by Edith Layton
He felt softness leading to softness, the dense pile of her dress leading to the cool satin feel of her skin, the pleasurable sensation of stroking something furred and warm giving way to the familiar but always new and thrilling discovery of tracing surfaces that were curved and smooth and distinctly, deliciously female. But not just any female, he knew, for he could not take his eyes from hers, at least, not until he gazed down at her lips. Then his other hand rose to cup her neck and gently bring her still nearer to better see what he thought he glimpsed in her eyes, and then to see if those lips offered what he thought they did.
If she could not deny the pleasure she suddenly discovered in simply standing so close to him, as she’d so often imagined herself doing, she could not in all honesty deny the wonder of having him actually touch her and draw her nearer to him. And then, of course, she couldn’t gainsay the joy in having his cool, no, now wonderfully warm lips upon hers, no, not even if she could have found the breath or the reason to say a word just then.
“Victoria,” he whispered after he’d touched her lips only briefly, drawing his mouth back just far enough so that he could speak, “Victoria love, it’s not enough to only accept me, no, join me. Here, love, open your lips just as I did for you, yes, yes, just so, yes,” he breathed, before he made sure he could not speak again.
It might have been some small noise the great Hall made as it settled down for the night, a creak that sounded too much like a footstep to some small, guilty, still alert part of Victoria’s dazzled mind. It may have been that she discovered too much pleasure in his clasp, or it could have been that his warm hands began at last to make her too warm, drew her that one fraction too close for her inexperienced senses to take in all at once, but too much of something made her pull back, and then dawning awareness of what had begun made her panic and attempt to give up and deny everything that had transpired.
“You said,” she whispered then, her fingertips shivering against her own traitorous lips that had silently told him too much as well, “that you would be a gentleman with me.”
“I was,” he stated flatly, coldly, even as he reached for her again, “but now, my love, I find it far more entertaining to be merely a man with you, as obviously, oh so obviously, you do too.”
12
The great house was still, but not quiet in spirit. It was as though the enormous Hall itself held its breath even as did the two people who stood facing each other in the night, upon the landing of the stair in the huge and empty upper hallway. The gentleman was dressed in dark evening clothes so that all that could be seen of him, if anyone else were afoot in the night to observe him, was the white gleam from his neckcloth, shirtfront and cuffs, and the indistinct blur of his swarthy face. The young woman’s yellow velvet gown glowed as if lit by its own rich interior radiance, and her pale face was uplifted to his. He held her at arm’s length as they stood in that moment, as still as the great Hall itself.
Then he dropped his arms from her, releasing her, though still she did not stir.
“So,” he said softly, “it seems there are all sorts of spirits abroad tonight. For a moment there,” he said on a sigh, looking down at her as though mesmerized, even as she stared at him as though he still held her with more than his dark unblinking gaze, “I think I was possessed by some of them. For I wasn’t acting either as a gentleman or a man just then. No, I think,” he went on, reaching out a hand to gently smooth back a lock of her hair that he’d disarranged, “I was acting precisely like a nobleman…of the sort that used to reign here, in this damned great Hall of theirs.
“Now, there’s a thought,” he added more lightly. “Does the Hall make the nobleman? Were all my bold, bad ancestors decent men before they took up residence here? That would indeed be a greater curse than poor Lady Ann thought to lay upon the wretched place. Don’t worry,” he said more gently, “it’s done, I’ve done, it’s over, I’m sorry. Lord, shall I write it out for you? It would be kind of you to say something at this point, you know.”
“It was my fault as well,” she said quietly at last.
“Oh, certainly,” he said, backing up a step, as though her words had broken whatever spell had kept him close to her, and thrusting his hands into his pockets like a boy, he said roughly, “Absolutely. Chap has to beware of pure, lovely young governesses sneaking up on him in the dark and pressing kisses all over his helpless person. My dear Miss Dawkins,” he said wryly, “I merely acted like a savage, I simply was about to attempt your seduction, all the while knowing I was supposed to be your protector in the best sense of the word, and that had I deliberately forgotten that and harmed you, you’d have no recourse whatsoever, since I am pleased to be an earl now, and you are a young woman in my employ, with neither family nor fortune to help you wrack retribution upon me.”
“Were you trying to harm me?” she asked, twisting her hands together as her eyes searched his face, fearing she sounded stupid, knowing she was stepping out of her place, but in the deep of this dark night, with the memory of his warm breath moving over her lips as though it were her own, suddenly no longer clearly seeing the lines that separated their places.
“No,” he answered slowly, “no, not actually. Just then I suppose I was trying to please you. But all the while I couldn’t help but know that the sort of pleasure I was trying to visit upon you would bring you nothing but eventual pain. Not just that sort of little pain maidens generally encounter in their first lovemaking, that’s inevitable, and neither terrible nor lasting—or did you know that already, my little well-educated apothocary’s daughter who still had to be taught how to kiss?—but rather the grander pain of abandonment, shame, and regret. For I was thinking of pleasure, Miss Dawkins, purely pleasure, and not permanence. Do you understand?”
