing.”

  “One never does cease to marvel at the wonders of the human body.”

  “Indeed,” he said, and there was a dark promise in that single word that sent a delicious shiver up and down the length of her spine. She looked into his shadowed face, into the green eyes gazing so intently at her, and she reached out, very deliberately, and placed a single ungloved hand on his cheek.

  He closed his eyes briefly at the feel of her hand on his skin, then opened them again—and, quite suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. She sucked in an unsteady breath, but it felt as though she could not get enough air in her lungs. He leaned forward, giving her ample time to pull away, but she remained still.

  He hesitated a fraction of an inch from her lips, giving her one last chance to stop him, but instead she leaned toward him, brushing her lips against his. And then, it was as if in doing so she had released him from a curse that bound him, for he bent down, seized her face in his hands, and took her mouth in a bruising kiss.

  This kiss bore no resemblance to the chaste touch of lips of a moment before, and Violet relished its difference as she slid her hands up to cup the back of his head. Their mouths were hungry, his lips moving against hers in a frenzied dance, giving her no chance to so much as catch her breath. Violet parted her lips and let her tongue dart out to trace the seam of his lips, savoring the familiar taste of him as he opened his mouth in turn.

  And, oh, she had forgotten how this felt—the wet heat of their mouths together, the growing warmth in various parts of her body to which she normally paid little attention. James reached out and slid a hand into her hair; Violet could feel the pins that held her coiffure in place falling to the seat cushions behind her. James cupped the back of her neck with one hand as he slid the other to her waist, pulling her to the edge of the window seat and into the cradle of his body as he dropped to his knees.

  She let out a moan and they broke the kiss, each breathing heavily. She allowed her head to fall back against his hand at her neck, eyes staring unseeingly at the ceiling far above. James leaned forward and placed a kiss at the hollow of her throat, where she could feel her pulse pounding wildly. His tongue darted out to taste her, and she slid her hands into the thick locks of his hair, pulling his mouth back to her own.

  She slid forward even far
ther until she was perched on the very edge of the window seat, her breasts brushing against the fabric of his coat. The hand that was clutching her waist began a slow journey north, cupping the weight of a breast, rubbing a finger across the hardening tip.

  “James,” she gasped, breaking the kiss again, but words failed her as he began to kiss a path along the side of her neck and onto the upper slopes of her breasts. His other hand released her head and reached down to tug at the bodice of her dress—not forcefully enough to tear the fabric, but with a persistence that, after a moment, was rewarded when first one breast, then the other, popped free of fabric and corset.

  “Someone might come in,” she said with what remained of her sanity in that moment, and James stilled at once, his head rising so that she could no longer feel the heat of his breath against her bare skin. He turned his head to peer over his shoulder, and Violet followed his glance. From their perch, Violet could not see the room’s entrance.

  “We’re hidden from view of the door,” James said, and Violet was pleased to hear that he was breathing rather heavily himself, his voice slightly uneven. “But if you’re concerned—”

  By way of reply, Violet leaned up and kissed him again, prompting a rumble of satisfaction from deep in his chest that she felt in her own body, pressed against him as she was.

  “Lean back,” he said, tearing his mouth away after a moment, and pushed against her waist with an inexorable pressure that resulted in Violet half reclining against the cushions of the window seat, her legs spread wantonly. James moved forward to fill the space she had vacated, and she could feel the evidence of his arousal pressing against her as he crouched between her legs. He raised his hands and practically tore his gloves off, flinging them over his shoulder without a backward glance. He bent his head and, without further preamble, took one of her breasts into his mouth, causing Violet to arch off the window seat, her body bowing in pleasure at the feeling of his lips and tongue on her sensitive skin.

  Her head fell back on the pillows behind her and she slid her hands into his hair once more, keeping him cradled against her as he kissed and sucked. Violet felt as though she were on fire, the blood in her veins racing with a feverish heat. She gave a wanton arch of her hips against him, once, twice. He groaned in response and lifted his head, his eyes blazing, and the sight of him there, with his hair disheveled and his cheeks slightly flushed, his chin resting in the hollow between her bare breasts, was so intoxicating that Violet felt as though she might spontaneously combust.

  The first year of their marriage had been one of love and lust, of desire, of a need and hunger that she had not previously known existed. And yet, nothing—nothing—could have prepared her for what she felt at this moment.

  Had it been it simple deprivation? she wondered with the small part of her mind that was still capable of rational thought. Had four years of abstinence been enough to prompt this reaction? Yet she could not imagine feeling this desperate, frenzied desire for any man other than her husband. It was something specific to them, to Violet and James and Violet-and-James, impossible to define but here, crackling between them.

  “I need you,” she said, barely recognizing the throaty sound of her own voice, so much deeper than its normal register. “Now. Here.”

  “Are you certain?” he asked, even as his hand began a steady, sneaky slide up her bare calf under the voluminous skirts of her gown. In that moment, when he asked that question, even as Violet could feel the strength of his need pressed against her own body, she knew, without a doubt, how much she loved this man.

