How he’d kept a straight face at that pronouncement, Phillip wasn’t sure and he’d had to nudge Belinda to school her features into sombreness. Her eyes twinkled and he was sure his own eyes mirrored them. The dear vicar had a way with words that didn’t encourage sobriety.
As they left the lane and entered the grounds of Clinderford House, Belinda sighed and looked up at him. ‘That was so lovely. I have to thank you for my posy. Your choice of flowers was inspired.’ She lifted the bouquet to her nose and inhaled deeply. ‘Roses, I love them.’
‘I’d like to say thank you and take all the praise, but Lady L hinted what would suit. Also, I warn you, she chose our wedding breakfast. I do believe it is composed of most of our favourites: pigeon pie, and venison, figgy pudding and lemon posset, amongst other things. Clarissa’s housekeeper has spent all morning baking and preparing the feast for us.’
‘Then we better do it justice,’ Belinda said. ‘Though I’m so excited and well…’ she blushed ‘…I’m not sure to do what I hope we’ll do is best on a full or empty stomach.’
Phillip stopped walking and stared at her. The others walked on, either unknowing or pretending they hadn’t noticed the bridal couple standing still.
‘Not… oh, ma belle, I do so love your ideas. Food for the body now, and food for the soul later. You need to keep your strength up. You’ll expend a lot of energy later.’
Belinda punched his shoulder. ‘Phillip.’
He roared with laughter. ‘It’s true. Wait and see.’
‘How long must I wait?’
‘Until we can safely slip away. After we’ve eaten and had our good heath toasted. A few hours.’
‘A few hours? It will still be daylight.’
‘So it will. All the better to see you then.’
Belinda hid her face on his sleeve. ‘But they’ll know…’ she mumbled. ‘How embarrassing.’
‘We can wait until it’s dark if you want. Sit in the salon and make conversation and have the others wonder if we have cold feet. Or intend to lead separate lives.’ He nudged Belinda to encourage her to walk onwards.
‘Well don’t we?’ Was that not what a complaisant wife did?
‘Belinda, watch my lips. No, we do not. Not now, not ever.’
She looked up at him and bit her lip. ‘I said I’d be a complaisant wife.’
‘Yes you did, didn’t you? I wonder though, if you actually know what that means?’
‘Well of course. That I wouldn’t stand in your way when you decide to continue with the sort of things you want…need…oh you know. Carry on with your rakish ways.’ Her cheeks were the colour of Clarissa’s gown and the roses they carried. ‘Well, as long as you don’t expect me to dress your mistresses any more.’
‘Oh that is not on the cards. Nor are mistresses. I’ll have no need of a mistress when I have a complaisant wife. You see, ma belle, you only have one very small part of complaisant correct. The rest is as follows.’ He stopped as they reached the gate, which led into the walled garden. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Well of course, but you’ve lost me, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh no, ma belle, on the contrary, I’ve found you. You see complaisant is…’ He took a deep breath and nudged her chin upward so she stared straight into his eyes. ‘Willing, acquiescent, agreeable, amenable, cooperative, accommodating, obliging, biddable, compliant, docile, obedient. Can you give me all of those?’
Chapter Twelve
Have I heard aright? It is what?
‘Probably not,’ Belinda said honestly. ‘Well, definitely not some of them. I’ve never been said to be docile, for one thing, and as for biddable and obedient?’ She rolled her eyes and Phillip laughed.
‘I did think you hadn’t researched your answer with enough thoroughness. However, even one or two of them could be interesting. Ma belle, shall we call a truce? Start again, and work out what we both want and need in a marriage?’
Could she? Why not?
‘Why not? Now?’
‘I think we’ll need to wait a while. It seems the rest of the wedding party are getting impatient.’ He let go of her chin and inclined his head towards the house where the others stood, patiently waiting. ‘Let’s go and do the things we must with them, and then…’ he winked ‘…we can go and do the things we must without them.’ He laughed as Belinda put her hands to her heated cheeks.
‘Phil-lip.’
‘Ma belle?’
