by Rose Lerner
She would keep him going. “Ruthless,” he said, his misery fading to a dull background throb as he focused on plans and strategy. “That’s good. You’ll need that.”
She looked surprised. She was used to gentlefolk, who valued a smooth flow of conversation above everything, or else people who wanted something from her. She didn’t expect anyone to openly question her motives. That made her forget that they could still do it silently. It made her feel safer than she should. She would need training for this deception. But she had it in her.
“Does that mean you’ll do it?” she asked after a pause.
“Yes.”
She smiled. “Thank you.”
He hoped she would still want to thank him in six months.
Rapping on the partition, she directed the coachman to the vicarage. “I want us to be married in time to prepare for Christmas if possible. I’d prefer the banns to be read for the first time this Sunday. If the vicar writes to Cornwall at once, we can get the letter on this evening’s mail coach.”
“Why trouble with banns?” he asked, surprised. “You can afford a license. We needn’t rush, and you’ll do better with your brother if you wait and ask his permission.”
She drew herself up. “I am a Reeve of Wheatcroft. We belong to Lively St. Lemeston. Our banns are read in St. Leonard’s Church and we are married there.” She deflated a little. “I suppose you’re right that I should ask Jamie’s permission, but I don’t think I could make that convincing.”
Well, it was she who stood to lose, and her risk to run. “We’ll need to discuss terms more carefully. And I think you might need a few acting lessons. If I come to your house tomorrow, might we speak privately?”
She raised her fine eyebrows at him. “We’re engaged to one another. Naturally we may dispense with a chaperone now and then.”
She had asked him for no assurances of any kind. She had trusted his yes, when he said he would stay for six months after he had his money in hand. Now she was trusting him with her reputation. He meant to play fair with her, but she had no way of knowing that. There was a streak of recklessness in her indeed.
He wanted her. He couldn’t resist anymore.
He leaned forward, bringing their faces closer together. “I don’t want to make unjust assumptions. You’ve said you can trust me not to expect anything, and that’s true. I promise our bargain shall go forward however you answer. In the six months we live together, do you intend us to…” He searched for a polite way to say it. “To have carnal knowledge of each other?” He knew it sounded ridiculous, but it was unambiguous, and if she meant there to be nothing of the kind, he needed to know now.
She didn’t laugh. Her brown eyes searched his face as if she expected to find something. She made him feel as if maybe she could, when he knew there was nothing on his face he didn’t want there. “I don’t consider that part of the bargain,” she said at last, leaning back against the cushions. Without the light directly on her face, he couldn’t tell if she was blushing, but her voice was a little too nonchalant. To an unmarried gentlewoman, this must be unimaginable boldness. “I hope we will neither of us feel entitled to expect it. But I don’t see that there would be any harm in it, if we found at some point that we both wished it. We will, after all, be married.”
He felt, actually, a little relieved that there was to be no set understanding. A thing like that developed best naturally, sure as a wild rose was prettier than a cultivated one. Besides, he’d got used to celibacy. He’d fumble and look unsure, and that had come to mean danger to him. It wasn’t as if he could practice on his own before a performance was required, like billiards or tying a cravat. Yet he said, “And now? If I should want, by way of example, to kiss you—I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I want to clearly establish the rules.”
She bit her lip. “So long as you accept a refusal gracefully, I won’t mind if you ask. I think I may trust you to…”
“Be a gentleman?” he suggested, amused.
“It’s not a good word, is it? I haven’t found that gentlemen take a refusal better than anyone else. Let us say that I believe you will not offer me disrespect or cruelty or—or force. Will you believe the same of me?”
She wouldn’t have asked a gentleman that, he thought with a touch of sourness. But it wasn’t her fault she was richer than him, or that she could probably turn this town into a howling mob with a snap of her fingers if the fancy took her. Plenty of women in her position would have assumed they’d bought whatever they liked. He wouldn’t even have minded. He wanted her, and besides, what was sex compared to the six months of marriage he’d already promised her? It was pleasant, really, to be asked.
