by Juliana Gray
He bent his head into the wood. “My stepmother.”
Shock paralyzed Stefanie’s throat. The room shifted about her, boats swimming past her eyes and ears, cold, damp air and her heartbeat like a distant crash in the center of it all.
“You see?” Hatherfield said. “I’m damned.”
She forced herself to speak. “Tell me, Hatherfield. When did it happen?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s done, it happened. There’s no rewriting the page.”
“It does matter. She hurt you. What did she do?”
He was silent.
“Tell me, Hatherfield.”
“I’ve never told anyone.”
“Then tell me. For God’s sake. Me, Hatherfield. Stefanie, your Stefanie, standing next to you. I am not stainless. Please.”
He braced both hands against the wall and spoke in a monotone, as if reading a page from a history book. “My mother died when I was five. Father married her a year or two later. I don’t remember the early years very well. I was up in the nursery, the schoolroom, and she rarely came up. They had four little girls, my sisters, one after the other, and the last birth was difficult. I believe she nearly died; she was in bed for months. In any case, she couldn’t have children after that. I was about twelve at that point, and when she recovered, when she was out and about again, she began . . . began to take notice of me.”
Stefanie swallowed. “Noticed you?”
“She would tell me what a beautiful boy I was. My damned face. She would touch me, hug me, bring up sweets to the schoolroom. I had a tutor at that point. At first I didn’t mind. I was so damned hungry, I hadn’t had a mother in so long, my nanny was busy with the girls, and I . . . God, I just wanted a scrap, just a scrap of . . .”
“Of affection. Of love.”
“Yes. Love.” He soaked the word with irony. “So it was all very well, the hugs and sweets and affection, until she slipped into my room one night. To tuck me in, she said, as if one actually tucked thirteen-year-old boys into their beds at night. She said she wanted to look at me, to see how beautiful I was. I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t had a mother since I was five, I didn’t know what was normal.”
“Oh, Hatherfield.”
“It went on. She began touching me. Not every night, perhaps once a week she’d come in. And I hated it, and yet when she didn’t come, I . . . I wondered why, wondered if she didn’t care anymore. She played it all perfectly, I suppose. One night she took off her robe. I was fourteen, fifteen. By then I knew what she was getting at, and I was scared to death. Of her, of myself. I told her to go away. She said she would tell my father that I’d been making her do it, blackmailing her. She said she knew I wanted it. Then she put her hands on me and . . .” He shook his head. “My own stepmother, and I spent in her hand.”
“You were a boy, Hatherfield.”
“I was fifteen, Stefanie. Old enough and big enough to push her away, and I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was disgusted, and I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t, I let her do it. At that age, my God, a well-turned piano leg made me hard as stone. What was I supposed to do when a beautiful woman came to me at night and took off her clothes and . . .” His fist hit the wall. “I went off to Eton soon afterward, thank God. I couldn’t even look at the other boys. I was dirty, I was different. Oh, that beautiful Hatherfield, that golden creature, that angelic boy! If only they knew.”
“It wasn’t you. It was her, she was the dirty one. You were a boy.”
“Yes, but who would have believed my word against hers? Who would have believed I didn’t want her there? I let her in. I let her in. I never said no.” He shook his head. “I dreaded coming home during school holidays. I learned to make friends, so they would invite me to stay. I learned to put on a show, to play the proper role. Charming old Hatherfield. Just enough that everyone thought I was a regular chap, a good fellow to bring home to the old pile over Easter, or during the summer. When I did come to my own house, I prayed my father and the duchess wouldn’t be there. That they’d be away in London and wouldn’t send for me. Christmas was the worst. I couldn’t avoid her at Christmas. I locked the door one year. She changed the lock, so it operated from the outside. She would come in and ask me if I’d met any girls, and what I had done with them.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That I hadn’t. Which was true, because I didn’t dare, didn’t trust myself even to look at a girl. I was seventeen when she got into bed with me. Boxing Day. I leapt out and ran for the door. She said she would scream for the servants, for my father. She actually started to scream.”
