Wellington Cross (Wellington Cross Series)

by Lane, Cheryl

  I knew what he wanted to do, what we both wanted to do. My body was crying yes, but my brain was saying no. “But,” I protested. “You’re still married to Elizabeth.”

  “I’m also technically married to you,” he said. He began kissing me again. “I was married to you first. You’re my first wife, the only wife I’ll ever want.” More kissing. He began unbuttoning my dress between kisses.

  Maybe it was because he had been crying so desperately…maybe it was because we had shared these rooms before as husband and wife….maybe it was because we had been apart for so long, but I found I could not resist him any longer, nor did I want to. I remembered being in this bed with him, memories of our marital lovemaking in the past. He was mine first, by golly, and I was going to take him while I still could, while he still wanted me, for as long as that may be. Besides, I wanted to take away his pain, if only for a little while.

  He knew the moment I had decided to consent in my heart. He began kissing me passionately again while his hands pulled down the dress he had already unbuttoned. He took the pins out of my hair and let the curls cascade down. I reached down and unlaced my leather boots and slid those off while Ethan slid off his own boots. Then he unbuttoned the thin shirt I had on, tossed that on the floor, and then untied my crinoline and helped me take that off. Next I helped him untie the corset strings and shimmied that off. Before he could take off my chemise, I started undressing him.

  “My turn,” I whispered, smiling. He had been fully dressed due to going into town that morning but had already taken off his outer coat before coming upstairs. I unclasped his chain from his pocket watch and laid that on the nearby settee. Then I unbuttoned his waistcoat and untied his stock, discarding them on the floor. I unbuttoned his white linen shirt, pulled that over his head to expose his knitted under-shirt, which I also eased over his head. I paused to caress his bare chest, admiring his muscles acquired from hard work. I traced a scar on his left lower abdomen that he got after falling off a horse as a young man. I ran my hands over his chest and midriff, and he closed his eyes. I kissed his midriff while he ran his fingers through my hair and over my bare arms. We both had cold chills. My hands shook with desire and anticipation.

  Next, I unfastened his braces and unbuttoned his trousers and eased those off, leaving only his socks, as he also had no underwear on. I couldn’t help but stare; it had been so long since I’d seen him unclothed. He slipped his socks off while I started taking off one of my garters. He motioned for me to sit down on the settee so he could take the other garter off, and then he slowly rolled down my stockings to reveal my pale legs and feet. He kissed both my feet softly.

  His mouth found mine and then he slowly took off my chemise to reveal my breasts, which he paused to look at and then drew his mouth to one of them. I took a quick intake of breath, closed my eyes, and leaned back against the settee. “Ethan,” I whispered longingly. He abruptly picked me up, kissing my mouth again, and carried me to the bed, relinquished the bedding hastily, and placed me gently on top of crisp white sheets that we’d purchased on our honeymoon. He joined me and sidled his body up next to mine, lying on his side, me on my back.

  We paused for a moment to look into each other’s eyes. “Maddie…I love you so,” he whispered.

  “I love you, too, Ethan,” I whispered, caressing his chest. “Oh, how I adore you.”

  “I had forgotten how beautiful you were, underneath all that clothing,” he said. “How is it possible I could forget that?”

  His lips kissed mine again passionately, and he moaned softly. His hands trailed from my neck, to my chest, and down to my breasts. I ran my fingers through his hair with one hand, while the other hand explored his torso and his loin. It felt so wonderful to be intimate with him again. It had been so long ago that we did this. I reveled in feeling his skin against mine. I could feel his groin against my thigh, and my kisses intensified at his arousal.

  His tongue trailed down my chin, down my neck, down to my bosom again, and I moaned softly with sheer pleasure. I arched my back to draw him closer and squeezed his shoulder. His hand moved down to caress my inner legs, and I bent my knee up to invite him further. His knowing hands touched and caressed me in places that haven’t been touched that way in so long, and I arched again, gasped, and he brought his lips back up to mine again feverishly. He moved on top of me, and our passion ignited further as his manhood entered me.

