by Jane Feather
“So, you come a thief in the night,” she mused in a bare whisper. “A Casanova through the window. Are you ordinarily given to such dramas, my lord?”
He laughed softly. “No, not in general, but I had the sense that an unusual approach was necessary with you, my lady.” He kissed her mouth. “You are so entrenched in your life, so surrounded by the trappings of domesticity, a simple siege seemed unlikely to carry the day.”
So entrenched in her life. The words banished Cornelia’s sensual lethargy. Her life was circumscribed by domesticity, ruled by the long shadow of the earl of Markby. If the earl could see her now…
The image was so absurd that she nearly laughed aloud. Or would have done so if it had not also been horrendous. The merest breath of scandal would be enough for him. The idea of his grandson’s mother lying shamelessly in the arms of a near stranger, a man of whom she knew almost nothing, except what he chose to present. A wealthy viscount, a widower, a man about town. What else was he?
Harry felt her sudden withdrawal. “What is it?” He propped himself on one elbow and smiled down at her with a hint of puzzlement.
“Nothing really,” she said with a quick shake of her head. “An inconvenient reminder, that’s all.”
“Ah.” He touched the tip of her nose. “How inconvenient?”
She shook her head again with a smile. “Irrelevantly so.”
He nodded in acceptance and moved his hand down the side of her body from her shoulder to the indentation of her waist in a long smooth caress. “Such richness,” he murmured, burying his lips in the hollow of her throat where the pulse began to beat fast.
Cornelia dismissed her questions and with them the faint unease that had prompted them. For the moment she needed to know nothing more about him than this. She stretched languidly beneath his hands as he began to explore her body anew, bringing her skin to tingling sensitivity. This was just a dream, a lustful and lusty dream. No one was watching, no one would ever guess how Lady Dagenham had once spent the long reaches of a dark winter night.
It was a quieter loving this time, each taking the time to savor the other. Harry moved slowly within her, drawing himself back to the very edge of her body, holding himself there, watching her face as she gazed wide-eyed into his face hanging above her. The lines of his face were softened, his mouth full and sensual, lips slightly parted as he gauged her reactions. When he sheathed himself inch by inch within her, she drew in her breath, caught her lip between her teeth, pressed her heels into the taut muscular buttocks. He resisted her urgency, kissed the corner of her mouth, drew back once more, teasing her.
Her back arched as her buttocks and thighs tightened, and her inner muscles gripped him, holding him deep within her. He moved a hand down between their bodies and touched her where they were joined and her body leaped beneath him. She flung her arms above her head, moving her raised hips around the shaft of flesh buried within her, moved upwards to the caressing finger, unsure now which part of him was causing this exquisite sensation but sure that she wanted it never to stop.
And when it did, it was in a rushing torrent of delight that brought tears to her eyes and the taste of blood in her mouth where she bit her lip to keep from shouting her joy to the night wind.
Harry slid his arms around her, pressed her against him as if he would join every inch of their bodies, their sweat-slick skins, and buried his mouth in her hair to silent his own cries.
He fell to the bed beside her, rolling her sideways against him, and closed his eyes, his heart pounding, a red mist behind his eyelids. He felt her fall into sleep, her body limp, one leg sprawled across his thighs, her head heavy on his chest.
But he had to leave her. He could discern the faint graying of the dark beyond the window. But how long had he been here, dallying with the widow? He raised his head, trying not to disturb Nell, and peered at the clock above the mantel. Five o’clock. The servants would be up any minute.
Nell seemed dead to the world. He lifted her leg from over his thighs and cradled her head as he slid out from beside her, laying it gently on the pillow. She didn’t move, her long white body gleaming in the darkness.
His eyes darted to the workbox. Now, while she slept, was his opportunity.
“Harry?” She raised her head from the pillow. “Where are you going?”
“It’s nearly dawn, sweetheart.” He bent to kiss her. “If I don’t leave now, your maid will find me here when she brings your chocolate.” Cornelia struggled up against the pillows and chuckled weakly. “What maid? We don’t run to abigails in this house.”
