by Mary Balogh
“Hmm,” he said. “You did not tear down the walls, then?”
“No,” she said. “I kept a great deal. I have not been unnecessarily extravagant.”
“One would hate to have seen Quincy’s face if you had been,” he retorted. “He has been somewhat green about the gills for the past few days as it is. I understand that bills have been flooding in.”
“That is at least partly your fault,” she told him. “I did not need so many clothes and accessories. But the dressmaker you sent said you were adamant and she dared not allow your orders to be contradicted.”
“Some women, you see,” he said, “know their place, Jane. They know how to be submissive and obedient.”
“And how to make a great deal of money in the process,” she added. “I kept the lavender color in here, as you can see, though I would not have chosen it had I been planning the room from scratch. Combined with gray and silver instead of pink, and without all the frills and silly knickknacks, it looks rather delicate and elegant. I like it. I can live here comfortably.”
“Can you, Jane?” He turned his head and looked at her—again with those burning eyes. “And have you done as well with the bedchamber? Or am I going to find two hard, narrow cots in there and a hair shirt laid out on each?”
“If you find scarlet a necessary titillation,” she said, trying to ignore the thumping of her heart and hoping it did not betray itself in her voice, “then I daresay you will not like what I have done to the room. But I like it, and that is what counts. I am the one who has to sleep there every night.”
“I am being forbidden to do so, then?” He raised his eyebrows.
That foolish blush again. The one sign of emotion it was impossible to disguise. She could feel it hot on her cheeks.
“No,” she said. “I have agreed—in writing—that you are to be free to come and go as you please. But I daresay you do not intend to live here as I do. Only to come when you … Well, when you …” She had lost her command of the English language.
“Want sex with you?” he suggested.
“Yes.” She nodded. “Then.”
“And I am not allowed to come when I do not?” He pursed his lips and regarded her in silence for a few uncomfortable moments. “Is that in the contract? That I can come here only for sex, Jane? Not for tea? Or conversation? Or perhaps just to sleep?”
It would be like a real relationship. It was too seductive a thought.
“Would you like to see the bedchamber?” she asked.
He regarded her for a few moments longer before the smile came—that slight smile that lit his eyes and lifted the corners of his mouth and turned Jane’s knees weak.
“To see the new furnishings?” he asked her. “Or to have sex, Jane?”
She found his raw choice of words disconcerting. But any more euphemistic way of phrasing it would mean the same thing.
“I am your mistress,” she said.
“Yes, so you are.” He strolled closer to her, his hands still at his back. He dipped his head closer and gazed into her eyes. “No sign of steely martyrdom. You are ready for the consummation, then?”
“Yes.” She also thought she was ready to collapse in an ignominious heap at his feet, but that fact had nothing to do with a weak resolve, only with weak knees.
He straightened up and offered his arm.
“Let us go, then,” he said.
THE FURNISHINGS HAD NOT changed, only the color scheme. But he would scarcely have known he was in the same room if someone had blindfolded him, picked him up bodily, and deposited him here. It was all sage green and cream and gold. It was elegance itself.
If there was one thing Jane Ingleby had an abundance of, it was good taste, plus an eye for color and design. Another skill learned at the orphanage? Or at the rectory or country manor or wherever the devil it was she had grown up?
But he had not come to inspect the room’s furnishings.
“Well?” Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed. “What do you think?”
“What I think, Jane,” he said, narrowing his gaze on her, “is that I will see your hair down now at last. Take out the pins.”
It was not dressed with its customary severity. It was waved and coiled in a manner that complemented the pretty, elegant dress she wore. But he wanted to see it flowing free.
She removed the pins deftly and shook her head.
Ah. It reached to below her waist, as she had said it did. A river of pure, shining, rippling gold. She had appeared beautiful before. Even in the hideous maid’s dress and the atrocious cap she had been beautiful. But now …
There simply were not words. He clasped his hands behind him. He had waited too long to rush now.
“Jocelyn.” She tipped her head to one side and looked directly at him with her very blue eyes. “I am on unfamiliar ground here. You will have to lead the way.”
He nodded, wondering at the great wave of—oh, not desire exactly that washed over him. Longing? That sort of gut-deep, soul-deep yearning that very occasionally caught him unawares and was shaken firmly off again. He associated it with music and painting. But now it was his name that had aroused it.
“Jocelyn is a name that has been in my family for generations,” he said. “I acquired it when I was still in the womb. I cannot think of a single soul until now who has spoken it aloud to me.”
Her eyes widened. “Your mother?” she said. “Your father? Your brother and sister? Surely—”
“No.” He shrugged out of his tight-fitting coat and opened the buttons of his waistcoat. “I was born heir to my present title. I was born with an earl’s title, Jane. My family all used it until I became Tresham at the age of seventeen. You really are the first to call me by my given name.”
He had suggested it. He had never done so with his other mistresses. They had called him by his title, just like everyone else. He remembered now being shaken to hear his name on Jane’s lips a week ago. He had not expected it to bring such a feeling of—of intimacy. He had not realized how he had longed for such intimacy. Just that. Someone calling him by name.
