A Lady's Formula for Love

by Elizabeth Everett

  Bunches of dried flowers and herbs hung alongside three large cabinets full of glass jars and bottles, and the scent of mint and sage hovered in the air. The sole light filtered through faded crimson curtains covering a bank of high windows.

  “Johnson appears to have a sensitivity to something in here,” Violet said. “I know you always want a guard with me, but if you wait . . .” She scratched out something and then sucked the end of her pen.

  Her manner could be interpreted as absentminded or naive, but Arthur knew that Violet walked in two worlds at once: the world in which everyone else lived and the world within her mind, where myriad connections were made every second.

  While Arthur waited for her to return to him, he examined a series of spigots and pipes overhanging the basin.

  He would miss this place. Each time he turned around, a fascinating discovery sat waiting for him. If he were a different man or if this were a different time . . .

  “My work has been progressing much faster than I’d anticipated,” Violet said.

  Arthur nodded, spinning a knob to let a flow of water rush past. So he would be leaving sooner than he’d expected. What was he to say?

  “That is good news.”

  She set aside her pen and gave him her full attention. “However, I’ve reached a point in the work where I can’t progress. I’m wondering if you could help me.”

  He stooped to examine her papers. A trail of numbers and symbols lurched across the page, devolving into a mess of scratches and naughty words scribbled in the margins.

  “I’m not sure how I can help you, other than mentioning that this part here . . .” He pointed to a word. “This is anatomically impossible.”

  “I had something less challenging in mind.” She swallowed, turning to the basin of water and washing the ink from her hands. Peeking at him, she continued. “It became apparent from our mutual enjoyment the other night that you and I are physically compatible.”

  Arthur raised a brow at this massive understatement. Unless compatible had another definition. Explosive, perhaps.

  She continued. “Sometimes, when I reach a block in my work, vigorous activity will help.”

  “Vigorous activity,” he repeated.

  “Extremely vigorous. In the interest of science, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  He should make this easier for her, but he admired the darkening color on her cheeks.

  The tiny smile slipped away from the corner of her mouth.

  “I remember you saying you did not want a child,” she said. “I never conceived a child with Daniel. It doesn’t mean, however, that pregnancy is out of the question.”

  The urge to tease her melted beneath the wave of sadness swirling around her. Instead, he placed a palm on her shoulder, and she tipped her head to rest her cheek on the back of his hand. For a moment, he forgot to breathe.

  Violet gestured to a glass bowl filled halfway with a clear, citrus-smelling liquid. “There are many ways to prevent conception. A few of our members—” She paused. “You must keep this a secret,” she pleaded. “We could get into serious trouble if anyone found out the ladies are refining methods to control a woman’s fertility.”

  Arthur gave her a nod of encouragement. “I would never say anything.”

  They stood so close their sleeves brushed. A ghost of pleasure from their night together rose beneath his skin.

  Curious, he nudged the bowl with a finger, and the contents swayed back and forth. At the bottom of the bowl lay a sea sponge, whittled to a tiny sphere, inside a finely netted bag, with the ends in a loop made of silken thread.

  He thought he knew what it was, but a strange idea occurred to him.

  “Do you drink this?” he asked.

  “Oh, no. The sponge soaks up the liquid,” she explained. “You can use vinegar, but this particular liquid contains a distillation of quinine.”

  “The malaria cure?” He knew about sheaths, of course, but hadn’t much experience with any other type of conception prevention.

  “One inserts the sponge in through the woman’s vagina until it is flush against the womb. It acts as a barrier. Afterward, you remove the sponge by pulling on the loop.”

  Arthur frowned. “Will this interfere with your enjoyment if we make love again?”

  Make love.

  The words had popped out unplanned.

  “No,” she said. “If anything it may enhance it for both of us if we do not have to worry.”

  With that, the final leash on his self-control was lifted and questions of right or wrong fell away. He tried, one last time, to hold on to sanity.

  “There is nothing prudent about this,” Arthur said. “I leave in a matter of days. You cannot risk the scandal if this affair is discovered, Violet.”

  He was speaking to himself, too.

  “We will be careful. We can keep secrets,” she said.

  He took her in his arms from behind, and her shawl slipped to her ankles. Trapping her in his embrace, he covered the tiny knobs at the top of her spine with his mouth. Unhooking the back of her dress, he traced the outline of her bones with the tip of his tongue. She tasted like a warm summer night in Brest, like salt and starlight and the knowledge that home lay so close and yet so far away.

  “Keep secrets? Oh, no,” he whispered, lips still pressed to her flesh. “Why keep secret how much I liked the feeling of your mouth on my cock, the way you moved beneath me, and how much I want to be inside you.”

  The shush of her dress sliding to the floor produced a counterpoint to the rhythm of their breathing. Violet trembled as he pulled the ties of her petticoats loose. A cascade of ivory cotton puddled at her feet.

  “What if someone . . . ?” she said.

  “I locked the door. We are safe.”

  “We are not safe,” she disagreed. “The way you touch me. I will come to crave it. The things you say. I will come to believe you, Arthur. That is dangerous.”

