A Not So Respectable Gentleman?

by Diane Gaston

  He could not tell in the dark whether she turned away or not, but he dropped his blanket, opened the door and walked outside. The rain felt good on his bare skin, clean, compared to the river water. He stood in the open and let it pour over him, lifted his face to it and tasted it in his mouth. He did not know how long he stood there, but it felt wonderful to wash the river out of his hair, off his skin.

  ‘Leo?’

  He turned and saw Mariel silhouetted in the doorway. ‘Mariel! What are you doing?’

  ‘I—I—you took so long. I thought something had happened to you.’ She averted her gaze.

  ‘I’m letting the rain rinse me off.’ He must look deranged, standing in the pouring rain, stark naked. ‘Go back inside.’

  The silhouette disappeared.

  He picked up the jug of water and carried it into the hut. As soon as he crossed the threshold, there she was, right inside the doorway.

  ‘What the devil, Mariel?’ He put the jug down and snatched up his blanket.

  ‘I want to rinse off, too,’ she said.

  She didn’t wait for him to answer, but walked past him, dropping her blanket right before stepping outside.

  To not look was impossible for him, but he remained far enough inside that he would not be visible to her.

  She was a mere shape in the rain, but still took his breath away. She lifted her arms to the sky and twirled around, graceful and sinuous. Her innocent abandon reminded him of their childhood days.

  Her perfect beauty, though, was that of a woman and his body responded.

  He could not turn his eyes away. His hands begged to slide down the curves that were merely suggested in the rainy night. His lips yearned to taste her again. His loins throbbed to possess her.

  He must have moved forwards. She turned to face the doorway and she stilled. Slowly she moved towards him.

  He remembered how powerfully he’d wanted her when they’d escaped the river; he wanted her even more now. He stepped outside and the rain cooled his fevered skin.

  But did nothing to dampen his desire.

  She walked directly into his arms and he captured her lips. Passion coursed through his veins, heightening his yearning for her. The kiss sent him back to when he’d so nearly lost her. The danger they’d endured

  fuelled his ardour once more.

  His hands slipped down her back and rested on her derrière, so satisfyingly round and feminine. He pressed her against him, against his arousal, wanting more. Needing more.

  She gasped beneath his lips.

  He loosened his hold on her and looked down at her, unable to speak the question in his mind. Did she want this?

  ‘Let us go inside,’ she murmured.

  Chapter Fifteen

  They were standing in the rain, naked, on a chilly rainy night. He ought to feel the chill, but he was aflame.

  He lifted her into his arms and carried her inside, stepping over the blankets that had once covered them. It seemed more natural that no barriers existed between them.

  He carried her to the cot and lowered her onto it. She pulled him down atop her, kissing him again, sharing her tongue with him as if she, too, could not get enough.

  He forced himself back to his senses. ‘Mariel, are you sure you want this? There are consequences...’ They could create a life by their lovemaking. He would stop if that was what she desired.

  ‘I don’t care. I don’t care,’ she rasped. ‘We almost died yesterday. We might die tomorrow. I will not die without making love with you.’

  And I cannot live without it, Leo thought.

  Her hands explored him, kneaded at his flesh, urged him on. He became too fevered to think clearly. He knew he should go slow, prepare her, be gentle, but his need was too powerful and she was too tempting, too willing.

  His wonderful Mariel, never one to balk, always game to do what needed to be done, fearless in forging ahead. He loved her for it.

  Loved her.

  ‘I love you, Mariel,’ he whispered. ‘I have never stopped loving you.’

  Her legs parted for him and he rose above her, wanting to plunge into her and hasten his release. He fought for the control to slow down, to enter her slowly, letting her body adapt to him.

  She gasped and stiffened when he filled her completely.

  He stopped. ‘Did I hurt you?’

  She shook her head and raised her hips, her hands pressing on his back.

  He tried to hold back, but she writhed beneath him, impatient sounds escaping her lips. The rhythm of lovemaking drove him to move faster inside her.

  Sensation grew, that exquisite hunger that demanded to be slaked, but other feelings, too, because this was his valiant Mariel beneath him, surrounding him, joined to him.

  She moved with him, her need intensifying, as well. He wanted to give her the pleasure he knew he would experience at the end. Nothing was more important than giving himself totally to her.

  But his need took over, becoming more intense, building higher, until his release exploded within him. At the same moment his seed spilled inside her, she cried out, convulsing around him in the culmination of her own passion. Together they writhed in pleasure until sensation ebbed and languor took over.

  He slid to her side and held her close.

  ‘I did not know it would be like that,’ she murmured. ‘Is it always like that?’

  He kissed the top of her head, her hair still wet from the rain. ‘Only with you.’

  She sighed. ‘Promise me you will not be sorry for this in the morning.’

  Be sorry for it? He would never be sorry for making love to her. The risks were all hers. ‘I should ask that of you, Mariel.’

  Her body was humming with pleasure from joining with him. It might have been wrong of her to seize the moment, to act without thought to propriety, without heed to the consequences. But was not propriety meaningless after facing the prospect of death? And if Leo’s child grew inside her, could anything be more wonderful?

