Matthew

by Grace Burrowes

  While kissing Theresa Jennings soothed and aroused, both.

  Matthew called upon his patience¸ lazily coaxing her to open for him. She tasted of lemonade, with faint overtones of lavender and reluctance, though on a sigh, she allowed him to deepen the kiss.

  That sigh had suggested she shouldn’t be doing this, she really, really should not, and Matthew’s heart sank.

  Then her hands slid up his chest and linked at his nape, her fingers toying with hair in need of a trim.

  “Better,” Matthew murmured, resting his forehead against hers.

  “What’s better?”

  “You touch me too.” Theresa Jennings had all the signs of a woman who’d want to talk about a first kiss. Matthew would happily oblige her, later.

  He touched his mouth to hers again, and this time, he used the arm around her waist to urge her more fully against him. When she acquiesced, he yielded to instinct, put some rhythm into the movements of his tongue, and widened his stance.

  He and Miss Jennings were healthy, unattached adults, and surely life was not intended to be an endless progression of parlor sessions and Sunday services?

  After an agreeable, and by no means sufficient, amount of kissing, she tucked her face into the crook of his neck.

  “What you must think of me, Mr. Belmont.”

  He thought her delicious, intriguing, and lonely. If he told her that, she’d likely disappear down the drive at a dead gallop and never return.

  “Let me hold you for a minute, hmm?” Matthew angled himself so he could lean against the library’s shelving and hold her close. “Lean on me,” he whispered, kissing a spot below her ear.

  She shivered at his kiss, then settled, and gave Matthew a moment to analyze his motivations. Sooner than most young men, he’d learned to manage lust. The circumstances of his marriage had required that much.

  He had not learned to manage a growing sense of pointlessness. His children were all but grown, his estate thriving, his place in the community secure, if not always appreciated. His life might not be even half over, and yet, the challenge and joy of living were increasingly difficult to find.

  Matilda’s portrait on the opposite wall stared blankly across the library, a room she’d never had much use for—much as she’d had little use for Matthew, at least in the early years of their marriage. Matthew had come to honestly pity her—after he’d spent a few years pitying himself.

  The lady in his arms stirred, and Matthew loosened his embrace without letting her go. He liked holding Theresa Jennings, liked the bodily reminder of his maleness. He liked the puzzle and prettiness of her, and he liked kissing her.

  “I don’t bite,” Matthew said, when she braced slightly away from him. “You needn’t poker up merely because I’m prone to normal male responses.”

  He’d pokered up, or started to.

  “We should not have done this,” Miss Jennings muttered, even while she burrowed against him. “We most assuredly should not have done this.”

  Matthew would have preferred to do a bit more, though only a bit. A child was loose on the premises, after all.

  “Where is the harm?” A legal question that came in handy in many walks of life. “I enjoyed kissing you, and I very much enjoy holding you.”

  “One can enjoy jumping off a cliff,” she countered, twiddling the hair at Matthew’s nape. “But then one lands.”

  Or two landed. “Hopefully, in a nice deep pool of water. When was the last time you jumped, Miss Jennings?”

  “Nine years ago, and the landing is an ongoing disaster.”

  As much as Matthew hurt for her—why hadn’t her family found her a convenient fellow to rescue her good name?—he was also aware that disasters had a way of becoming life sentences, unless one took steps to leave them behind.

  “Perhaps you jumped from the wrong cliff.” Or perhaps she’d been pushed, which thought gave him pause.

  When she stepped back, Matthew let her go.

  “A cliff is a cliff is a cliff,” she said, swishing across the library to stand before a tall window.

  Maida bestirred herself to rise and poke her nose against the lady’s hand.

  How lovely Theresa Jennings looked, absently petting the old hound as she regarded the Belmont gardens, back straight, coiffure beginning to unravel at her nape. Matthew took the place immediately behind her, though that tempted him to again touch her.

  “May we talk about this, madam?” Matthew was the one who wanted to have a discussion now—also more kisses, provided those kisses were welcome.

  She rubbed her fingers across her forehead. “Conversation won’t change anything, Mr. Belmont.”