  “Oh, Ethan,” I whispered, taking quick breaths between kisses, enjoying the rapturous feeling of him inside me. He knew just when to enter to give us both the most pleasure. It had been practiced many times during our year of marriage, and he had not forgotten. Our passion reached heights beyond any I could remember experiencing before.

  When it was all over, we both collapsed but stayed together, him on top of me. He felt heavy, but wonderful. I was so happy and content; I wanted to stay there with him forever.

  He tried to move off of me, but I stopped him and whispered, “Not yet. I’m enjoying this.” It had been too long since I had felt him inside me, too long since we were touching skin to skin. I hugged him tightly against me, breathed in his scent, and kissed his neck.

  The curtains whipped wildly at the windows, and outside the cicadas and birds chirped loudly in the afternoon sun. Thankfully, Lillie was still asleep.

  “Your skin is so soft,” he said quietly, rising up slightly to face me. “And the scent of your hair intoxicates me.” He caressed my hair as he spoke.

  I smiled. “I rinsed it with lavender water just this morning.”

  After a few minutes, he rolled off of me and lay beside me. We looked into each other’s eyes, still touching, still caressing each other, not wanting to be apart just yet. I intertwined my legs with his.

  “I love you,” he said. Tears were forming in his eyes, and I felt like he was thinking about his pain again, so I kissed him in an effort to make him forget, and caressed his soft beard.

  “I love you, too,” I said. I then nestled down against him with my head on his chest, and he continued caressing my arms. We lingered in bed for quite a while, enjoying the closeness of each other, not talking, just being together.

  Before I knew it, he started caressing me all over again, and we started the whole thing all over. Our second time was every bit as sweet as the first, but this time was achieved more slowly and less urgently.

  This time after we finished, Ethan got up and poured us a glass of water from the pitcher on the wash stand in the corner. He handed one to me. I sat up and took it, propping up the pillows and leaning against the headboard. He joined me, and we sat close to each other. The water felt good going down my parched throat, even if it was warm.

  Lillie made a noise, and Ethan got up and opened her door quietly to look in. He smiled at her. He left the door open for a breeze, and came back and joined me on the bed. “She’s still sleeping,” he said.

  We didn’t say anything for a while, just sat close, each in our own thoughts. As much as I had enjoyed all of our love-making, I had to wonder what would happen after this. What was it that upset him so to make him weep, so much that he couldn’t talk about it yet? I felt a dread at learning what that was. But I knew eventually he’d have to tell me.

  “Ethan, whatever it is, I am here for you. Let me share your pain. Let me help you, if I can.”

  He wouldn’t look at me, but he took my hand in his and kissed it. I leaned over to sit my empty glass down on the floor, and he did the same with his. Once again I snuggled close to him, and he wrapped his arm around me, resting his chin against my head. He kissed my head, smelled my hair and sighed quietly. I knew he was trying to get up the nerve to say something, anything.

  Finally, he blurted out, “Elizabeth is with child.”

  Chapter 16

  Complications

  Never in a hundred years would I have guessed that Ethan was going to say that. Elizabeth was with child? His child? Oh, God. And we just had relations…twice. I felt like I’d been slapped
in the face. I couldn’t have been more shocked.

  Ethan turned my face up to look at his. “I don’t regret a minute of this,” he said. “I meant what I said. I love you, and you’re still my wife, in my eyes. The only one I’ll ever want.” He closed his eyes and kissed me on the forehead. “Please don’t hate me,” he whispered.

  I was in shock. I couldn’t speak yet. I tried, but no words would form on my lips. What could I say? He’d married her, they’d had relations, and now she was going to have his baby. Even though they only had relations one time, it was enough to produce a baby. She was carrying Ethan’s child. I should’ve recognized the signs that morning when she was pale and said she was nauseous or the morning she was in the stables with the horses, when she had also looked pale.

