Tears shot to her eyes. “Your compliments thrill me, I hope you know this. But I wanted your attention to tell you . . .” she crossed to him “. . . that I love you. So much.” She raised up on her toes and kissed him softly on the lips.
“I love you too,” he breathed. “But what prompted this declaration?”
He gathered her up. “You hate the house. Not large enough. Too large. No goats. No room for your parents and brothers.”
“Tonight,” she said, cutting him off, “we will make love. Depend on it.” She wiggled free of his embrace.
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you mean . . . at dinner?”
She fastened her second earring. “After dinner.”
He paused. “Tessa.”
She glanced at him.
He continued, “Do not pressure yourself into doing something for which you’re not ready. It could set us back—and for no reason. Really, there is no rush.”
“We’ve been married for nearly a year. It’s hardly a rush to make love ten months on.”
“You imagine the rush. We have a lifetime.”
“We have tonight, and why shouldn’t we? I am a prodigiously sensual woman. Or I used to be.”
“You are—but sensuality was never the problem.”
“I’ve grown weary of being a problem.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
“Know this,” said Tessa, turning back, stalking to him. “I’m in love with you, I am undone with desire, and I am a woman who takes matters into her own hands.”
“Oh, you are?” His eyebrows raised. He tugged on the lapels of his dinner jacket. He looked suddenly more interested.
“I am. When I wanted you for my husband and the father of my baby, I made it happen. When I wanted to kiss you, I did it. I kissed you in the boot room, and in the stable at Belgrave Square, and on our first night in the inn.”
“I know that makes me sound suspiciously passive, but you realize how important it felt to allow you to initiate things,” he said.
She waved this comment away. “Tonight, I want to consummate this marriage; and I shall make certain it happens. I am initiating. You’ve been warned.”
She spun and stalked toward the door.
Joseph enjoyed Sir Thomas’s dinner guests very much.
That is, he enjoyed them in as much as he could enjoy any strangers at any meal when he was preoccupied with the promise—threat? vow?—to expect sex with his wife.
And not just any promise/threat/vow. Tessa had come to him with confidence and fire in her voice, with a spark in her eyes that lit the languishing fuse in his own. He tried to prepare himself for possible reconsideration, for a goodwill attempt that resulted with something less than sex, for fatigue, or missing the baby, for a stomachache.
And yet, he could not wipe the look in her eye or the mettle in her voice from his mind. It lodged in his chest and caused his loins to throb.
His wife hadn’t asked, she hadn’t hinted, she hadn’t even teased. She’d informed him in no uncertain terms. Sex tonight, in the giant bed of the beautifully appointed guest suite.
Dinner, therefore, felt very secondary. He comprehended very little of the mealtime conversation. The guests were a father and son, Mr. and Mr. McMillan, and the son’s wife. As Sir Thomas promised, both father and son were active in Whig politics in the area and informed him of men he should meet and lower offices that might, in coming years, be an easy win for a newcomer.
Excellent, good, what a lucky coincidence, he’d said again and again. Are we to pudding yet? Was it rude to encourage the men to forgo port and cigars?
Meanwhile, Tessa seemed unhurried and unfazed. She dazzled Sir Thomas, Mrs. McMillan, and Lady Winnifred with stories about Christian and, eventually, with her interest in the dockyard. Sir Thomas promised to introduce her to the Hartlepool dock master, a man he claimed to know well, and to recommend her if, as he put it, “. . . Joseph permitted Mrs. Chance to seek some role in the dockyard.”
Joseph had been listening with one ear and he winked at his wife. It was a pity that such fortuitous news carried an addendum about Joseph’s perceived “permission,” but Tessa did not challenge him. She knew as well as Joseph that, if they smiled along, Sir Thomas would sell them his house, make the dockyard introductions, and then hie off to London, never to bother them again. Eventually, Tessa would show every man in town the role of Joseph’s “permission” when it came to her employment.
