by Splendid You
Even if she’d been in Yorkshire, he would have found her distracting. Having her present physically in his house sent him wild. Yet, to be fair, she didn’t do anything to trouble him. She never interrupted him when he was working. If he spent an hour with his family, she did not sit too close to him. At dinner, she passed him bread or salt or what have you without permitting her fingers to so much as brush his. She was never vulgar or overt.
All the same, he was aware of her in a whole new way. He’d always admired her mind, even on paper. He had felt that they could be friends. When she arrived, he’d found her unexpectedly attractive, more so as time passed, as evidenced by those out-of-control moments in his study.
Now, however, he was aware of her as a woman, as the consummate woman. He couldn’t be in the room with her without noticing the slightest exposure of an ankle, or the graceful lines of her body, or the way she turned her head when someone spoke to her. Every smile that was not given to him made him jealous. If he heard even a murmur of her voice, he strained his ears to catch the words. He watched her reading a note with the sunlight streaming in through a window behind her, and bit a pencil in two.
He told himself that tomorrow couldn’t come quickly enough. The moment she left London, sanity would return. Lucy would marry Winslow. He’d find a rich patron to finance a return to Egypt, while his mother settled down to find husbands for Amanda and Jane. Then she’d travel to visit her married children and he would be alone at last.
How much work he’d accomplish then! That would be the best of all possible worlds—himself, alone, independent, liberated. Julia Hanson would be a memory, or it was even possible they’d return to their former relationship. One day their letters would peter out naturally when she married at last and pursued other interests.
Simon tried to forget how often he’d traveled miles to the bank of the Nile when he’d heard a boat had come, hoping that the post would be aboard. How often had he sorted eagerly through a cache of letters, only to drag himself dispiritedly homeward because no envelope had been graced with her handwriting. He put from his mind the recollection of how he’d smiled at the setbacks and disappointments an archaeologist was heir to, knowing that at night he’d be writing her an account of what the day had brought.
Half-dressed, his tailcoat still hanging over the wooden valet, Simon pulled open a drawer of his bureau. A japanned box with a lock in the lid reposed there, the top jammed down tight. He wrestled with the key and at last it sprang open, spilling over with letters. It contained only this season’s exchange; many more than there’d been the year before.
He poured them out onto his bed, an avalanche of paper. Sorting through them, Simon tried to imagine, for the first time, what his letters had meant to Julia. Where had she waited for the post? Had her heart begun to thump harder when the postman came by in his gaudy uniform, only to crash to her shoes when nothing came with an Egyptian cancellation? Did she keep every scrap as he did, giving in all too often to the need to savor each word again?
When his mother came into his room, he only half listened to her. As hostess of the evening, his mother would be dressing at the Earl of Roxbury’s house. The countess had recovered from her cold in time to hold a small dinner party prior to the evening’s festivities. Simon’s sisters and Julia were invited to that, too.
As the nominal guest of honor, he himself was not supposed to arrive until enough guests had collected to make the applause satisfactorily loud. “Yes, Mother. I’ll be there in two hours. And yes, I’ll make sure my cravat is straight and my hair is brushed. I am more than seven, you know.”
“I know. So excited, I don’t know what I’m saying. I’d better fly! The girls are waiting. Just beautiful....”
Simon listened to them gabbling away like swans as they trotted down the stairs to the coach the countess had sent. He tried to be happy for them as they achieved a state of nervous delight. Then he settled down to do some serious brooding.
How long had he been in love with Julia Hanson? He had firmly believed her to be an elderly lady when their correspondence began. True, an elderly lady of a particularly lively wit and vivid mind, one of those whom age did not whither but rather enriched, yet still far too old to be thought of as a desirable woman.
Thinking of the way Julia was, Simon revised that opinion. If she lived to be a crone and he with her, then he doubted he’d ever give up wanting to touch her, to hold her, not so long as he kept the memory of a thousand nights of passion to fan the embers.
Thinking back to when he’d first seen her, he wondered now if his reaction had been due more to shock than anger. All his ideas about her had been thrown into revolution. He’d had no time to adjust, so he had lashed out. Everything else that had happened—her hallucination, her danger, her nearness—had come from that reaction to the sight of her face, so young and alive that she seemed to radiate waves of energy. The air around her had seemed to ripple with it, the way the desert writhes in the heat of the sun.
Without her warmth, the future would be a bleak place indeed.
Suddenly in a hurry to get to his uncle’s, Simon rushed his clothes on. He’d just finished giving his hair a final brushing when he heard a loud a thump that shook the floor, followed almost at once by another. He came out into the hall to listen. All was silence.
Then a moment later, something shattered in another room with a crash like an ice floe breaking off a floating iceberg.
Simon galloped down the hall. He suddenly wanted the noise to be Dr. Mystery up to more mischief so that he could use the fists God gave him. He almost ran the young woman down.
“Simon!”
“Julia!”
“I wondered who was pounding along up here like a herd of wildebeest! Whatever are you doing?”
“What are you doing here? You left with others.”
“No, I didn’t. I stayed behind to put some few last things in my cases.”