  She sat up to gaze at him steadily. ‘I have no regrets.’

  * * *

  He made love to her one more time before retrieving their blankets and filling cups with water, which they sipped as if it were the finest wine. As the new day dawned, they sat together on the cot, wrapped in the blankets, the fireplace warming them in a cocoon of their own creation. It seemed to Leo as if nothing in the world existed except the two of them.

  He embraced the illusion. It was preferable to imagine these walls as the confines of the world than to think about the complications that faced them outside.

  She turned to place a kiss on his bare chest, warmed by the fireplace and their lovemaking. Her fingers traced one of the scars that were reminders of the worst he could do. Or had it been his finest act? He could never be certain.

  Her touch was gentle, such a contrast to the wound that created the scar. ‘What happened, Leo? How did you get these?’

  What would she think if he told her? ‘It is best you not know.’

  She shifted and looked him straight in the eye. ‘Do not say that to me. Do not put secrets between us. Not now.’ Not after making love, she meant.

  ‘I was in a fight,’ he finally said. ‘In Paris.’

  ‘A fight?’ she repeated.

  She wanted more, he was certain, but it was not an episode he wanted to share. He did not want to place it in her memory, giving her images he did not wish her to have.

  He knew too well how impossible it was to shed those images.

  It involved his meeting with Walker. Walker had grown up in an East End rookery and had belonged to a gang of thieves virtually his whole life. Like Leo, though, Walker had not belonged in the world where he was born. Like Leo, Walker wanted more. He’d dared to leave the gang and the rookery and ma
de his way to Paris, where Leo happened upon him in a three-against-one street fight. Knives were pulled and the fighting became life or death. One cut-throat slashed at Leo, causing the wounds whose scars Mariel so tenderly touched. Leo managed to wrest the knife away, but the man lunged at him and the knife plunged into the man’s chest.

  Leo could still see the look of surprise on the man’s face before he fell, never to rise again.

  The others scattered and Walker pulled him away from the body before the gendarmes could be summoned. It was only later Leo could reflect on what he’d done. He’d taken a man’s life, and even though he’d do it again to save Walker and himself, it disturbed him.

  He faced Mariel and tried to adopt a light tone. ‘It happened to be a very a nasty fight.’

  * * *

  Mariel searched Leo’s face. She sensed there was a great deal more to Leo’s story than he had disclosed to her, something that caused him great emotional pain as well as physical injury. She waited for him to go on, but he added nothing.

  ‘Tell me more,’ she pressed. ‘Why were you fighting?’

  ‘Who recalls?’ He shrugged. ‘I found myself in many scrapes while I was on the Continent.’

  He knew the reason, she realised.

  She stared at him and finally said, ‘You will not tell me, will you?’

  His gaze remained steady and his voice turned low. ‘The less anyone knows about those days, the better.’

  His words created a leap of anxiety inside her. What had happened to him in the past two years? The rumours made it sound as if he’d turned into some sort of dissolute rake. Each contact she had with him left a different impression. He was still like the Leo she’d fallen in love with, except there was a darkness inside him, a darkness he would not share with her.

  Perhaps she could learn more from Walker—she swallowed—if Walker was alive.

  An image of Walker and Penny being flung off the carriage assaulted her, but she pushed it away. She could not think of Walker and Penny. Not yet. She wanted to remain cocooned here with Leo and keep all the ugliness that surrounded them at bay. If only they could do so forever.

  Perhaps she and Leo should just run away to Switzerland, like the poet Shelley had done years ago with his lover, Mary Godwin. That flight had caused heartache for those they left behind, especially Shelley’s children and his wife, who later killed herself.

  By drowning, Mariel remembered. She shuddered, knowing precisely what Harriet Shelley experienced before her death.

  A knot formed in Mariel’s stomach. Think what running away would do to her family. Her father would hang and who would look after her mother and sisters?

  She quickly changed the course of her thoughts once more.

  ‘What woke you so suddenly before?’ she asked Leo.

  He frowned.

  Would he leave this question unanswered, as well? What did he hide this time?

  Finally his gaze rose to meet hers. ‘I’d been thinking of the reason we came on this trip.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Most of all Mariel did not wish to think about Kellford.

  But Leo continued. ‘With luck we should still have time to find the bank clerk.’

  She held up a hand. ‘Must we speak of this? While we are here we are powerless, are we not? Let us not even talk about it.’

  Their time together would soon enough come to an end. When the day cleared and their clothing dried, they would walk out this door and whatever reality they faced would cause great pain.

  Leo placed his cup of water on the floor and took her hand. ‘There is something I must say. We need to plan for what to do if we do not find the clerk.

  At least he was saying ‘we,’ including her in making plans, but what was there to do if they did not find the bank clerk? All would be lost.

  She pulled her hand away and used her fingers to comb the tangled mess that was her hair. ‘Very well. Say what you must.’

  He positioned himself behind her, pulling her between his legs, resting her back against his chest.