After an exceedingly lengthy dinner, Lady Winnifred asked if Mrs. McMillan might play the pianoforte. The younger woman declined because she had suffered a burn to one of her fingers, and Joseph had never been more grateful.
He was just about to claim exhaustion and ask to be excused when Tessa asked if she might have a go.
Or not, Joseph thought, suddenly intrigued. He did love hearing his wife play.
Lady Winnifred accepted and Tessa hurried to the piano, settling her waterfall of fuchsia skirts over the small bench. Joseph lowered himself into a chair. He postponed his accelerated enthusiasm for after, and allowed himself to sink into the beauty of his wife at the keys of a piano. He narrowed his eyes. His gaze traced the curve of her waist and bottom. He promptly forgot the other guests, who sat primly around him, waiting for a minuet or waltz. He licked his lips and reveled in the next best thing to going to bed with his wife.
The composition that followed, a sonata, began with a soft prelude, like the first drops of rain. The notes rose, like a good, soaking shower. After that, she pounded a thunderous, drapery-trembling crescendo that threatened to shatter windows and take down beams. Her playing was like a storm, rolling through the cavernous house.
Joseph swallowed hard, aroused by the theatre of her playing and the drama of the sound. He watched the rise and fall of her shoulders, the sway of her body over the keys. Her delicate slipper on the pedal reminded him of a tongue darting out every fifth beat.
He shifted in his seat and glanced around the room. Maids and footmen had gathered just outside of doorways to listen. Sir Thomas and his wife and the elder Mr. McMillan stared at Tessa with disbelief and at the pianoforte with concern. The younger McMillans, Joseph was relieved to see, looked thoroughly entertained.
Bloody right you are entertained, he thought. When it was over, he clapped politely—clapped ironically, considering the insufficiency of the five other members of the audience. Their feeble clapping was laughable after the verbosity of her performance. Tessa, he saw, did not care. She rose from the bench, gave a little bow, and shot Joseph a flushed, hot look.
Joseph coughed, and then called out, “Well done, darling. Well done.”
After the performance, it was no surprise that their hosts began to suggest fatigue and “. . . overstimulation.”
Well done again, Joseph thought.
The McMillans excused themselves and Joseph and Tessa soon followed, climbing the curved staircase to their appointed room in the guest wing.
Beyond pleasantries and praise for the meal to the hosts, Tessa had not spoken since her tumultuous recital. She rested a calm hand on Joseph’s arm and allowed him to lead her.
His pulse, still elevated from her sonata, kicked up again. The same confidence he’d seen before the meal was also in the hand on his arm; it was in her enigmatic silence, her straight back and raised chin.
Excitement coursed through him, and he blew out a breath. He’d been in a near constant state of arousal since they’d convened at the inn in Hartlepool; and that said nothing of the previous eleven months, when he’d fallen in love with her twice but not taken her to bed once.
When they reached the bedroom door, she said, “May I have five minutes? Lady Winnifred is sending her maid to assist me.”
“Right,” he said, and he pretended to study a row of paintings down the corridor. When the maid arrived, his heartbeat kicked up yet again. Blood coursed through his veins at an invigorating, almost lightening rate. He heard his pulse in his ears.
; When he heard the door gently click shut and he saw the maid descending the stairs, Joseph let out an audible breath. His loins grew heavy and tight. He rolled his neck and reminded himself that nothing was an inevitability. He would not perish if they tried, and tried, and tried again.
His hand shook as he knocked twice on the door. He tried to call out, but his voice broke like a youth. Swearing in his head, he pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The room was dim, lit only by the fire and a lone candle beside the bed. He squinted, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. He shut the door. He called out again. “Tessa?”
He scanned the room, giving full attention to the dark corners and curtained window seat. He squinted at the fire.
And then his body turned to stone.
Tessa stood beside the grate fully and completely unclothed.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Lady Winnifred’s maid had not batted an eye when Tessa had told her she’d wanted unfastened from the red dress and stripped naked. Her host may have been shocked by Tessa’s pianoforte concert but perhaps nudity in the guest suite of Abbotsford Cottage was not an uncommon thing.
