He could do that. He’d make sure of it. The only real question was whether he’d survive when his own was broken instead.
* * *
She was going to cry, and Vivian was certain that wasn’t comme il faut. The sensations were overwhelming, the pleasure beyond description, and the emotions… She silently apologized to William, who’d no doubt shared years and years of these kinds of feelings with his Muriel. Feelings Vivian would never have been able to compete with, never have been able to match.
And what of Darius? How did he do this, hire himself out for coin when the consequences were so intimately devastating?
Or were they?
He held her tenderly, his hands on her back leaving a trail of slow, sweet pleasure where he traced her bones and muscles. He’d shown her consideration of a magnitude Vivian had never imagined—was this why Angela loved her husband? Was it the promise of that kind of care that had seen her own mother giving in to Thurgood’s smiles and caresses?
Vivian was witless to puzzle through it, but her best guess was that Darius wasn’t witless. He was used to this. He’d said as much.
Like an ice on a hot day, a good gallop on a fall morning. Nothing more. Not even when it started a precious new life, not even when it meant a woman he hardly knew would be financially secure for life.
She felt him slipping from her body, and then he was patting her backside. “Slide up, so you’re over me.”
“I’ll make a mess.”
“A small mess. On me, rather than on the sheets. Up you go.”
Another gentle pat, and she complied, mortified to feel his seed leaving her body along with him. And then he was casually holding a folded handkerchief to her sex, preventing the mess but completing her sense of embarrassment.
“You’re blushing.” He kissed her cheek and dabbed at her gently. “There’s no need for that.”
“Blushing isn’t a matter of need.” She dropped her face to his shoulder and felt him using the handkerchief low on his belly. “Shall I go back to my room?”
“Is that what you’d like?”
He tossed the handkerchief aside and passed her a glass of water. When she sat up to drink it, she realized she was still straddling him, and she was naked, and he was…
Well, of course he was looking at her, smiling up at her a little… tentatively. The light from the banked fire was dim, but Vivian was certain she’d never seen that exact smile on Darius Lindsey’s face. She passed him the water, and when he’d finished, she set it on the nightstand.
“I’m sleepy,” she said, “and your bed is warm.”
“Never say I sent a lady alone to a cold, dreary bed.” He stroked the mattress beside him, and she climbed off him and cuddled up.
“So is that something they pay you for too?”
“I beg your pardon?” There was amusement in his tone, also something else—bewilderment? Hurt? She would certainly have paid him for it, paid him a great deal.
“The ladies who pay for your favors? Do they pay you for the pleasure of cuddling?”
“They do not,” he replied, sounding displeased. “Nor would I allow it. Now hush.” He settled his chin on her temple, and Vivian was all too willing to hush. She hurt for him. Hurt that he had nobody to cuddle with, that the only child in his life was likely his brother’s by-blow, and he must sell even his kisses to keep his household intact.
She resolved to ask William why this should be so. Most earldoms came with fat, old estates, capable of supporting younger sons to at least some modest extent. But as her body went boneless in Darius’s arms, and sleep seeped into her brain, Vivian considered she might not bring this up with William, ever, for what passed between her and Darius was somehow precious and private, business arrangement or not.
* * *
Darius knew the moment Vivian gave up and let sleep claim her. He’d been prepared for her to fire off more of her pithy observations about his lifestyle, if not his lovemaking, but she’d succumbed, and now he could wallow in the pleasure of simply holding her.
How long had it been since he’d held a woman for the uncomplicated pleasure of it? He could tell himself he wanted to swive her again in the morning—increase the chance of conception, that is—but right now, all he wanted was to hold her, to keep her and her tender, inexperienced sensibilities safe for as long as he could.
He missed Italy, where the women understood what a cicisbeo was and what he was not. He was a friend, an appreciated friend. And he missed the way Italian men were demonstrative with their ladies. They didn’t show they cared for a woman by blowing another fellow’s brains out on some foggy meadow strewn with sheep dung. They wrote poetry to women and sang to them and toasted them before open company. And the ladies blew them kisses in return.