‘I have to go and be polite with that thought in my mind. My cheeks are red, my body heated and my mind… Well, it’s full of things I have no idea about and well…’ She let her voice trail off. ‘I’m not in the right frame of mind to do what’s necessary.’
‘Now? Or later? The first is nothing—they’ll just think you’re a blushing bride. The second? Follow my lead.’
Belinda choked and Phillip patted her on the back. Was he a bit too vigorous? She spluttered. ‘Enough now, I just need water, not knocking to my knees.’
He dragged her towards the others.
Clarissa looked at Belinda in consternation. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘She swallowed a fly,’ Phillip said without a blink or a blush. ‘Needs water, and then food. Flies don’t have a lot of sustenance in them.’
‘Hmm. I suppose you were using your skill at innuendos again. Ignore him, Bel, or he’ll never stop.’
Belinda rolled her eyes. Clarissa and Phillip took great delight in teasing each other, but at this moment she wished they would spare her and get her some water.
Ben seemed to realise it, because he tapped his wife on the rear. ‘Enough. Let’s go in and get Belinda the water she needs and then eat. After that we can all relax in whatever way we wish. You and I are going for a walk. A long one.’
‘We are?’ Clarissa said, startled. Phillip laughed as Ben bowed to his wife.
‘I thought towards the folly.’
Clarissa’s cheeks reddened even more than Belinda’s as she gasped, swallowed and giggled.
Belinda swallowed her grin, as Lady L cackled and Lacey hid her grin behind her hand and a very forced cough.
Ben smirked, and Belinda wondered if they had all gone mad or whether it was just marriage that had addled her brains and made her assume that.
‘Food.’ Lady L barked the word. ‘Now, or we’ll end up here bandying quips all day, and I for one am too old for that sort of lark. Phillip, take your bride and lead the way.’
He bowed and held his arm out to Belinda. ‘My dear, shall we?’
She curtsied, very correctly. ‘It will be my pleasure my lord.’
An hour later, Belinda watched as Lady L and Lacey stood up and both yawned very obviously.
‘Time we left,’ Lady L said. ‘We’ll nap in the carriage. It would be best if we aren’t away from Sinton too long. It’s a better place to find out what’s occurring in the world of the ton. No, don’t get up either of you. Well not for us. We’ll see you back in town when it’s viable. For now though, if we have information you need, I’ll send young Martin with it.’
‘We’ll be back in town in a few days,’ Phillip said.
It was the first Belinda had heard of this and her heart dropped. Why?
‘Taking the offensive, Phillip?’ Lady L asked shrewdly.
He nodded. ‘Oh yes. Taking it to where I can control it best.’
‘Sensible. Then we’ll see you there next week.’ Lady L dropped kisses on everyone’s cheek and shepherded Lacey out.
Ben stood up and looked at his wife. She scrambled up after him and giggled.
‘It seems I’m to be taken on a tour of discovery. Of my grounds. Er, I’m sure you can entertain yourselves until we get back.’ Clarissa yelped as Ben tugged her arm and hauled her away from the table and out of the room. ‘Enjoy yourselves…ooft. Be…en…’
Phillip shook his head in mock sorrow. ‘Ever the hoyden. Now, ma belle, if we sit and chat for long enough to let Lady L’s carriage be brought around, so they leave, and let Ben and Clariss
a make their getaway across the lawns, I know someone else who is about to be taken on a tour of discovery,’ he said softly. ‘In some ways quite similar, in others not at all. Shall we, ma belle?’
There was a clatter from outside the front of the houses, voices raised and chatter heard, and then the noise gradually died away to silence.
He stood and bowed over Belinda’s hand, before he kissed the palm and curled her fingers over the spot as he was wont to do.
Belinda swallowed, and tried to ignore the butterflies that danced in her tummy. This is it—at last.
‘I, er, yes. If we can?’ Lud, how pathetic. However, she was loath to go upstairs and let all the household know what was about to happen.
‘Oh we can. Let’s go this way.’ Phillip took her hand in his and led the way to the floor-to-ceiling windows, which opened onto the terrace. ‘If we go through here and head around the lawn and through the rose garden to the stables, there is less likelihood of being spotted.’