The tears ran down Stefanie’s cheeks. He hadn’t moved from the wall. His hands still braced him up, as if his legs couldn’t hold him. The sight of his bowed head pierced her with the purest agony. She walked toward him and stopped a few feet away, next to the wall. She knew better than to touch him.
“But I couldn’t do it. I left. I ran out and went upstairs and hid in one of the old bedrooms in the servants’ quarters. Nearly froze to death. In any case, I never spent another night under my father’s roof. At some point I encountered Worthington, and he sheltered me from time to time, until I went to Oxford.”
“And that’s all. You were free.”
He made a short bark of a laugh. “Free? Free of what? Free of sin, Stefanie? No, I was not. You see—and here’s the irony—the very next time I went to stay with a friend, Easter it was, his mother seduced me in the conservatory Sunday afternoon, right after services, and that was that. Rather a relief, really. And it’s a funny sort of pastime, because once begun, it carries on almost by itself, until you can’t do without it. I’ll spare you the details. Suffice to say, I made a career of it for a year or so, shagging restless matrons when they were available and visiting whores when they weren’t. Not every night, I’d resist for weeks at a time, and then I’d go on a bender, two or three a night, one after another, sometimes all at once. I defiled myself in every possible way, I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t stop. Eventually I got the clap, and had to stop for a bit, getting cured. That was about the time I met my friend Penhallow, Olympia’s grandson . . .”
“My cousin Penhallow? Roland Penhallow?”
“Yes. Good fellow. He stroked for the Blues, and he told me I should try rowing, that I was built for it. So I did. I took it up with passion, and Penhallow took me in hand a bit. He was in his last year, frightfully clever, and he . . . well, he showed me it could be done. Being a decent fellow. Immersing myself in sport, in physical discipline. I stopped all the rest of it, I swear it. I never even . . .”
“Yes?” she said gently.
His arms relaxed at last. He laid his cheek against the wood, looking away from her. “Never even kissed a woman again, until you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I couldn’t. Couldn’t trust myself not to . . . go back to what I was. And every time I got to flirting a bit, I would think, what if she knew? Knew what I’d done before. My own stepmother, my father’s wife.”
Stefanie shook her head. “It isn’t what you did. It’s what she did to you, when you were a lonely boy and she was a grown woman, someone with a sacred trust to protect you. You’re not to blame.”
“The fact is, it happened. I let it happen. And what I did after, all those women . . .”
Stefanie ventured a hand to his shoulder. “Listen to me. What you’ve told me, it’s horrible. I want to put my hands around that woman’s throat and strangle her. What she did to you, an innocent boy. How you’ve suffered, how you’re suffering. But it doesn’t change who you are, you radiant man, with your pure and magnificent soul, your immense and lonely heart. It was long ago, it’s all past, and you have to grant yourself the forgiveness that God has long ago given you. Look at me, Hatherfield. Turn around and look at me.”
He sighed and turned, and the misery stood there in his exhausted face, so real and palpable that she moved forward without thinking and took him in her palms. The blanket slipped f
rom her shoulders to the floor.
“Come to bed, Hatherfield.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head, between her two hands.
“It will be different with us. You and I. What we do together, when we kiss, when we touch, it’s right and good and beautiful. Because we are in love.”
His eyes flashed open.
“Yes. It’s true. And I need you, I need the comfort of your body, I need your strong arms and your passion. I suppose that’s bold of me. I can’t help it.”
His mouth opened as if he wanted to say something, but not a word came out.
“I’m going upstairs now, Hatherfield. I won’t seduce you, or beg you, or command you. I want you to decide for yourself. But I hope . . .” She swallowed back her fear and brushed his lips, very gently, with hers. “I hope with all my heart that you’ll join me.”
“Stefanie, wait . . .”
But she turned before he could speak, and made her way past all the silent boats to the stairway at the back of the room.
