by Erin Satie
Yours most sincerely,
Olympia
Bonny lowered her parasol and tipped her head back so she could see the sky past the shade of her bonnet. It was a mild day, the sky a deep saturated blue. A light breeze kissed her face. She might have been jealous, but it was such a perfect day. She was so happy to be right here, in this place.
“I wonder what they’re getting up to,” said Bonny.
“Something alarming, at a guess. Do all women talk to one another like that?”
“Just Olympia.” Bonny grinned. “She’s flighty, I’ll grant you, but smart enough to take Tess’s advice.”
“Do you wish you were there? I can’t leave Woodclose… but you could spend more time in town.”
“Once you’ve trained Charles Dunaway, we’ll make trips together. Right now though… I’m exactly where I want to be.” Bonny smiled and pointed at his line, bobbing in the water. “You’ve got a bite.”
Loel caught six fish before rowing back to shore. On the way home, walking side by side, he said, “We’ll bring a cushion for you next time.”
Bonny savored that “next time”—the acknowledgement that she belonged, that she was welcome. That he’d enjoyed the time they spent together.
She had too.
They returned to find Charles and Hugh shouting and laughing in their piping voices as they ran in circles around the yard, playing a game of tag. Charles drew up short when he saw them, bowing and mumbling an apology.
“Take these to Mrs. Taylor.” Loel handed Charles his basket of fish. “And I’ll make sure all’s well in the greenhouse.”
Charles dashed inside, Hugh trailing slowly behind.
“It might be a while before we can think of traveling,” Bonny murmured.
“Mm-hmm.”
She followed him into the half-empty greenhouse. The plants that they hadn’t taken to auction were young, ailing, or dormant. The sweet perfumes and vivid colors were gone. But the fountains remained, the bright chuckle of water and the sharp scent of chlorophyll. Not much for a new apprentice to injure, luckily.
Bonny clicked the padlock closed around the inside latch. “Close your eyes and count to ten.”
“What?”
“Count slowly.”
Loel hesitated, then obeyed.
Bonny ran down the narrow path into the center of the greenhouse, removing her bonnet and gloves and tossing them onto the empty table where once her Odontoglossum crispum had rested in solitary glory. She worked the fastenings of her dress and draped it over the back of a chair.
By the time she reached Loel’s little bed, she was naked.
She shivered, despite the heat. So long as she was beautiful, she was valuable. So long as she was beautiful, she was afraid. The two had gone hand in hand all her life.
Men saw her and wanted her. She’d relied on their desire as much as she’d resented it. But everything she knew about right and wrong had been upended these past months. She’d been taught propriety for the benefit of men like Charles Gavin, who’d treated her like a piece of candy, a treat made for his enjoyment, not a person in her own right
She’d unlearn it for Loel. Loel, who was earthy and physical and patient. Who’d given her time and space to bloom, like one of his flowers.
He approached slowly, without speaking, and brought her hands to the button of his coat. Because she’d told him once how it moved her to watch him dress, or undress, and he remembered. Because when she gave him a gift, he gave one back—weaving the threads that bound them together as husband and wife.
She slipped the buttons loose from his coat and drew the thin wool off his shoulders, trailing her hands over his linen-clad shoulders, his hard biceps. She repeated the process with his waistcoat and tugged his shirt loose from his trousers. He obligingly lifted his arms so she could pull it off, leaving him bare from the waist up.
She leaned close to breathe in his scent. She caressed the silky smooth skin along his ribs and arms, raked her fingers through the hair on his chest, followed the trail of it down to the waistband of his trousers. She dug the heel of her palm into his erection, thick and straining against the cotton.
“They say,” said Bonny, sitting on Loel’s bed and working the clasps of his trousers, “that we must lie in the bed we make. To tell us we will get our just deserts, though I’ve known since the fire that wasn’t true, and in any case, how many of us make our own beds?”
“I’ve made mine for years,” said Loel.
“So you have. Here in your greenhouse, where it’s always warm and comfortable and you can never get enough sleep. But that’s going to change.”
Loel’s eyebrows lifted a notch.
Bonny settled on the thin mattress and reached for him. “For now, I will lie in the bed you made, and let you make love to me.”
“And what will that prove?” Loel wondered, working off his boots.
“Nothing at all.” Bonny grinned. “But it will feel very good.”