  And yet, converse with her, Matthew would. He turned her by the shoulders and led her to the sofa, gesturing for Maida to resume her nap on the carpet. When Miss Jennings was seated, Matthew took the armchair on the other side of the low table, the better to gauge the lady’s reactions.

  The better to keep his hands to himself.

  “Have my instincts gone totally around the bend,” Matthew began, “or were you enjoying that kiss too?”

  “My body was enjoying it.” Miss Jennings crossed her arms like a vexed governess. “Some.”

  Which meant other parts of her had not been enjoying Matthew’s attentions.

  “You did not protest.” She still wasn’t exactly protesting.

  “Your kisses are pleasant.” Her aggrieved posture faded, leaving a thoughtful expression, as if she contemplated not a high, dangerous cliff, but perhaps a small, leap-able stream bank.

  “I have grown accustomed to being invisible,” she said. “With the exception of Priscilla, nobody touches me. It’s as if…”

  Invisible? As a harmless old squire was invisible, save to matchmakers and other miscreants?

  “Go on.”

  “It’s as if I have no physical person anymore.”

  She swallowed, and Matthew could feel a damnable ache in his own throat, for she was confiding in him, sharing pain too vast and bewildering for tears.

  “It’s as if,” she went on, “having used for unworthy ends the one body the Lord gave me, I am now neither male nor female, pretty nor ugly, old nor young. I am not ever acknowledged as any of those things by the touch of another—or certainly not the caring touch of another.”

  “You are young, female, and lovely. Pretty is for debutantes, landscapes, and flowers, and you are more than simply a pleasing appearance.”

  Matthew would like her touch, to remind him that he was a man not yet old, with something to offer a woman besides small talk, civilities, or a few minutes of fumbling oblivion stolen from the boredom of a house party.

  Miss Jennings picked up a pillow—two white doves embroidered on a maroon velvet background, a curving green bow over their heads. She traced the bow—an olive branch?—with the fourth finger of her left hand.

  “I’ve found a kind peace in being nobody, nobody but Priscilla’s mother. The other…. I never really learned how to go on, when I was young, pretty and female. I rather botched it.”

  “Because you conceived a child?” For more than a simple misstep lay behind the lack of a ring on that elegant finger.

  “That too.” She put the pillow aside, dove-side down. “One doesn’t conceive a child by sipping lemonade.”

  “Conception is supposed to be a far more enjoyable process than sipping lemonade.”

  Oh, he ought not to have said that. Miss Jennings’s chin came up. “Supposed to be, for the man.”

  Matthew abruptly reconsidered his strategy. A woman might be indifferent to him physically, and no disrespect to either party lay in admitting as much. His own palate had become increasingly diffident with respect to potential intimate partners, and he would not abide being merely tolerated in a woman’s bed.

  He had learned years ago that he could not abide it, in fact.

  In addition to the possibility of bodily intimacy, Matthew was asking Theresa Jennings, whose confidence had been betrayed in
the past, for her trust.

  And that… changed what he must offer in return.

  Miss Jennings was attracted to him, but she’d got nothing whatsoever in exchange for the risks she’d taken when Priscilla had been conceived. Not pleasure, not affection, not a fleeting infatuation, nothing.

  Not a promise of marriage, should a child be conceived, suggesting Priscilla’s father had been a rogue in addition to a blunderer.

  Matthew fell back on a barrister’s oldest tool for exposing buried truth—the hypothetical question.

  “If there were no threat of another child or no threat of public censure, then would you kiss me again?”

  Miss Jennings’s smile was rueful and adult. “Kissing is not what gets us into such trouble.”

  “That does not answer my question.”

  “I would kiss you again,” she said, humor flickering out and leaving testiness in its wake. “Or allow you to take me in your arms.”

  Allow him? Well, yes, as it should be. Matthew savored the victory in that—the victory of Miss Jennings’s self-respect over her loneliness, and his.