In England, the last thing Darius could be was a friend to the likes of Lucy or Blanche. They took their power too seriously, dealt too much from weakness and need, not generosity and pleasure.
He hadn’t been willing to let himself think this way, not until the prospect of Lord Longstreet’s coin loomed closely enough at hand that Darius could consider becoming a gentleman farmer in truth.
And how nice it was going to be, to have another three weeks to toss ideas back and forth with Vivian over the breakfast table. To see her dressed appropriately to her station, and to know of all men, he—without coin to speak of, or expectations—had given her her heart’s desire.
In sleep, Vivian stirred then settled, but her hand had slipped lower, from Darius’s waist to rest over his groin. Her fingers flexed, brushing his cock—forbidden territory to all other women—and he went still then shifted slightly under her hand. She brushed her fingers over him again, patted him sleepily, then subsided.
And for that, for that simple, sleepy, affectionate little pat on his soft cock, he gave up another piece of his heart to her.
Eight
Able regarded his father, who sat in the stifling library swaddled in blankets and scarves. “I never should have put you up to riding out with me. You’ve been ailing ever since.”
“Ah, but it did me good, my boy.” William’s eyes held a twinkle. “To treat myself to a hot scone or two, a nip from the flask, a trot through the village. It reminds me what it’s all for, you know?”
“All what?”
“The scrapping about in the Lords, for one thing. You think it’s fun, to listen to the same old arguments over the Catholic question? To hear Prinny whining for yet still more money while the streets of London are littered with men who gave limbs and eyes in defense of King and Country?”
“You’re sounding suspiciously liberal, your lordship.” Able drew up a chair before the blazing fire, because it wasn’t often he and his father just talked.
“Not liberal, exactly. I believe the monarchy in the hands of a wise and just ruler is still government as God intended,” William said, setting aside some faded correspondence. “But the people aren’t sheep, and we’ve seen what they can do when they decide revolution is their only recourse.”
“England isn’t France.”
“Hunger is hunger,” William countered, sitting up straighter. “Bad harvests can happen anywhere, and Louis was ruling an abundantly blessed and happy nation, and then, in just a few decades, all is chaos and murder.”
“I suppose you’re in a better position to appreciate that than most. Not many have your perspective.”
William smiled thinly. “I’m too damned old, you mean. God knows I feel it.”
Able did not argue the point, for William was venerable indeed. “We should send word to Vivian that you’re ailing. I can put a note in the post tomorrow.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” William said with a touch of asperity. “She’ll be galloping down here, wielding vile concoctions, putting plasters on my feet, and clucking and fussing until a man can’t get any rest. I have a little cold, is all, and there’s no better place for me to be recovering than in the company of my family, at my ancestral home.�
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Able smiled at the reference to family. It wasn’t much, but they weren’t demonstrative men. Coming from William Longstreet, it was something, to be called family—as clearly, whatever she was, Vivian wasn’t included in that designation.
* * *
Darius grinned down at Vivian. “I made it to Edward the Martyr that time.”
“I beg your pardon?” Vivian thought her tone was impressively crisp, but she spoiled the effect entirely by brushing his hair back from his forehead and slipping her fingers over the curve of his ear. She knew he liked her to touch his ears, and his hair, and his…
“You know, Alfred the Great, Edward the Elder, Athelstan, Edmund, Edred… when you tempt me to lose control, I recite them in my head.”
“And all the past kings of the realm help you withstand my charms. I’m impressed.” She was impressed that she could have this discussion—any discussion—when her body was still throbbing with the pleasure Darius visited upon her.
“I’ve never even gotten as far as Canute,” he confessed, still clearly pleased with himself. “You’re a siren, Vivvie.”
And didn’t that just prompt a woman to be pleased with herself, too? “I’m a hungry siren.” She stroked his ear again.
