by Willa Ramsey
He sighed. He did not know what the morning would bring, but it was blissful to be there with her, even if it was just to lie next to her awhile, like the contented and long-married husband he already was in his imagination. He hadn’t left his room since the bout, and didn’t know what Quillen and Mrs. Meary thought of Caro being in his room, but guessed they were deliberately keeping their distance and giving them the time to be alone that they would not have upon returning to town.
They might even presume they were already engaged.
Would there be awkwardness when Caro awoke and they had to contend with being in bed together like this? He was unsure. They loved one another, and before Chumsley’s lies had gone public, they were on the verge of becoming engaged. Had they come back to that point?
Or was his precocious lady simply comfortable lying with him outside of marriage?
She stirred. Her eyelids parted, and he laughed aloud at the skeptical, confused look on her face.
“Hello there,” he said, laying his book on his lap.
She raised herself onto her elbows, hair mussed, eyes squinting, and assessed her surroundings. When understanding dawned she said, simply, “Lud.”
He laughed again. He was sitting up against some pillows, bare to the waist. But she was looking only at his face, quizzically, as if she was trying not to look terribly pleased about something.
“What is it, darling?”
“Your spectacles.”
“What of them?”
“I have missed them.”
He threw his head back. “They are your old friends, now?”
She started to crawl toward him, innocent but cat-like, and his entire world seemed to turn, a ship keeling helplessly on some tropical reef.
And here I was concerned things might be awkward for her.
She tucked her skirts beneath her and kneeled next to him, then reached up and brushed a bit of hair from his temple.
He brought his fingertips to the spot, brushing softly against hers. “The stitches?”
She nodded. “They’re healing nicely.” Her warm breath was a tonic; who needed a salve or a surgeon, when there was Caro?
She leaned over him and put a fist on his other side, then kissed him once, gently. “I love you, Adam.”
He brushed an unruly lock of hair from her face. “I love you, Caro.” Did he say her breath was a tonic? It was nothing to her lips; those were what could cure—what would cure—his every ailment.
Then she turned her head to the side and looked down at his lap.
“That is most interesting.”
“I beg your—” He stopped, and looked down.
“‘Hardwoods of Northern England?’” She grabbed the book and tried to move away but he caught her and turned her onto her back, shrieking happily.
“How did you know that was a subject of great fascination to me, my lord?” she asked, laughing heartily with her head thrown back, her eyes closed, her hair falling into her mouth.
“I’ll show you fascination,” he said as he kissed the lovely spot of neck that was now wide open to him. He covered her body entirely, his knees on either side of hers, his hands pinning hers against the pillow, near her head.
When she’d finished laughing he raised his head, but instead of kissing her at once, looked into her eyes. “I want for every night to be like this, Miss Caroline Crispin.”
She lifted her head and kissed him. He freed her hands and she brought them to his face, guiding him lower, so she could rest against the pillow.
They opened their mouths in unison and he lowered himself still further, resting some of his weight on her. When she moaned softly he broke the kiss and asked, “Is that too much?”
“Not at all, I adore it. What of you, though? Are you in any pain?”
Now it was his turn to laugh. “I am very much in the opposite of pain.”
He looked at her; her expression had turned serious. “Can we have this night, without talk of the future?”
“Caro—”
She had reached under him and was stroking the front of his breeches. He closed his eyes and a guttural sound escaped his throat. Having lost all trace of his previous thought, he plunged his lips back onto hers. He was finished contemplating matters.
They kissed ferociously now, and pressed their bodies together sometimes urgently, sometimes clumsily—seeking friction and heat, yes, but also closeness, unity, peace. There was a sweet torture to it all, and when he thought he might crush her with his need to press the whole of himself against the whole of her, he crooked an arm underneath her and flipped her over, rolling her on top of him.
She sat up and grasped at the fabric of her dress. He saw that she was trying to remove her clothing and sat up to assist her; it was a job that was best done, apparently, with a great many giggles and whispers from not one eager party, but two. There was another shriek as well, followed quickly by a half-hearted shush, as items of the finest silks were pulled over her head, untied around her back, and slipped agonizingly along her legs. By the time she was naked, he was overwhelmed with the thrill, the adoration, the trust of it all.
He was also practically quivering from want.
She sat beautifully on his lap and smiled at him, with as little modesty in her manner as there were threads on her person. He pulled her close. The exquisite softness of her skin seemed impossible; she was cool where he was nearly afire, and he brushed his palms and fingers gently, tentatively, down her back as if wary of singeing her. She cradled his chin in her hands and continued to kiss him with such eagerness—such triumph, in a way—that he once or twice felt close to tears.
He was a romantic, after all. And he was with the woman he hoped to spend the rest of his life with, for the very first time. He pushed aside questions of whether she would indeed marry him, of why she was resistant to discussing the future, and savored every precious second, instead.
Lud! Did this ever live up to her expectations!