  What could he say to this? He kissed her again in answer to her fears as he pulled the pins from her thick, heavy curls, freeing them from the tiny metal prisons. He’d dreamed about Violet’s unbound hair since their first night together. Roamed the hallways in search of its bright, clean scent. Now, masses of it were loose in his hands, and he memorized the texture.

  Her wild tresses created a frame for Violet’s face, and a younger, hopeful woman peered out at him. Sympathy for the person she’d been as a bride swelled within him. If he went back in time, what could he have said to eighteen-year-old Violet? What would he have told the eighteen-year-old Arthur, come to think of it?

  Don’t love? Don’t invest your heart in something destined to bring you pain?

  Their younger selves would never have listened.

  Her dark brown eyes, her fairy pools, remained fixed on him as he took his leisure in appreciating her beauty.

  “I agree this is dangerous,” he said, tracing the line of her jaw to the arc of her neck with his thumb. “The silk of your skin might be fatal.”

  The straps of her worn chemise slipped from her shoulders to her elbows. The thin material hung on her full breasts for a moment before he pulled it off, and her nipples hardened. Angry red lines streaked across her breasts and ribs, marks from the corset boning.

  He bent and soothed the welts with his tongue, growing harder each time she gasped in pleasure.

  “The sweetness of your breasts could prove lethal,” he teased.

  Picking her up, he turned them both around, and Violet wrapped her legs around his hips. He walked them to a low table, set her on the edge, then fetched the glass bowl, placing it to one side of her.

  It should have been him with the power in the room. He stood fully dressed and carrying a dagger or two on his person. She wore nothing but a transparent pair of drawers and her stockings, her house slippers hav
ing fallen off.

  Instead, Violet took command of the encounter. Reclining onto her elbows, she arched her back, grinning with a pride in her appearance he’d never seen in her before. In the crimson light, the edges in the room blurred. Lambent with desire, she shook her hair and spread her legs wider.

  Arthur set the tiny sponge to her tender flesh. She yelped in surprise, coming off the table and grabbing his arms. Pulling her into a kiss, he licked the giggles from her lips, holding her tight against him with one hand while the other brushed the sponge lightly over her entrance. As their kisses grew deeper and more heated, he pressed his thumb against the center of her in a gentle rhythm.

  In between kisses, she directed him, praising him with enthusiasm as he worked his thumb in circles. The slit in her drawers teased him with glimpses of her, and he pulled away to watch his fingers disappearing inside.

  “You are beautiful,” he rasped, hands shaking with need. “No, not beautiful. There isn’t another word that comes into my tiny male brain at this moment to describe you. It might be grace that sets you apart from any other woman I’ve encountered,” he declared. “Grace and, of course, the most astonishing brain in England.”

  Head tilting in flirtation, Violet reached for his coat and pulled him between her spread legs. “I’d have never guessed, from the way you hauled me about on the first night we met, how silver-tongued a charmer you could be, Arthur Kneland.”

  In all his years of watching men and women perform terrible acts of cruelty and ignorance, he’d stopped hoping to find someone like her. Not perfect, but a light in the world nonetheless.

  Essential to know such a light existed when one lived close to the darkness.

  Reaching up, Violet set her work-stained hands on his cheek, holding his gaze.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I understand we are bound by the same limits you set the other night. This cannot be permanent.”

  Her history of rejection and disappointment lay in the tiny creases above the bridge of her nose and in the wariness with which she received his compliments. She was not a child, and Arthur did not treat her as such by denying her words.

  “I can’t undo twenty years of vigilance,” he said. “We cannot forget who I am. Who I am not.”

  Leave aside who he wished to be. Leave everything aside for this moment.

  “I would never expect sudden declarations. I ask only . . .”

  She threaded her fingers through his hair, clenching them, in an echo of how he’d held her the night before. The slight pain gave an edge to his desire, and his balls tightened in anticipation. Wrapping one leg around his waist, she pulled him to her and licked the closed seam of his mouth. When he opened his lips in response, she drew his tongue into her mouth and suckled, then broke the kiss, lips damp and swollen.

  “I ask that you let those reasons stay outside that door,” she said.

  “I wish . . .” Arthur fell silent.

  A wish is a weighted object, heavy with history and the burdens of expectations and responsibilities. It would crush them both if he were to speak his aloud.

  Instead, he told her, “I promise.”

  Promises could be made with the softest caress of her breasts and belly. Made in the gentle worship of her round knees and curved thighs. Promises could be made while honoring the sweet center of her with all the skill at his command.

  If he could not say the words and would never hear them from her lips, he could plant his promises beneath her skin.

  * * *

  WHETHER HER THROAT was sore from letting loose words of praise or from the pain of holding back an unnamed emotion, Violet could not be certain. Thoroughly spent, she lay spread on the table in front of Arthur, one leg draped over his shoulder.

  When he raised his head from between her thighs, a self-congratulatory smile on his face, Violet realized he remained clothed while she was bare except for her garters and stockings. Unhooking her leg, she rose and tugged at the waistband of his trousers. His erection strained against the material, evidence that he was not unaffected by her pleasure.

  “That was a passable attempt at turning the human body from a solid to a liquid,” she teased him.