The Marquess of Hatherfield couldn’t have said how long he stood there, in the midnight stillness, counting the boats on their horses, on their pegs along the walls. The air was still full of her, fragrant with the scent of Stefanie, echoing with her voice.
We are in love.
He spread his fingers out before him and stared at them. When he had first begun rowing, the pads of his hands were coated with ugly blisters, black and half healed, opened again the next morning. Eventually the calluses had formed, and they had never left. The only unsightly part of him. Whenever he thought about quitting the sport, or pausing for a few months over the winter, he remembered the agony of those first weeks on the water. How, if he relaxed his steely discipline even for a short while, the calluses would soften, his hands would grow tender once more, and he would have to relearn the pain all over again.
Above him, the wood creaked under the weight of Stefanie’s footsteps. What was she doing? Readying herself for bed, perhaps. Making up the blankets and sheets, banking the fire. He closed his eyes and saw her before him again, naked except for her linen shirt, her breasts visible through the thin masculine material, unbearably erotic. He couldn’t even look at her, while he had been reciting his sins. If she’d glanced down, she would have seen his arousal, his bone-rattling and barely contained desire for her.
What we do together, when we kiss, when we touch, it’s right and good and beautiful.
To kiss her. To touch her. Hold her in his arms and make love to her. The heaven of it.
Because we are in love.
He opened his eyes and looked once more at his hands, his calloused and leathery hands, and without making a conscious decision, he walked to the stairs.
She was lying in the narrow bed. She sat up with a start when the door opened.
He opened his mouth to speak, and not a word came out. In lieu of speech, he removed his jacket and slung it over the chair. He unbuttoned his waistcoat, and laid that on top of the jacket. Piece by piece, layer by layer, he unclothed himself before her, studying her pale face against the dark wall, examining every telling movement of her body, waiting for the instant when the tide turned. When she found him unworthy.
But that instant didn’t arrive. She gazed back with an expression of profound interest, one cat watching another, not moving a single muscle. The hushed glow from the fire illuminated her skin. He laid his stockings carefully over his folded trousers and reached for the end of his shirt, which tented over his raging erection with an abundance that might have provided shelter for a modest spring picnic.
He lifted the shirt over his head.
“Oh my God,” whispered Stefanie. She rose to her knees and held out her arms.
He touched the very tips of his fingers to hers, pad to pad. “Tell me again. Say it again.” His voice cracked alarmingly.
She pulled him in. “We are in love, Hatherfield. You and I, we’re in love.”
“Again.”
“We are in love.”
By some gargantuan effort of self-control, he kept the first kiss soft and featherlight, just tasting her generous lips, her sweet tongue. He drew his hands up her arms and tangled them in her hair. “Listen to me. I will try to be gentle . . .”
“It’s all right. I’m sturdy.”
“I know you are.” He inhaled the scent of her hair, her skin, her warmth and delicate female roundness. “I don’t think . . . once we start . . .”
Her hands caressed his back, his sides. “Once we start . . .” she whispered.
“I won’t be able to stop.”
“Then don’t. Don’t stop.”
What he meant was that he would want her again, and again, and again; that his appetite was insatiable once he’d begun. But he pushed all that to the future and concentrated on the here and now of her, the present perfection beneath his hands and lips. He caressed her breasts through the fine linen of her shirt; he slid his thumbs across the velvet hardness of her nipples. He bent and covered one with his mouth, licking and then suckling it, while his cock pushed into her belly and her back arched toward him.
This woman. This Stefanie. He was going to have her at last. Take possession of that luscious body, and be taken in return.
The thought sent his blood shooting in his veins. He peeled back her shirt, up and over her head, and there she was, naked and blooming, her round breasts tilted toward him and her round hips cradling his stiffness.
He wasn’t going to last. Already his stones were tingling, already the familiar flame was licking about the sensitive head of his cock. Stefanie’s hands worked downward, reaching for him, and he grasped them just in time.