She could barely contain her excitement as Adam ran his hands up and down her back, tickling and soothing her, then travelled up her neck and into her hair, removing the few pins that remained there. He pulled her head to him, kissing her deeper than ever. Then he suddenly pulled away.
“There is one caveat to my agreement to spend this night with no talk of the future.”
“Yes?”
He hooked a muscled forearm—oh, how she loved his forearms!—around her waist and flipped her over again, back onto her back. Lying underneath him, she traced a fingertip along the front edge of his breeches, dipping and exploring underneath the fabric, delighting in the heat of his skin. He nuzzled her neck and made sounds that magically, miraculously, she felt everywhere from her shoulders to her toes.
“We must discuss whether to take certain precautions…”
She hesitated. She thought it best if they did, but was wary of offending him. “I don’t know about you, but I am hoping this is not the only time we do this…”
He laughed. “Meaning?”
“It seems to me there is no harm in…in taking precautions at times. At this time.”
“That’s all I need to know, love.”
She thought he might guide her hands then, as they were already nearly pulling down his breeches, but instead he resumed his adulation of her body, which he performed mainly with his lips but occasionally conducted with one or both of his mighty hands. There were kisses and nips, tight grips and feather-light brushes, and she was stunned by the variety of it all. He had begun with her neck—oh, how he seemed to love her neck!—and made his way to her shoulders and down the rest of her, ministering to every bit of her in equal measure.
Until, at least, he arrived between her legs, where he dawdled at length.
Did she say earlier that she’d been stunned? Ha! What a fool she had been! She hadn’t known what it was to be stunned until that moment, when Adam made her feel things—there and through the whole of her—that she could never have imagined. Her previ
ous encounters pressed up against men, her own explorations, her perusal of the most salacious books in Mrs. Hellkirk’s library—none of these things had prepared her for such sensations. She arched her back and grasped futilely at the sheets, and when he brought her to the brink he seemed to sense it, giving her everything she needed to cross over—to pain, to pleasure, to poetry, to satiation.
Did she say that this had lived up to her expectations? Nay, this surpassed them. It thundered over and crushed them, and everything else in its path.
He moved gently up her body, measuring the distance in slow kisses, then positioned himself above her. He brought himself lightly against her as he whispered in her ear.
She wanted to reach around his back and pull him to her, but knew he would be in great pain if she touched him where he was so bruised. So she reached lower and grabbed him by the buttocks instead.
“Easy, love,” he replied after a quick groan. He held still, in spite of her attempts to encourage him to greater urgency.
So she stilled herself, and waited, and tried to admire his derriere with her hands. It would not have been a difficult thing to do, had she not been so distracted by the desire to have—oh.
Oh.
Now she understood the need to go slow.
He kissed and bit her bottom lip, then sucked it gently into his mouth. Before she knew what was happening, he was guiding one of her legs up and around his waist, moving gently against her, picking up speed, keeping her lip between his teeth. By the time he released it, she had adjusted to his presence, his size, his rhythm. She arched against him until she had more of that exquisite pressure from earlier, and she explored him by hand and mouth, matching him in mounting intensity as he approached his own release, withdrawing just beforehand and spending himself on the bedclothes.
She pulled him gently back toward her, then down onto his side, and they lay like that with their foreheads touching, their contented exhalations their only conversation. She ran her hands over the muscles of his arms and his back, slick with salty perspiration, and he traced her lips with a callused finger and smiled at her. She felt strange and magnificent, spent and replete all at once, and very much in love with the man lying next to her.
But when he fell asleep, she got up and dressed and called for a servant to alert Mrs. Meary to do the same. It was dawn, and she had to leave. After she had packed her bag, she wrote a note and folded it and placed it next to him.
Dearest—
I will see you soon, in town. Rest and recover and come back to me.
—Yours
She did not want to leave, but she had her parents to think of. And she had another scheme to conduct.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“You haven’t stopped smiling since I arrived,” said Edie. “And that was a full hour ago.”
“Haven’t I?”
“No. You must be rather thrilled with Adam’s new prominence in all the gossip pages.”
Caro nodded meekly.
“Or perhaps you are pleased with something else of Adam’s doing.”
“Tea? Let’s have some tea,” she announced as she jumped up and rang for Barclay.
She didn’t need any prodding to think about Adam’s doings. Indeed, she’d been able to think of little else on the carriage ride home that morning, or when she’d written her note to Edie just afterwards, or when she’d sat in the morning room pushing food around her plate, smiling stupidly at her toast.
“Tell me about the event that you’re planning,” she asked as she stood before the fireplace, surprised at the chill that had invaded London in her absence.
“It was my brother’s idea, really. He wrote to me from Banmoor, and provided the names of some friends of his and Lord Quillen’s that he felt I should invite. I added some of our neighbors and such.” She shrugged. “I guess he wanted to show off the drawings that your parents have prepared for the house.”
“An exhibition? Oh, how wonderful. Papa often gives a talk at such things.”
“That is what I understand. He and your mother have agreed to come, of course.”
“Edie, do you hope to marry?” she asked, turning suddenly from the fire.
