Lady Lovett's Little Dilemma

by Beverley Oakley

  Cressida glanced at the few meagre possessions around the room, contemplating a woman’s vulnerability when she had no protector. Women like she did not tend to dwell on such matters but rather to dismiss fallen women like Madame Zirelli as arbiters of their own fates, she thought, guiltily.

  “After struggling to support myself through my singing,” Madame Zirelli resumed, “I found myself, several years later, in the power of another man. Lord Grainger was my employer, to whom I gave myself willingly and recklessly one night, which meant”—she gave a small, ironic laugh—“that I was now to bear his child. The thought of being forced to give up another child I could not support was intolerable. I sought the offices of a woman who apparently—” her mouth quivered as she uttered the word—“dealt with such matters. A woman whose brutal butchery nearly killed me and left me scarred and infertile. An irony, since Lord Grainger made me his wife shortly afterwards, then divorced me nine years later because of my inability to provide him with an heir…compounded by his fury at learning of what I had done.”

  Cressida gasped.

  Madame Zirelli gave an eloquent shrug. “For years I have lived alone, accepting that my daughter was lost to me until, by chance, three months ago I saw her. The resemblance to the Castilian side of my family was remarkable. So certain was I that I had seen my own daughter, and so horrified by the circumstances, I sought out your husband in the hope he would be able to trace her background and confirm my suspicions.”

  Wearily she indicated the table in the corner of the room by the window. Upon it was a small portable writing desk. “All the answers to your questions are there,” she said. “You are free to examine any correspondence…anything at all…if it will satisfy you that your husband’s relationship with me has been purely on a business footing.”

  Cressida did not argue. The hour was late and Madame Zirelli wanted the catharsis of knowing Cressida believed in and trusted her.

  “Take the whole box,” Madame Zirelli directed. “There is other correspondence which little Dorcas slips in when it arrives, but the document prepared by your husband and various letters pertaining to the matter are all in there.”

  When Cressida was halfway to the door with the writing box under her arm and the interview at an end, Madame Zirelli stopped her. “Lady Lovett, your husband severed contact with me eight years ago…the very day after he first set eyes on you, in fact.” Her smile gained warmth. “Few women have the power over their husbands you seem to wield, yet it would appear you do not know what to do with it. Go to him, my dear. Use the knowledge I have given you. And be happy.”

  * * * *

  Cressida was borne home by a very weary looking John the coachman and let into the house by a rather crumpled looking housemaid. She’d never been out so late on her own but, while she felt guilty, she felt not the least bit tired.

  Nervous energy and anticipation bolstered her. She hurried up the stairs and, at the landing, hesitated as to whether she’d turn right to Justin’s apartments or left, to hers.

  She was still clutching Madame Zirelli’s little writing desk. She needed to put that down somewhere. Also, she wanted to make some discreet improvements to her appearance because…

  It mattered.

  The details of Madame Zirelli’s story were not important. Not right at this moment, because Madame Zirelli’s tragedy had occurred in the past and neither Justin nor Cressida could help her, though Justin had done what had been asked of him. Cressida was saddened and moved by the woman’s story and grateful, too, that Madame Zirelli had shared it with Cressida in order to help her. Now it was time for Cressida to help herself. Madame Zirelli had given her the tools.

  Cressida moved the candlestick that her maid had lit beside her bed to her dressing table. She’d told the girl not to wait up for her, assuming when she left for the night that Justin could perform the necessaries of undressing the lady of the house.

  Though there’d been a hitch in proceedings, he still could, she thought with a fizz of exultation as she sank onto her dressing table stool, reflecting on the fact that she had all the joy she could wish for ahead of her while Madame Zirelli had only a dried up future to look forward to and a daughter she could never acknowledge.

  Just up the passage Justin lay sleeping. He’d been crushed by her disloyalty earlier that evening but Cressida had to think past that to all the ways she could atone.

  Two hours ago, Madame Zirelli had seemed the incarnation of the evil that could come between a husband and a wife. Now Cressida had to acknowledge the huge debt she owed the woman.