Belinda blinked. The stables? Not to a bedroom? ‘In my wedding gown?’
‘If you don’t mind. I’ll take it off so it doesn’t get spoiled, of course.’
Her muscles clenched as she thought of all the likely, and unlikely scenarios that might soon happen. Her skin heated and her mouth went dry. ‘The stables? Why?’ Surely they weren’t going to make love on the back of a horse? Not for the first time. That thought made her want to giggle. On a horse? Was it possible? That was not something she was prepared to enquire about, not yet, but the images it put in her mind were more than intriguing.
‘Wait and see.’
Wait and see what? Oh Lord, I wasn’t paying attention. Nevertheless, what else could she do? ‘Lead on.’
Belinda admitted to herself that she was ready to do almost anything that would help her be his. ‘Where are we, er…’ She waved her free hand in the air. Seriously, it was getting ridiculous. Er, um and ah seemed to be the bulk of her vocabulary. ‘Going.’ She finished, not able to actually say bedding, or making love or even spending the next however long together.
‘Like I said, wait and see.’ Phillip walked swiftly towards the stable yard. ‘It won’t take us long.’ He began to whistle.
Belinda could have said something scathing—if only she had any breath to spare. At the pace Phillip was going she had to almost run to keep up. How could he keep up such a fast pace and whistle at the same time?
He cut straight across the cobbles and headed towards the barn at the other side of the stable buildings. Set a few hundred yards away, it was, Belinda thought, if her memory served her right, used for…
Storing hay.
The yard was tidy and empty and the few horses with their heads over the half doors seemed to doze in the mid-afternoon air, creating a somnambulant atmosphere. Above a skylark sang and a few bees bumbled around the rambling roses that grew up the sides of the walls. The steady drip of water from the pump into a horse trough was loud in the otherwise silent yard.
If she was fanciful, Belinda could have said the air was waiting for something special to happen. As she tried not to be, she decided it was just a perfect summer afternoon.
‘Where is everyone?’
Phillip grinned as he eased open the door to the hay barn and pulled Belinda in behind him. It was swept smooth with little in the way of goods or grain to show what the building was used for. ‘They have the day off to celebrate our wedding, and are banned from here until evening feed time. I thought it fitting we end one era and start the next in a place like this. There’s even a ladder at the ready.’ He indicated the sturdy ladder with its thick wooden rungs that leaned against the opening, which led to the loft. ‘After you.’
Belinda sniggered. He had such imaginative and excellent ideas. ‘You just want to see my ankles again.’
‘True. And the rest of you. Which before many minutes I intend to. Up you go.’ Phillip patted her bottom, and she swore for one brief second his fingers clenched the flesh. Even over her skirts it was arousing, exciting and made her all the more eager for what she hoped was to follow.
With a cheeky look at him over her shoulder, Belinda made her way to the ladder. She lifted the hem of her gown—her now less than pristine ivory gown—up a few inches, waggled her sandal-clad foot in a circle and placed it carefully on the bottom rung. Not only to tease him, but also to enable her to climb the ladder without tripping and ending up at the bottom, on her arse. That would be ignominy in all its glory.
‘It can go even higher now.’ Phillip stood by the door and watched her every movement. ‘Now we are wed, it is perfectly acceptable.’ The ‘I dare you’ was in his voice even if he left it unsaid.
‘To show my knees in public?’ Belinda edged her skirt up to just above her knees, but below her garters. Some things were better hinted at. ‘Surely not?’
‘But, ma belle, this is not public. This is for your husband’s eyes only, and he likes what he sees so far.’
His voice was silky. As smooth as her morning chocolate tinged with spice. It rolled over and around her, like a warm, arousing cloud of desire. Belinda gulped and let her instincts take over. She ran her tongue around her lips and watched as he straightened and his pego stood out long and hard against the fine material of his trousers.