Afterword
Thanks for reading Bed of Flowers! If you have a chance, I hope you’ll leave a review—or share your thoughts wherever you like to talk books. Word of mouth is the best way to help other readers find the books they’ll love and avoid the ones they won’t.
I don’t yet have a release date (or even an estimate) for the next book in the Sweetness and Light series, though I can tell you that Cordelia Kelly will be the heroine. If you want to make sure you don’t miss the news, sign up for my newsletter. You’ll be the first to hear.
If you want to drop me a line, you can email me at [email protected], chat with me on Twitter @erinsatie, or look me up on Facebook.
If Bed of Flowers was the first book of mine you’ve read, consider giving my No Better Angels series a try. It’s a series about women who fight for themselves and what they want, even if that leads them away from the high road… and the men who love them just as they are.
If you’re curious, turn the page to read the first chapter of The Secret Heart, which is free at all major retailers.
The Secret Heart, Chapter 1
Sussex, England
Autumn, 1838
Midnight struck as Caroline Small crept through the moonlit corridor. A chorus of bongs and chimes sent her ducking into the shadow of a tall clock. Her skull vibrated with the noise.
Imagining the maintenance required to synchronize so many clocks made her shudder—did the Duke of Hastings employ a servant just to wind his clocks? All day, every day, in an endless circuit? But then, it stood to reason that the Duke would find a way to broadcast his importance even in the dark of night.
Not that she’d ever met him. Hastings spent most of his time in London and rarely visited Irongate, the seat of his duchy. Caro’s invitation had come from the old Duke’s ward and niece, Daphne.
Silence settled over the house again. Caro brushed the dust from her wrapper and resumed her slow progress. The ballroom, when she finally reached it, was bigger than the entirety of Caro’s London home. Decorative plasterwork framed tiers of arched windows, sculpted whorls and curlicues that shone dully in the moonlight. Gold leaf, probably, though she wouldn’t be sure until she saw them in the light. Overhead, thousands of crystal droplets dangled from three massive chandeliers. The whole room smelled soothingly of beeswax.
Her foot slipped on the glossy floor as she advanced, allowing her to pinpoint the odor’s source: a fresh coat of polish, applied with a heavy hand.
Too slick to dance on.
She tiptoed up to one of the French doors set into the west-facing wall, positioned to squeeze every last drop of sunset into the room. She flipped the latch and advanced onto a wide terrace. Beyond lay a garden in the French style, all paved walkways and bushes pruned into rigid geometric shapes.
All the windows on this side of the building were dark. Even the servants had cleared away. And a waist-high balustrade of white marble circled the terrace. It would serve her as a barre.
Caro lit the lamp she’d ca
rried down from her bedroom and dropped her wrapper. Beneath she wore her usual practice uniform, a bodice and knee-length skirt of white muslin with a black sash tied at the waist. Her bare arms prickled with gooseflesh, but she wouldn’t feel the cold in a few minutes.
Her instructor, Giselle, always told her ballerinas pray with their legs. If so, An Elementary Treatise upon the Theory and Practice of the Art of Dancing was their Bible. Every obstacle is surmounted by perseverance and reiterated exercise, wrote the great instructor Carlo Blasis. Caro dropped into a plié, heels on the ground, bending at the knees, legs turned out. Remain not, therefore, twenty-four hours without practicing. It had taken almost two days to reach Irongate. She couldn’t let her first night here pass without finding a place to dance.
Forty-eight pliés, and then she moved on to the grands battements. For these, she extended her leg, raised it as high as her hip, and beat it quickly. All the lessons he takes, when widely separated one from the other, can be of no service toward making him a good dancer; and are little else than a loss of so much time. After sixty grands battements on each leg, she stepped away from her makeshift barre and repeated the whole routine.
Lots of girls hated the barre exercises. Giselle said the talented ones often tried to avoid them. Caro loved them. She loved the repetition. She loved the precision. She loved the feel of her body doing what she told it, when she told it, how she told it. Obedient. With her leg turned out, her arm bent just so, her head turned up, she felt like she’d transcended her own flesh.
Which was why, after she finished her exercises, she rehearsed her favorite passage from La Sylphide. She became the sylph, a soulless air spirit, pantomiming her erratic, teasing advances toward a besotted woodsman with skills built from the most earthbound qualities of all: discipline and perseverance.
