The Passionate Prude

by Elizabeth Thornton

  His arms encircled her waist. “They’ll never allow it,” he said softly, and he kissed her very swiftly on the lips, then pulled back to gauge her reaction.

  “We’ll persuade them somehow,” was the throaty rejoinder. Her fingers coiled in his dark curls, and she pulled his head down.

  “Oh no, love, oh no,” he groaned weakly, but he crushed her to him just the same, and kissed her so shamelessly that there was never any doubt of who carried off the honors in that encounter.

  Upstairs in the west wing of the private apartments, Martha, a young maid of an age with Deirdre, was occupied in unpacking her ladyship’s boxes.

  She curtsied at her young mistress’s entrance. Deirdre acknowledged the gesture with a smile and glanced around the candlelit chamber. She had an impression of shabbiness, a grandeur that had gone to seed, but she was too weary to take much in. She longed for the comfort of a hot bath, but such luxuries, so she had discovered, were beyond the imagination of the residents at Belmont, and she thought of Marcliff with regret and of the servants, few though they were in number, whom she had trained to run the household with the precision of a corps of artillery gunners.

  As the abigail unpacked Deirdre’s boxes and put away her things, Deirdre suffered the discomfort of a cold sponge bath and made monosyllabic replies to the spate of chatter which emanated from the maid. Something caught her interest, however, and she asked at length, “What Servants’ and Tenants’ Ball?”

  “The last one, ma’am, afore his lordship went off to Spain. That were the first time I ever wore a grown-up gown, like this.” She held up one of Deirdre’s pale muslins and went on hopefully. “Me ma says that now that Belmont has a new mistress and his lordship is finally settled, mayhap we’ll go back to the old ways and have a ball again every year.”

  “Would that please you?”

  “Oh m’um!” Martha’s eyes were shining. “It’s the grandest thing I ever was at in my life.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Deirdre, her interest piqued.

  Martha’s pinched face softened, taking on a faraway expression, and her faltering accents gradually warmed as she began, diffidently at first, then with more confidence, to describe an event that had made a deep impression on her young mind. She told of the months of preparation throughout the castle and of the night itself, just after harvest was in, when the Great Hall was lavishly garlanded with fresh flowers and sheaves of wheat, and an orchestra with violins, imported from London, played beguilingly from the gallery. As protocol demanded, the ball was opened when his lordship led the housekeeper into the first dance, and the lady of the house was partnered by the august butler. So vividly did Martha tell her tale that Deirdre could almost hear the sweet strains of the orchestra and smell the oxen roasting on spits in the great fireplace as two hundred guests sat down at long trestle tables which had been pushed back against the walls, and devoured the special dishes which cook and her helpers had painstakingly prepared weeks in advance, and she could almost taste Martha’s excitement as servants and tenants opened the small gifts which had been set at the place of every man, woman, and child.

  Deirdre slipped between the cold linen sheets smelling of lavender and smiled with faint regret. “A Servants’ and Tenants’ Ball sounds marvelous, Martha, but scarcely practicable. I would die of shame before I’d let my neighbors see the squalor inside this old heap of stones. I can’t see how such a thing is to be accomplished, can you?”

  Martha became involved in emptying out the china wash basin and tidying away the towels which Deirdre had discarded. “No, m’um,” she agreed politely, then cautiously, as an afterthought, “but my old ma always says that there’s nothing like a good party to get the house spanking clean from attics to cellars.”

  “Does she now?” asked Deirdre, and paused as if she was giving the matter some serious thought. “It occurs to me that your old ma knows a thing or two. Perhaps we shall have a ball,” she mused aloud, “yes perhaps we shall, if I can be persuaded, that is, that I won’t live to regret it.”

  “Oh no, m’um! You never would,” said Martha seriously, and Deirdre smiled to herself.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Deirdre stretched languidly like some replete jungle feline, and she buried herself deeper into the warm depression the weight of her body had formed in the cushion of fragrant hay. A sound which was very close to a purr caught in her throat, and a slow smile of pleasure touched her lips. She felt happier and more relaxed than she had done in a long, long time. Her thoughts drifted, resisting the pull to consciousness, and she turned on her side as if to turn her back on the reality of scores of servants who were turning Belmont Castle upside down and inside out in preparation for the ball which was only a month away.