“Why?” He glanced into her room, where two valises lay open on the floor.
“Because I’m leaving tomorrow. Or had you forgotten?”
“I’ve never forgotten anything you’ve told me, Julia.” He drew back as though from a crumbling precipice. “I meant—why are you doing that instead of Apple?”
“No one is going to be here, the maids are having an evening out. Didn’t you see the cold supper they left for you?”
“No.” Her dress was in the latest mode. About all that could be said for it was that it wasn’t actually transparent. The neckline exposed her shoulders in their entirety, running straight across her swelling bosom. Three gathered tiers of lace descended from there, old cream over a pale pink body, giving the impression that one glimpsed flesh beneath the lace.
The rest was a full satin skirt decorated with roses, but he hardly noticed anything beyond the fullness of her breasts, gleaming white, A strand of pearls, worth as much perhaps as the entire cost of his last expedition, was looped three times about the base of her neck, but they were lusterless compared to her glowing skin.
Simon turned away, his eyes burning as though he’d stared too long at the sun. “What was that crash?”
“Oh, I dropped a mirror. I was about to clean it up.”
“Did you cut yourself?”
“No. It must have fallen by itself. I put it down carelessly on the edge.”
He saw the shining shards on the floor beside her dressing table and knelt to gather them up. ‘‘Do you have something I can put the pieces in?”
She pulled open an empty drawer, saying, “Put them in here. I’ll leave a note for Apple.”
“You’re not worried about bad luck, I take it?” he asked, trying to keep their conversation light.
“What else can happen to me?” She stood beside him while he picked up the pieces one by one. The pink slippers on her feet were tied with ribbons that disappeared under the swaying bell of her skirt. She rustled delectably when she moved, leaving a faint scent of roses behind her. He remembered how she h
ad promised once to give him the experience of breathing attar of roses on her wrist.
He reached for her hand as he came to his feet. “Julia, what has happened to you that makes you say that?”
“Don’t you know?”
He forgot her fashionably shameless gown, her scent, everything but the sorrowing look in her eyes. “You love me,” he said.
“Yes.” She turned away. He caught her by the shoulders, soft and powdered.
“Is that a tragedy?”
“No,” she said bitterly. “Nothing but folly. I love you and you won’t ask me to stay.” She covered his hands with her own, pressing them against her warmth. “You touch me and you don’t ask me to stay. You know I’m the perfect wife for you but you will let me go without saying a word.”
“I want you to stay,” he whispered, and kissed her.
He meant to stop at that. Just one kiss, then they’d separate, for there was still more than enough to divide them. But her lips were soft and parted under his touch, while his hands screamed with the knowledge that they could so easily slip under that line of lace.
Julia reached up to put her arms around his neck. Everything under his hands shifted. He clenched down on the groan that wanted to burst from his throat. She looked up at him with radiant eyes. “Kiss me again, and again, and again....”
“I don’t dare. Oh, God, Julia....”
Then he did hold her hard against him, her skirt billowing out, and took her mouth as he wanted to. She met his thrust with her own, opening freely, giving everything back. Her arms were stronger than he’d guessed. The gray emptiness inside him vanished, burned away in a heated, mindless chaos.
For one instant, only to save his self-respect, Simon tried to stand against it. “Julia, we ought to wait... but let’s not.”
Her laughter had a new sound, ripe and womanly. Her clever hands yanked savagely at his carefully arranged cravat. “I’ve already waited two years for you. I wanted this from your first letter.”
She tugged his shirt out, the studs popping off. Throwing his shirt into the corner, she suddenly pressed her hand against her own burning face. “I—oh, my.”
“Julia....”
“No. It’s all right. I—I won’t think anymore. A friend told me to seize my opportunity if it came. Kiss me, please, and make me forget.”
Simon know that was the moment for him to walk out, to hold to his principles. Instead, he kissed her until neither one could form the words that would stop them.
He drew her to the bed. The crisp white covers crinkled beneath him as he sat down, bringing her to stand between his thighs. “Turn around.”
She obeyed, and sighed deeply as he undid the tiny buttons that ran from between her shoulder blades down to the dimple of her back. Simon pushed apart the opening and pressed his mouth to her shoulder as he slipped his hands inside the dress. He found her breasts through the corset and felt her tight nipples push through his spread fingers. The shudder that ran through her as he touched her was his reward.
Julia turned and saw the raw male satisfaction on his face. She’d never seen that expression before but she felt she recognized it. She had caused Simon to look like that. She wanted to laugh with delicious triumph.
From that first kiss, her sense of herself had been overturned. Always she’d been an intellect first, her womanhood a long way second at best, a nuisance at its worst. But as her body softened under his touch and her response grew, she found that being a mere female was enough to hold a man spellbound.
Instinctively she’d crossed her arms in front of her body, keeping her dress up and her modesty safe. Now, watching his eyes, she writhed from side to side and let the gown slide down an inch at a time. He reached for her, but she stepped back.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice very deep.
“I want to please you, my way.”
“I have no say in this?”
She laughed lightly. “You have the advantage of knowing what you are doing, Simon. I don’t.”