“If you were an earl’s daughter,” he said harshly then, when she still didn’t answer, “I don’t know that I would have dared. Now do you understand?”
She nodded, incapable of any other sort of answer.
“And I am rather filled with self-loathing at the moment. Not that your kiss didn’t please me, no, you improved out of all recognition with just a little prompting. But this damned place…” He laughed, he grimaced, he shrugged, he began to speak bitterly and low, as though he were attempting to explain himself to himself. “I suppose I can’t put the blame on spirits, although no doubt my forebears were wildly applauding my stunning exhibition of lust and irresponsibility just now.”
He paused, took another step back, and said in firmer tones:
“But it’s done. Put it down to the active and inactive spirits of the night, and put about as much stock in it as you might one of my wilder stories of them told this night. And then forget it, please. But I can’t order that, can I? I suppose you may yet regale your charges with it in future, remembering the night when the master of the house forgot his place. A lowering thought, but probably no more than I deserve.
“Now,” he said decisively, looking down at her dispassionately, “please go to bed.”
“I said good night, Miss Dawkins,” he repeated in a harsher voice when she did not move.
He grinned a little grimly when it became apparent his request finally registered as a command, and she started as though from a reverie, and blinked. Then she backed to the stair and turned and fled up it without a good night or a backward look to him.
He watched until the glow of her gown disappeared at the top of the stair.
“Lady Ann,” he said then with a skewed smile, when he was quite alone, as he bowed to the dark and empty air, “it seems I’ve still some honor. Terribly sorry, old girl, best purchase a new pair of walking slippers. For I refuse to be the earl who gets that bastard for you, to take to my own cold noble heart.”
*
She didn’t see him at breakfast, since she was careful to take it in her rooms with the children. Then in the afternoon when she discovered he’d gone riding with Alfie, she could relax. So she was pleasantly conversive with Miss Comfort when she del
ivered Sally for her French lesson, and had time and to spare to chat with the head groom when she brought Bobby to him so that the pair might see to the training of a pair of scent hounds. Bobby vowed they’d be the greatest addition to the autumn hunt that had ever been seen in the district, although from their size and lethargy, Victoria privately thought they were more likely to become the greatest boon to the welfare of fleas that had ever been known in the kingdom.
Mrs. Haverford was secreted in her rooms with a novel she couldn’t bear to part from, the librarian was desk-deep in annotations to his list, the couple at work on the paintings had only just discovered a risky patch of canvas they couldn’t spare a breath to disengage their eyes from. Since her known companions were otherwise occupied, Victoria decided to look up acquaintances she’d always meant to pursue further. The housekeeper’s sprightly niece had the toothache, so Victoria went to the music room to hunt up the lovely young woman she’d often seen there. The housekeeper had said the fair-haired girl she’d described might be the young person from the village who did fine mending on the curtains, although since she was always dressed so well, in flowing white chiffon, Victoria believed Mrs. Haverford might be right in assuming her chance-met companion was more likely to be the gardener’s niece, a pretty-behaved young woman who saw to the floral arrangements in the Hall. A disadvantage, Mrs. Haverford had sighed, of having such a grand Hall to keep up, was not so much the great number of persons one had to employ, as it was the fact that it was hard to acquaint oneself with each and every one of them. When she got to the music room, Victoria was delighted to find the fair young woman again hovering near the harp there. But even as she began to speak to the girl, she was dismayed to see her rise, smile apologetically, and then, although with every apparent sign of rue for it, immediately fade into the shadows and out of the room, as though there was an errand she couldn’t bear to let wait another instant. As a last resort, Victoria climbed the stairs to Nurse’s quarters, for the old woman liked to reminisce, and did so charmingly, only to find her as soundly asleep as Baby, as they were both taking their customary afternoon nap.
It was only then, at that advanced hour of the day, that Victoria at last admitted she was forced to be alone with the one person whose company she least wished to bear—herself.
She left word with the butler in case she was needed and then prepared to leave the Hall, since the outdoors, she reasoned, held more things to divert her thoughts than her own room might. At the last, she made one more bid for some distraction from her thoughts and sought one of Bobby’s dogs for company. She’d hoped that even a companion who’d only fetch a stick for her might chase away the specters of her punishing conscience and weak will, both of which had kept her awake most of the night with their fierce interior dialogues. But most of the dogs, from the spotted setter to the odd little cur with the quantity of fur, had followed their savior to the stables. Only the enormous melancholic black beast that followed the children everywhere, dogging their steps from a distance, remained within the Hall. Victoria frowned when she found him plodding down a hallway; it was only more evidence of her poor luck this day, for he was the most disobliging animal, never responding to any of her offers of friendship. She tempted him with a boiled sweet, she whistled and cooed, but though he followed her almost to the kitchen door, he hung back in the dim corridor when she stepped into the light, and not only wouldn’t budge further, but disappeared entirely when she became insistent.
She walked alone to clear her head, she walked far to evade her thoughts, but it soon became evident that no sunlit pastoral scene had the power to erase that midnight encounter from her mind. As was so often the case at the Hall, night again defeated the day, for as she walked past the gardens and statuary that enhanced the grounds, she never saw them at all, so intent was she on the remembered vision of that dark and shadowed face she’d actually touched last night.