  “Then let me give you those simple gestures of regard for now,” Matthew said, rising. “We can leave the rest of this discussion for another day.” Or another evening in a chilly garden, or a ride through the autumn woods on a crisp, sunny morning, or a picnic without benefit of Priscilla’s chaperonage.

  Matthew repositioned the armchair by the hearth, then came down beside Miss Jennings on the sofa.

  She sat rigidly, as if the town drunk had taken the pew beside her at church.

  Matthew was tipsy, at least, on hope, on possibilities, on puzzles.

  He traced a finger along her jaw—so resolute, so smooth.

  “Let me hold you. This will cost you nothing, not one damned thing. Not a glance from your brother, not a question from Miss Portman, nothing. You can get up, call for your horse, and leave whenever you wish. My discretion is utterly trustworthy. I promise you this.”

  For one instant, Miss Jennings’s gaze was so tormented Matthew nearly withdrew his request. Had the blundering rogue promised her discretion, only to ruin her good name? Had Thomas Jennings any idea of the depth of his sister’s suffering? Had anybody taken a moment to see the person enduring years of self-censure in that lonely castle by the sea?

  Matthew was on the point of declaring himself a presuming fool when a feminine hand slid across his belly. Theresa rested her head on his shoulder, carefully, tentatively.

  An olive branch.

  He angled his body toward hers, brought his arms around her, and tucked his cheek against her hair. When she seemed comfortable with that much, and only then, he assayed a slow caress to her back. She tensed at first, but slowly, slowly eased under his hand.

  Matthew wanted to kiss her until he could loosen their clothing, slide her beneath him, and pleasure them both to a mindless stupor. The realization was heartening, for he hadn’t wanted to kiss much of anybody—excepting perhaps his horses—for some time. But he merely held her, and not only because a child was loose on the property.

  He’d thought Theresa Jennings an attractive, experienced, possibly available woman, and that characterization was likely true, though far from a complete truth.

  Any relations they undertook would be complicated, but also substantial—real and meaningful. Meaningful intrigued Matthew, like a faint game trail twisting through lush undergrowth.

  Of course she’d been dishonored—she had the child to prove it—but something in her manner, in her sad blue eyes, suggested the story wasn’t so simple, and the solution to her sadness wasn’t a carefree romp in the hay with an affable neighbor.

  How to bring the smile back into Theresa Jennings’s eyes was a mystery. The even greater puzzle was why Matthew, who finally had life much on his own terms, would want to unravel that mystery.

  For unravel it, he would.

  * * *

  Theresa curled next to Matthew Belmont in his pretty, light-filled library, her mind racing in all directions.

  She should not allow herself the comfort of his affections.

  Where was Priscilla?

  Matthew Belmont smelled good, of green pastures, autumn sunshine, horse, cedar, and spices.

  Hold me, please. Hold me.

  Did the Belmont staff know the squire was sequestered with an unchaperoned female of marriageable age and tarnished reputation?

  Into this flapping, fluttering flock of thoughts, another intruded: Matthew Belmont was different. Desire formed a part of Theresa’s reaction to him, but so did affection, respect, discretion, and—Theresa pounced on this insight as if it were her last sovereign—intimacy.

  Not a mindless relinquishing of physical dignity in exchange for favors or pleasure, but an intentional vulnerability far more dangerous and lasting.

  To her relief, Mr. Belmont made no further attempts to kiss her, nor she him. His hand on her back soothed her nearly to slumber, but when the clock on the mantel struck the hour, he lifted his arm from Theresa’s shoulders and shot his cuffs.

  “I could do with another serving of lemonade. Shall I pour you some as well?” he asked.

  “Please.” For Theresa needed something to do with her hands, something to do with her mind.

  “You needn’t be nervous of me,” he said, garnishing Theresa’s drink with a sprig of mint. “I will not presume, though you are invited to take whatever liberties with my person you please.”

  He passed Theresa the cool glass, no brushing of fingers, no lowered lids, no lascivious smile. Had his flirtations been that gauche, Theresa would have known how to react—ignore them, take a brisk leave of her host, and never again be alone with him.