  A small pang of guilt intruded on her pleasant reveries, but she smothered it. They could do without her direction for an hour or two, and she would not reveal her secret retreat above the hayloft in the stables and be at the beck and call of every scullery maid in Belmont for every minute of the day. She filled her lungs, breathing deeply of the comforting aromas of fresh hay, sweating horseflesh, and the mellow tang of old polished leather. Something stroked against her back, and she moved slightly to accommodate it, supposing in her drowsiness that one of the stable cats was seeking her warmth.

  Under her palm, she felt her breasts swell, and the bud of a nipple tightened against her stays. Her bodice loosened as if in obedience to her half-formed thought. Her eyelids fluttered, and a small frown furrowed her brow. A hand buried itself in her short-cropped tresses and Deirdre came fully awake. She sat up with a start, and her bodice dropped to her waist, baring her breasts. She looked down in bewilderment, gazing at her nakedness, and at the long masculine fingers which caressed her flesh, indolently kneading the soft mounds to a voluptuous sensitivity.

  “You!” she breathed, turning fully to be bathed in the brightness of his languorous, golden gaze. Rathbourne raised himself, and she twisted slightly away from him as if to protect her nudity from his devouring eyes.

  “Deirdre,” he murmured against her neck, and he slipped out of his pristine white shirt to reveal the tanned, muscular physique which rippled with each sure movement. “Deirdre,” he said again, and cupped her shoulders, sinking his parted lips into the soft warmth of her nape. She felt the heat of his naked torso as it brushed sensuously against her back, heating her skin to a feverish glow.

  She moaned, her scattering thoughts losing focus, and the knot of resentment she had patiently nursed in the weeks since she had last seen him splintered into a thousand fragments.

  “Unjust,” she whispered on a breath of a sound, and twisted slightly to block the marauding hands which moved purposefully to cup her breasts. His hands followed her, and his thumbs lazily stroked the swelling nipples, coaxing her body to a sweet oblivion of everything but him.

  “Unjust,” she breathed again, shrugging his hands off, her mind groping to hang on to the feeling of ill-usage which was fast slipping from her. “We must talk,” she said slowly and deliberately, but could not recall exactly what it was she wished to say to him.

  “Yes,” he agreed, and forced her gently but relentlessly into the hay, “but only love talk. Everything else can wait for this.”

  He came down on her, deliberately brushing and teasing the tender rise of her breasts with the soft mat of dark hair on his chest. She groaned, and her lips parted slightly. He swiftly captured them, cupping her chin in both hands, forcing her lips wider as he buried his mouth in her honeyed warmth. The kiss gentled to a slow exploration as if he wished to refresh his senses with the taste of her on his tongue and lips, and awaken her to the pleasure of his body. But passion outstripped reason, and his hands and mouth burned and bruised with his raging haste to possess her. She splayed her fingers against his chest, restraining him, and he released her at once.

  She pushed herself to a sitting position, her arms hugging her knees. He was manipulating her into surrender and she fought again
st it.

  He raised on one elbow and ran the fingers of one hand down the length of her bare arm. “Deirdre?” he said coaxingly, his need for her hoarsening his voice to a whisper of liquid sound, “I’ve waited almost two months for this. Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could let you turn me away now. You can give in gracefully, or…”

  His hand grasped her ankle and began a slow and tantalizing exploration beneath the folds of her skirts, and his warm, erratic breath fanned her shoulder. He parted her knees, easily overcoming her slight resistance, and his fingers moved higher and deftly untied the strings of her drawers. His palm burrowed inside to the warmth of her abdomen, languidly massaging the taut muscles till he felt them relax against the flat of his hand.

  “Deirdre, love, we don’t want all these clothes between us, do we?” he asked, and soothed her with words of love as he stripped her to her chemise.

