by Hawke, Jessa
“A fever he had, Lady Olivia, the likes of which I have not seen in a long time. He fell into something so deep that all we could hear was these awful screams; I think he was delirious,” related Mrs. Huxting. Olivia knew that the housekeeper was not a woman to speak in hyperbole, and felt a certain kind of fear paralysis overtake her in that moment. A few minutes later, Katherine came bounding down the stairs; she truly looked a sight, her hair unbound and her dress filthy. She barrelled into Olivia like a child half her age, joy mixing with desperation at seeing a familiar face amidst the darkness.
"He's dead, oh he's dead," sobbed Katherine into the folds of Olivia's cloak, staining the fabric, but Olivia cared not a whit. She thrust the girl from her body, grasped her by the shoulders, and shook her. She must have resembled a wild woman, but her thoughts were furthest from how she looked in that moment, or how much she could be scaring Katherine.
"Tell me exactly what the doctor said," she told her, but the girl just cried and cried, her ordinarily shiny brown ringlets limp and loose. That was when the fear of the worst seized her body like a tornado, and her breath was knocked from her body. Was it true? Had she lost the duke forever?
"He is not dead, you silly ninny," came the cold, brittle voice of Mrs. Huxting. Olivia was shocked. She had never heard the housekeeper's voice like that, as if she had forcibly removed all emotion from it. Glancing quickly at the swollen red eyes of the older woman, Olivia understood that she was just barely keeping her emotions in check, and that her absence from the house had come close to doing irreparable damage to the unity of the family in this trying time. She also understood, at the wonderful bound of joy that sprang free in her chest, that all was not lost, and that she must gather more evidence to divulge the true nature of the duke's state.
“The duke has not been in his study yet?” she questioned the woman.
“Went straight to bed; the stable boy had to carry him in.”
The sharp pain of almost losing him, in more than one way, cut her to the quick. She had been blessed, also in multiple ways. Olivia felt her heart flutter and girded her nerves, for she had to be strong. For Katherine, for all of them. But most of all, for herself. That was the price she learned to pay when love hit her, suddenly and all at once. Love meant giving of yourself to another person, a sacrifice because it meant that in so many ways, that person was your mother and father now. They were the recipient of all your hopes, all your dreams, all the tenderness you had to offer. The painful aspect was that so many pretended they did not need all that love to live, to trust, but it was a lie. That was the falseness of Cynthia and Ben—they pretended. As she stroked the cold sweat on the duke's fevered brow, Olivia felt a wave of tenderness come over her. He was as helpless as a babe, though he was nearly forty years of age. In losing his wife, he had lost his mother, as well, much as his children had. Remembering their wildness when she had first entered into that household, Olivia realized just how precarious the situation had truly been—the children could not understand that their father felt as lost as they did, and perhaps even more so, thrust into a position always meant to be held by two.
There was strength in doing, not thinking. Over the next month, the longest of her entire life, Olivia nursed the duke back to a semblance of health. It was she who organized the physician's regular visits to the home, she who oversaw the special menu. No stone was left unturned. She sent word to her aunt, who in turn wrote to all of her acquaintances around the globe and sent back letters filled with remedies from shamans and medicine men from the far reaches of the Earth. Olivia was willing to try them all, hoping, praying for a miracle.
It was remarkable how someone of so little faith in a higher power could suddenly turn to it in a time of great need. One of the many corners that Olivia turned to include the local parish, where the priest let her have the entire church all to herself as she bent on prematurely creaking knees to lift her hands in prayer. She, too, felt entirely devoid of parentage for the first time so acutely in her life. And although she walked from the church with no sign that anyone had heard her, a part of her that believed she had a shoulder to rest her weary head on felt comforted.
She felt her exhaustion take over one night as the duke slept. His fever had finally broken earlier that morning, and she felt slightly better about sitting back on the overstuffed armchair the servants had placed in his room. She stoked a roaring fire herself and relished the quiet of that moment. The weeks had been filled with a nonstop flurry of activity, and she took advantage of this rare moment of silence to join the duke in some slumber. The room was so warm, and the chair so wonderfully cozy that just for a moment, Olivia let herself drift off.
When she woke, it was to the delightful sensation of the sun warming her face.
“Olivia...”
The voice was low and breathy, more a moan than an actual sound, but Olivia responded as if she had been shocked by lightning. It was the duke, her duke, finally broken of his fever. She ascertained this by lifting a hand to his brow, finding it slick with sweat, but the just right temperature. Heart pounding, caring not for propriety any longer, she said, “Oh, I thought I lost you!”
The expression on his face was very grave as he clasped her fingers to his face; his grasp was weak, and she could tell how much effort it cost him to hold her at all. “You could never lose me.”
“I almost did. I almost made a terrible, awful mistake,” she told him, and just like that, the story with his brother spilled out of her like a damn that had broken through its barriers. She could see the story pained him, but the sense of relief she felt once she had gotten it off her chest was immense. For so long, she had been terrified that she was caring for the duke out of a misplaced sense of guilt; now that she had bared all, she knew that he was the only one she wanted. “You must hate me,” she cried, looking shamefaced. “Oh, you must abhor me entirely, and I would not be able to blame you not one bit!”
