by Ingrid Hahn
Below a crop of maiden’s hair, he opened the lavishly shaped inner lips to expose her sex. The pleasure point was high and swollen large, her rosy flesh so ornate. There were a few flowers in the hothouse he wouldn’t be able to see again without flashing back to how she looked there.
He leaned close and ran his tongue over her from entrance to apex, finishing the stroke with the promised kiss at the top. She tasted of their coupling.
To her little shudder, he grinned. “Feels better than you expected, doesn’t it?” He sat back, taking himself in hand. “Touch yourself, Lady Grace.”
“What?”
“I want to watch you touch yourself.” He gripped his aching cock and worked up and down in slow strokes. At least he was used to his own manipulation and could hope for better control both a second time around and under the guidance of his own maneuvers.
Her eyes fell to what he was doing to himself. “Do you do it, too?”
“What, flog myself?”
She smiled at the euphemism. “I didn’t know men could. I thought it was only me.”
How strange. Women kept silent, even amongst themselves? Men boasted and jested of their randy achievements. It didn’t seem fair. “Make no mistake. Men do it and do it often. And I expect more women do it than would own to it.”
“I had no idea.” She blinked. “Is it always like this, my lord?”
“We have much to accomplish in a single night.” Even if they had every night hereafter to share together, he wouldn’t ever have his fill of her. “You’re not tired, are you?”
“No.”
“Go on then, Lady Grace. Touch yourself.”
She folded one leg up and reached down to do as he said, her other hand grabbing a breast and squeezing.
Gaze fixed on his cock, she began, grasping her pleasure point within two fingers and beginning with careful circles.
His pride flared, fierce and masculine. She was watching him as she pleasured herself just as he was watching her.
…
Grace floated back to her chamber, warm and weightless in a haze of wonderment, feet and legs so confined in her stockings after the interlude of nakedness. Soreness lingered between her legs. Her hips ached from having been pressed open so wide.
She brought her hands to her nose and inhaled the smell of him still clinging to her skin.
What a strange thing—a strange, odd, yet utterly marvelous thing. Who knew it would feel as nice as that? Described, the act seemed positively atrocious. Ludicrous.
Acted upon, it was anything but.
How could Grace have ever thought marital matters a delicate thing? How much she had not known. It’d been gentle and rough all at once. More than anything, it’d been so remarkably physical.
And the closeness of him when they’d come together. The almost unbearable intimacy—the surrender. The sensations. Those delicious sensations.
To think she’d believed she’d known all there was to know.
She came to her door and sighed, looking back from where she’d come. After a lifetime alone in bed, one might think she’d relish returning to what she was used to, that sharing a sleeping space would be the curious thing.
But no. She wanted to do it again. With him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Grace slipped into her chamber and came to a sharp halt, heart jumping into her throat.
In the chair by a freshly made-up fire with the Egyptian history open in her hands, Lady Bennington looked up. “There you are, my dear girl.”
“Mother!” Scorching heat flared in her cheeks.
All at once she’d been transformed from a woman of seven and twenty to a guilty girl of ten caught pilfering lumps of sugar. What she’d been doing with the earl didn’t fill her with shame, by any means, but it wasn’t what an unmarried daughter did to honor her family, no matter what her age. “I—I was thirsty and didn’t want to wake a servant, but I couldn’t sleep without a drink, and—”
“Grace, please.” Her mother smiled indulgently. “I bore seven children and raised four of them to grown women. Whatever you think it is you’ve discovered tonight—well…” She blinked, appraising her daughter down the long line of her nose. “I’ll let you keep your secrets, but whatever you do, my girl, pray don’t believe me a fool. I can’t say I’m happy about the deed itself, mind you, and it’s not like you to be so imprudent, but what’s done is done.”
The statement coaxed the fire in Grace’s face flame higher. “I—I—”
Lady Bennington held up a hand. “I’m not here to discuss it. To be sure, I had no notion of whether you would be returning before morning, and I wasn’t about to have the servants talk if they came to build your fire and found the room deserted.”
It’d been a good many years since Grace had prayed the floor would swallow her up, but the stinging sensation came back swiftly like an old enemy.
Her mother gestured for Grace to take the chair opposite. Grace took it, trying not to wince as the pressure built on the place the earl had made so sore.
“Are you going to talk to me about what our living situation will be reduced to if I don’t marry him?”
The elder woman’s mouth pinched. “I see Jane has been speaking with you.”
“Don’t blame her. She’s only trying to nudge me into doing the right thing.”
“The right thing? And what is that, pray tell?”
“Mama—”
“Grace, after your father…” She hesitated, clearly searching for the right words. “…well, after his demise, you transformed. You became a silent, strange creature.”
“Strange?”
“You wanted to be perfect in everything you did as a sort of—well, I can only imagine as a sort of penance for what he’d done. And indeed, to make me happy, I have no doubt. But you’re not responsible for what your father did.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” She drew a breath. “You’ve outgrown the girl you were. And right before my eyes, you have grown into a woman I admire and respect.”