By the time she finished, sweat dampened the hair at her temples and bloomed on her bodice. She gulped air. Her legs trembled, and she swayed like a sailor in a tempest as she skirted the balustrade and stumbled down the steps onto a gravel path leading to a three-tiered fountain.
Human again.
Caro drank, reaching out for more. Water filled her cupped palms, spilled over, cool and plentiful. Her cheeks were so hot. She could heat a small orphanage through a mild winter with the body heat she was generating.
“You must be Miss Small.”
The clipped, aristocratic voice sent her whirling around, choking a little as she failed to stifle a shriek. She saw a heavily muscled man dressed in warm flannels, well bundled despite the mild autumn weather, lips thickened and split, one eye swollen shut.
Two choices: one, she could scream. Someone would come running, maybe even in time to save her from being violated. If she were lucky, the scream might even frighten her attacker away. But he didn’t look like the sort of man to frighten easily. He did appear strong enough to throw her over his shoulder and carry her away before help arrived.
Her second choice? Run. Just run.
The stranger had a broad chest, too solid to be called lean, his legs thick as tree trunks. Beautifully made, impressive, but not tall—though he still towered over her. Fine male specimens of his kind couldn’t run with any speed. If she dug into her reserves, she’d make it through the doors before he’d gone two paces.
“I think you have the advantage of me, Mr.…” Caro backed away toward the gap in the balustrade as she spoke, angling for a straight shot at the door.
“You don’t recognize me?” He spoke in a tone of mild curiosity, not affront, in the purest accent she’d ever heard.
A prickle of unease raised gooseflesh along Caro’s arms.
A stray moonbeam skated along his pale, sweat-dampened hair. According to the portraits she’d seen on the walls, the dukes of Hastings had for generations boasted uniform, and unusual, coloring—blond hair and light brown eyes. What if this ragged, beat-up figure of a man were a member of the family?
What if he lived at Irongate?
“I’m sorry, I don’t.” Caro smiled nervously. “You have my permission to introduce yourself.”
She took another step toward the door, moving as lightly as she could, but the gravel crunched beneath her heel.
The stranger’s gaze dropped straight to her feet. “Running won’t do you any good.”
“Well, of course you’d say that,” Caro snapped. “I think I’ll take my chances.”
To her surprise, he smiled. Not much—his mouth was too swollen to stretch. Even the attempt opened the split in his bottom lip and sent a thread of fresh blood dribbling down his chin.
Caro’s stomach turned, and she shuddered.
“Go on, then.” He scowled. “Go back to your room. Lock the door. In future, try to remember that rules are made for a reason. Young ladies who stay in their rooms at night don’t have to worry about encountering bloody brutes in a dark garden.”
She couldn’t tell if terror or disgust kept her guts liquid, only that some devil had decanted strong liquor into her belly, and it would serve her as fuel. But his last sentence, the unabashed bitterness of it, gave her pause.
She tipped her head to the side. Softened her voice a bit. “Do you live here?”
He only glared, and in the silence she heard his labored breathing. Each inhale quick and shallow, then a catch before the slow exhale. He wasn’t winded. He was in pain.
Of course he was in pain. He looked like he’d been pulped.
He took a single, deliberate step toward her. And then another.
Her pity fled as quickly as it had come. She forced steel into the exhausted, stinging jelly of her legs and sprinted for the door. She flew across the gravel and took the stairs in a single bound.
Then tripped over the oil lamp she’d left aglow on the terrace. She twisted as she fell and landed on her side, but the impact knocked the wind out of her. She gasped, sucking air faster than her lungs would take it, until her breaths settled back into a regular rhythm. Oh, she’d ache in the morning.
A shadow, a deepening of the blackness all around her, startled her. The stranger. He’d followed her to the terrace.
He was even harder to look at from up close. Pinpricks of blood welled in the raw skin of his forehead and cheeks. Black blood ringed the inside of his nostrils.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded.
He bent to pick up the lamp—the glass shade had cracked, but it hadn’t shattered or leaked. “Lucky little fool,” he muttered, then held out his hand.
It was a big hand, with thick, stubby fingers and bulging, reddened knuckles. She cringed away from it and, before he could get any closer, scrambled to her feet and through the open French door. She closed it, flipped the lock, and ran to the safety of her room.
Want to keep reading? Click to download The Secret Heart, free at all major retailers, or check out the Complete No Better Angels Box Set. Priced at $9.99, it’s cheaper than buying each book in the series individually.