His smile was gentle, the corners of his eyes creased with wisdom and years. She knew now that she wanted all of that wisdom, all of those years; all of that pain and heartbreak and loss made his find that much sweeter. He gathered her fingers, crushed them in his hand, and she felt nothing but his warmth and welcome.
“How can I hate you, Olivia,” he said, pulling her in close, “When I have loved you all along?”
She shuddered and sighed deeply, feeling more blessed than she ever imagined she could deserve. So many mistakes, so many secrets, and still he wanted her. “I almost lost you,” she told him, knowing he would never know the double meaning behind the words.
He kissed her lightly on the lips, still weak. “And to ensure that we never lose each other again,” he said, his eyes brimming with something wonderful, “would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
They celebrated their wedding a month later. Olivia would have done it sooner, but the duke insisted that she and the girls be outfitted with the latest fashions from the London modiste. She glimmered, she glittered, she was all elegant lace, but Olivia did not care. She had one thought on her mind, and that was of a very unladylike hunger for a certain dark-haired groom that possessed her every dream for a long time.
It was she who turned her back to him in his bedchamber that was now theirs. She who backed her bottom into him as he attempted to untie his cravat. When his eyes met hers in the vanity mirror, she gathered his large hands in her small ones with a singular purpose and placed them on the front of her torso. She wanted to feel his body against hers, and she was not willing to wait a moment longer. She felt not a single moment of remorse when the duke swiftly disposed of the back of her wedding gown with a single ripping motion and all the pearl buttons on the dress went flying across the room. She thought with a delicious wickedness that every time they came across one of those tiny buttons in the months to come, they would remember vividly this night.
Olivia pushed down her gown, wresting it away from her torso and hips until she stood in front of the duke her husband
in nothing but a white satin corset, stockings, and garter belt. She knew at once that he was taking in the vee of her thighs where they met her sex and flared out into her hips. Knowing not where her boldness stemmed from, but strongly suspecting it came from that night all those nights ago when the duke unbound her with his mouth, Olivia lifted her hands to the clever twist Mrs. Huxting had created for the wedding ceremony. She pulled out pin after pin until the waves of her hair, more wild than usual, tumbled free over her shoulders and gave her the appearance of a woman caught somewhere in between ravaging and having been ravaged, a spot between innocence and maturity, a precipice Olivia had straddled for as long as she had known the duke.
He heaved a deep sigh when he saw her as such, immensely satisfied as his treasure. He disposed of his cravat and shirt and reached his hands towards her, but she raised a palm to his chest. He was still as she explored the hair there with her fingers, silent as she stepped closer. As she pressed her palm against him, she looked up and he fell into the green of her eyes. “I want you to know,” she said, softly, but surely, “that I loved you from the moment I laid eyes on you.”
And with that, she reached up and kissed him for all she was worth.
The night was gentle about them as they made love, slowly and tenderly on their marital bed. When he kissed her, Olivia relished the weight of his manly body on her; she felt as if she had been made for this purpose and this one purpose alone. The dips and crevices of her body had been made to carry the weight of just this man on her, and he did not let her come up for air as he kissed her, tangling his tongue inside of her mouth until Olivia realized she could live forever without breathing if she could just have this feeling. She opened her legs to welcome him, bent her knees and cradled him closer, the heat of his erection pressing against the core of her through her undergarments until neither one of them could stand it. He broke away and unlaced her corset, following up with such a lavish celebration of her creamy breasts and rosy nipples that the aforementioned buds puckered tightly under his lips and fingers and Olivia clutched his head in her hands, trying to press him closer to an unknown place where she felt everything that had ever been felt since the beginning of time.
She opened for him without thinking, for what was the need? When the duke pressed his member against her opening, he grabbed her hand, and the look he gave her opened her far deeper than a physical connection ever could. He pushed inside of her, pushed past the hurt, past the pain, soothing the momentary discomfort with his murmurings, with his kisses, until Olivia knew that nothing could ever hurt her again, not really, as long as this man was with her. And then Olivia knew nothing at all as she soared, again over that precipice where no words of poetry are ever needed because something so elemental requires no words save one, the calling of a lover's name over and over again into the deep dark of the night air. For wherever and whoever we are, whatever we have lost or managed to find, this is the feeling that unites us all, and on the night of her wedding, Olivia joined the rest of the human race in the celebration of a wonderful orgasm.
* * *
The news of the separation of Mr. Ben Soothley and Lady Cynthia Freeworth scandalized the upper crust more thoroughly than they had ever been scandalized before. Or so it seemed. This was not the sort of news that has the luck to die down after several weeks. For wherever she went, Lady Cynthia Freeworth would henceforth be known as the lady who falsified her pregnancy to ensure her right to a gentleman's fortune.