  And act on it.

  Quickly and with mounting excitement, Cressida tidied her hair and dusted a discreet veil of powder over her heated face. Her body pulsed with the knowledge of the power it soon would yield and in her haste to complete her ministrations she knocked the writing desk from her dressing table with her elbow.

  It crashed to the floor, breaking apart and spreading pages to the far corners of the room.

  Cressida crouched and quickly tidied them, the words blurring before her eyes. There was no point in reading them. Perhaps she never would. Justin could discreetly return them, for Cressida understood too well now the bleak history of a woman who’d been stripped of her one true love, her child—a sorrow compounded when she’d become a victim of sexual exploitation and finally, with no family support, had carved out a life for herself against the odds.

  Hurriedly she tidied the pages and placed them in the remains of the little writing desk. A single folded letter sealed with wax had fallen to her seat, which she discovered as she was about to sit down, and when she picked it up the wax seal disintegrated and the letter unfolded before her eyes.

  She saw the name Sir Robert and the familiar name of her old friend, Annabelle Luscombe. “Sir Robert,” she whispered aloud. Madame Zirelli’s old love?

  Without thinking what she was doing might be wrong, Cressida carefully smoothed the letter, sat down upon the chair and began to read.

  “My dear Mariah—” Sir Robert began—a familiar greeting, even after so many years, for, if what Madame Zirelli had said, she’d not seen him for nearly twenty.

  Cressida tried to remember what she knew of Sir Robert. He was married. He had children, she thought, but hadn’t heard mention of him in years.

  “I do not know if this will find you, or indeed where you are or whether you are married. I was saddened at news which filtered through to me in Basle, where I’ve lived the past sixteen years, of your divorce, but I hope you have found the happiness you deserve.

  Throughout the fifteen years of my marriage I have thought of you with great fondness, hoping that life has treated you well. I have been living abroad, returning only recently after my dear wife, Lucille, died, and indeed I’d not have risked stirring up the past, Mariah, were it not for an occurrence some weeks ago which begs for clarification if I am ever to sleep easily again.

  It is difficult for me to write this, but I have no choice for if—as I believe—I have been in ignorance these past nineteen years, then you have carried a terrible burden.

  Several weeks ago I attended Lady Sommer’s ball where I chanced upon a girl who bore such an astonishing resemblance to you that I cried out to my friend, “Who is that young woman?”

  “Don’t you know your own niece?” he told me. “Your sister’s child, Miss Madeleine Hardwicke. She is to marry Lord Slitherton in six weeks.”

  In the intervening sennight I have pondered the matter and my disquiet has not abated.

  Mariah, you cannot know how distressed I was at our enforced separation and the lengths to which my parents went to ensure I remained at Oxford rather than rush back to see you when I heard you’d been engaged as a governess in Dorset.

  As you did not reply to my letters I did not persist, thinking you wished to close that chapter of your life.

  It is strange returning to England after sixteen years to find both my parents dead and soon to follow them to the grave my older
sister, whom I feel I never knew, the mother of a child she believed she could never have. I have so many unanswered questions.

  Perhaps you have some of the answers. Nothing would gladden my heart more than to meet with you again, so we may discuss all that happened so many years ago.

  With fond memories,

  Yours ever,

  Robert.”

  Cressida dropped the letter. Madame Zirelli’s kindness towards Cressida had stemmed from a genuine wish to supply her with the knowledge to control her own fertility, because it was this lack of knowledge that had ruined her own life.

  Ruined, because she’d been stripped of a child she could never know.

  Tonight Madame Zirelli had learned that Miss Madeleine Hardwicke was the daughter she could never acknowledge. In three days Miss Hardwicke would marry the ageing peer, Lord Slitherton.

  Cressida refolded the single sheet of vellum and tapped the table with it, unable to dismiss the uncomfortable knowledge that the wedding would be as decidedly unjoyous for Madame Zirelli as it would be for Miss Hardwicke. And poor Miss Hardwicke would have to live with the consequences for many unhappy years to come.