  She nodded once by way of confirmation, and it was the only signal he needed, his hand continuing its journey up, up, over her knee and onto the silken skin of her thigh, moving ever closer to where she so desperately wished him to touch. He paused for a moment, as if sensing her own urgency and determined to thwart it, his thumb stroking a rough circle into the skin of her inner thigh.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked innocently, a wicked grin curving at his lips even as his thumb continued its movements—so close and yet still so frustratingly far from where she wanted it.

  “I might enjoy myself a bit more,” she said a bit unsteadily, “if you would get to where you were going.” She leaned forward then and placed a kiss at the base of his throat, then used her tongue to trace a slow path upward. A groan from James was her reward, and she finished her journey with a gentle kiss on his chin, leaning back to smile smugly at him.

  “You do like to win, don’t you?” he asked, but before she could answer his fingers touched her slick folds, and she fell back against the window seat with a moan that she just barely managed to stifle against the back of her hand. Said hand was torn away from her mouth a moment later and replaced by James’s lips, kissing her with a frenzy that matched the rough movements of his hand below. His tongue slid into her mouth just as he slipped a single finger inside her, and Violet whimpered against his lips, her hands rising to clutch at his shoulders.

  “James,” she gasped against his mouth as his thumb rubbed a particularly delicate spot. She shoved her hands under his coat, pushing it from his shoulders, and James pulled back to shrug it off. Violet tugged his shirt from the waistband of his trousers, her fingers greedy for the feeling of his bare skin. She slipped her hands up under the fabric of his shirt, moving them over the muscled expanse of his abdomen before sliding them around to clutch once more at his strong back. He leaned forward and placed a series of kisses against her neck, while his fingers resumed their distracting rhythm beneath her skirts.

  “Enough,” she said, and reached forward to fumble with the placket of his breeches. He sucked in a breath as her fingers brushed against him, but a moment later the buttons were undone and he was spreading her legs, hooking them up and over his hips.

  “Are you—”

  “Don’t ask me if I’m certain,” she said, reaching up to twine her arms around his neck. She pressed her forehead against his, their faces so close together that all she could see was the intense green of his gaze burning into her own. “I am.”

  This was all the confirmation he needed, and with a flex of his hips he slid into her, the sensation enough to make Violet’s back arch and another helpless moan escape from her lips.

  “God… Violet…” he panted, then withdrew before sliding forward again with a powerful thrust. Violet buried her face in his neck, her arms still wrapped tightly around him, her lips sliding over his skin without much finesse or purpose.

  He continued to thrust, her hips rising to meet his, and it was just like every time they had ever done this before—and yet somehow different, and better, and entirely new. If their kiss had been a conversation, then this was something else entirely—a bond that went beyond words, beyond thought. The world outside the window seat shrank and vanished, until Violet couldn’t remember her anger, her hurt, her loneliness—she could barely remember her own name. All she could focus on was the feeling of James moving inside her, the delicious friction that accompanied every move he made, the warmth of his hand at her breast, his face buried in her hair, his lips forming unintelligible syllables against her scalp.

  For the first time in a fortnight, Violet didn’t care about revenge, about teaching anyone a lesson, about winning. She only cared about James’s hips flexing against her own, and her desire for him to never stop.

  Soon, too soon, she felt a warmth rushing up within her, setting every nerve in her body jangling. James was close, too, she could tell—his thrusts were growing more erratic, his breathing heavier, and his hand had slid from her breast to clutch at her hips instead, pinning her to him as he moved ever more forcefully within her.

  “Vi… Vi…” he panted, pulling his head back to look at her once more. She pulled his face down to her own, kissing him sloppily and desperately, her heart pounding in her chest.

  She was close—so close—but not quite there.

  “James,” she moaned, arching against him with an inarticulate cry, and s
omehow, he understood. He let one of his hands glide down underneath her skirts, sliding it into the negligible space between them, and rubbed—not with the finesse she usually expected from him, but at that moment, Violet didn’t care—once, twice, thrice…

  She shut her eyes tight, her head falling back against the cushions as wave after wave of pleasure washed through her. She could feel herself clenching around him, and a moment later he was gone, too, groaning into her neck as he shuddered helplessly above and within her, the sound of his pleasure heightening her own.

  And, for the first time in four years, she had the feeling she’d nearly forgotten: that there was nowhere else on earth she would rather be.

  Thirteen

  Violet couldn’t have guessed how long they lay like that, her feet still hooked around his back, he still buried within her, his face pressed against her neck, her eyes screwed tightly shut. Eventually, however, she returned to herself and released her grip on him, allowing her legs to slide back down to the floor, her thighs protesting. The movement seemed to rouse James from his stupor, as he lifted his head at last, straightened up, and stood, his hands fumbling to refasten his breeches.

  Feeling unaccountably shy, Violet blushed and looked away, suddenly very conscious of the fact that she was only half dressed in the library of a house that was not her own. She sat up, tugging her bodice into place, then raising her hands to her hair to ascertain the damage there. She fumbled around on the window seat cushions behind her, feeling for the pins that James had so cavalierly flung aside; finding them, she began shoving them haphazardly into her coiffure, attempting to restore some semblance of order.

  “I don’t know much about ladies’ hair,” James said, thrusting his arms into his coat and then dropping to his knees to hunt for his gloves, “but I don’t think you’ll be able to make that look the same as it did before.” There was a faint note of satisfaction in his voice that made Violet simultaneously want to kiss and smack him.