Soothley's own sins were widely forgiven in the face of his wife's latest deception, and he received a far more sympathetic response from both sexes of the upper crust. It was this particular detail that plagued the Duchess of Worchester as she read the latest missive that had been delivered by special coach straight to her desk.
She read the letter, so full of the little charms that the lady had proved herself to be more than capable of in the past few years. She read of the disintegration of the union that had seemed so promising at first, and the coldness that arose, seemingly out of nowhere only a year after they had been joined. It was all very pretty, and somewhere halfway through it, the duchess felt a twang of sympathy for the composer of the letter, the kind of sympathy that can only come from a woman to another woman. It seemed as though Lady Freeworth had had some difficulty conceiving and had grown quite desperate to mend the break between her and her husband.
“What did she say next?” breathed Mildred Kingsley as the duchess relayed her tale.
It appeared as though many months were passing with no lack for trying, until the lady had grown quite desperate. It seemed that her handsome and wealthy husband had developed quite the roving eye and had begun to seek comfort in the embraces of other ladies whose minds were far less troubled with such ugly matters.
And I simply did not know what to do, darling! For heaven's sake, there is only so much a woman can take! So I thought, perhaps to purchase myself the little gift of time, I would tell him that we were already on our way, so that he could relax and spend some more quality time with me.
It was all very sordid, the way things came out, in the end. I had just told him, and you should have seen the way he looked at me, as if he had love in his heart again for me. I thought nothing could ever break us—surely we would now conceive—and that is when I walked in on him and that damned red-haired harlot, Hillary Pinecust! Oh darling, and that is when I knew, I simply knew that there was no point to any of it, and I got so angry that I wanted to hurt him as much as he hurt me and I told him the whole truth of the matter. And wouldn't you know it, the stuffed shirt got on his high horse and went on and on about how I had deceived him! To say nothing of the fact that I caught him with his bare bottom waving in the air.
“She didn't!” crowed Mildred.
I suppose you are a bit surprised to hear from me after so long, dear, but as soon as it all happened, I thought of you. And that is when I realized how absolutely dreadful my own behavior was two years ago; how it must have felt when I caught Ben's attention right underneath your nose. My darling! I just know that you will understand my pain now. You have, after all, always been one of my closest friends—you even introduced Ben and me! I wonder if you could ever forgive me for the mistakes that I have made.
“You didn't,” gasped Mildred as she sat across from the duchess. “Oh you couldn't forgive that shameless hussy after everything she did to you. Tell me you did not.”
Remembering the mistake she herself had almost made, the duchess found she that she did indeed have room in her heart for forgiveness. And if she could forgive Lady Cynthia Freeworth for all she had done to Lady Olivia Knightbridge, well then she could certainly forgive herself.
Lady Olivia Knightbridge, Duchess of Worchester Abbey, decided to invite Lady Cynthia Freeworth, recently separated, for a week of heart to heart chatting and rest at her new home. And her new husband and beautiful children were not the reason, not the reason at all. It took a certain kind of strength of character to admit one's mistakes and request absolution, and it did not matter if the lady in question had once been the rising star of the ton or not. All of us rise, all of us fall; we rise and fall again and again, only to live out our lives together.
THE END
Fated to His Kiss
“You will be my wife,” Henry said, preening away.
“I will do no such thing!” cried Anabelle, indignant. “When I am grown, I will be my own lady, own my own stables, and no husband or brother or father will tell me what I am to do with myself.”
“But Anabelle,” pleaded Henry earnestly, “that is not what wives DO.”
“But I will,” said Anabelle, tossing the ball they were throwing around deep into the lake. “I will be my own person.”
She knew that her mother would not be happy to hear her saying these things, but eight year old Anabelle Givens frankly did not give a damn, even though she knew damn was a bad word because of God. But if she could not share it with the neighbor boy, who was so close to her in age tha
t it almost did not count, who could she share it with?
Henry Princely, aged eleven years and three months, did not know quite what to make of the fire-locked girl before him. On one hand, she had been taking over all of his toys and mastering riding lessons well before he did, and on the other, she was so darned interesting to look at. It was certain that her sister, Isadora, was much whispered over by his parents because of her lovely blond hair, but he much preferred the way Anabelle did not seem to care much at all if her own red hair was brushed or not. He had started coming over every day ever since their parents had decided that the racing track was all the rage and begun attending such events together, and it was Anabelle who always set the pace for their explorations.
The grounds of the Given family household were not extensive, but Anabelle always found the most marvelous games to play. Once, it was that they were pirates of the pond, hunting for treasure, and once, it was a giant tree with a huge knothole in hit where she showed him she hid all of the things that mattered to her. Anabelle was his friend, although he would not admit it to any of the boys he went to school with. He was almost a man now, and it would not do to be playing with a girl, except for the fact that he did not enjoy himself nearly so much playing military constantly. What else was there to do but to marry Anabelle so that he could play with her all the time and nobody else would be the wiser? Except that she was so resistant to the idea!