She had a lawyerly mind behind that Tudor-portrait face. She understood everything should be laid out separately and clearly, with no room for misunderstanding. He wondered what she’d be like in his arms. Like a wildfire? Methodical? He hoped for both at once. “I trust you,” he told her.
“Thank you.” She licked her full lower lip. “Do you—do you wish to kiss me?”
“I do, yes.” Saying it without urgency, so as not to frighten her, was more difficult than it should have been. He was half-hard already.
Her lips parted and her eyes unfocused. Then she moved to sit beside him, sliding his hat out of the way with a jerky movement. “I—yes. Let’s.”
Chapter Ten
Ash twisted round in his seat to kiss her. She tasted like tea and roses and human warmth, but it wasn’t enough. He hauled her into his lap and yes, that was it, that was what he wanted, to have her curled against him. Now it felt real. Her hip pressed against his cock, and the chill under his skin faded. His hands felt hot again as he gripped her waist.
He held her snug against him and kissed her while he explored, tracing the bones of her stays up her side and following the edge of the corset with his fingers to where it cupped her breasts. He dragged his thumb hard along the busk, down her front to her belly. She broke off the kiss to brush her cheek against his, making a tiny satisfied sound in the back of her throat, so light and sweet his heart contracted.
He knew, distantly, that he was unhappy. He focused on this instead, on her hunger and how he could satisfy it. He knew they must be almost to the vicarage but if he just had time to give her this, if he could just feel her shudder in his arms, if he could just accomplish this one small thing—he cupped her cunt through her skirts. She went absolutely rigid, and he thought that if she pulled away he might not be able to hold in his tears.
There was a long moment, and then she spread her legs and pushed up into his hand. He made a sound that was barely human and pressed his mouth to her throat, rubbing his hand against her. Even through all that expensive cloth, he could feel the yielding of her soft flesh, and the bone beneath. She urged him on with her hips and made not a sound except for her desperate breaths. Her skin was soft and sweet and hot, and she quivered against his mouth, straining. Every movement she made rubbed his cock. With his whole soul he willed her to spend, if he could, if she could, please.
She put a hand up to his head. She must have noticed that his ear was cold, because she pressed her warm palm flat around it. There was a sharp pain in his chest—
The carriage jolted to a stop. They both froze, and then she whisked herself back to her own seat. Ash felt as if he were made of lead.
“Oh, damn,” she said quietly. Her mouth trembled and curved up, and then she laughed, straightening her clothing and putting on her bonnet. “You have rose lip salve on your mouth. Hopefully only on your mouth, it’s too dark in here to be sure.”
He laughed back, but underneath he felt terribly exposed and didn’t know why. He pulled out his handkerchief and rubbed at his mouth. Looking down, he saw he had taken out his mother’s handkerchief by mistake. He had forgotten he had it. It was supposed to be in Rafe’s pocket. He couldn’t do this.
Yes. He could.<
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He tucked the handkerchief away, buttoned his greatcoat over his erection, and inhaled and exhaled slowly. He could smell her in the close air. That was good; it distracted him. “We have to look happy,” he told her. “It isn’t enough to smile. You have to be happy.”
Six months of her. He could manage to feel happy about that.
She blinked, and the door to the carriage opened. He leapt out and swung her down. She stumbled, crushing his toe with her patten, but she tilted up her chin and beamed at the coachman, a blinding victorious grin. The coachman’s smudged lantern turned her skin a dark gold and made the red in her hair seem a trick of the light. “Congratulate me, Gideon. I’m getting married!”
Lydia was painfully aware that despite a good start, her performance last night at the vicarage would not have won accolades upon the stage. In the face of the vicar’s stares and dismay, she’d grown nervous and a little panicked, and been unable to do anything but assert that she was long since of age, that there was no impediment, and that that must be the end of it. She had felt sick and guilty at deceiving him; he had baptized her, for Heaven’s sake!
She would have to do better now. “I have something to tell you, Aunt.”
Aunt Packham raised her eyes from her tatting. “What is it, dear?”