“Nevertheless, I must go.” He bent to his discarded clothes and scrambled into them. Then he went to the window, pushing it up. He swung a leg over the ledge and looked back at her, now sitting bolt upright in the bed.
“Until the next time, sweetheart,” he promised softly. He reached for the drainpipe, hung for a second, then swung sideways and was gone.
Cornelia jumped from bed and ran to the window. She leaned out watching his agile descent and the neat drop into the soft earth of the flower bed below. “How are you going to get over the wall?” she whispered. But if he heard her he chose not to respond. She watched as he darted across the garden, the light growing stronger by the minute. He leaped for a low branch of an apple tree and shinnied up it, then straddled the wall and a second later was gone.
Cornelia closed the window softly. Her body was still singing, and she stood for a minute running her hands over herself, remembering the touches that had brought her alive after so long. And even with Stephen…but she quashed the thought. Such a comparison would be disloyal. Her husband had been a gentle lover, but she guessed fairly inexperienced. He had not known how to arouse his partner, and she had not known what to expect, so they had been contented with what they had shared. And it brought them children…her children, now only hers. She could not lose them.
Panic rose for an instant in her throat. She swallowed it, breathing deeply. Her pleasure in the night faded. From beyond her door came the unmistakable sounds of the house waking. A child’s cry from the nursery, the excitable yap of a dog, the sound of the front door.
Her eye fell on the puddle of white…her nightgown on the floor in front of the fire. She picked it up, shook it out, and for a moment felt again the glory of the night, aware of the stickiness on her inner thighs, the slight soreness between her legs, the glorious sense of a well-used body.
She dropped the garment over her head and went to the armoire for her robe. It was time to put on the day.
Chapter 14
SO WHAT DO YOU THINK, Nell? Will this do?” Livia, careful not to disturb the pins that held her into the gown, turned in front of the long mirror in the spare bedchamber that had become the seamstress’s workroom. “It’s very fine, I think.” She stroked the silver-striped cream taffeta skirt of the ball gown. “It is, isn’t it?”
“It’s lovely,” Cornelia said, reaching over Livia’s shoulders to adjust the neck of the gown. “But this needs to be lower…don’t you agree, Claire?”
“Yes, indeed, m’lady,” the seamstress agreed, stepping forward to make her own adjustments. “And if Lady Livia feels a little exposed, then a fichu…?” She let the question die of its own accord.
“Certainly not,” Cornelia declared with a quick conspiratorial smile at the seamstress. “You have lovely breasts, Liv, and they need to be seen.”
“Quite right,” the seamstress declared with the familiarity of many fittings.
“My father…?” Liv protested without conviction.
“The vicar will not see you to object.” Aurelia pointed out, entering the fray. She’d been standing to one side, making her own observations. “It’s a gorgeous gown, Liv. You’ll wear it to your first Almack’s assembly ball, and the bucks will be at your feet.”
Livia laughed. “That I doubt, but I appreciate the reassurance, Ellie. Now it’s your turn.” She gestured towards the dove gray silk that lay over the chaise longue.
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br /> “One minute, Lady Livia,” Claire said. She unpinned the creation from her body, and Livia stepped back with a shake of her shift and a twitch of her shoulders.
“Now, Lady Farnham.” Claire picked up the dove gray silk with a degree of reverence. “If you would stand in front of the mirror?”
Aurelia stood for her fitting, watching her reflection. The gown was, as she’d specified, quite demure, even matronly, she thought with a little flicker of dislike. But she had made the decision for herself. She was a chaperone. A widowed mother. The gown was unpinned, and she sat on a low stool to watch Cornelia’s fitting.
Cornelia’s ball gown was an azure blue silk, very similar in style to Aurelia’s own. A decorous décolletage, a dainty froth of lace over the shoulders. The color, however, beautifully complemented Nell’s eyes, and the shape made the most of her long waist. It ended in an embroidered hem that fell just above her ankles. Aurelia had always envied those nicely turned ankles.
“It’s very pretty, Nell,” she said.
