Improper Arrangements (The Improper Series)

by Juliana Ross

  “How did you meet Peter?”

  “Our fathers were friends. We were thrown together, in the way that happens to children when their parents are close. But we liked one another in spite of it.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Five or six. Young enough that I can’t remember a time before we were friends. We were holy terrors back then, half wild, forever disappearing into the woodlands, scrambling about in streams. We went off to school together, then university.”

  “Is that when you met Tom?”

  “I didn’t know him when we were at Cambridge. No, we met at the Alpine Club a few years later. Were both of us disappointed by the place. Nothing but a room of old fools blathering on about their exploits. As if they’d ever climbed anything steeper than their front steps.”

  “And you made friends—just like that?”

  “Just like that. Even a confirmed misanthrope like myself.”

  “My brother is awfully charming.”

  “Birds out of trees, as the saying goes.” He shifted me slightly in his arms. “What was he like as a boy?”

  “The same. Always running, always talking. Always had a dog or two at his heels, his boots clotted with mud. He hated school, hated being trapped inside.”

  “Was he very naughty?” he asked with a smile.

  When had Tom not been naughty? I regaled Elijah with stories of my brother’s many misdeeds, most of them involving the use and abuse of ancient weaponry purloined from Papa’s renowned collection. I talked and talked, finding that it helped to push the pain in my arm and ankle to the back of my mind. In what felt like only a few minutes, but was likely closer to an hour, Elijah was hammering on the door of the Pension Devin.

  “We’ll have you mended and comfortable in no time,” he promised as he carried me up the stairs to our room.

  “Where is the doctor?”

  “The nearest physician lives in Evolène. He’ll come to look in on you tomorrow. In the meantime, Madame Devin has called for the village midwife. She’ll be here within the hour.”

  “What would a midwife know about setting bones?”

  “In a small farming village like this? More than most physicians, I’d wager.”

  He set me down on the bed, taking great care not to jostle my arm or ankle, and proceeded to undress me. It took ages, as he first had to cut away what was left of my sleeve, and by the time he was done, I felt close to fainting.

  “Steady on,” he ordered. “We’re almost there.”

  “I’m ever so tired, Elijah.”

  “I know. Is there anything else you need?”

  “May I have something to eat?”

  “Of course. Anything else?”

  “I want you to talk to me. I want to lie in your arms and listen to you talk. And...”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell me something that isn’t in your books. Something only I will know. I’ll never tell anyone—it will be my secret to own. Please?”

  A knock on the bedroom door forestalled his answer. It was the midwife and, behind her, Madame Devin with a tray full of supper. I was very hungry and pleaded with Elijah to let me have some of the soup, but he was adamant—my arm and ankle first, then food.

  The business of setting my arm and constraining it in a proper splint was most unpleasant. By the time the midwife had finished with my arm and rewrapped my ankle, I was dizzy and feverish and interested in nothing beyond the oblivion of sleep.

  Elijah shooed everyone out; he alone would tend to me. He fed me soup and bread, washed away the stone dust that clung to my skin, and dressed me in an overlarge nightgown borrowed from the maid. Then he climbed into bed and had me sit up, cushioned between his knees, while he brushed out my hair and plaited it.

  “How do you know how to do that?”

  “I have four sisters. And I’ve plaited together my share of frayed ropes. There. All done. Time to sleep.” He helped me to lie back, arranging a cushion so my splinted forearm was well supported, and turned down the oil lamp on the wall above our bed.

  “Why did you decide to become my guide?” I asked. “I’ve been wondering.”

  “I told you already. There was something about you. I liked you, I suppose. And I needed to get away from my desk, from my book. Go out into the world again, if only for a week.”

  “You seemed so opposed to the idea at first. You were terribly intimidating, you know.”

  “I’m a miserable old sod at the best of times. Sorry.”

  “You’ve been lovely to me,” I whispered sleepily. “Really you have.” I wanted to talk with him more, but I was so tired. And then I remembered. “What about my story? The one only I will know?”

  “It can wait ’til morning. Good night, Alice.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Do I have your promise?”

  It was early still, not long past dawn, and I’d been awake for a while, my sprained ankle paining me far more acutely than my arm. But I’d assumed Elijah was still asleep.

  “I beg your pardon?” I mumbled. “What promise?”

  “I’m about to tell you that secret—the one only you will know. Do you promise to tell no one?” His voice was serious, but when I looked in his eyes I spied a glimmer of mischief.

  “I promise.”

  “So...it was the first time I’d ever climbed outside Derbyshire. Peter and I had just come down from Cambridge, and as a reward our fathers sent us on a tour of the Continent. We’d seen the sights in France and Germany and Austria and it was all getting a little boring. So instead of proceeding to Venice, we went to Geneva and hired a guide to take us climbing. He took us to the north face of the Aiguille du Peigne, not far from Chamonix. Nearly seven hundred feet of granite.

  “The weather was beautiful, fine and clear, and the guide was a good man—knew every inch of the mountain. We were making terrific progress. I think we were on our second or third pitch when it all went to pieces.”

  “What happened?”

  “I looked down.”