He tossed his waistcoat aside and untied the knot of his neckcloth. She was watching him, her hands clasped at her waist, cloaked in gold.
“Jocelyn,” she said softly. “Everyone should know what it is like to be called by name. By the name of the unique person one is at heart. Do you want me to undress too?”
“Not yet.” He pulled his shirt off over his head and pulled off his Hessian boots. He kept his pantaloons on for the time being.
“You are very beautiful,” she surprised him by saying, her eyes on his naked torso. Trust Jane to make such a remark! “I suppose I have offended you by using that particular word. It is not masculine enough, I daresay. But you are not handsome. Not in any conventional sense. Your features are too harsh and angular, your coloring too dark. You are only beautiful.”
An experienced courtesan could not have aroused him so deftly even with the most cunningly erotic words.
“Now what have you left me to say about you?” he asked, stepping forward and touching her at last. He framed her face with his hands, sliding his fingers into the warm silk of her hair. “You are not pretty, Jane. You must know that. Prettiness is ephemeral. It passes in a season. You will be beautiful when you are thirty, when you are fifty, when you are eighty. At twenty you are dazzling, breathtaking. And you are mine.” He dipped his head and touched his parted lips to hers, tasting her with his tongue before withdrawing a couple of inches.
“Yes, Jocelyn.” Her teeth bit into her soft, moist lower lip. “For now I am yours. According to our contract.”
“That damned thing.” He chuckled softly. “I want you to want me, Jane. Tell me it is not just the money or this house or the obligation that wretched piece of paper has put you under. Tell me you want me. Me—Jocelyn. Or tell me truthfully that you do not and I will leave you to the enjoyment of your home and salary for the next five years. I will not bed you unless you want me.”
He had never particularly cared before. All conceit aside, he knew he was not the sort of man who repelled women who earned their living in bed. And it had always been a matter of pride with him to give pleasure where he took it. But he had never cared whether a woman wanted him or just the wealthy, rakish aristocrat with the dangerous reputation. In fact, if he had thought about it, he probably would have decided that he did not want any woman close enough to desire him.
He had never before been Jocelyn to anyone. Not to anyone in his family. Not to any woman. Not even to his closest friends. He would rather turn and leave now and never return than let Jane lie on her back on that bed simply because she felt obliged to. It was a somewhat alarming realization.
“I want you, Jocelyn,” she whispered.
There was no doubt she meant it. Her blue eyes were focused fully on his. She was speaking the simple truth.
And then she leaned forward, letting every part of her body rest lightly against him. She set her lips to the hollow at the base of his throat. It was a gesture of sweet surrender.
All the sweeter because it seemed uncharacteristic of Jane. He knew her well enough to realize it was something she would never do merely because surrender was expected of her.
He felt strangely gifted.
He felt curiously wanted. In a way he had never felt in his life before.
“Jane,” he said, his face in the silk of her hair. “Jane, I need to be inside your body. Inside you. Let me in.”
“Yes.” She tipped back her head and gazed into his eyes. “Yes, I will, Jocelyn. But you must show me how. I am not sure I know.”
Ah. Jane to the end. She spoke in her cool, practical voice—which he suddenly realized was a mask for nervousness.
“It will be my pleasure,” he told her, his mouth against hers as his fingers tackled the buttons down the back of her dress.
14
HE WAS NOT NERVOUS.
Oh, yes, she was.
She was nervous in the sense that she did not know quite what to do and was afraid of being gauche.
But she was not afraid. Or in any way horrified at what she was doing. Or ashamed. And she had spoken no lie. She wanted him. She desperately desired him. And he was beautiful—all solid, hard muscle with broad shoulders and chest, narrow waist and hips, long legs. He was warm and smelled of some musky cologne.
He was Jocelyn, and only she had ever spoken the intimacy of his name. She knew all about the importance of names. Only her parents had ever called her by her middle name, her real name, the one that seemed somehow to encompass her true identity. Her parents and now Jocelyn. She had tried to stop him from calling her Jane, but he had done so regardless.
And so in some inexpressible way they knew each other intimately even before the physical knowing, which was just beginning. He was unclothing her. Her nakedness did not embarrass her. She saw herself through the look in his dark eyes and knew that she was beautiful and desirable.
She gave him back the look.
“Jane.” He set his hands lightly at her waist and drew her against him. She inhaled slowly at the feel of his bare chest brushing her nipples. “We are ready for bed. Come and lie down.”
For a moment the coldness of the sheet against her back took her breath. She had changed the colors of the room but not the materials. Satin, she had guessed, was an erotic accompaniment to what would happen in this bed.
She watched him finish undressing. He did not turn his back and she did not look away. She was to become as familiar with the look and feel of his body as she was with her own. Why begin with shyness or coyness?
She knew pretty well what happened. She had lived all her life in the country, after all. But even so she was shocked. There surely could not be room.
He was smiling that half-inward smile of his when he climbed onto the bed beside her and propped himself on one elbow to look down at her.
“You will become accustomed to both the sight and feel of it, Jane,” he said. “I have never had a virgin. I suppose there will be pain and blood this first time, but I promise you pleasure too. And I will not put this terror inside you until your body is ready for it. It is my task to see that it is made ready. Do you know anything of foreplay?”
