by Mary Balogh
“I think I am,” she said. “And I think it is going to get worse before it gets better. But there is only one cure I can think of. Make me better, Lucius.”
She spoke in a low, throaty voice that raised goose bumps along his arms and down his spine.
“My pleasure, ma’am,” he said, his lips feathering kisses down over her chin and throat. “Shall we dispense with the foreplay this time?”
“This time?” she said, twining her fingers in his hair. “Is there to be another time, then?”
“How many hours are left in the night?” he asked.
“Eight?” she suggested.
“Then there will be other times,” he said. “One hour for play, one for rest between times. Three other times, then? Perhaps four since this is likely to be brief.”
“Then let us dispense with the foreplay this time,” she said, and laughed softly again.
He came down on top of her, slid his hands beneath her, positioned himself between her thighs, and thrust hard and deep into her wet heat.
He had known almost from the start that she was a passionate woman. But tonight she had abandoned all her inhibitions to it. He had not lied when he had told her that she was almost too hot to handle. What followed his mount was pure, mindless, glorious carnality. She met him thrust for thrust, and they mated with vigor and panting breath and mingled heat and sweat—and ultimately with a shared and shattering climax.
Aware at the last possible moment that they were at a public inn and the walls might not be as thick and soundproof as they ought, he opened his mouth over hers to absorb her final cry.
Then he turned his head to one side, relaxed his weight down onto her, and sighed.
“The secret when one intends to spend a whole night at play,” he said, “is to save some energy, to conduct the first bout in a restrained manner and build to a lusty climax with the final bout sometime after dawn.”
“But that is exactly what we are doing, is it not?” she said softly, her breath warm against his ear. “Wait until that final bout, Lucius. It will shatter the globe, and we will find ourselves shooting through space.”
“Heaven help me,” he said. “And heaven help the world.”
And he promptly fell asleep without first bothering to move off her.
Was it possible, Frances wondered during one of the drowsy times in the course of that night when she was not either making love or dozing, that some people lived life this vividly day after day, week after week, even year after year? Giving joy and taking it with reckless disregard for the consequences or the future or anything, in fact, except the precious moment as it was being lived.
The cautious part of her mind told her she was being foolish, even immoral. But something in her soul knew that if she never reached for joy she would never find it and at the end of her life she would know that she had deliberately turned away from the most precious opportunities her life had offered as a gift.
She could not marry Lucius. Or rather she would not because she knew that without his family’s blessing he would never be quite happy. And how could they give that blessing if his bride was the daughter of an Italian singer and some unknown Italian man?
She could not marry him, but she could love him now tonight.
And so she did, giving herself up to all the passion she felt for him. They made love over and over again, sometimes with swift vigor as they had done at the start of the night, sometimes with prolonged, tantalizing, almost agonizing foreplay and long, rhythmic couplings, which were so excruciatingly sensual and beautiful that they both, by unspoken consent, held back from the moment when excitement would be unleashed to hurl them over a precipice into satiety and peace and sleep.
His hands, his body, his powerful legs and arms, his mouth, his hair, his smell—all became as familiar to her in the course of the night as her own body. And as dear. She came to understand the idea that man and woman could become one flesh. When he was inside her, it was hard to know where she ended and he began. Their bodies seemed made to fit together, to mate together, to relax together.
“Happy?” he murmured against her ear when dawn was graying the room. He had one arm beneath her neck, his fingers twined with hers, while his other hand described lazy circles over her stomach and one of his legs was draped over both of hers.
“Mmm,” she said.
But daylight inevitably followed dawn, she knew.
“You will be glad to get back to work?” he asked.
“Mmm,” she said again. But really she would. She had always been happy at the school, and the work there had always brought her satisfaction. Her fellow teachers were the closest friends she had ever had. She loved them—it was as simple as that.
“The rest of the school year will be busy?” he asked. He took her earlobe between his teeth and rubbed his tongue over the tip, causing her toes to curl up.
“There will be final examinations to set and mark,” she said. “There will be farewell teas for the senior girls who are leaving, and placements to arrange for the charity girls in positions for which their education and personal inclinations qualify them. There will be the selection of new girls for next year—Claudia always involves all her teachers in those decisions. And there is the end-of-year prize-giving evening and concert for parents and friends. Several of my music pupils will be performing and all my choirs. There will be daily practices from now until that evening comes. Yes, I will be too busy to think of anything else.”
“Will you be thankful for that?” he asked.
She kept her eyes closed and did not answer him for a while.
“Yes,” she said.
He turned her head with their interlaced hands and kissed her on the lips.
“And you will be busy,” she said, “attending all the balls and parties for the rest of the Season.”
“My mother and the girls do seem to enjoy dragging me about,” he said.
“And you will be wanting to meet someone new,” she said. “Perhaps—”
He kissed her again.
“Don’t talk nonsense, love,” he said. “In fact, don’t talk at all. I feel another energy attack coming along.”