“It’s been a taxing week. Undo us, sweetheart.”
“Why is it my job?” she groused, but she carefully extricated his waning erection from her body, because he preferred she be the one to do it. Vivian suspected Darius just wanted her to become at ease handling him, as God knew, he was at ease handling her. In a week’s time, she’d learned all manner of naughty, wonderful things from him, and she suspected he was only bringing her along slowly so as not to shock her.
“You like having your hands on me,” Darius said as he shifted off of her. “I’m humoring you.”
“Of course, you are.” She pushed him to his back and rolled off the bed to fetch a damp cloth from the basin on the washstand. “Every proper English schoolboy learns the royal succession so he can humor the ladies.” She swabbed off his cock, comfortable now moving him this way and that. He hiked his knees and spread his legs so she could make a pass at the inside of his thighs, his belly, and groin, and then the part she suspected he liked best, when she’d carefully tend to his balls.
“You are like that tomcat.” She dabbed at herself, set the cloth aside, and climbed back on the bed. “Your physical pleasures are dear to you.”
“All of God’s creatures like to feel cared for.” Darius ran a hand down the side of her face, a caress that had her nigh purring. “It’s how you show your appreciation for all the care I lavish on you.”
“Forcing me into new gowns, slippers, gloves, and bonnets isn’t care, Darius Lindsey, it’s your idea of entertainment.”
He wrapped her in his arms. “Ungrateful wench. You love it when I make you read Mrs. Radcliffe and dance with me in the library and try decadent desserts with each meal.”
“Except breakfast.”
“I just served you your breakfast dessert, unless you’d like to nibble on my parts? No? Well, perhaps another time.”
“You keep suggesting this. I can’t believe you’re serious.”
“Of course I’m serious.” He slid a hand over her breast. “Though you won’t let me nibble on you. I’m attempting to get a child on a spinster, and it’s trying, to say the least.”
He teased like this mercilessly, making Vivian wonder if all couples were so free and affectionate with each other.
“You’re trying to shock me, sir, but I need a nap, so hush and rub my back.” She rolled over, because in this at least she was in complete earnest. Sharing a bed with Darius Lindsey was exhausting.
Darius smiled and did as she ordered. As Vivian dozed off, he made a bet with himself that she’d be giving him more explicit orders long before their month was out. She was or soon would be fertile, and her natural sense of curiosity was making quick inroads on her inherent shyness.
Day by day, and night by night, she was shedding one inhibition after another. She now insisted the candles be kept burning when he made love to her; she didn’t gasp and stammer when he accosted her in the study or her own bed or the broad light of day. He’d jammed a saddle rack against the feed room door just the day before, and hiked her skirts for a little ride at midday in the chilly confines of the barn. His thighs still ached pleasantly from the exertion of thrusting at just the right height.
When Gracie tapped softly on the door, Darius quietly bid her to enter. The maid took one look at Vivian, thoroughly tousled and cuddled even in sleep against Darius’s side, and shook her head.
“You wore the poor thing out,” Gracie said, passing Darius a cup of tea. “Best be careful, Master Dare.”
“Of?”
“She’ll take a piece of you with her.”
“And leave thirty pieces of silver,” Darius replied. “Which we can use around here.” Though a child would be a piece of him—maybe the best piece.
“You know, when he’d got his silver, Judas hung himself from a tree.” Gracie poked at the logs on the hearth. “And what good will you be to any of us, swinging in the breeze that way?”
“She’s leaving, Gracie.” Darius’s hand passed gently over Vivian’s head. “She’ll be gone in two weeks, and then it won’t matter what happened between us. We’ll be strangers again, and my obligation will be met.”
Gracie rose from the fireplace and turned a pitying expression on him. “As if the woman who breaks your heart can ever be a stranger to you. Have a care, sir, or you’ll be picking out your tree.”
Darius offered her a lopsided smile. “Be gone with you, Gracie. When I’ve tired this one out, I’m coming after you.”