  “What do you mean, ‘I looked down’? Surely you must look down all the time when you’re climbing. To...well, to see where you are. How far you’ve come.”

  “When I’d climbed before, it had been on cliffs I knew like the back of my hand. And although they’d seemed big, they were minuscule in comparison.”

  “So you looked down...I don’t understand.”

  “I froze. It was easily three or four hundred feet, straight down, to the valley below. I simply couldn’t move. It was fear. I was afraid of heights.”

  “You? Afraid?”

  “Terrified.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Our guide had seen it before. He made his way down, talked me through it, helped me to descend. It was humiliating, to say the least. I didn’t climb again for more than a year.”

  “What made you try again? Most men would have left well enough alone.”

  “Necessity. I was in the north of India with a surveying team. I was the only man on the crew who knew how to climb, and there were times when the theodolite—the instrument we used to measure height and distance—couldn’t get an accurate reading. So I’d have to climb to the point in question with the mountain barometer.”

  “You stopped being afraid?’

  “No. Never. I climb past the fear, if that makes any sense. It’s always there, but I won’t allow it to master me. And it will never stop me from doing what I want to do.”

  * * *

  After three interminable days I was allowed out of bed, though only to sit in an armchair by the window. After another three days, the doctor, who had traveled from Evolène twice to visit me, let me go on a short walk with Elijah, my arm secured in a sling.

  “Madame Keating must have as much fresh air as possible. But take care she does not tire herself.”

  We took a turn about the garden and then, as my ankle had begun to swell, we sat on a bench and turned our faces to the sun.

  “Shouldn’t we corre
ct the doctor when he refers to me as your wife?” I asked.

  “Probably not. He and everyone else here would be horrified if they knew we weren’t married.”

  He had a point, for Arolla was a small village, isolated from the modern world in most respects. Madame Devin, as friendly as she’d been, wouldn’t hesitate to turn us out if she were to learn the truth. But it rankled all the same. I wasn’t Madame Keating, would never be Madame Keating, and it felt like the worst sort of untruth to answer to that name.

  As my right arm was unaffected, apart from a few bruises, I was soon able to draw and paint again. In the weeks that followed, I added details and color to the sketches I’d begun while we were walking, though I found another subject far more appealing. Soon every last scrap of the paper I’d brought along was filled with variations on a single theme. Elijah as he worked on his notes, his brow furrowed in solemn concentration. Elijah sleeping next to me, an arm thrown over his face, the tattooed bands scarcely visible in the tender half-light of dawn. Elijah watching over me, his pale eyes somehow warmer than the sun.

  He rarely left my side and was endlessly attentive to my comfort. He must have been bored, but he never complained. Much of the time, he sat by my side and wrote in his notebook. One afternoon he agreed to read aloud from Between Earth and Sky. He chose one of my favorite passages, his account of climbing the Jungfrau for the first time, and it was all I could do not to beg him to read the entirety of the book to me.

  Not infrequently, I would feel his eyes upon me and, turning to meet his gaze, would glimpse the shadow of some unspoken worry. As he never spoke of any concerns I soon decided I was either mistaken or, more likely, that he was thinking about his work and perhaps fretting at falling behind.

  Though I would never admit it, part of me wished our days in Arolla would never end. Untroubled by the world beyond, we had no one to please but ourselves, no place to be but where we were. The only thing missing between us was the intimacy we had shared before the accident.

  At first it had made sense, for my arm had been very fragile and required the utmost care and delicacy of touch. But as the days stretched into a fortnight, and the broken bone healed, I began to long for a renewal of his attentions.

  I waited for him to make some overture, offer some gesture beyond the fraternal kisses he often pressed to my brow, but in vain. Perhaps he hesitated out of fear of reinjuring my arm, or tiring me unduly while I was still recuperating.

  I was done with waiting. So late one afternoon, nearly three weeks after our dramatic arrival in Arolla, I called for a bath. It was that lazy, perfect hour after tea had been cleared away but before it was time to think of supper. As soon as the maidservant had dragged in the copper tub, filled it and taken her leave, I approached Elijah, who was working at the desk. I stood close behind him, near enough that I might kiss his temple and, in so doing, allow my breasts to brush against his shoulders.

  “Would you be free to wash my back and arms in a moment?” I asked.

  He grew tense, as if steeling himself against disappointment. He cleared his throat, muttered something that I took as an affirmative and set aside his notebook to watch me. I walked to the bath and shed my garments as enticingly as I could manage, given the stiffness of my left arm and my lack of experience with such maneuvers.

  I settled in the bath, which was so small I might as well have bathed in one of the soup bowls from luncheon, and began to wash those parts of my body I could reach with my right arm. Suddenly—the man was quiet as a cat—he was behind me, kneeling on the floor, his breath hot against my neck.

  “Are you certain?” he asked.

  “What do you think?”

  “I promise to be careful.”

  “I trust you,” I said, twisting round to look in his eyes.

  He took the soap and began to wash me with a small square of linen. First my nape, shoulders and back, then my arms, his hands moving with exceeding care over my tender left forearm. My legs and feet were next, then my breasts, which he soaped and rinsed diligently. By the time he had finished with them, my nipples were as red and round as late-season raspberries and my toes were curling reflexively around the rim of the tub.

