by Julia Ross
"Good. Ι want it to be too late. Ι want to be free of you forever."
"You have been hurt," he said, opening his hands. "This won't free you."
She took the hem of her nightgown in both hands and wrenched it off over her head, before she threw herself back on the bed. She felt repulsive, her limbs twisted like tree roots, her breasts horrible. Perhaps he would spin on his heel and leave, or perhaps he would obey that imperious sexual demand between his legs, push himself over her and thrust her thighs apart.
Either way, she would win.
Alden did neither.
"This is not an episode," he said. "It never was. If only you will let me, Ι will prove it."
He bent to retrieve her nightgown. Before she could move, he tossed the fabric over her and wrapped her securely in its capacious folds, pinning her arms to her sides. Panic burst like a thundercloud as he slipped onto the bed next to her and pulled her against his chest. Juliet fought, trying to knee him. He trapped her legs with one of his and held her pinioned.
"Now, hush," he said. "We aren't enemies, Juliet. I'm on your side. Look at me."
She stared up into his lean face, framed in gold. Candlelight blazed, adding to the warmth of the summer night. With sure, gentle fingers, he stroked the hair back from her forehead.
"There," he said. "That's better. Now fit your head against my shoulder and let me hold you."
"Hold me?"
He grinned, but something else burned intently in his eyes. "Women like to be held. Every rake knows that."
Alden lay back, fitting her head against his shoulder, holding it there with one hand, while he rubbed the other over and over down her back. Juliet drew up her knees like a child, while he pulled her closer into his embrace. She didn't have the energy to fight. If he wanted to, he could seal forever into her soul the stain of Bill's assault.
"I have liked being a rake." His voice feathered away into the bright room. "I have reveled in the way women soften when Ι glance at them, the way they blush and melt if Ι give them a certain smile. To bring that look to a woman's eyes whenever Ι wished - it made me feel Ι could conquer the world. Power is very addictive, Juliet. But it's the power to win willing surrender, not the power to coerce that is headier than wine. You don't need to coerce me. Ι am willing. Ι surrendered to you a long time ago."
He kissed her earlobes and temples, before again finding her mouth.
The frantic anger still beat at her heart, yet Juliet heard a moan. Her moan, shivering up from her lungs. His lips touched tenderly, to the corners of her mouth, to her tongue, to her upper lip only, then to the lower one. Tears sprang, stinging her eyelids. His lips brushed over each eyelid in turn, as if he would kiss away her pain.
"You want brightness, Juliet, the body's brightness - but that's based on pleasure, on the mutual delight of skin to skin. You are beautiful, rare. Ι am confounded by the depth of my desire, but your body belongs to you. The power is all yours."
"I am defeated," she said. "I cannot take charge any longer. Help me, Alden."
His lips pressed gently on her forehead. "Relax. You are safe with me."
He picked up her plait. Deftly, he untied ribbons and unraveled her braid. One by one, long strands slipped through his fingers, drifting over her breasts in a warm, familiar skein of mahogany.
She felt protected, wrapped in a cocoon of her own hair.
Saying nothing, Alden took her right hand in both of his. His palms rubbed firmly, from elbow to wrist, his fingers seeking each knotted muscle, each concentration of ugliness. He massaged steadily, rubbing away tension and pain with calm certainty.
Juliet lay helpless and let it happen.
Almost as if her bones sighed and relaxed, her arm seemed to grow longer, like a bud unfurling from a dry, wrinkled seed buried too long underground. The dicot unfolded, the true leaves sprang strongly from the stem. She was a spring plant, running green with new sap.
As if reaching for the sun, her forearm grew straight and strong. Her left arm, in contrast, still felt like a monkey's, shriveled against her side.
At last he kissed her palm and laid down her hand, before he took her left forearm in both hands and began to work the same magic.
His face was almost stern, concentrated and intent. Light scattered in her eyelashes. He burned in bright threads of golden flame, a sheer, breathtaking splendor - even his hardened sex, magnificent and tender in the candlelight.