  Slowly, Cressida rose, tossed back her head and studied her face in the looking glass.

  She could not think of Miss Hardwicke now. Cressida had other priorities. No, poor Miss Hardwicke and her unhappy state of the heart would have to wait.

  But maybe, just maybe, she thought as she pinched colour into her cheeks and bit her lips, she could unite some unlikely forces and give the ton something to really get excited over. Something that would advance the cause of womanhood, for a change.

  * * * *

  “Cressida!” Justin, billiard cue in hand, jerked round as Cressida pushed open the double doors to the games room and stepped inside. A nervous tic pulled at the corner of his mouth as he regarded her through black eyes shadowed within cavernous sockets.

  Cressida felt as if her heart were torn asunder. Her poor darling had been pacing the house like a caged beast, tormented, since she’d all but cast him out without a hearing all those hours ago. She tried to banish her guilt quickly with the knowledge that she had the power to bring the joy back to both their lives.

  “You don’t have to explain a thing, my darling,” she whispered, advancing towards him until their bodies were almost touching. Warily he watched her, still uncertain of her motives, clearly unwilling yet to take her into his embrace.

  “Good Lord, Cressy. What are—?”

  “Hush,” she whispered as she undid the buttons of his breeches and slid one hand into the slit to gently cup his balls. His instant erection, straining against her hand, sent a surge of satisfaction through her and she stepped in to close the gap, pressing her lips to Justin’s mouth, which had pursed in surprise. With one hand on his shoulder and the other fondling his manhood she kissed him deeply, her tongue darting inside to explore the cavern of his mouth, thrusting and tangling with his, bolstered by a confidence she’d rarely felt as she registered his excitement building in tandem with her own.

  He dropped the billiard cue and stepped back, trapped between the edge of the heavy table and her body, which she offered up to him in anything but sacrifice.

  “God, Cressy, I hope you know what you’re doing,” he croaked, somewhere, it seemed, between horror and wary delight.

  “Absolutely,” she reassured him, lowering herself to her knees and gently easing his engorged cock out of his breeches. She felt her eyes widen. God, now that she could actually see it in the light, it was huge. She’d never seen it like this before—face to face, as it were. So this was the power he wielded with such devastating results…under cover of darkness in the bedroom beneath the counterpane.

  With mounting excitement, she grasped her husband firmly by the root and gently circled the tip of his manhood with her tongue, pausing to laugh softly when she felt him stiffen, and his shock as he muttered, “Oh my God, where did you dream up this exquisite torture?”

  Cressida raised her eyes to slant him a sly smile. “While looking for you I stumbled upon a tableau not meant for the eyes of a lady.” She thought a moment, adding, “And yet I think we were all ladies at Mrs Plumb’s, and most of us were looking for the same thing.”

  At his momentary frown, she clarified in a low whisper, “Ways in which we might combine pleasure with power.” She stroked his shaft then kissed it with great tenderness before smiling up at him. “You surely will not blame me for putting to good use the lessons I learned as I searched for the truth you’d been keeping from me, dearest? For I’ve come directly from Madame Zirelli. I know the truth and that is why I am here. You’ve no need to worry I harbour the slightest doubt about your constancy. We’ll talk later,” she soothed. Any reply of which he might have been capable was truncated as she took him deeply into her mouth, sliding her tongue around the base of his engorged member, thrilling at his responses as she licked and suckled.

  His hands tangled in her hair as he threw his head back and gasped. “You are exquisite,” he groaned, his breathing tortured as Cressida built up the tension with her tongue.

  It was all so new to Cressida, and all so wickedly exciting. She could afford to be as tantalising as she wished, for she had precautions and she had knowledge. A week ago this hugely important aspect of her life, the foundation of her marriage, had been mired in dark, swamp-like ignorance.

  While Justin moaned his pleasure, Cressida could provide him with all he could want of a wife, fulfilling her conjugal side of the contract. With interest. It was exhilarating and it was just the beginning.