“Mr. Cahill has asked me to marry him.”
Aunt Packham blinked. “Which one?”
Lydia calmed the tense fluttering in her chest. To her surprise, when it was gone she was able to laugh. “Mr. Ralph is a little young for me, surely!” Although really, she’d believed Mr. Cahill’s lie that she and Mr. Ralph were of an age. It was only that she hadn’t been able to stop thinking of him as a little brother.
Aunt Packham looked amused. “At my age, it’s hard to understand all that fuss about a few years. The elder Mr. Cahill, then. I thought he liked you.”
Lydia smiled, thinking how annoyed Mr. Cahill—he had instructed her to continue to think of him under that name—would be by that.
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him yes.”
Aunt Packham’s needlework fell forgotten into her lap. “You did? Oh, my dear!” She stood, opening her arms for a hug, and stepped on her needlework. She fumbled, trying to pick it up and unable to see through the tears misting her eyes. “I wish you all the joy in the world, darling.” Straightening, she gave Lydia the hug, a kiss on the forehead, and a kind of soft back-rub that meant she was overflowing with emotion and that Lydia had always disliked on account of being ticklish. “When do you mean to be married?”
“Before Christmas.” Lydia kept still for the back-rub with an effort. “The banns are to be read for the first time on Sunday morning.”
“Oh! That’s a little soon, surely?”
“I don’t want to wait. I want—” She blushed, realizing that anything she said would sound as if she were eager for the marriage bed. “That is to say—it would be nice to spend Christmas in my own establishment.”
Aunt Packham’s eyebrows went up. “Well, if you’re sure—oh, my dear, you’re going to be so happy.” She gave Lydia another hug, beaming.
Lydia was ashamed of her own emotion as she hugged her aunt back; it rose in her throat quite as if this moment were real.
“Oh, if only your father could be here!” Aunt Packham said. “I had almost given up hope that you would find someone, but he never did. He wanted so much to see you settled and happy.”
Lydia began to cry, and, incredibly, her longing for her father to be at her wedding felt real too. She had to remind herself that she wouldn’t be getting married at all, if her father were here. This whole desperate undertaking was only necessary because he was gone. She was seized by fear that the anticipation fizzing like champagne in her stomach at knowing she’d see Mr. Cahill soon was the same as being glad her father was dead.
She tried to think what Mr. Cahill would say to that. He’d have something, even if she didn’t know what, and somehow that comforted her enough that she was able to stop the tears with a horrible sniffling sound. Blowing her nose, she said, “I know Jamie will want you to stay on as his hostess.”
Aunt Packham’s smile wobbled. “You children are too good to me.”
Lydia thought how galling it must be for Aunt Packham to have to defer to a woman half her age, simply because Lydia was rich and she was poor. She’d thought of it before, of course; the misfortune of poor relations was hardly a new idea. But for the first time it didn’t seem a sad necessity, as unavoidable as the weather, but an active injustice. She remembered Mr. Cahill’s flash of resentment in the workhouse: Isn’t it God’s plan?
“Not as good as you deserve,” she said at last, quite truthfully, and submitted to another back-rub. “I—I must write to Jamie.”
“He will be so happy for you. Oh, you look so happy, my dear! I don’t know how I missed the signs, it’s clear on your face that you’re in love.”
Aunt Packham was always claiming to be able to read things in Lydia’s face that were not there at all. I can tell your headache is better when it was worse, I can see you’re hungry when Lydia had just eaten, Poor girl, you look wretched when an unpleasantly insinuating neighbor finally went off to London to practice law. Lydia was deeply thankful for such a forgiving audience. She had no idea what to tell Jamie, who was more perceptive and who had to sign the settlement.
Dearest James, she wrote, and waited for inspiration. She had been waiting a quarter of an hour when, with relief, she heard hoofbeats on the drive, and was given Mr. Gilchrist’s calling card.
“May I ask how you do?” the young man asked once he was settled in a chair with a cup of tea in his hand. “I heard Mr. Ralph Cahill has left town.”