  He paused for a moment to roll up his shirtsleeves, then took up the soap again, lathered the washcloth well and began to wash between my legs. And then, leaving the cloth to float away, he stroked me deliberately and methodically, knowing exactly where and how to touch, knowing exactly what I sought.

  My release dawned slowly, blossoming in ripening, rolling waves of pleasure, warm and welcome, endlessly satisfying. Yet still I wanted more.

  Elijah helped me out of the bath, patted me dry and ushered me to the bed, where he left me, wrapped in a blanket, while he busied himself in front of the fire. First he took a thick quilt from the wardrobe and folded it neatly into a pallet, which he set before the fire.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “Come to bed.”

  “Trust me.”

  Rather than return to me, he undressed, and at the sight of his naked form my mouth actually watered. Little wonder, since I was starving for him, and for the delight of his touch.

  Retrieving the prophylactic sponge from a drawer in his desk, he poured a measure of oil over it before returning to stand by the fire. “Come here,” he told me.

  I crossed the room, letting the blanket trail behind me as I approached. Why did he not wish to continue in our perfectly comfortable bed? The pallet seemed unlikely to offer much protection from the hard wooden floor below.

  And then I forgot all my questions because he began to kiss me, lovely caresses at my temples, my throat and across my breasts. I parted my legs for him, let him insert the oiled sponge, and for some odd reason I was trembling—though of course I’d been in a hot bath and the room was cool, despite the fire burning merrily in the grate.

  We sank to our knees, his mouth on mine, stealing my breath, my will, my heart, and then he was on his back and I was atop him.

  “Less chance of hurting your arm this way,” he muttered. “Mind you hold it close.”

  I tucked it against my chest, beneath my breasts, which mounded them high and plump for his approval. And he did approve, cupping and squeezing them, pinching my nipples lightly, until I bit my lips to keep from crying out.

  I was straddling his cock, pressing against it with every tiny movement I made, and I had to restrain myself from rubbing against him like a cat in heat. Though I doubt he would have minded.

  “Rise up on your knees, just a bit,” he said, and once I’d obliged he grasped his cock and directed it between my legs, parting my folds, positioning it at my entrance. And then he stretched his hands above his head, as if to tell me I was at his mercy, and left me to proceed.

  As it had been almost three weeks since we had last made love, I had to go slowly, taking him inside me inch by delicious inch. Though the sensations I was experiencing were nothing short of sublime, I took just as much pleasure in regarding the expressions that crossed Elijah’s face—delight and torment in near equal measure.

  Once he was seated deep inside me, I experimented by moving up and down a little, just to see how it felt. At this he closed his eyes and groaned softly.

  Perhaps I was doing something wrong. “Am I hurting you?”

  “No. Only...could you go a little faster? I’ll help you.”

  His hands went to my hips and he lifted me gently, moving so smoothly I felt no pain in my arm at all.

  “Make yourself come,” he growled. “I want to feel you come.”

  I rubbed myself surely, almost harshly, for as much as I wanted to come, as much as I was desperate to please him, I wanted most of all to look in his eyes as I tightened and quivered and convulsed around his beautiful cock.

  “Elijah,” I called out. He looked up, his strange silver eyes promising so much, and before I could take another breath I was caught up and spun round by the unyielding grasp of my release.

  He arched his head back a
nd shut his eyes, every muscle in his body growing tense, and something like a sigh left his lips. His release pulsed deep within me, a foreign and entirely enthralling sensation.

  I fell forward, hugging him tight, and waited for our bodies to grow still and calm.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his words fracturing the silence.

  “For what?”

  “I didn’t pull away.”

  “I don’t mind,” I assured him. “I’m sure the sponge will be enough.” And then a question occurred to me. “Is it better for you like this? To come inside me?”

  “It is, God help me. All the same, I won’t make a habit of it. That I promise you.”

  * * *

  Exactly one month after the accident, Doctor Langrin visited and pronounced me fit for travel, providing that my arm was bound tightly in a sling and the carriage I rode in was well sprung.

  “If your wife’s arm becomes swollen or excessively sore, Monsieur Keating, you must halt at once.”

  “Of course. Thank you for your care.”

  Once the doctor had departed and we were alone again, Elijah pulled up a chair to my bedside, folding his arms as he looked down at me. “So, Madame Keating. Where now?”

  This was the moment. It had to be said.

  “I’m not certain. I had planned to be back in England by Michaelmas.” I looked down, suddenly afraid to meet his eyes, and steeled myself for what was next. “Where will you be going?”

  “I don’t understand,” he said carefully.

  “Are you returning home to Argentière, now that we’ve concluded our arrangement?”

  “Concluded our arrangement?”

  “Wasn’t that your intention? To return to Argentière to work on your book?”

  “Originally it was, yes. But that was before your accident. Before I realized...before things changed between us.”

  “Nothing has changed,” I said, though I had to force the words past my lips. “We are both the same people. We both want the same things as we did before.”

  He reached for my right hand, but I pulled it back. “Don’t say anything. Please. You know there can be no future between us. We’re so different. Look how you live your life—”