  “And now it’s my turn,” she whispered when she felt him nearly at the cusp. She wanted this moment to confirm their sexual life would never be the same. Still holding him with one hand, she hastily retrieved the French letters from the reticule at her knees and slipped one of the strange sheaths on to him, just as Madame Zirelli had shown her. His desire matched her own and she was wet and desperate for him as she rose to her feet, twisting in his grasp so she had her back against the table.

  She did not have to say the words that had been forming on her breath—‘Take me here.’ Her actions conveyed their own eloquence and now it was Cressida’s turn to throw back her head and gasp as his hands encircled her waist and he lifted her onto the table, moving in to take her ankles and wrap her legs around his waist.

  Breathless, panting and excited, they both grappled with her full, heavy skirts, hoisting them to her waist.

  She wanted no preliminaries. She was clear about that, her lust too advanced, her desire too urgent. She needed to feel herself full and hot with him thrusting deep inside her. She wanted him to lose himself in her as he’d done when they were lovers as much as newlyweds, and the consequences were a bonus not a bane.

  She wanted to reclaim him.

  With her arms supporting her weight, she opened heavy eyelids as Justin pushed into her, first with tentative exploration, for it had been so long since they’d done this, then with serious intent as he picked up the pace with smooth assurance. She gasped and closed her eyes, thrilling at the memory of Justin’s expression, glazed with passion.

  It came naturally. She moved with him as he ground his hips against hers and she felt herself drifting, losing herself in the moment, her body a mass of heightened sensation. As important as the physical was the knowledge that she had all but claimed back what she’d thought she’d lost.

  He came with a shudder, his body convulsing over hers, and she wrapped her legs even tighter around him and thrust her own body forward to clasp his head to her chest.

  “My God, Cressy,” he groaned, “I had no idea how much I’d missed this. Please forgive me.”

  She kept her eyes closed. She felt full, with joy, and satiated, her husband still inside her. Justin had just made love to her for the first time in ten months—and she was not left with the fear and uncertainty of another pregnancy. They’d thrown themselves into bringing pleasure to one another with the joyful abandon
that had characterised their early marriage, yet, with all they knew of each other, and their confusion and mistrust laid to rest, it had been even better than it had eight years ago.

  “Oh, Justin, it was nobody’s fault and it was the fault of both of us, but Madame Zirelli opened my eyes when she told me everything.”

  They slid to the floor, embracing upon the thick wolf skin, stroking and kissing each other as renewed sexual desire quickly pushed aside post-coital lethargy.

  “Justin—?” Cressida opened her eyes, surprised as she felt Justin’s member pushing against her hip, slowly enlarging once more. Tentatively, she gripped it, her joyful sense of power growing as she felt him instantly harden. Slyly, she added, “I don’t think we’ve finished yet.”

  “Cressy, you don’t have to. Are you quite sure—?”

  A skilful squeeze stayed his objection.

  “I came well prepared.” Her voice was a hurried whisper as she rolled over and reached for her reticule, retrieving from it a second French letter. “Now…” She rose to her feet and gripped the edge of the billiard table, turning her back to him and planting her legs wide apart. “I have the desire to feel your approach from quite a different angle, my darling. I believe it is possible, though had not thought so before.”

  She felt his breath, hot and inflammatory on her neck, as he whispered, “Another of your fantasies you’ve not divulged to me until this moment?” His hands shimmied up her thighs as he raised her skirts for unfettered access and she gasped, as if experiencing it for the first time.

  “I kept a tight rein on my fantasies, darling, when I thought of the consequences.” With a shudder she closed her eyes as she felt his hands cup her sex then the trickle of her own moisture slide between her legs as his fingers massaged the slick nub of her desire. Instantly, her anticipation was on a par with his. She sucked in a quick breath and managed to grind out, “Your old friend has tutored me in what every mother should tutor their daughter, if she wishes happiness for her… Oh, God,” she whispered urgently as he slid inside her, entering her from the rear before withdrawing in a series of even, regular strokes.