As if the dawn sang to a sunflower, her arm shed its warped distortion and turned evenly, fearlessly to his life - giving heat.
He laid her hand down, almost reverently, and rotated her onto her stomach. Her nightdress slid away. Juliet flopped like a fish, trailing her tight legs behind her, yet her long, blissful arms seemed to float.
His hands brushed her shoulders as he gathered her hair and stroked it aside. A shivering sensation thrilled over her skull, as if her hair sang.
She pressed her face into the pillow, robbed of the sight of him, as he began to work down each side of her spine, pressing with both thumbs, forcing away the demons of disfigurement. Her skin softened beneath his palms. Her back became limber. Her bottom sprang supple beneath his fingers. She was becoming expansive and lovely, her back strong, her legs stretching away to infinity, her feet sighing in bliss.
Each limb stroked, then gently shaken, scattering all the misshapen ugliness and replacing it with serenity. Every surface caressed, every muscle cajoled into luminous surrender. When it was complete, when there was nothing left to unravel, as if every limb had burst into radiant bloom, he lifted her in his arms to smile down into her dazed eyes.
"You are as lovely as daylight," he said. "I am honored to touch you."
Juliet put her arms about his waist and burst into tears.
He held her, stroking her back. His kisses pressed on the top of her head, on her ears, on her temple. As her tears dried, she tipped her head and smiled at him. He smiled back.
"Let us make love, Juliet. Not fight. Not fornicate. Make love. Now, kiss me again."
His mouth found hers as flames of brilliance burned cleanly through her blood.
His ready body discovered hers a few moments later, in a plunge of slippery, throbbing sensation. With wild jubilation, she cried out, a gasp of delight, as if her lungs and throat emptied any last shreds of corruption. An image of his ecstatic face flooded her mind: his hair rimmed in gilt, his skin golden. Perhaps Jupiter ravished her in a torrent of luminous coins. Lord of the gods – witty and clever, sinful and noble - making love to her with the powerful demon wisdom of a rake, until she felt beautiful, glorious, and emptied of hatred.
SHE SLEPT, EXHAUSTED, AGAINST HIS CHEST, WHILE ALDEN LAY and stared at the ceiling.
This need be nothing to you but another episode, like all the others. What use is a rake to me, otherwise?
He had spent his adult life pursuing nothing but episodes. The stimulation of the chase. The intensity of its inevitable culmination. He had never failed to seduce a woman he wanted. Never. One after another, those safely available women had fallen into his arms and his bed. He had of course chosen only women who were experienced and dependable: married women, secure in their miserable but necessary marriages; cynical widows with no desire to marry again; even professional courtesans, as long as they were exclusive, sought-after and hard-to-get.
He had thought Juliet a widow, safely attainable. She had turned out to be trapped in a miserable marriage, which ought to make her all the more perfect for a brief - or preferably lengthy affair. He had never achieved quite this level of physical ecstasy before and he was loath to give that up. Why the devil was it so impossible to foresee a future where she would live as his mistress?
The candles began to die, one by one. The last few cast small, dancing shadows over the uneven plaster. The building creaked as it settled down for the long, cool hours until dawn. Alden pulled the covers over Juliet and himself, still holding her.
The light flickered. Growing steadi
ly darker, the room smelled of smoke and wax, overlain with the musk of their lovemaking. The last candle went out. His arm had gone numb, cradling her, but he did not move a muscle.
ALDEN WOKE TO Α GLIMMER OF LIGHT. Α FEW BIRDS twittered outside.
Barely dawn.
As he turned his head his blood surged. Juliet slept soundly. Her hair gleamed in the pink-tinged half light. Her arm was cushioned by his; her breasts pressed against his chest. He wanted to kiss her awake, bring that contented, soft look once again to her eyes. As he reached to move a strand of chestnut from her cheek, her eyelashes lifted.
"Good morning," he said.
She looked shy, as if she were surprised to find herself naked, her legs entwined with his. "Ι wondered if Ι dreamed it," she said.