A good omen, Tessa thought. Abbotsford Cottage would likely be her future home and she quite liked the idea. She couldn’t believe they’d not thought of it sooner. If Tessa was unnerved by Joseph’s hand rising in her skirts, why not simply remove the skirt? Why not remove it all?
She had barely positioned herself beside the warm glow of the fire when Joseph knocked twice and stepped into the room. She did not, thank God, have time to second-guess. She simply laced her hands behind her back—why play timid now?—raised her chin, and waited.
Joseph froze when he saw her. No metaphor could do justice to his expression. He looked exactly as if he’d opened the door onto an unexpectedly naked woman. Shock, then captivation, then enterprise. It was all chased with a very little bit of uncertainty, but enterprise prevailed. He understood. And he was immediately complicit. He paced three steps, stalking her, and then paced three back. He looked at her through narrowed eyes, he looked again and again, devouring the sight of her.
She allowed it. Her hands remained behind her back. She thrust out her breasts and he stopped walking.
“You’re certain?” he asked.
“Certain,” she said. “But I should like us both to be naked. Will you do it? So that we both—?”
“Yes.”
He hopped on one foot and tugged off a boot. The other boot came next. After that, his jacket, cravat, waistcoat, shirt, undershirt, buckskins, drawers—all shed in a matter of seconds.
He stood tall and tan and muscled some five feet from her, his clothes in a heap on the floor. He was painfully aroused and Tessa allowed herself to study him in the way he had studied her—in the way he studied her still. She had touched every part of him during the past days, but she had not seen his body.
It was a work of art; the body of a Greek god.
The music she’d played after dinner, Chopin’s “Nocturne Op. No. 2” in C sharp minor, rolled in her head, and she was emboldened to move first.
But he moved, too, they reached out in the same moment, and their bodies made impact like the sun meeting the horizon at dusk, smoothly, gracefully, unstopping.
Tessa felt warm, restricting muscle where she usually felt breeches or shirt; she felt his arousal against her belly without the barrier of her gown. She felt, and nuzzled, and kneaded. She rubbed against him like a cat. She raised her mouth across his skin and tasted.
Her senses were awash with him. The smell of his soap, the taste of skin, the sound of his breathing. She saw him only in flashes of the jumping firelight; his mouth descending, his hands brushing the hair from her shoulder.
Yes, she thought. Yes.
No talking, no stillness, no caution. No dancing around the edges. No clothes.
Why had they not done this sooner?
“It was a mistake,” Joseph panted, “not to do this sooner.”
“Everything has led to this,” she soothed. “No mistakes.”
He slid a hand down the dip of her waist and cupped her bottom, lifting her slightly and pressing her to him while he made one, delicious thrust of his hips.
Tessa’s mind stopped. She’d felt precursors of this, moments of pressure that threatened to overwhelm her, to carry her away, but they had been mere flashes compared to the bright light of pleasure. She could only anticipate the next thrust. Surely there would be a next? She bowed her body, reaching . . . and there it was, he thrust again.
Tessa moaned into his mouth and he answered with her name.
When he pressed again, Tessa’s knees threatened to give away. She wobbled, and Joseph lifted her and carried her to the bed. She felt his muscles strain as he endeavored to lower her down slowly, to bow her back like a tree branch, bent by a gentle wind.
But then she wrapped her legs around his haunches, and his strength failed him. He dropped her onto the bed and came down on top of her. The weight of him made her want to fall and fall and fall.
“Tessa?” he breathed, kissing her shoulder, her clavicle, her breast. “Alright?”
She nodded, pulling his lips back to her breast. He growled and kissed her again.
“You are more beautiful than I imagined,” he said. “And I imagined your beauty quite a lot.”
She should thank him, Tessa thought. She loved his compliments. She never felt more beautiful than when he told her she was a fantasy or a goddess or the prettiest woman he’d ever known, but she was rapidly losing her ability to follow simple thoughts. Speech in this moment seemed like a terrible use of her mouth and her brain. She wanted only to suck in breath, and feel, and press her mouth against any tanned or muscled (or tan and muscled) part of him that occasioned her lips.