Her friend surprised her. “Yes.” Cornelia frowned at her image. “Too pretty. I don’t like pretty.” She plucked at the neckline. “Claire, could you lower this?”
“Yes, easily, Lady Dagenham.” Claire was there with her pincushion.
“And do something more interesting with this lace.” Cornelia plucked at the discreet lace on her upper arms.
“A little puff sleeve, m’lady,” Claire suggested, wielding pins. “Very fashionable.”
“Good,” Cornelia said. “Then do that.”
“But you liked the gown perfectly well two days ago,” Aurelia pointed out.
“Yes, but I’ve changed my mind,” Cornelia stated, aware of her sister-in-law’s puzzlement but unable to explain it away. The only way she could explain it to herself was that something had opened or awoken within her, the recognition that she was a sexual being, something more than a loving mother and a dutiful widow. And she wanted to glory in that side of herself, not hide it away behind demure and matronly widow’s weeds.
Aurelia regarded Cornelia quizzically. “I hadn’t realized that you intended to burst upon the ton in full glory, Nell.”
“I don’t really, Ellie. But we might as well look our best,” Cornelia said carelessly. “You should alter your gown too. We’re chaperones for Liv, but we don’t have to look like matronly dowds.”
The seamstress coughed. “I beg your pardon, ma’am, but I would not send you into society looking like dowds.”
Cornelia was instantly apologetic. “No, Claire, I didn’t mean that at all. I meant only that Ellie and I haven’t seen much of the outside world since we were widowed. But I don’t think we should dress as if we’re only fit for sitting against the wall watching our protégée dance.”
She looked at Aurelia. “Come on, Ellie, you’re twenty-nine. You don’t have to put yourself on the market, but you could feel that you were in contention and play the game.”
Aurelia looked at her friends. Looked at herself in the mirror over Nell’s shoulder and made up her mind. “Very well, if you’re going to play the game, Nell, then so will I.”
Claire nodded with satisfaction. “Three such beautiful ladies. It will be a real pleasure to dress you.” She gathered up the unfinished gowns and arranged them reverently on the dressmaker’s dummies.
“We’ll leave you to it then,” Aurelia said, moving to the door, Livia following her. She glanced back at Cornelia, who was still sitting on the edge of the threadbare chaise beneath the window. Her friend wore a distracted air that was most unlike her. Ordinarily, Nell was utterly focused on whatever she was doing, but for the last two or three days it seemed as if she was only half-there. She would sometimes start a sentence and let it fade away uncompleted. Either that or she would stare into the middle distance for minutes at a time, just as she was doing now.
“Penny for them, Nell,” she said lightly.
Cornelia looked startled. “What? Oh, sorry, I was miles away.”
“Yes, so I noticed,” Aurelia said. “Are you coming?”
“Oh, yes, of course.” Cornelia seemed almost visibly to shake herself as she stood up and followed them out of the room.
Aurelia said with a laugh, “What’s the matter with you, Nell?”
Cornelia shook her head. “I’m not sleeping very well,” she offered, and hurried away in the direction of the nursery stairs.
“Just what’s going on with her?” Aurelia demanded of Livia. “You’ve noticed how strangely she’s behaving, surely?”
“She does seem a bit distracted,” Livia said. “But if she’s tired…”
“Stuff,” Aurelia scoffed. “Nell could be dead on her feet, and she would still be focused. She’s just not here most of the time.”
“No, I suppose you’re right. Now you mention it.” Livia frowned. “And why this sudden urge to be fashionable? Nell doesn’t give a fig about clothes.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Aurelia said. “But her style has never been…what’s the word I want…daring, that’s it. It makes sense I suppose to make our new clothes as modish as possible but such a pronounced décolletage?” She shrugged in puzzlement.
“Well, I think she’s right, for what it’s worth,” Livia stated. “We don’t want to look like country bumpkins. Just think of that gown Letitia was wearing when she came to call yesterday. It was practically transparent. I don’t know why she didn’t freeze to death. The materials are all so thin, and the necklines are so low…and if that’s for daytime wear, the devil only knows what they’ll wear at night.”