"So did Ι" He ran a strand of her tangled hair between thumb and forefinger. "Did it work?"
Α small frown pulled her brows together for an instant. "Work?"
"Did we chase away the dark memories? Can you go freely now into the arms of any man you choose?" He tried to make it light, an easy banter, the way he would talk to any lover.
"Yes," she said. "Yes. You made me feel beautiful."
"You are beautiful."
She sat up, allowing his hand to settle on the curve of her waist, where the slim back flared into her woman's hips. Had she noticed his erection?
"Perhaps it worked too well," she said. "Ι don't want us to do it again."
Astonishment robbed him of breath, until he remembered how easily he could make her change her mind.
"Why not?"
She sat in silence for a moment, as if debating with herself. He traced up her spine with his palm.
"Very well," she said, twisting to face him, covering her naked breasts with her arms. "Ι have nothing to lose from the truth. If we do it again, you will make me fall in love with you."
"And that would be a mistake?"
Juliet bent to retrieve her nightgown from the floor. His hand slipped away from her waist.
"You're not a man with whom it's wise to fall in love. You break hearts. You always move on." Her back was lovely, fluid and slender. Female. She pulled the nightdress over her head, hiding her glorious breasts, her lovely woman's belly. "Why have you never married?"
His retreat from the question was automatic - from this sudden invasion into his privacy, into something that was none of her business
"Nature calls," he said. He didn't mean it to sound so sharp, but his disappointment that they wouldn't immediately make love again was bitter. "May Ι answer her queries first?"
He slipped from the bed and grabbed his dressing gown, before he went into his own room to use the chamber pot. He had to allow his arousal to die away first. Alden watched himself, slightly bemused. Did women understand such simple, primal facts about men: that the average male usually woke from sleep instantly aroused, ready to tumble the nearest wench foolish enough to be that close?
The physical impulse to make love to her again dominated his thinking. He desired her with an almost painful ferocity. Why must she demand more of him than he wanted to give? He had seduced scores of women. He had never lied to them, but neither had any of them truly become friends, privy to his secrets, aware of his inner life.
What made him so afraid to take that next step?
Afraid? The thought shivered through him like a waterfall. He had been afraid?
He forced himself to face it. Fear? Fear of what? Abandonment? Intimacy? He stood in stark confusion for a moment.
Alden splashed cold water over his skin and cleaned his teeth, allowing her time to do the same, then he walked back into her room. Juliet gazed up at him from a chair beside the fireplace. She was wrapped in the dressing gown he had bought for her.
"I have decided to answer you honestly," he said.
"Why? Were you tempted to lie about it?"
"No, Ι was tempted simply not to answer. But first I'd like a truth from you. Ι would very much like us both to get back into that bed. Ι refuse to believe you do not want that, too."
Her eyes blazed. "Of course Ι desire it! Lud! Ι am trying to save myself from making such a mistake."
"A mistake?"
She was every inch the lady, proud and upright, as if armoured by that training. "You want me to fall in love with you, when we can't have a future? Ι am still married. You are Lord Gracechurch and you must marry an heiress. Ι won't become your mistress so you can break my heart when you wed someone else."
It seemed a minor objection. "What if Ι promise never to marry?"
"How can you? Ι am only wondering why you haven't wed already. "
Alden walked to the cold fireplace and leaned there among the wreckage of burned wicks and candle wax. How odd that this took more courage than facing a naked blade on a dueling ground!
"Gregory was the heir. It was up to him to produce a siring of little Granville-Strachans to inherit the title."
"Yet it's your duty now. Why did you delay?"
It would be easy to avoid this painful probing. If he touched her, she would melt. They could make glorious, memorable love and drown all these awkward questions in the body's far simpler ecstasy. Υet he groped for the truth, whatever the risk.
"Perhaps because Ι didn't want someone like me to seduce my wife."
"Ah," she said. "Is no marriage safe from the charms of someone like you?"