Edie sat back and looked around, perhaps surprised at the sudden change in topic. “I have always told you that I’m not terribly keen on getting married.”
“You have stated any number of opinions on marriage, depending on the season and how you were feeling at the moment.”
Edie flopped her wrist at her. “Nuance,” she scoffed. “Who has a need for it?”
Caro smiled. “As you seem to have figured out, Edie, I may find myself in…in a new position one day soon. A position that affords me an even greater interest in your desire to marry.”
Edie smirked at her. “I knew it.”
Caro went over and sat down next to her, taking her hand. “I need to know, dearest. What would you say to my marrying Adam? He has not asked yet—not in full, anyway—but he seems very much on that course. I cannot accept him, though, without your blessing.”
Edie’s eyes glistened. “I want nothing more than to have you as a sister, Caro. And if I do decide to marry one day, I’ll have the best schemer in London to help me find a match.”
“Even though this particular schemer is still whispered about, by some?”
“Especially because she is whispered about.”
They embraced and they cried a little, and then they laughed like the schoolchildren they had once been together. They sipped tea by the fire, talked of the gossip regarding the fight, and disagreed vehemently as to whether Adam had been fairly described in the papers as “being known, rightly, for his impressive presence and intellect.”
Even when they’d stopped talking of Adam, Caro’s thoughts found their way back to him, as if tethered. But apart from feeling guilty for daydreaming when she was meant to be conversing with her friend, she did not mind this new reflex. She had already concluded that she would be thrilled to marry Adam—and had only needed Edie’s blessing on the matter. She knew that she could trust him not to ask her to be silent on her accomplishments or her ideas. Marriage to him would not be a tether; in fact, it would be a buttress, capable of withstanding great pulls and pushes, rains and windstorms, and the passage of a great many years.
But if she knew Adam at all, he would be worried that she had refused, the night before, to talk of their future. He had done so much for her; the least she could do was offer him that conversation—and the chance to ask his question, and to receive an answer.
Even if she had to come up with a new scheme to make it the special sort of occasion he likely hoped for.
When Adam entered the front hall he was shocked to find Mother there—and standing on two feet. Three, if you counted the sturdy cane that she rested her hands upon.
“I am glad to find you in one piece,” she said as she approached him, getting close enough to take his chin in her hands and peer closely at his still-bruised face. “There isn’t room enough in this house for two curmudgeons with canes and limps.”
“Lovely to see you too, Mother,” he replied.
She gave his chin a wag before letting go and smiling. “Come, come.”
They settled in the saloon, where she sat with a foot propped up on several pillows.
“How does the leg feel, now that you are walking?”
“My leg? Pish! Tell me about that gash on your temple.”
“I thought you’d have heard all about the fight by now.”
“Indeed. Your sister and I were most taken aback, Adam,” she replied, sitting forward and frowning at him.
“What criticism could you have, Mother? Your own husband was the most enthusiastic fighter I’ve ever known.”
“Precisely, Adam!” Now she raised her voice, surprising him. “He enjoyed a good fight. You, on the other hand, do not!”
“How do you know that, when we haven’t spoken of it in years? Nay, we’ve barely spoken of it at all, in fact.”
&
nbsp; She snorted at him and sat back. “I am your mother, Adam. I know what troubles my boy.”
“If that were true, then you would have known that I hated it all those years ago. Why did you not say anything, then? Not even when Father required me to spar with him every day, all those years?” He had not meant to raise his voice to her, and was startled when she shifted in her chair and avoided his eyes.
“We did speak of it, Adam,” she replied, more softly now. “On occasion. I would ask how your training went, and you answered that it was fine. I thought you were figuring things out, learning how to stand up to Father. I didn’t think it my place to figure it out for you.”
“Did you ever speak to Father of my unhappiness?”
“Yes. But you must understand, Adam. Your father’s own father—your grandfather—was a gloomy, capricious man. And he was about your height, but bigger—much heavier. You did not know him, thank Heavens. But he was strict and prone to outbursts, and I’m afraid that when your father was a child, those outbursts were sometimes violent. He threw a chair at him, just before he went away to school—”
“’Struth?”
“—indeed. And so your father took up fighting, to learn to protect himself. He came home from school a grown man, and having never been defeated in the ring. And wouldn’t you know it? He never had a chair thrown at him again. Perhaps it was coincidence, or perhaps having a reputation as a bruiser made your grandfather respect him, finally. I couldn’t say. I just know that it became more and more of an obsession for him over the years, and that by passing his obsession on to you, he thought he’d be doing you a favor in this world.”
“Why did you not tell me this?”
“Since when does anyone in this family speak seriously about things?”
Adam huffed in agreement.
“Or ill of the dead, for that matter? And I will admit, I did not realize the extent of the misery that his training caused you. You were my firstborn, and I was unsure about so many things. I stood back too much.”
He looked into the fire. They had never spoken like this. The rapport they had with each other—and with Edie—was so bound up in teasing that they struggled when an earnest declaration was called for.