  But she had been bleeding after she fell off the horse. Maybe…

  “Doc examined Elizabeth after she fell off the horse because she had been bleeding. That’s how he discovered she was with child. The baby is all right, but she has to stay recumbent for several weeks or she might lose it.” He let me absorb that, and then he said, “She also needs to avoid stress.”

  “How far along?” I choked out hoarsely.

  “It would have to be about five weeks. I only had relations with her one time, the night of our wedding.” He still held my hand and rubbed the back of it with his thumb. With his other hand, he wiped his face. “You can be sure that I will never have any other babies with her because I will never have relations with her again,” he said, bitterly.

  It still didn’t matter, if she had one child or ten. She was still having his baby. A part of him would always be with her, in that child. He had forgotten about me long enough to spread his seed in another field. In essence, he had been unfaithful to me. I knew all of this already, and I had forgiven him for marrying her, but it hurt now more than ever because there was evidence of their union in the form of this baby. I would never be able to forget, as long as that child was alive. Would I be able to forgive him for fathering her baby?

  “I’m so sorry, Maddie. This whole ordeal is all my fault. I should’ve never married her.”

  I felt tears coming to my eyes but held them back. I let go of Ethan’s hand and left the bed to retrieve my clothing. Suddenly I felt too vulnerable and too intimate with him when I didn’t have a right to be anymore.

  I glanced at him from time to time, and he was watching me with sorrowful eyes. When I was completely dressed, I came back and sat on the side of the bed, facing away from him. “What will you do, Ethan?”

  I felt his arms slide around my shoulders and across my chest, and he just held me. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “I had all these hopes and dreams that included you and Lillie. I never expected this to happen.” He kissed the back of my head. “We were always supposed to be together, you and me.”

  I tried to be mature about all of this, but I had already lost him once and didn’t want to lose him again. What could I do or say to convince him to choose me? I didn’t think I could bear losing him. Then there was sweet Lillie to consider…I longed to be the one who took care of her…who woke up to her babbling in the morning, who rocked her to sleep every night, before consummating love with my husband. I wanted to be the one who had more of his babies.

  I couldn’t stand the thought of that damned Elizabeth getting to stay with Ethan and not me. Suddenly, I was angry. I didn’t want to be coddled any more. Just the fact that he didn’t know what he was going to do made me even angrier. If he really thought we were meant to be together, then he was supposed to say that he would still send Elizabeth to Catherine’s to have her baby because he wanted me to be his wife, like he’d been saying since I came back home, like he promised me…because he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, not her. The fact that he didn’t know what to do spoke volumes. He did care about her – more than just a little – if he was contemplating staying with her.

  “I’ve heard enough,” I said. Ethan froze, and I stood up, pulling myself out of his arms. I picked up my pins from off the floor and started putting my hair back up into a bun. I couldn’t look at him for fear of breaking down and sobbing, or running back into his arms. Instead I looked out the window at the distant river. No, I would not look at him. I would simply walk away and let him think for a while.

  After all the time we spent loving each other this afternoon, I couldn’t believe he was having a hard time making this decision. It seemed to me that he had wanted to have me one more go with me – two actually – two more follies, before going to his other wife. It made me angry all over again.

  “Let me know when you’ve reached a decision,” I said curtly, still not looking at him. I felt his eyes on me as I walked over to the nursery and looked in on Lillie, still sleeping, oblivious to what was going on with her mother and father. She was innocent in all of this, but would be affected by it all. She didn’t know it, but her world was falling apart…again. I closed my eyes to prevent tears from falling, then turned around and finally decided to face Ethan one last time before I walked out the door.

  “I can’t believe this is a hard decision for you to make,” I said, fighting back emotion in my voice. “Perhaps you don’t love me as much as I thought you did…not as much as I love you. It wouldn’t be a hard decision for me.” I’d hurt him, I could see it on his face, but he said nothing. I wiped the tears from my eyes, walked across the room, unlocked the door, and left the bedchamber.

  After having a good cry in my room, I freshened up a bit by splashing some water on my face from the pitcher that I poured into a large basin. I headed downstairs, aiming to take a walk. On my way, I passed by the sitting room, when Elizabeth called out to me. I stopped walking and looked in the room where she lay on the sofa. In the same room where I played piano…where Ethan and I had shared many kisses.