She visualized him as she wandered past the knot garden, recalled his low voice as she strolled along the crushed-shell walks, felt his hands and lips upon her again as surely as she felt the soft breeze whisper past her hair as she picked her way down steep garden slope. And so after she finally came to rest, midway across a Palladian bridge which watched over the small serpentine river that chuckled past the Hall, she didn’t recognize reality immediately when she eventually heard that voice comment in amused tones:
“I thought it was Narcissus who fell in love with his reflection.”
The earl ignored her sudden start in reaction to his actual appearance as he strolled to her side and rested his elbows on the rail beside her. “But there’s not a chance of getting a good look, the water flows so swiftly here, so it can’t be self-adoration you’re after. It couldn’t be self-destruction either,” he laughed. “If you leapt from here, all you’d net would be an awkward landing—it’s scarcely waist-deep, you know.”
When she didn’t reply, but only gazed at him as though he were one of the ghosts his Hall boasted, he went on in reasonable ruminative tones, although he looked down to the water and not at her.
“I’ve come to beg pardon, again. I might have let it pass, hoping time would mend things, but time’s like this running river, it might carry things away, but as it’s also always deepening its channel, it has a way of deepening insult too. I saw you from afar, just standing, just staring. You’ve walked a long way and been gone some hours, and you’re obviously distracted. Since the guests are gone, Comfort’s bedridden, and my mama’s the soul of innocence today, if only because she’s so rapt in her book, and the children are better behaved than I’ve been, I assume it’s my actions that have distressed you. So I repeat, I beg pardon.”
She noted how the clear light took nothing away from the firm features that had etched themselves in her mind, and then said with equally as much candor and honesty as she’d already used with the phantom Earl of Clune a dozen times over in her mind in the last hour as she’d stood watching the water bubble and slide down below her.
“No, it’s true I’m disturbed, but not with you, my lord, it’s at myself. Yes,” she said as he turned slightly to show that he raised a dark brow at her, “me. You see, last night, as I said, was my fault as well.”
“Oh, yes,” he agreed, “I noted how well you stalked me.”
“You’re not the only one to have troublesome ancestors prodding you, you know,” she went on resolutely, again forgetting her place, again remembering only her emotions. “I’ve a great-grandmother many times removed who was a king’s consort, or so they said. And today I can’t help but wonder at her influence over me. Because I could have run away from you, or fought you, or protested, and well I know it, I couldn’t sleep last night for knowing it,” she explained unhappily, dimly aware that she oughtn’t to be confessing this to the man who’d caused her problems, but in her loneliness thinking only that he was the one person who might understand since he’d shared that experience with her.
“But you see,” she admitted so quietly the rushing water almost swept her words away, and would have if he’d not moved closer, “I found, I believe, that I might have said ‘Yes,’” she finally blurted.
“I wasn’t insulted, or frightened, or even regretful. Do you understand?” she asked, staring into his dark and widening eyes, continuing to speak in the forlorn hope that he would, and so would explain it to her. “I was about to say ‘Yes. Yes, my lord, I will,’ to whatever you asked of me. At least, I think I was. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he answered softly, slowly, looking down into her troubled, light-filled eyes, shaking his head as though shaking away some nagging thought. “Oh, yes,” he said as he drew closer still, and “Certainly,” he began to say until the word was lost against her lips.
He held her very close and his kiss was hard, almost hurtful, until he felt her surprise and slight withdrawal and then he gentled his mouth and his hands and she found herself moved along with him as though she were some light, insensible thing the rushing water beneath
them carried in its wake. When he touched her breast she stiffened, but then even as he closed his hand over it, she discovered that she moved more closely toward him, as though to aid and abet him in her own seduction. She couldn’t stop to reason why what should have alarmed her only drew her nearer, not while he held her and murmured how right it was.
And he, finding her so pliable, so trusting, so infinitely susceptible to his every word and motion, forgot his original motives entirely. It was only when he at last raised his head for a moment to look about for a comfortable place to continue that which he’d begun and take it to its natural ending, that he realized where he was, who he was, and what he was doing and about to do with the young woman in his arms. In that same instant, looking down again at her stunned pale face, drowning in the desire he’d created and only just beginning to show confusion at his lips leaving hers, he recalled what he’d known last night, what he’d tried to forget just now: that she had no idea of what he was about to do, nor of what she was about to begin with him. For whatever her willingness or her desirability, he was too experienced to ignore the awkwardness that clearly showed her innocence.
One of his hands had been wound in her hair, supporting her head as he’d kissed her. When he drew away, the first thing she felt after his lips left hers was the tug of his hand tightening in her hair.
“Yes?” he asked harshly, and her eyes flew open to see all softness fled from his face, his dark eyes no longer warm but rather burning now, his lips not full and tender but thinned and curling around each scornful word. “Yes? You’d be a mistress as your ancestress was? Ah, but she consorted with a king in an antique age, and this is modern times. Well, and if you want the position, my dear, it’s best I detail the duties for you. It’s a high-paying post, I’ll not hire on someone not willing to take on all her obligations.