“Mama—”
Lady Bennington held up a hand. “Allow me to finish, my dear. I want to say that of late I’ve been considering that you might not have outgrown the old habit of trying to please me as much as I thought you had.”
With a smile somewhere between stately and gracious, she continued. “Make no mistake. I thank you for honoring me. You’re a good child, Grace, you always have been.”
“But?”
“But you’re no longer a child. You’re quite grown. Moreover, I won’t have you honoring me for the wrong reason. If you must break your engagement, if he does make you so terribly unhappy, I forbid you from marrying him for no other reason than believing you will make me happy by doing so.”
The very last thing she had considered was whether she was honoring her family. Maybe she was as bad as her father had been.
Grace’s gaze fell into the hands in her lap. “Please don’t say those things.”
“Is there—is there perhaps more to the story?”
It was time to release an old secret. “You’re alluding to what happened between Corbeau and myself all those years ago.”
Drawing back, her mother blinked in surprise. “Did something happen?”
Grace thought a moment. “I suppose it might be said that something did.”
She nodded as if Grace were confirming all her suspicions.
“I know you and my sisters conjecture about what it was.”
“I promised I would never ask, and you owe me no explanations.” And yet curiosity shone blatantly from Lady Bennington’s expression.
“There’s less to the story than you might think.” At the same time, perhaps more.
“I’ll listen to whatever you wish to tell me, my dear.”
“It was about eight years ago. Corbeau—well, I knew of his interest. It was marked enough. Who didn’t notice?”
“And then?”
“He wanted to pay his addresses
to me.” The memory of his stiff formality pulled a smile along her lips. If she’d only known about him then what she knew now. “I refused, and in rather, well, distinct terms, shall we say. It was around the time father was dying, and we were beginning to get an idea that his affairs were all much worse than we’d feared. So much worse.”
Her mother gave only a slight indication of acknowledgment, the past plainly too painful for her to think about without going to stone.
Grace hung her head. “I never told you because I thought you’d force me to accept him. And then when he found out about Father, he’d think I’d tricked him to save myself, and he’d resent me forever.”
“A man like him?” Her mother drew back. “Resent you? Grace!”
“What did I know? I was nineteen and with everything else as it was, father’s death imminent and the truth of how bad those last years were—well, I was afraid. Confused.”
“Then what’s stopping you from having him now?”
Grace winced. Oh, she’d had the earl, well enough.
“My original stance stands, my girl. If you can’t marry him with impunity, I forbid you from doing so thinking it will make me happy.”
“I thought you wanted me to marry him.”
“I want your happiness more.”
“What will happen to us if I don’t marry him?”
“That is precisely the question that I ask not enter your considerations when debating the merits of the choice.”
“How can you ask that of me?” Grace rose and strode to the other side of the room.
“You have a good head on those pretty shoulders of yours, Grace. I expect you to use it. You might be unmarried, but you haven’t needed me for years, not in any real way.”
“Of course I need you.”
Joining her, her mother stood close. “Then I hope we can always depend on each other to be dear friends. As such, I will only be happy if I see you happy.”
“Happy with the earl or happy without him?”
“That”—she placed a kiss in the middle of Grace’s brow—“is only for you to say.”
“It would have been so much better had Phoebe been the one locked in the storeroom.”
“Tsk, Grace, such foolishness. But I know you don’t mean it, so I won’t scold you for it.”
“Then you accept my decision?”
“This is why girls should marry at eighteen instead of seven-and-twenty—so they don’t live long enough for their heads to muddle the way to their hearts.”
“What?”
“It’s true. What use do you believe a girl’s parents to have? They’re there to do the thinking for their daughters when their daughters aren’t old enough or wise enough to manage the feat for themselves.”
“That’s horribly unfair.”
“Wait until you’re a mother yourself, Grace. Then you shall see.” She sighed the sigh of one bearing an onerous load. “Mark my words, you shall see.”
The absolute assurance that Grace would be a mother someday strangled her heart. “I’m not going to ever be a mother, because I’m not going to marry him.”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.” Lady Bennington shook her head in mock mournfulness as if not believing a word.
“After what Father did—”
“You’re not really going to let one man’s ghost stand between you and happiness, are you, my dear?”
Grace made no reply. It was so like what Corbeau had said to her. What did they see that she didn’t?
Her mother frowned. “He wouldn’t have wanted it.”
“Then he shouldn’t have ruined us.” She took a breath, hardly daring to ask the next question. “Was everything riding on my marriage? Is it our last salvation? Are we headed straight for the gutter?”
“Forgive me, my dear, but you are a rather perplexing creature.” Her mother set her shoulders, chin dipping. “There’s nothing more to be said. If you don’t marry him, it’ll turn out all right for us. Somehow. We’ll find a way. Concern yourself only with your happiness. The rest of it—from me to the storeroom—none of that matters.”