  She sipped her lemonade as Mr. Belmont took his to the shelves along the wall. Even that—the courtesy of some physical distance—might have been a purposeful kindness from him.

  “Will Priscilla enjoy a tale of adventure?” he asked. “Shall I find her an illustrated herbal or a book about birds of darkest Africa?”

  “All three,” Theresa replied, while she would have appreciated a manual for how to navigate the bewildering waters of mutual adult attraction. She’d banked her oars years ago and was entirely at sea in the Belmont library.

  A door slammed, and Theresa nearly spilled her lemonade. Mr. Belmont pulled three volumes—two slim, one stout—from the shelves, and came back to the sofa with his lemonade.

  “The watch approaches,” he said, tipping his glass to his lips. “Let’s make our return to the stable by way of the grape arbor.”

  Priscilla burst through the library door a moment later, her pinafore streaked with green, a leaf caught in one of her braids, a few stems of aster in her hand.

  “I gave my flowers to the maid,” she announced. “I found some white ones to go with the purple. I didn’t go into the pasture, but I greeted the ponies because that’s polite when you make a call.”

  Priscilla’s chatter continued as Mr. Belmont led them out the French doors and through his gardens, until they approached a long arbor laden with fat clusters of purple grapes. He passed Theresa a handful and gave Priscilla a smaller bunch before selecting a few for himself.

  “Watch out for bees, Priscilla,” Theresa warned. “The later the season, the worse their sting.”

  Mr. Belmont hadn’t taken Theresa’s hand, hadn’t done more than remark on the changing leaves as he’d plucked ripe fruit from the vines.

  “And here,”—he found another cluster—“you can take these to Spiker, Priscilla, and let him know we’ll need the horses in a few moments.”

  Priscilla bounded off, leaving her mother alone with Matthew Belmont in the privacy of the grape arbor.

  “I would like to kiss you again, you know,” Mr. Belmont said, as bees droned nearby and a gentle breeze set green and yellow leaves twittering.

  He’d planned this route, planned for the shelter of the thick vines.

  “Are you warning me, or seeking my permission?” Theresa w
anted to kiss him again too, intentionally, with forethought and focus. Part of her hoped his first kiss had been a fluke, that what had felt like patience, confidence, and respect had been caution and novelty, no more.

  “I am asking your permission and warning you, both. Also stating a fact.” He slipped a hand around Theresa’s waist and lowered his lips to hers.

  He doesn’t rush. Thank all the naughty saints, he doesn’t rush, and he doesn’t dawdle. He didn’t haul her roughly up against him and mash his face to hers, didn’t try to gag her with his tongue, didn’t manhandle her breasts as if they were so much under-ripe fruit.

  Didn’t thump his hips against her as if she had no awareness of where a man’s arousal centered.

  Matthew Belmont prowled his way through a kiss, building desire by deliberate degrees, and giving Theresa time to adjust to each minute maneuver. As his tongue parted her lips and tangled plush, fruity sensations with anxiety about Priscilla’s whereabouts, Theresa admitted she was in the arms not of a boy or a prancing lordling, but an adult in his prime.

  Matthew Belmont was all muscle and man, no waste, no false moves, no excess about him.

  Theresa was both disappointed and relieved when he eased his mouth from hers and merely held her for a long moment. His cheek rested against hers, his breath gently fanned her neck.

  Merciful devils, she liked this. Liked how Matthew Belmont’s kisses had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Only a confident rider took his time and let the approach, the jump, and the landing all have their moments.

  “My dear,”—he nuzzled at her neck—“we should be going, or Priscilla will come patrolling for you. Have another grape and say something. You’re too quiet.”

  He moved away to find the requisite grape, then slid his palm down Theresa’s arm to capture her hand in his. They stood thus, munching on grapes, in a moment prosaic, disconcerting, and precious.

  “Would you like me to tell you if your tongue is purple?” Theresa asked.

  He set her hand on his arm. “You might tell me if my tongue tastes purple.”

  “Your…” Theresa shaded her eyes, as if the stable lay not beyond the garden wall, but across a brilliantly sunny lake. “You taste like pure sin.”