He took her free hand in his and brought it against him. She could feel him harden into arousal again and wrapped her hand about him.
“But I am too lazy to come over on top of you,” he said, “or to lift you on top of me. Shall we see if there is a lazy way to love?”
He turned her onto her side against him, lifted one of her legs over his hip, pressed himself against her and wriggled into a better position, and pushed inside her. She pivoted her hips in order to give him deeper access.
And they loved slowly and lazily, their warm, almost relaxed climax coming several minutes later.
He lifted her leg back off his hip, and they drifted off to sleep for a while, still joined.
The sun was up and shining in her eyes when she next awoke.
Tomorrow you will continue on your way to Bath . . . I will return to London. . . .
Tomorrow had indisputably arrived.
She should be coming back to London with him. She should be going back to stay with her great-aunts, allowing them to fuss over her as she prepared for her betrothal celebrations and then her wedding before summer was out.
She should be going back to speak with Heath, to make arrangements with him for the concert he wanted to plan for her. She should be practicing her singing and preparing for the career that was just waiting for her to reach out and grasp.
But there was something far more important that she should be doing.
She should be going back to Bath, back to Miss Martin’s, back to her pupils and her teaching duties and all that had made her life rich and meaningful during the past three and a half years.
She might have crumbled all that time ago, caught as she was between the ultimatum the Countess of Fontbridge had given her and the ruthless exploitation of her talent that Ralston and Lady Lyle had engaged in for two years.
But she had not crumbled despite a sheltered upbringing. Rather, she had had the strength of character and purpose to turn her back on a rather disastrous start to her adulthood and to make a new life for herself.
He had been wrong to call her a coward, Lucius had come to realize, to accuse her of settling for contentment when she could be reaching for happiness with him—and with her singing.
She had not run away from her old life.
She had run to a new one.
It was wrong to expect her to give it up simply because she loved him and he wanted her to marry him. It was wrong to expect her to give it up for the prospect of a singing career even though she had dreamed all her life of such a career.
She had a life and she had a career, and she owed both of them her presence and her commitment at least until the end of the school year in July.
The hardest thing Lucius had done in a long while was to allow her to go on her way without trying to persuade her to go back to London with him—and even without begging her to allow him to come for her in July.
For she was right. Even though he knew now that he could not possibly marry any woman for whom he did not care, he also knew that the blessing of his family—his mother’s and his sisters’ as well as his grandfather’s—was important to him.
Whether his love for Frances would outweigh their disapproval if it should come to that he did not know, though he rather thought it might. But he did know that he must do all in his power to win their approval.
It would be easier to do that if he returned alone, if they were not simply confronted with a fait accompli.
And so after a breakfast they might as well not have ordered for the amount either of them ate, they took their leave of each other in the stable yard, he and Frances Allard.
Thomas was already seated up on the box of her carriage, the docile-looking pair of horses hitched to it awaiting the signal to start. Peters, meanwhile, stood at the head of a more frisky pair hitched to the curricle and looked eager to be on his way, though he had looked disappointed when informed this morning that he was not going to be driving the vehicle himself.
Lucius took both of Frances’s hands in his outside the open door of the carriage. He squeezed them tightly, raised one to his lips, and held it there, his eyes closed, for a few moments.
“Au revoir, my love,” he said. “Have a safe journey. Try not to work too hard.”
Her dark eyes, wide and expressive, gazed back into his own as if she would drink in the sight of him in order to slake her thirst for the rest of the day.
“Good-bye, Lucius,” she said. She swallowed awkwardly. “Good-bye, my dearest.”
And she snatched her hands away and scrambled into the carriage without assistance. She busied herself with organizing her belongings while he closed the door, and she kept her head down while he nodded to Thomas and the old carriage lurched into motion.
She kept her head down until the moment when the carriage was turning onto the road and out of sight. Then she looked up hastily and almost too late, raising one hand in farewell.
And she was gone.
But not forever, by Jove.
This was not good-bye.
He was never going to say good-bye to her again.
Even so, he thought as he strode over to the curricle, swung up to the high seat, and took the ribbons from Peters’s hand, it felt like good-bye.
He was damnably close to tears.
“You had better hang on tightly,” he warned as Peters clambered up behind. “As soon as we turn onto the road I am going to spring them.”
“I would think so too, guv,” Peters said. “Some people who aren’t too keen on eating country breakfasts would like to eat their midday meal in London.”
Lucius sprang the horses.
25
When no betrothal announcement concerning Viscount Sinclair had appeared in any of the London papers within two weeks of his startling announcement in the drawing room at Marshall House, Lady Balderston made it clear to Lady Sinclair in a series of hints and roundaboutations that if Viscount Sinclair would care to make an abject apology, he would be received with forgiveness and understanding. It was said, after all, that half the gentlemen who had attended the concert had fallen in love with Miss Allard—and it was a well-known fact that Viscount Sinclair frequently spoke and behaved impulsively.