  “You’re my wife, and I love you,” he reassured, and he quickly divested himself of his pantaloons and hessians. “I want to be as close to you as I can. Words can’t possibly express what I am feeling for you at this moment. I want to show you with my body, and…”

  She turned into him on a soft cry, and words became superfluous. He pressed her back and drowned her senses with lavishly bestowed caresses and slow, seductive kisses. He stroked her ceaselessly, as if he would rediscover the imprint of each curve and hollow against his hand, and when she opened herself to him, holding nothing in reserve, he fought to control the hot surge of passion that swept through him like the incoming tide.

  “What is it you want from me?” he teased with mock innocence, and his fingers worked their irresistible magic, his touch as light as snow melting on the moist warmth of her skin. Her knees snapped together and she bared her teeth at him. “Gareth Cavanaugh,” she ground out, then she sucked in her breath as he pressed her knees apart and entered her deeply. “Gareth Cavanaugh,” she repeated, but on a breath of a sound as his mouth smothered her lips, swallowing her soft cries as she rose to meet him, the rising tempo of their rhythm heating their feverish skin till it was dewed with moisture.

  He tried to prolong their pleasure, but she resisted when he made to still her movements. “No!” she protested when his hands clamped on her hips to hold her passive. “No!” and she moved sinuously, arching herself into him.

  He drew his breath on a ragged gasp and his control shattered. He reared over her. “Deirdre, oh Deirdre,” he groaned, his voice a whisper of apology and he drove into her. But she was beyond him, the ripples of sensual pleasure already convulsing her body. She dissolved against him, her nails compulsively raking his back, and he heard his name on her lips as his own cry of release tore from his throat.

  She became aware that his idly caressing hands had, by degrees, become purposeful, deliberately brushing against the pleasure pulses of her body. “No,” she said negligently, still savoring the gift of repleteness which his lovemaking always brought to her.

  “Yes,” he corrected uncompromisingly, and he swept his hands possessively over her nakedness. She caught them with her own and said on a laugh, “Gareth, it’s too soon.”

  His answer was to capture her lips, forcing them open, and the strength of his rising passion stirred her. She made a weak attempt to shake him off, but he held her fast, impervious to her halfhearted protests.

  When she determined the earnestness of his purpose, she thought to make him a gift of herself, to let him use her as he would for his own gratification, but the generous gesture was not to his liking. He wanted her breathless with desire, as he was, and he devoted himself to feeding her passion with unlimited patience and skill. When he heard her deep-drawn gasps as her lungs gulped in air, he rewarded her by giving her what her body now demanded.

  “Again?” he asked on a low laugh of masculine triumph.

  “Gareth,” she warned, and sighed with relief as he brought himself fully into her. “Again,” she pleaded, and locked her arms behind his neck, drawing his head down.

  But he had himself well in hand, and seemed to take a perverse pleasure in evading her shy attempts to bring him to climax. It forced her to a boldness which delighted him. Her hands caressed and teased and her softly murmured words of entreaty drove his passion to boiling point. When he finally allowed her lips to connect with his, he tasted the blaze of uninhibited desire on her moistly open mouth and his bridled ardor exploded through him.

  The aftermath almost became another prelude, but Deirdre was now sensitive to his mood swings, and she thwarted his intent by scrambling to her knees and warding him off with both hands. He had half moved to catch her and draw her back, but when he saw the determined light in her eyes, he sank back on his haunches, gave a regretful sigh, and resigned himself to what he knew must follow.

  She dressed quickly, keeping a wary eye on him as he reluctantly donned his own hastily discarded garments.

  “What happened to your hair?” he asked, mentioning her shorn locks for the first time, and his eyes darkened.

  She touched one hand guiltily to the wispy gold strands on her nape and shrugged off his black look. “I had it cut. But that’s not what I wish to speak to you about, so don’t try to turn the subject.”