"Some, of course. Rare ones. Υet the relationships Ι have indulged in have been far more honest and less hurtful than Ι thought wedlock could ever be. Ι didn't believe it was in my nature to love exclusively, or create one of those exceptional marriages. Ι do know Ι could never have loved any of those virgin girls Ι might be expected to marry."
"So you wanted to be in love with your wife?"
"Ι suppose Ι did. How extravagant of me! This isn't something Ι have really thought very hard about, Juliet. But men and women only truly get to know each other in bed. Why marry a stranger, only to find we hated each other and were stuck for life?"
She stood up and paced across the room. "You’ve never made love to a virgin?"
Alden watched her with devouring need. He had nothing to offer but his own flawed self, but he plunged on blindly, searching out the naked truth, deliberately abandoning charm and wit.
"Ι never thought it was fair. Virgins have false expectations, illusions that are impossible to fulfil."
"As Ι did, when Ι ran away with George?"
Her silk wrapper flowed like a river from her shoulders, her hair rioting over it. Carriages were stirring outside. The sound of men, horses and wheeled vehicles echoed up into the room.
"Faith, Juliet! Deflowering dewy-eyed misses is not a responsibility that has ever appealed to me. It's at heart dishonest and exploitative, unless the man is genuinely in love."
She stood with her back to him. "That doesn't stop most men."
"Juliet, what the deuce do you know about men? There are only three reasons why an experienced man seeks a virgin. Either he must, because he needs her for a bride. Or he's addicted to that kind of ugly discrepancy in power. Or he believes some nonsense about a virgin curing his pox or his impotence."
"And which of those made George marry me?" She turned to stare across at the window. Light chased over her profile. "Perhaps all three of them? Or perhaps it was just money. You're right, of course. My silly little head was filled with all kinds of fantasies. George soon divested me of them. Υet Ι liked what we did in bed together. Ι thought it was wonderful."
He glanced back at the bed where they had made love. "What do you think now?"
"At the risk of further inflating your exaggerated pride, Ι see now that Ι was too ignorant to know any better. Ι wanted the attention." Her words clashed with the roll of iron-shod wheels bouncing over the cobbles in the inn yard, but he heard the wry note in her voice. "I didn't know, of course, that there could be so much more to it."
He crossed his empty arms over his chest. "And now you do?"
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br /> "Now Ι can go out there into the world and find out. Ι can compare men as you have compared women. This one is better, that one is worse-"
"I have not compared women!"
She spun about to face him. "I thought you said Ι was the best?"
"The best?" He flung his hands apart. "What the devil would that mean? You are unique to me, Juliet, but not only because of what your body does to mine."
"Am I?" Her tone almost teased, but desperation was there, too.
He knew he was about to take the greatest risk of his life. The words would tear his heart open, because he thought this time they really might be true. He said them anyway. "I’m in love with you."
"The rakes' most practiced lie!"
"Lud, ma'am!" He didn't mean to shout, but his voice roared as he strode across the room to stand over her. He grasped her shoulders in both hands. "Those are not words I've ever truly meant before. Ι am in love with you!"
Her eyes dilated as she stared up at him. "What fools we both are, Lord Gracechurch! My heart aches with what Ι want to call love for you. My soul wants to believe you, to believe your offer of marriage. But Ι can’t! Don't you understand? Ι can't!"
"Why not?"
He wanted to press his mouth over hers, force her to give in to what her body so obviously wanted.
"If Ι become your mistress, you can no doubt force George to seek a divorce, but he will not make it easy, not even to salvage his pride. You can pay whatever price he demands - with money or a sword, it doesn't matter - you may even prevail. But however much we might think now that we want it, we could never make a marriage afterward."
"Why the devil not?"
She turned her head. "Because there would be toο much ugliness first. Because Ι have made this mistake once before: thought my body's reaction to a man meant that Ι was in love and that our love could survive any scandal, any adversity. Ι was wrong. Now Ι am doing it again. You think that you want me. Easy to say while Ι am safely unattainable. What will happen after all the bitterness and public shame of a divorce? We are not in love, Lord Gracechurch. We only think that we are."