“I’ve got one good hand, Master Dare.” Gracie swept toward the door. “That’s plenty enough to paddle your naughty backside into next week for such foolish talk. Mind you order that woman a soaking bath, or she’ll be too sore to walk.”
Gracie closed the door softly on that whispered reminder, and Darius made a mental note to do just that. Were it not for the need to consider Vivian’s inexperience, he’d be going at her twice as often as he did, and twice as hard.
Just once, he’d treated her to a hard, fast coupling, and she’d come like a house afire before he’d even found his rhythm.
And then come again when he had.
But he hadn’t used her so hard since, aware that their goal was conception, and frequent coupling was conducive to that end. This kept him gentle with her, considerate, mindful of the need to savor and conserve when he might have otherwise plundered.
As he lay back on the pillows, sipping his tea and petting Vivian’s hair, he considered that with a woman like Vivian, marriage might not be the trap he’d envisioned it being. With Vivian intent on a child, they were having exactly the kind of unrestrained, frequent sex newlyweds might have.
And it was… overwhelmingly sweet, a backhanded gift from fate that he, a man who never allowed women the intimacy of intercourse, never allowed them to kiss him, should have all that given to him in such unstinting abundance—from a woman to whom he’d have to become, just as he’d said, a stranger in the new year.
He set his tea aside, slipped down into the covers beside Vivian, and drew her into his embrace. She went into his arms trustingly and gave him her warmth without even waking.
* * *
The weather moderated, and Vivian found herself riding out with her… with Darius. He loved his estate fiercely, and she concluded fierceness was a part of him, part of the boy who’d grown up between battling parents, finding his purpose befriending his brother and protecting their sisters.
As they rode over his muddy acres, Darius told her his plans for this field and that pond. Trout could be raised like a crop, she learned, and it would improve Darius’s crop yields if he set up a system of irrigation and flood control for the water on his property.
“Why not raise flowers? You don’t need a hothouse for them, much of the year, but you c
ould easily sell them in Town.”
“Townhouses all have back gardens.”
“Bachelors buying flowers for the ladies do not have gardens,” Vivian said. “No single townhouse or mansion has enough flowers on hand to decorate for balls and entertaining. There is demand, and you could specialize.”
“In?” He was bringing the same focus to this topic that he brought to every topic, including how best to bring her pleasure. The notion left a lady somewhat breathless, even as her horse merely ambled along beside his.
“Fragrant flowers?” Vivian tossed out the idea. “Exotic flowers, I don’t know. It would be easy enough to see what’s in short supply and provide it.”
“And then when fashion dictated that fragrant flowers were no longer all the rage?”
“You diversify,” Vivian said as Bernice stepped around a puddle. “Just as you have already. You excel at it, with your chickens and sachets and… other things.”
“My whoring.” He cocked an eyebrow, looking pleased to have an opportunity to shock her with bad language.
“Your enterprise. I suspect you feel sorry for those women, Darius.”
“Vivian…”
“Don’t scold.” She kept her tone mild, but this aspect of his life bothered her increasingly. “No matter what they pay you, you have to feel a little something for them, or you’d just sell more chickens.”
“Chickens produce only so much income. The ladies pay very, very well, and they cost me nothing.”
“They cost you dearly.”
“I’ll race you to that stone wall.”
He nudged Skunk with his heels, so Bernice cantered more forward as well, and Vivian knew the point he was making: sexual pleasure, or pain, mattered only like a good gallop on a crisp day, nothing more. So she let the subject drop and let the mare have her head for the next half mile, but when she woke in Darius’s bed on Christmas morning and saw a small, wrapped box on the breakfast tray, the cost of Darius’s enterprises with the ladies came to mind again.
She nodded at the box. “Why is that there?” William gave her presents, on their anniversary or her birthday. Little things—a book of old verse, a pair of ear bobs, nothing unique to her, but thoughtful gestures nonetheless.
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