He said it with a significant air and a piercing look of sympathy, as if he imagined she had sent Mr. Ralph about his business and was now nursing a broken heart. She was touched by his concern and amused by how far he was from the truth. The two things combined to make a very convincing smile. “I am better than I have been, thank you, Mr. Gilchrist. I am—I have news, if you have no pressing business.” Aunt Packham quivered in her chair with excitement, but kept her eyes on her tatting.
Mr. Gilchrist’s eyes brightened, and he leaned forward in his chair like a little bloodhound, which his strong resemblance to a fox made especially comical. “None at all.”
“I hope I can trust you not to gossip,” she said severely.
His face clouded. “I’ve learnt my lesson. I assure you, my lapse was entirely out of character. I have kept worse secrets better.”
Really, he was only very young. At his age she hadn’t always remembered to guard her tongue, either, and in this instance, his slip had helped her enormously. But irrepressible Mr. Gilchrist needed occasional repressing, so she waited a few moments to give his regret time to sink in. “I am to be married.”
There was a long silence. “I wish you joy, of course, but—to whom?”
“The elder Mr. Cahill.”
“A charming young man,” Aunt Packham said. “I am very fond of him already.” Lydia was seized with a wave of affection for her aunt.
Mr. Gilchrist stared. “But…after what I have told you…”
It would be tricky to carry this off. “I spoke to Mr. Cahill about what you told me. You were right; he brought his brother up from Cornwall as a result, in the hopes we should suit. But you cannot blame him for his pragmatism. I—ordinarily I wouldn’t confide in you so far. It is none of your affair. But since you already know so much, I will tell you that he’s agreed to take only the smallest percentage of my money, to set his brother up in the army. The rest will be entirely mine. There is no question of fortune-hunting, and I hope very much you will not embarrass me or my future husband by implying otherwise in the town.”
Aunt Packham had listened to this speech with a deepening frown. “Certainly not! If you spoke to you
r own wife more than five times before marrying her, Mr. Gilchrist, it is more than I’m aware of.”
Mr. Gilchrist flushed bright red. “People in glass houses, eh?” he said with a laugh that didn’t come off. “This wretched tongue of mine. I’d give it a tongue-lashing if I could do so without its cooperation.”
She could see from his expression that he had thought of something coarse to say on the subject of tongue-lashings, but after several firm setdowns early in their acquaintance, he knew better than to say it in her hearing. Having wrestled with his demons and won, he told her with evident sincerity, “I hope you will be very happy, Miss Reeve. No one could deserve it more.”
“Thank you. If Mr. Cahill makes me half as happy as I hear you’re making Mrs. Gilchrist, I shall consider myself lucky.” Mrs. Gilchrist, though one of the prettiest girls in town, had always had rather an anxious air about her. Lydia had caught sight of her the other day, and while the anxiety lingered, it was suffused by a gentle, beaming glow.
He grinned, equilibrium recovered. “I could give him pointers, if you like.” There was a slight pause, which she suspected he’d have liked to fill with a wink. “Do you mean to remove to Cornwall after your marriage?”
Lydia smiled, flattered by his ill-concealed dismay at the prospect. “Mr. Cahill has led a wandering sort of life and has no objection to settling here. Other than removing to the Dower House, I imagine I shall go on very much as I have.”
Mr. Gilchrist lit up with relief. “I am very glad to hear that, madam. It is a pleasure working with you, and not only because of your extraordinary personal beauty.”
Lydia laughed, trying not to think about how soon his salary would come due. “Thank you, Mr. Gilchrist. On that note, let us work.”
They spent the next half-hour discussing the recent parish vestry meeting, the petition being got up by the local Whigs asking their MPs to sponsor a Police Act for the borough, Lady Tassell’s imminent arrival in the district, and half a dozen requests for favors and small loans. It was all so familiar that Lydia could almost imagine that her father was away in London for the opening of the new Parliament, and that his account of the day’s work might be expected in tomorrow’s mail.