“Well, Letitia certainly managed to get in a few disparaging comments on our own dress,” Aurelia said with a grimace.
“Nell put her in her place, though.” Livia chuckled. “You remember, when Letitia made that comment about how plain your gown was and how horizontal stripes were all the fashion now, and Nell said she always thought that stripes increased one’s girth, but that you, at least, would be able to get away with it, seeing as how slender you are. And then she looked at Letitia and suggested that perhaps a vertical stripe might lessen the impression of a certain thickness.”
Aurelia smiled, but a trifle guiltily. “We shouldn’t be unkind, but Letitia did deserve to be taken down a peg.”
“Well, next time she sees us, she won’t have any call to make disparaging comments,” Livia stated.
Cornelia forced herself to concentrate on Stevie’s convoluted description of his morning’s visit to Hyde Park with Daisy. Franny’s frequent interruptions didn’t make the narrative flow any faster, and the temptation to let her mind follow its own path was almost irresistible, but she knew that Stevie would sense the first moment her concentration wavered, and his hurt recriminations would only make her feel horribly guilty.
For once she welcomed Linton’s firm declaration that it was time for the children’s afternoon nap and left the nursery, making her way to her own bedchamber. She needed solitude and knew that her present mood was already attracting her friends’ curiosity. And she had no way of satisfying that curiosity.
She sat beside the fire and took up her workbox, preparing to finish sewing the braided trim on a sleeveless velvet jacket designed to accompany the new walking dress Claire had made for her. The addition of the jacket would transform the outfit sufficiently to make it seem like another one altogether.
Absently she turned the thimble around on her finger, trying as she so often did to decipher the engraving. It seemed just a series of hieroglyphics, almost Egyptian in origin she thought. Whatever they were, whatever they meant, it was a lovely object in its own right.
Then her hands fell into her lap and her eyes rested on the fire. It had been two days since that night with Harry, and he hadn’t come knocking, either on the front door or via her bedchamber window. She told herself that it was all to the good if she’d seen the last of him. No one knew about that one extraordinary night of bliss, and they never would. But it couldn’t happen again…mustn’t happ
en again.
But she knew she hadn’t seen the last of Harry Bonham. He would be back. And what she would do then she had no idea. She knew what she should do, but Cornelia had enough self-knowledge to know that in this case that might not be what she would do.
A knock at the door brought her back to the room. “Nell?” The door opened, and Aurelia put her head around. “Oh, there you are. We were wondering where you’d got to. You weren’t in the nursery.”
She came fully into the room. “A messenger just brought this.” She held out a letter, quite a thick one. “I think it’s from the viscount. It looks like his crest.”
Cornelia took the letter with a word of thanks. Her heart jumped against her ribs as her fingers closed over the paper, just as if she were some love-struck girl, she thought with a mixture of amusement and disgust.
“I wonder why he’s taken to writing to us,” she observed lightly. She turned the packet over and slit the wafer with a fingernail. She opened the folded sheets and looked in surprise at the list of names inscribed on both sides of the two sheets. “What on earth…? Oh, it’s a list of the people he says we should leave cards with.”
“Do we know any of them?” Aurelia leaned over her shoulder to read the list. “Oh, yes, I recognize some of them. Lady Bellingham was a friend of my mother’s. And…oh, and he’s suggesting we call upon Letitia. Of course he doesn’t know we’ve already done that, perforce.”
“We’ll have to return her call of yesterday anyway,” said Cornelia somewhat dourly.
“May I see the list?” Aurelia took the paper from her sister-in-law and read the list again. “There must be about thirty names here. That’ll keep us busy for a few afternoons.”
“We need a carriage to make calls,” Cornelia pointed out. “We’ll have to hire one from a livery stable.”
Aurelia frowned. “It’ll make us look a bit shabby, won’t it?”
Her sister-in-law shrugged. “It can’t be helped, Ellie. We can’t afford to set up our own stable. Maybe Nigel will be able to help.”