  ‘In the event we run out of time...’ he seemed to choose his words carefully ‘...I want you to know I will do whatever I can for you and your family. I will support you and your family and help your father in any way I can. I will pay back what your father stole from his cousin.’ He paused. ‘If you wish it, I will marry you.’

  His offer was incredibly generous. He also made it sound like an obligation.

  ‘You do not have to do such a thing,’ she said.

  He spoke near to her ear, his breath warming her skin. ‘I owe it to you.’

  She moved out of his arms and wrapped the blanket around her. ‘Because we made love? I was equally responsible for that.’

  He faced her. ‘Not because of that.’

  It was hard to look at him. ‘I have no wish to be an obligation.’

  His eyes creased as if in pain. ‘I know it would not be a respectable marriage for you. I am aware of my reputation. If we are discovered to have been together, it will make the scandal even worse. The burden would be yours—you’d be the one with a bastard husband with a disreputable past.’

  A past he kept secret. ‘And you would endure the shame of marriage to the daughter of a thief.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘Once we did not care what anyone thought of our romance.’

  His eyes pierced into hers. ‘You cared enough to keep it secret. You worried about scandal even then.’

  ‘Not for my sake!’ she cried. She’d never cared about such nonsense. ‘I worried that if we eloped it would reflect badly on my family, that it would hurt my sisters’ chances for good marriages. I had to think of them.’

  He held her by the shoulders and held her gaze. ‘That is the one thing I cannot prevent. If we fail to find the bank clerk on time, I cannot prevent the scandal or gossip or the damage to your family’s reputation. I cannot promise to save your father from the hangman’s noose.’

  She stopped breathing. Could reality be any uglier? The marriage she once dreamed of would cost her father’s life, her family’s reputation.

  She wished she could collapse under the enormity of it all.

  As if he sensed her despair, his blanket slipped off his shoulders and he wrapped his arms around her, giving the comfort she so desperately needed. She leaned her head against him, her ear against his bare chest filled with the sound of his beating heart.

  He held her until her heartbeat matched his. He sought her lips and kissed her as hungrily as if they’d just escaped the river again. They lay back on the cot, she atop him, prolonging the kiss, feeding her own need along with his. Their tongues touched and explored, their breath mingled.

  Flames shot through her body and she burned with desire for him once more. She needed to be joined to him. Needed the pleasure they created together. Breaking free of his kiss, she savoured him, rubbing her hands over his muscled chest, over the scars from wounds that might have cost him his life.

  He slid his hands up to her breasts, his touch hot and erotic. Sensation flashed through her, consuming every inch of her. She never knew a man’s touch could be so glorious.

  Leo’s touch.

  He filled his hands with her breasts, tenderly kneading and scraping her nipples with his palms. When she thought she could not endure this exquisite thrill a moment longer, his hands moved to cup her derriére. She straddled him and rubbed herself along his erect manhood, trying to ease the aching that grew inside her.

  A part of her stepped outside herself to wonder at the experience. She’d always known she wanted to make love with Leo, but she had understood nothing of the glory of it, of how freeing it would be to abandon herself to sensation, to cast off worries of the past and future and simply relish the intimacy of bare skin and secret places. In a moment she would take him inside her and
be filled by him. The pleasure they would create together was unlike anything she could have imagined.

  Perhaps she should be selfish and marry him, obligation or not, family or not.

  She gasped. Pleasure fled as swiftly as the river’s water had whisked them away.

  ‘What is it?’ His body tensed.

  Tears filled her eyes. ‘If I marry you, it will mean my father will die and my family will be ruined. If I have you, it means I destroy them.’

  ‘It is not you who would destroy them,’ he murmured. ‘Your father and Kellford bear that responsibility.’

  ‘But I could change it.’ By marrying Kellford, she added silently.

  He stroked her tangled hair. ‘We may yet change it and prevent those dire results.’ He gestured to the window. ‘The sun is rising and the rain has stopped. We’ll be able to leave here soon. We’ll find Penny and Walker and then we will find the bank clerk. We will only be a little delayed.’

  His fingers and his words calmed her. Lying next to him made anything seem possible.

  Her arms encircled him and she placed her lips on his. Together they lay down on the cot and she took sustenance from his kiss, as if he were breathing his strength into her. He ran his hands over her body as if she were his most cherished possession, as if he might never have another chance to touch her. She explored the contours of his muscles, so firm and thrilling. At this moment she could sweep past and future aside and relish this passion between them.

  She said a prayer of thanks for his strength and his will and for the joy of touching him so intimately. Nothing separated them now. They were mouth to mouth, skin to skin, body to body, as they were meant to be. Her senses flared with desire for the pleasure they could create together.

  His hand covered her breast and the need for him intensified again. His mouth covered her nipple and his tongue created new delights. She nearly cried aloud at the rapture of it.

  Her fingers dug into his back. Her hips rose as his hand slid down to her feminine place. She suddenly needed for him to touch her there. How could she have guessed such a need existed? At the moment she wanted nothing more.