“You’re doing just fine. Come here. I’ll let you run things.”
“I am running things, whether you like it or not.”
“Oh, you needn’t worry. I like it,” he said, his eyes everywhere.
Blushing because it was her first time, but otherwise feeling very confident because Simon was there, Julia stepped out of the billowing mound of her dress. She bent down, giving him a view like no other, and scooped up the material to throw over the end of the bed. It wouldn’t be fit to wear again tonight, but some things were more important than parties.
“Go on,” he said, lying on his side, his head propped up on one hand. His eyes were like two burning sapphires. Julia had never felt more beautiful than under his gaze.
One at a time, she untied the lace-lavished petticoats and slipped them off. She stepped out of the last of four, standing up only in a brief-skirted chemise and stockings. She felt his gaze trace the length of her silk-clad legs, which no man had ever seen before. Julia felt she had to know the truth and, of course, Simon would never lie to her. “Do I please you?”
He made a sound deep in his throat, like the rising growl of a hungry lion. “Women wear too many clothes,” he said. “Come here.”
Julia hesitated, holding on for one single instant to the person she’d been up until now. Whatever happened now, she would never be the same. Simon’s kisses had been the spells to begin the transformation; his embrace would mold the final creation. Then Julia laughed at her pompous fancies, for whatever happened, would happen to them both.
She came to him with a smiling joy that was still on her lips when they kissed. Then his hands were on her, moving with sure purpose over areas she herself hardly knew. And suddenly she understood why young women were hedged about with such strict rules of conduct. “If once they knew ...”
“What?”
She shook her head, then moaned aloud as he kissed her ever more deeply.
Simon didn’t strip off her chemise, though it was in his way. He wanted to leave her that much modesty. So he eased it down from where it echoed the line of her gown across her chest. At first, he only kept on kissing her lips and throat. Her pearls were as warm as her skin.
He gave her every chance to conceal her breasts if she wanted to. Then he took one in his hand, admiring the smooth, cool weight of it; and she tensed, but not with apprehension.
She ran her fingers over his hand and seemed proud to have him see her whole body. He looked at last, and thought he’d surely die right then and there. The glimmering white was crowned with duskily ripe roses, already budding. He kissed her there, gently at first, and felt her fingers clench in his hair.
Things were getting beyond him. He tried hard to control his reactions, to give her time, but the pounding rhythm of his blood was driving him hard, like a rider urging on a horse. She was worthy of poetry and singing, but all he could do was make love to her and hope she understood.
Julia wrecked all his preconceptions about virgins. She did not lie idle while he worked. She clutched his back, rising and falling beneath him like waves embracing the shore, while her scent, woman and roses mixed, dizzied him like incense. Dragging his hands to her mouth, she kissed them again and again, calluses, sensitive interstices and all.
He found the words to tell her, after all. “My love is sweet as sycamore figs, her breasts like white doves nestling in my hands. She awaits me on the river bank, her hair streaming like the water. Her embraces give life to my heart.”
“Simon, speak English ...,” she gasped. “I told you ... my Arabic isn’t very good yet.”
“I’ll show you,” he said.
This time, when he reached the top of her stockings, he untied the gaiters and threw them, one at a time, over his shoulders, to lie where they would. Kneeling between her legs, he met her gaze while he drew the stockings down. She bit her lip, but looked steadily into his eyes as he ran his hands back up her legs to reach the sweetest part of her.
&
nbsp; Suddenly she wriggled away, struggling to sit upright. He sat back, disappointed but resigned. He knew loving her was too good to be true. He half expected all this to be a dream, “It’s all right, Julia. I understand.”
His eyes grew wide with surprise and pleasure as she sat up, pulling the chemise over her head. The rosebud-topped hairpins that decorated the dark waves of her hair tumbled out, littering the pillowcases of her bed. Naked and unashamed as a goddess, she lay back, offering him herself. “Simon? I think I know what happens next. Please ... hurry.”
He shoved off his trousers and underlinen in one gesture. She didn’t seem to have qualms about using her eyes. She gazed and, though Simon would have found it hard to believe, his body responded with even greater enthusiasm. But he almost lost all semblance of control when she reached out and stroked him with one delicate hand.
“I always thought the Egyptian scribes were exaggerating when they drew pictures of this. I wonder if measurements might be taken and comparisons made.”
He caught her hand and said, with heartfelt emotion, “At any other time, my love, I will be happy to talk about Egyptology until the sun dances into the sea. But not now.”
Her smile held the eternal charm of woman. “Forgive me.”
She opened her arms to him, gasping at the renewed heat of his skin as their bodies came into complete contact. He kissed her again and again, and Julia relished the thrust of his tongue against all the newly sensitized areas. But not as much as she had a few moments ago. He’d lost none of his skill, but she wanted something more now than kisses, sweet though they’d been.
She couldn’t tell him what more she wanted, for her words had all fled. She pushed a hand between their bodies to touch him, pressing his hardness into her, there where all the heat seemed to come from. He said her name in a voice she’d never heard from him, hoarse and urgent. If the earth had a voice, it would sound like that, she thought.