  I reluctantly entered the room. I knew I should say something to her about her accident from falling off the horse, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. At the moment, I felt no pity for her. I waited for her to speak first.

  “I hope you’re not too shocked by the news, Madeline dear. It’s for the best, you know. You didn’t think you could just pick up where you left off, now, did you? Whether you have your memory back or not, it’s irrelevant. Ethan is married to me now. I told you that I wouldn’t let you just waltz back in here and take Ethan away from me.”

  She lay there all smug on that sofa, gloating at me. I wanted to smack that smirk right off her face. I didn’t say anything; I just glared at her.

  “When will you be leaving?”

  “Leaving?” Of all the gall!

  “Yes, of course. You can’t just stay around here, you know. You’ve got your memory back; now it’s time for you to leave. It’s now lawful for a man to have two wives. And now that I am with child, that means you will have to go.”

  “I have a child in this house, too! Besides, it’s up to Ethan to decide, now, isn’t it?” I exclaimed in anger and briskly turned to leave the room.

  As I walked down the hall towards the river-front door, I heard her say, “Yes, my dear, it is.”

  I walked down to the river to think…to contemplate my predicament. The heat was stifling; I was perspiring in my clothes. I pulled up my dress a bit and pinned it up with one of my hair pins, revealing the lacy crinoline underneath. I took off my sun bonnet and pulled my hair up tighter in a bun, readjusting the pins. Then I fanned my face with the hat.

  The dogs followed me, wagging their tails. I sat down on the bench under the trees near the river in the slightly cooler shade…where Ethan and I had had so many wonderful talks and shared kisses. The dogs lay down at my feet, panting and looking up at me. I touched their soft fur and was comforted for a moment.

  What a day it had been! It had started right here on this very bench with Ethan telling me that he was getting the paperwork started on his annulment with Elizabeth. I had been so happy, thinking that our lives were about to be joined again, that we’d be marri
ed again. And then the accident with Elizabeth happened, and Ethan became distraught. Of course I knew now what upset him so much that he cried. Remembering how much he had cried in my arms made me realize how very much he was hurting, how anguished he was over Elizabeth being with child and the decision he had to make.

  Then there was our afternoon love-making. It was so precious to be with him again, so joyous. I didn’t regret a minute of it. I was thankful that I was able to have one more – make that two more – moments of bliss. Perhaps he did love me after all. I had been harsh with him; I regretted that now. I wished I had not been so quick to leave him. I had gotten angry, but I wished I had stayed with him a while longer. I should’ve gone back to bed with him and let him console me, let him hold me in his arms. I may not get that chance again.

  Perhaps the reason he was having a hard time deciding was because he was thinking of the child, not necessarily of Elizabeth. I didn’t know what he would decide, but since it was a hard decision for him to make, I knew had better prepare myself for the worst. I had to accept the possibility that he might choose her over me. What would I do? Where would I go? I guessed I would go to Jonas’, to my old home. It would break my heart to do so, if it should come to that. Not only to leave Ethan – my husband, as far as I was concerned – but also Lillie. We just got reacquainted, and now I might be taken away from her again. That couldn’t be good for her. Wouldn’t Ethan realize that? Would he consider Lillie’s point of view at all? Or mine? I had just gotten my memory back, just got my life back, only to possibly have it taken away from me again.

  I watched the sun go down, realizing I must have sat on the bench through supper. I couldn’t eat anyway, even if I’d wanted to. I was too upset. The dogs had gone away; I didn’t know when. I was alone…alone with my thoughts and my memories. Only a week ago, I had barely any memories of my past. Now, it seemed, all I had were my memories. I would have to make my memories last. I was thankful for one more sweet memory, of our marital love-making today. I could still feel Ethan’s arms around me if I wanted to imagine it. I could still feel his skin against mine. I would remember it for a lifetime. No one could take that away from me.