“You’ll kill me,” he said.
She looked up at his face, and whatever expression she saw there, Hatherfield feared to know: urgency, need, bestial desire. But she seemed to understand his predicament. She knit her fingers firmly with his and lowered herself back on the bed, drawing him with her, his heavy knees sinking between her legs, their hands linked together above her head. The sinful scent of her female arousal drifted up deliciously between them.
“Are you ready?” he managed.
God only knew what he would do if she said, No, actually, not quite ready yet, kiss me a little longer.
She lifted her knees and smiled. “Oh yes.”
His prick was like solid iron, stiff and full. He was almost dizzy with the strength of his arousal. He brushed himself against her, and her readiness shocked him; she was slippery wet for him, her lips parted in an unerring channel that guided him home and clasped his tip. He braced himself above, poised, ready to strike.
“Oh God,” she whispered. Her pleading eyes met his.
We are in love.
He slid inside her.
Ahhh, she groaned, long and luxurious, as he buried himself deep, a perfect fit, surrounding his cock from stem to stern with Stefanie. His mind went white with pleasure.
She was right. Of course she was right. How could he have doubted it? This was true and good and beautiful. This was Hatherfield joining himself to Stefanie, skin meeting skin, hand meeting hand, gaze meeting gaze, an act of loving union.
And at the same extraordinary instant, an act of pure carnal lust.
“Stefanie, I’m going to spend,” he said.
She lifted her hips and dug her fingernails into the backs of his hands. The pain made an exquisite counterpoint to the ecstasy of penetration, holding his imminent climax just at bay. He pulled back and thrust again, and Stefanie cried out, and the sensation was so spectacularly good he did it again, and again, and again, until the pressure mounted so high he thought he would crack open. Stefanie’s heels dug into the backs of his thighs, urging him faster, and this time there was no holding anything at bay, he was coming hard, he was coming right now, and he heard her call out his name, all drawn-out and singsong, Haa-ther-field!, and at that exact second, the climax rolled forth from his balls in long, reckless spurts.
TWENTY
&n
bsp; Reason returned to Stefanie’s brain in discrete little pings of awareness.
She smelled him first, warm and salty, his rapid breath tasting sweetly of kisses. She was surrounded with him, with the musky scent of sexual completion.
And then his hands. They were clasped in hers, high above her head, stretching her body to an exquisite sensitivity, a perfect vulnerability. Their fingers were twined together. Knotted in a vise.
And the rest of him, beautifully heavy, weighing her down into the mattress. He fit her just so, in the pocket of her torso, while her legs wrapped around his. His arms cradled her head; her ears fit neatly into the crooks of his elbows. His shoulders, tense with muscle, loomed like smooth-skinned hillsides near her lips. The warmth of his breath filled her hair.
She didn’t move. She couldn’t if she wanted to, and she didn’t. She was pinned in bed by the Marquess of Hatherfield’s magnificent body. Every sinew hummed, content with the echo of climax, like some sort of electromagnetic energy that kept on looping and looping about its circuit, held in place by the pressure of that rigid organ that still filled her below.
“Hatherfield,” she whispered.
“Hmm.”
“Are you awake?”
“Hmm. Of course I’m awake.” Groggily.
“Your left hip bone . . . It’s digging in just a bit . . .”
He shifted an inch. “Beg your pardon.”
She waited for the flow of honeyed words, the praise and love, the vows of fidelity, the proposal of marriage, the honeymoon abroad, the hinted hope for children and grandchildren and pots of daffodils in the springtime.
Waited.
Waited.
Well, perhaps a small nudge was required.
“Hatherfield?”
“Mmm.”
“That was lovely. That was . . .”—a word, a word, a word that would jolt him awake—“transcendent.”
“Mmm.”
“Magnificent. Divine. I would almost say sacred, if that isn’t rather blasphemous, except that it felt like a sacrament to me, the two of us, consummating our passionate attachment with . . .”