  It occurred to her then that she could scarcely ring a peal over him when she had just allowed him to make passionate love to her. She bit her lip, wondering if he had contrived the whole thing for that very purpose. A quick look at the barely suppressed mockery lurking in the depths of his eyes confirmed her suspicion. He would, oh yes, he would!

  She surprised herself as much as him by her opening remark. “You didn’t even give me a chance to say ‘welcome home.’”

  The eyebrows shot up. “I have no complaint about my welcome home,” and a smile creased his face when he saw the blush come and go under her skin. He picked up a straw and ran his teeth over it, his eyes never leaving hers for an instant.

  “Oh, it’s no good taking you to task,” she said petulantly. “You have a plausible explanation for everything. But what you did to me was wrong. You used my fears for Armand to force me to your will.”

  He stretched out in a leisurely manner, and clasped his hands behind his head. “That was a mistake,” he said calmly, “an impulse that I regretted almost as soon as I indulged it. I’ve been in Intelligence work too long, I suppose, and find it hard not to carry the methods I use there into my private life. I beg your pardon.”

  Her expression was arrested. “You were in Intelligence work? You never said a word to me.”

  “That, my dear, is the nature of the game; cloak and dagger stuff. It was safer for you not to know, given the fact that my interest in you was common knowledge.”

  “What a whisker! It was your liaison with Mrs. Dewinters that was common knowledge, and don’t try to deny it!”

  He looked at her with amused indulgence. “Did I gammon you too? I confess that my bruised pride was soothed by your jealousy.” He saw the dangerous glitter in her eyes and his smile deepened. “Nevertheless, my fictionary affair with Maria was to throw sand in the eyes of the watching world and to protect you. I told you many times that there was nothing between us. You wouldn’t listen. Am I to be blamed for your lack of faith in me?”

  The man had an answer for everything. But Deirdre was determined to keep him in the wrong.

  “Was that fair to her?”

  He shrugged negligently. “Maria was one of our best agents. She understood the risks she was running. We’ve worked together before.”

  She sat looking at him in silence for some moments. He could almost hear her mind working as she absorbed this piece of information and reviewed his past iniquities one by one. He was not overly troubled. He had spent two months perfecting the responses he would make to every possible accusation she could come up with.

  “Why are you telling me this now?” she said finally.

  “Because now it is safe to tell you. Bonaparte is now far away on the island of St. Helena. In Brussels, with Napoleo
n and his cohorts practically on our doorstep, you were in danger. It was better for you to be in ignorance of my activities. Even now, you must treat what I have told you with the utmost confidence. Some people have long memories and carry a grudge. But I thought I owed you an explanation.”

  “Thank you, that is very generous of you,” she said scathingly, and he suppressed a smile.

  He watched in fascination as she chewed on her lower lip. He had taken the wind out of her sails and he could see that she was not best pleased by it.

  “Are you satisfied now, love?”

  “No! Everything is just too pat.” Her face brightened a little and instinct warned him to be cautious. “To get back to Armand,” she said in dulcet accents. “If you regretted the impulse to use him to blackmail me, as you say, why did you not tell me at once? Why did you let me go on thinking the worst?”

  “Because explanations would have taken time and led us into all kinds of difficulties. We had less than two hours together. I had better things to do with my time than quarrel with you about your brother. It was, for God’s sake, our wedding night.”

  “But to let me think that he would be safe, when all the time he was with you and—”

  “I know. I took the coward’s way out. But I couldn’t stop the boy, and I honestly did my best. I set O’Toole to guard him with his life. When Armand took a scratch, I put him in the infirmary. I thought I had done my duty. O’Toole was with him. He left him for an hour or so, and when he went back to check on him, Armand was gone. I didn’t know what to think. We heard after the battle that he had fallen on the field with a friend who went to help him. O’Toole and I looked for him all that night, but there were so many corpses, so many wounded. It was hopeless. Can you imagine what I went through thinking that I might have to face you with your brother’s death?”

  His eyes were very frank and his expression somber. That part of his story she had verified for herself. She shuddered, remembering the events of that day and the long night of terror.