When no such abject apology—or any apology at all, for that matter—had been made after another two weeks, Lady Portia Hunt suddenly became the on dit in fashionable London drawing rooms as word spread that she had dismissed the suit of Viscount Sinclair in favor of the advances of no less a personage than the Marquess of Attingsborough, son and heir of the Duke of Anburey, was making toward her. And suddenly, as proof that the gossips did not lie, the two were to be seen everywhere together—driving in Hyde Park, seated side by side in a box at the theater, dancing at various balls.
Lucius meanwhile had not been idle even though he was far less active than he usually was. He spent hours at a time sitting in his grandfather’s apartments, either beside the bed or else in the private sitting room when the elderly gentleman was feeling well enough to get up.
He had, the physician said, suffered another minor heart seizure.
Lucius sat at his bedside the afternoon of his return to London and chafed one of his cold, limp hands between both his own.
“Grandpapa,” he said, “I am sorry I was not here sooner. I have been halfway to Bath and back.”
His grandfather smiled sleepily at him.
“When I called on Mrs. Melford and Miss Driscoll yesterday afternoon,” Lucius explained, “I found that Frances had just left to return to Bath. I went after her.”
“She does not want to sing after all, then,” the earl asked, “even though Heath was so impressed with her?”
“She does,” Lucius told him. “But she is a teacher, and the school and her pupils and fellow teachers are more important to her than anything else at the moment. She does not wish to be away from them any longer.”
His grandfather’s eyes were on his face.
“And she does not want you either, Lucius?” he asked.
Lucius rubbed more warmth into his hand.
“She does,” he said. “She wants me as badly as I want her. But she does not believe she is worthy of me.”
“And you could not persuade her otherwise?” The old man chuckled. “You must be losing your touch, my boy.”
“No, I could not, sir,” Lucius said, “because I did not have the authority to convince her. She will not marry me unless I have the full blessing of my family.”
His grandfather closed his eyes.
“She knows,” Lucius said, “just as well as I do that you have your heart set upon my marrying Portia.”
Those keen eyes opened again.
“It is something Godsworthy and I have talked about over the years as a desirable outcome,” he said. “But you must cast your mind back to Christmas time, Lucius, when I told you that your choice of bride must be your own. Marriage is an intimate relationship—of body and mind and even spirit. It can bring much joy if the partners are committed to friendship and affection and love—and much suffering if they are not.”
“You will not be upset if I do not marry Portia, then?” Lucius asked. “And really, Grandpapa, I cannot. She is perfect in every way, but I am not.”
His grandfather chuckled softly again.
“If I were a young man,” he said, “and if I had not yet met your grandmother, Lucius, I do believe I would have fallen in love with Miss Allard myself. I have been aware of your growing regard for her.”
“She had a sheltered upbringing,” Lucius explained, “but there was no money left after her father died. She fell into the hands of Lady Lyle and George Ralston, of all people. He got her to sign a contract to manage her singing career. You can imagine if you will, sir, the kind of singing engagements he found for her. They were very much less than respectable. He a
nd Lady Lyle raked in the money for a while—supposedly to pay off debts. Fontbridge was courting Frances, but the countess is too high a stickler to look kindly upon his wedding the daughter of a French émigré. Then Lady Lyle took a hand in breaking off the connection—Fontbridge had told Frances she would not be able to sing after their marriage, and doubtless Lady Lyle feared the loss of income. She dropped poison in Lady Fontbridge’s ear. But her plan succeeded too well. Not only did the countess frighten Frances away from Fontbridge, but she also caused her to break away entirely from the life she had been living. She went to Bath without a word to any of them and has been teaching there ever since.”
“My admiration for her has grown,” the earl said. “And the fact that she has returned there now, Lucius, rather than allow herself to be swept away on Heath’s enthusiasm and ours, shows steadiness and strength of character. I like her more and more.”
“It is the poison dropped in the countess’s ear that is of most concern to Frances, though,” Lucius said. “It is that which she sees as disqualifying her most to be my bride. It seems that she was not Allard’s daughter even though he married her mother before she was born—and knew when he married her that she was with child by another man. Frances does not know her real father’s identity but assumes he was Italian, like her mother. Allard acknowledged her at birth and brought her up as his daughter and never breathed a word of the truth to her. But he did tell Mrs. Melford and Miss Driscoll—and Lady Lyle, who I gather was his mistress. By law, then, Frances is legitimate.”
His grandfather lay with closed eyes for a long time. Lucius even thought that he might have drifted off to sleep. There was a slight gray tinge to his skin, and it looked parchment thin. Lucius felt rather like weeping—for the second time in one day. He stroked the hand he still held between his own.
“Lucius, my boy,” his grandfather said at last, his eyes still closed, “your marriage to Miss Allard has my blessing. You may tell her so.”
“Perhaps you can do that yourself, sir,” Lucius said. “There is a prize-giving and concert at the school at the end of the school year. All of her choirs will be singing, and some of her individual music pupils will be performing too. I thought we might attend.”