‘You mean you would like more?’ Belinda grasped the silk in her hand and waved it around a little. It wasn’t easy as she still used one hand to steady herself on the ladder. ‘Well, I think…oops.’ She wobbled and so did the ladder. Phillip slammed the door shut and ran across the barn to take hold of her and the ladder even before she realised how precarious her perch was. With her skirts in one hand, gathered tight round her lower legs, she held on to the sides of the ladder for grim death with the other.
‘Silly woman, you nigh on scared the life out of me. Do you want to kill yourself?’ Phillip pressed tiny kisses up Belinda’s leg. ‘The only death you need is the little one, and God willing and my wife agreeable, that will follow very soon.’
Belinda looked down on him. In the gloaming his teeth were white and his eyes twinkled as he stared at her.
‘Well if it does you better not be scared to death then, as you are the only one I want to give it to me.’
She saw the flash of his teeth in the half-light as he grinned at her. ‘Thank the Lord for that. Now, shall we go upward before thunder and lightning decide to get in on our act?’
It was getting gloomier by the minute. Without the slight illumination that reached the ground floor from upstairs it would be too dark to see what she was doing. ‘Ah yes.’
‘Then one rung at a time. Let me hold your skirts.’
Belinda laughed shakily. ‘So you can lift them higher?’ She went up two rungs and paused to let Phillip catch her up.
‘Good idea, but that wasn’t in my mind. I want us to get there in one piece. However…’
A little more of her legs felt a soft breeze on them. She fought and won not to look down and see exactly what was on show. After all she could do nothing to assist or hinder him, not when she was halfway up a ladder, which needed careful negotiating.
‘What have we here?’ Phillip’s voice was almost a purr. ‘Very nice. Garters, silk ribbon ones. What a delight. I’ll enjoy playing with them…later.’
What was it Clarissa said? Oh yes, silk ribbons have a multitude of roles to play in a loving relationship. Was she about to discover what they were?
‘Up you go, one, two, three.’ Phillip’s hand on her foot almost upended her again, but Belinda held on and slowly reached the top of the ladder and scrambled into the loft of the barn.
She looked around with interest as Phillip followed her.
The door where hay would be tossed down was ajar and the deep, clean, sweet-smelling sheaves were neatly piled into bales. Except for one area to one side of the open aperture, where something resembling a bed had been created. Along with, she noted with a nervous giggle, a sheet, a pillow and a folded blanket.
To one side
, in a space cleared of anything that could upset it, was a bottle of champagne wrapped in cloths and buried under the last remnants of cubes of ice, glasses, and a platter of fruit and cheese.
Belinda stared at it and her body tingled with love and desire. ‘You arranged this earlier?’
Phillip inclined his head. ‘No one else knows, I promise. I brought this out and did what I felt was needed early this morning. All that Ben knows is to keep Clarissa well away. I believe they’re off to create some memories of their own. I thought we needed special memories to start our life together. Ones that will wipe out Repellent Rosemary and make up for an afternoon in a rhododendron bush.’
Belinda giggled. ‘More than. It will even make up for my scar.’ As if on cue the scar throbbed and she licked and sucked the area. ‘Mind you, Rosemary apart, that afternoon made me aware of someone I thought may well become important in my life, if I ever let him, of course.’
Phillip moved her hand away from her mouth and replaced it with his. The soft rasp of his tongue teased her skin, and her muff as well as her hand became damp. She pressed her legs together. If something so innocent set off those tingles and shivers, how would she cope if he touched her again as he had yesterday?
He lifted his head. ‘Now let me see if I can help you out of this beautiful dress. After all, I sneaked a sheet and pillow in here, so no errant stalk would stake its claim on your soft skin, and thus let you stretch our for me, without crushing your gown. It would be a pity to spoil it. I’ve spent the last few hours fantasising about how I’m going to do this.’ Phillip reached for the ribbons that criss-crossed her breast and untied them slowly. He let them slide through the circles of silk that held them in place until the bodice gaped and showed the soft swell of her bosoms.
‘Such perfection. It can be increased by this though I think.’ Unhurriedly, reverently, he stroked the soft swell of her breasts and further pushed aside the ivory silk that mimicked the colour of her flesh.
The Rake's Unveiling of Lady Belle Page 19