She shook her head. “I have never even heard the word.”
“It means what it says.” His eyes still laughed gently at her. “We will play, Jane, for as long as we need before I mount your body and ride us both to satiety. I daresay you do not know much if anything about the ride either, do you? The pain will be over before it begins. You will enjoy it, believe me.”
She did not doubt it. There was already an ache of something that was not quite pain along her inner thighs and up into her belly. Her breasts had tightened to a strange, tingling soreness.
“You are doing it already, are you not?” she said. “Playing? With words?”
“We could sit at opposite ends of a room and arouse each other to fever pitch with only words,” he said, grinning suddenly. “And maybe we will do it one of these days. But not today. Today is for touch, Jane. For exploring each other with hands and mouths. For stripping away the otherness that holds us from merging into the oneness we crave. We do crave it, do we not? Both of us?”
“Yes.” She lifted a hand and cupped one of his cheeks. “Yes, Jocelyn. I want to be a part of your name, a part of the person who bears that name, a part of the soul inside that person. I want to be one with you.”
“You, me, we, us.” He lowered his head and spoke against her mouth. “Let us invent a new pronoun, Jane. The unity of I and the plurality of we melded into a new numberless word for Jane and Jocelyn.”
She opened her mouth beneath his, suddenly ravenous and shaken by the words they had spoken—and those they had not. This was not the way she had expected it to be. This was not man and mistress. This was lover and beloved.
It had not been a part of the bargain. Either for her or—surely—for him.
But it was what was happening.
She realized too late, as his tongue plundered her mouth and his hands gave her an intimation of the magic and sensual delights ahead, what this was all about. She understood, far too late, why she had taken this option rather than any of the other more proper and rational ones. She understood why she had accepted his proposition without either outrage or horror.
This was love. Oh, perhaps not love exactly. But this was being in love. This was wanting to give and give to the beloved until everything that was oneself had been gifted away. And wanting to receive and receive until the emptiness had been filled again with a mingling of what was herself and him.
He was right. There was no word. No pronoun. There never was a word for the deepest realities.
“Jane.”
His hands, his skilled fingers, his mouth were everywhere. He knew unerringly where and how to touch her, where to brush with feather-light fingertips, where to tickle, where to pulse his fingers, where to massage, where to pinch and scratch. He knew where to kiss, where to lick, to suck, to nip with his teeth.
She had no idea how long it went on. And she had no idea how she knew where to touch him, how to caress him, when to change the nature of each caress. But she did know, as if she had always known, as if there were a deep well of femininity on which to draw for the beloved without the necessity of any lesson.
Perhaps it was that hers was not just any woman’s body and his not just any man’s. Some instinct told her that this was usually done in darkness and with eyes tightly shut, that usually all the pleasure was hugged tightly to oneself, the pleasure-giver shut out. Even in her inexperience she sensed that lovers did not always love with eyes open and focused on each other’s whenever it was feasible to do so.
“Jane.”
He spoke her name over and over, as she did his. She was his beloved, as he was hers.
The ache, the yearning, the need became more persistent and more localized. She needed him there.
Here.
; Now.
His hand, between her thighs, worked light, deft magic in her most secret place and built a frenzy of desire.
“Jocelyn.” She set her hand over his wrist. “Jocelyn.” She did not know what she needed to say. But he understood.
“Slick and warm and ready,” he said, his mouth coming to hers again. “I am going to mount, Jane. Lie still and stay relaxed. When I am deep, we will begin the final pleasure.”
“Come,” she said to him. “Oh, please come.”
His whole weight bore her down into the mattress, holding her immobile while his thighs came between hers and pressed them wide and his hands slid beneath her. By sheer instinct she twined her legs about his. And then he raised his head and looked down into her face, his eyes heavy-lidded with passion. But not blind passion. He looked deep into her own eyes.
And then she felt him hard against the pulsing ache of her entrance. And pressing through it, pushing slowly but firmly, filling her, stretching her, alarming her. There was the sudden premonition of pain, the certainty that he could come no farther. He was too big.
“Jane.” There was something like contrition in his eyes. “If I could only take the pain for you. But it always falls to the woman to do the suffering.” He pushed hard, frowning as he gazed into her eyes.
There was an involuntary tensing, a fear of pain, and—and an awareness that the moment had passed, that he was deep. That he was inside her body. And inside her heart. Inside herself. She smiled at him.
“I am still alive.”
He grinned and rubbed his nose across hers.
“That’s my girl,” he said. “I could not expect tears and vapors from Jane Ingleby, could I?”
She clenched her muscles about the unfamiliar thick hardness inside her and closed her eyes to revel in the wonder of it. But he had promised more. And now that the dreaded moment of her lost virginity was over, all the longing, all the aching came flooding back.
“What is the ride?” she asked, opening her eyes again. “Show me, Jocelyn.”
“Lie still if you wish,” he told her. “Ride with me if you wish. There are no rules here in our bed, Jane, and nothing in that foolish contract either that applies to this. Just you and me and what is mutually pleasurable.”