  “Passable,” he scoffed, his relaxed tone at odds with the way his palm covered her hands, as if uncertain whether to stop her or not. “Is that a challenge? If so, you may not have voice to issue another if I accept.”

  He allowed her to unbutton the fall of his trousers, glancing first at the door, then at the bank of windows.

  “Do you sleep, Arthur?” Violet asked.

  “Yes, of course, I . . . ah—” His voice broke into a hiss when she held him in her hand. Stroking him from root to end, she clasped the thick length of him with enough pressure to wring a groan from him.

  “Your attention is distracted for those few hours of the day, yet nothing terrible happens?” she asked, feigning innocence while her thumb circled the tip of him with deliberate gentleness, teasing a reaction.

  Ruddy and engorged, the head of his cock glistened in the low light. Violet considered taking it into her mouth and bringing him to his knees. That wasn’t what she wanted, though.

  She wanted to see him bare before her. She craved the sensation of his skin beneath her fingertips. His trousers clung to his slim hips, and the long tails of his linen shirt hid his flat stomach from view. How maddening this attempt to keep his distance by hiding behind layers of wool and linen.

  Didn’t he understand? She didn’t need to see his flesh to know he was human.

  “There is so little time left,” she reminded him. “I won’t have you leave behind this one regret.”

  After the slightest hesitation, he slipped the sponge inside her. Scooping her up, he took a seat in a hard-backed chair, settling her in his lap. The rough weave of his pants abraded the soft skin on the inside of her thighs as she straddled him.

  “Just this once,” he whispered, dusting her cheekbones with tiny kisses. Holding on to her hips, he shifted, so she hovered above the length of him.

  She’d told him they would be honest, and as she let the tip of him inside her, she spoke the truth.

  “I will not ask of you more than you can give. You have seen every piece of me.” She stopped speaking for a moment to relish the slow stretching of her passage in his wake.

  “So sweet,” he whispered as he nuzzled the curve of her neck.

  “Hmm,” she said, too full for words as gravity did the work drawing out the pleasure/pain of him filling her. Invisible threads pulled with a delicious tension, from the tips of her fingers to the top of her scalp. When she did not think any more of him would fit, he pressed her hips down another inch and ground against her. They rocked against each other with tiny thrusts. Friction sent blissful pulses through her body.

  To gain purchase, Violet clutched Arthur’s waistcoat in her fists. The raised threads of embroidery rubbed against her nipples. She writhed on his lap, wanted to pull the clothes from his body, baring him to her gaze.

  “I can see you,” she warned. “Through your layers of cloth, your seventy thousand daggers, and the grim facade you wear every day. You are beautiful, Arthur, and I wish you would not hide it.”

  All movement stopped. Deep within, Arthur pulsed in time with her heartbeat. Violet clenched around the length of him. He filled her utterly: thoughts, body, and heart.

  With a tenderness that made her ache, he brushed a tear from her cheek and let his armor fall apart.

  One second was all he gave her.

  One second to see him bereft of protection. One second, and everything he felt could be read upon his face.

  One second was all it took for her to fall in love.

  She shuddered against him. With an inarticulate cry, he lifted his hips. Wrapping his arms around her back, he took control of the tempo, pushing Violet past the point of breathlessness
to a place outside her experience.

  When her climax came, and the world turned upside down around her, Violet could still see Arthur’s face in that last unguarded moment.

  18

  HAPPIER THAN A well-fed tarantula in the desert, Violet crooned sweetly to her formulas when Phoebe burst in on her and slammed a bonnet on her head.

  “You are due at the Mensonge studios in half an hour,” Phoebe cried. “Do not ‘But, but, but.’ Fanny Armitage has been comparing your last gown to a chewed-up jellyfish, and I won’t stand for it.”

  “But . . . but . . . ,” Violet said, though she knew it would do no good. “I canceled that fitting.”

  Phoebe hustled her downstairs. “I rescheduled it. You will have a new gown for the event, or I will make you wear mine.”

  Violet beheld Phoebe’s yellow silk skirt covered in waterfalls of lace beneath an ermine cape with matching muff. Each stitch lay perfectly straight; every material was of the highest quality. The very existence of such an ensemble intimidated Violet into submission.

  “I told Mama I would be back within the hour,” Phoebe said, “so I will have to trust you not to panic. Now, go forth and fashion.”

  “Tell Mr. Kneland where I’m going,” Violet called out to Mrs. Sweet as she left. “I’m taking a guard with me, but you can be certain he’ll be cross when he finds out.”

  In the luxurious fitting rooms of the Mensonge studios, she stood upon a pedestal flanked by purple velvet curtains. Violet had forgotten how unbearable she found the process of being fitted for gowns, especially those designed for slimmer women. It pained her to see her flaws in the dressing room mirror. Daniel’s complaints rang in her ears, and she fretted about being away from her work for so long.

  Did no one else have places to go and dangerous criminals to thwart?

  To her surprise, Madame Mensonge presented Violet with a dress made of watered silk the same color green as new shoots in spring. With a scandalous bodice and a cunning underskirt of bright gold peeping out from beneath the draped overdress, it fit as though it had been made for her.