Concern herself only with her own happiness when her family was in such straights? Was she the most selfish creature alive? “How can you say that? You’re speaking as if we have choices. Where will we live?”
“What did I just say? We’ll manage, Grace. Something will turn up. It always does.”
“If only it weren’t so complicated.”
Because it was. The most complicated thing in the world.
Wasn’t it? Or was she, all by her stubborn self, complicating the situation?
Being around Corbeau was like walking in a ray of golden light. What was complicated about that?
…
Corbeau blinked into consciousness. Automatically, he’d reached across the bed, his heart turning to stone when he found himself alone.
He’d gone to his washstand, splashed cold water on his face, and studied his reflection in the small glass above the basin. The answer to everything might be simpler than he’d thought.
First the stables. It wasn’t an answer, but it was his second-to-last morning of the chore, and he wasn’t about to forget his responsibility to the horses. Or that damn goat Sebastian who yesterday managed to escape—again—and found his way into the laundry—again—and eaten some very good linen—again. Besides, much like deciding whether or not to take her out for the tradition of the exchange, Corbeau needed time to reflect on an idea.
After he saw to the animals, he’d be free to put his new idea into motion. No matter how his heart beat with the anticipation of her response, it’d not change the fact that she’d not rise for hours yet.
It was well into the morning when he was washed, dressed, fed, and sitting at his desk in the library, newly mended pen in hand, spelling out the terms, careful to mind he wrote with care. It wouldn’t do to blotch the sheet with ink stains. The writing had to be legible. The lemony light of the new sun shone at such an angle through the window as to reveal the relief in the texture of the paper.
Finished, he blotted and reviewed what he’d written. Reaching the end, he scowled. Not good enough for Lady Grace. Corbeau crumpled the sheet, tossed it aside, and began fresh.
It was well into midmorning when the library door opened. He’d been standing by the window, hands clasped behind his back.
He turned, his heart clamoring to make her his once and for all. And this was it—the moment when he’d at last win her.
“You sent for me, my lord?”
“Pray enter.”
She wore a simple morning costume of printed floral muslin. Her face was rosy, her smile warm—and a little shy. So full of quiet hope and shared secrets.
His body stirred at the memories of last night when she hadn’t been so tidy and collected. He’d have to be patient.
“If you will excuse me saying so, my lord, you look rather stern this morning.”
“I have a proposal of some seriousness for you to consider.”
“I see. This concerns last night?”
“No, actually.” He took a breath, willing his thoughts to remain fixed on the matter at hand. “It concerns all the rest of them.”
“I think I’d best let you explain, then.”
“Yes. Well.” His heart picked up pace. “This should contain everything you need to know.” He plucked the sheet from the center of the desk and handed it over.
Her eyes scanned the words.
“You’re not—” Her cheeks went a flamboyant shade of red, and she covered her hand with her mouth as she read a second time. “You’re not asking me to be your mistress.” Her tone was incredulous.
A sensation of doubt slithered into the pit of his belly. He had to have made the right calculation. This had to be what it took. This had to be what she wanted.
“I’m asking you to be my wife. No storeroom, no exceptions, no hands forced by the bounds of decency and honor.”
“But—” She glanced back to the
paper. Her hand went to her brow as if she were dizzy. “I don’t understand. It reads as if you’re going to sign over twenty-five thousand pounds to me.”
“Twenty-five thousand pounds that will be yours upon our marriage, Grace. Think about it.”
Her expression changed, but not in a way that inspired any hope. A bloom in Lady Grace evident only moments before had been smothered.
Her features hardened into understanding—the sort of understanding that comes only from forcing oneself to confront a hateful truth.
All of Corbeau’s hopes sank like a ravaged ship in a desolate sea.
What had he done?
Nothing but ensure he lost Grace, this time, for good.
Pride comes before a fall. And nobody could have claimed to have fallen lower than he. Corbeau had been so certain his proposal would have been met with smiles of gratitude. He’d envisioned her looking from the paper to him, eyes lit, and reaching out her outstretched hand for him to take. They’d call the clergyman and make use of the special license before noon.
In retrospect, it was nonsense.
He’d made blunder after blunder in his quest to win Grace. This was the final stroke.
It was over.
…
Grace could only stare. His expression implored her.
This couldn’t be happening. She stayed still a moment, trying to absorb the reality of the situation. How had it come to this?
“Grace—”
“You’re trying to—to what? To buy me as your wife?” It was all she could do to keep her voice level. She sounded distant, as if speaking from a very long way away.
The snowy mid-morning glare streaming through the windows suddenly seemed garish and unrelenting.
“That—no. Not in the least. It’ll be yours in trust the moment we’re married, and I won’t be able to touch a single farthing.”
“Please forgive me, I’m trying very hard to understand this, my lord.”
“Don’t you see? I’m ensuring your security. You won’t have to rely on me. I could become the most inveterate gambler England has ever seen and ruin myself three times over. But I won’t be able to leave you in poverty.”
“What you’re saying is, you won’t be able to do to me what my father did to us.”