Her body had begun to move of its own volition, to press up, to seek, and she was too lost to sensation to ask or consider or sort it out, she wanted only to let it go, to press and find what she sought.
“Tessa?” Joseph moaned. He sounded strangled. “Tessa?”
“Ye—?” So much talking, he was always talking.
“Tessa, love, you mustn’t move like that. I won’t be able to—Tessa . . .”
Oddly, this, her brain was able to follow. A plea. A no-please-yes from a man who was finally losing control. Was it unfair, she wondered, to agitate him, to entice and kindle and move when he’d been willfully touching her, bit by bit, until she was wild with desire for the last two weeks?
And furthermore, was it so very bad that it would be difficult for him to . . . ?
To . . .
Even in her fevered state, she knew the end of that sentence was stop. If she encouraged him, it would be difficult for him to stop.
“I don’t want you to stop,” she said. “Please, Joseph, don’t stop. . . .”
“But we—” he panted, and then kissed her, the ultimate manifestation of “we,” or rather the prelude to the ultimate “we.”
“We’ve waited too long,” she told him, turning her head to breathe. “We’ve teased and gone slowly and resisted and now we will lose control.” She found his mouth and kissed him hard. “And we will revel in it.”
Likely one earnest, restrictive moment had built on the next, and they had reached this point through days of smaller moments. But now they’d arrived, and she wanted nothing more than to thrust against him, and the more he tried to ask her to stop, the more she wanted to do it.
“Tessa, I’m serious,” he rasped, and he tried to raise up from her.
She clawed him back, pulling his shoulder, his hair—an ear—whatever she could grab hold. She squeezed her legs around his haunches like a vice. He could not rise up without taking her with him.
“Tessa, are we—?” he gasped.
“Yes,” she sighed.
“But are you . . . ?”
She opened one eye and stared up at him. His face was a mask of agonized restraint. And love. He looked down at her with such love. Her heart
burst. “Please, Joseph,” she said, tossing her head on the pillow. “Please now.”
Joseph let out a curse, and he rolled them to the center of the bed.
“Loosen your legs,” he said. His voice was low and rough.
“But I—”
“Tessa,” he pleaded, and a heightened jolt of pleasure zinged through her. “I can’t maneuver with your legs around me. Relax. Can you relax?”
Slowly, Tessa let her legs drop and untangle from his body. The new position felt open and vulnerable; the smallest current of unease snaked up her chest and into her throat.
No, she thought, it wasn’t panic, it was simply the no-turning-back acknowledgment of what was about to happen. What she willed to happen. What she wanted.
Joseph detected her hesitation and leaned down. She raised her lips, thinking he would kiss her again, but he went straight for her ear and began to speak lowly, gravelly, in his other voice, the voice he’d had before he’d become a gentleman.
The words he said were inconsequential. Praise, encouragement, just a little goading, but the tenor of his familiar voice in the unfamiliar accent ignited her, and within moments, she was fighting for his mouth, begging for a kiss. Her body bowed up of its own volition, seeking, open and on fire.
When her breathing turned again to panting, when she strained against him and begged, he said an oath in a language she didn’t understand and repositioned his legs. Tessa whimpered, resenting every time he pulled away, but then he was back, reaching between them. She felt his hand, felt his arousal, felt him pause . . .
She opened her eyes. He was poised above her, looking down, his eyes half-lidded but dilated to midnight.
“Do not ask,” she said. “Do it. Please, Joseph, do it.”
With an oath, he sank into her. Tessa made a little cry. The sound of that cry was different from her previous, lust-soaked cries, and the sound yanked her from him for the flash of a second. Her consciousness hovered somewhere between her daily life and this moment in time. On one side, she wore clothes, stood upright, thought logical thoughts; on the other, she was naked, prone, and in carnal throes with her husband.
All Dressed in White EPB Page 28