Two weeks he had said. The fortnight was almost over. She sat near the window and watched a mouse nose its way through some ivy in the garden while she clung to the joy that would certainly end soon. She would have to end it, wouldn’t she, if she were to do what she had to do?
The sounds of another carriage worked its way up the lane. That would be Kendale. He too had one bring him here, so he would not have to deal with his horse on a property ill suited to maintaining one. She knew the sounds of all of his carriages now, and recognized the fine one that had called on her when their estrangement ended. Its wheels gave out that particular cry as they stopped.
He entered, his hair mussed from the breeze and his high boots dirty from a day of riding. He carried a long fat cylinder covered in muslin that he set on a chair, then came over and gave her a kiss.
“All is well at your house?” he asked.
She stood and linked her arms around his neck. “Very well. That man who was walking by still has not returned. Jacob and Pratt still watch out their window. The women are busy with a new stack of engravings sent by a book publisher. And Madame LaTour has been most helpful so that I can steal away to visit this little cottage.”
“You come early, so she must be very helpful.” He embraced her, but looked around the humble sitting room. “I was concerned you would find this too poor. It was all that was available immediately, however.”
“I find its simplicity charming.”
He looked down at her warmly, but she sensed a distraction in him. Not one that removed her from his attention. Rather it centered on her, and caused him to concentrate on her too thoroughly. She waited for words that she saw in his eyes and felt in the air.
Instead he kissed her. A mere brushing of his lips at first, then more fully. His arousal changed the kisses even more. It appeared the stew and bread would not be eaten for a while.
The kisses turned hard, devouring. His embrace encompassed her tightly. She recognized the signs of impatience. When he picked her up and carried her to the small bedchamber, she wondered if he would even bother to undress.
He surprised her, as he could at times. Instead of throwing her on the bed he set her on her feet and set about disrobing her. Suddenly he was taking his time, a lot of it, carefully unlacing her dress and working the hooks on the back. Reverently folding each garment and setting it on the chair. And always, each time he looked at her, that concentration.
Her own arousal teased and played at her. Her body waited and her thoughts blurred. When she was naked, however, he traced the curve of her form from shoulder to thigh in a slow, careful line drawn by two fingertips. The way he looked at her then, that deep consideration, caused a note of worry in the melody of her bliss.
She stopped his hand by clasping his wrist. He had to look up at her then. “You look at me as if you are memorizing me,” she said. “Are you leaving?”
“My journey is not for a few days yet, at worst.”
She had not only meant that journey that he planned. Relief sighed through her heart when he only heard that question, however.
He laid her down then undressed himself. Instead of impatience he took infinite care in how he handled her. The pleasure was as slow and sweet as that night at Ravenswood, when she forced him to admit he wanted her. This time it affected her differently. He might not be leaving, but she could not ignore that he would be soon, and she would be too, and this fortnight of happiness had almost ended.
She clung to him as a result. She held him as closely as she could. She did memorize him while she caressed, and listened to his breaths and noticed every detail of his touch. Soon, very soon, the pleasure sank low in her and every kiss, every tease, deepened it so she was ready much sooner than he.
It maddened her to wait. Another day she might have demanded he join with her. But she sensed this slowness was not for her sake, but his. He did not lack desire. The evidence of that was undeniable and prominent. Rather that concentration distracted him still, and she guessed he was noting every touch as much as she did.
He could tell how much she wanted and needed him. She did not know how to hide it. He indulged himself a while longer anyway, carefully closing his teeth on one of her breast’s tips while he flicked the other with his thumb. She cried out at what it did to her, and on impulse grasped his hand and tried to move it lower.
Instead he rolled and brought her above him. “Take what you want, Marielle. This way I can still admire you.”
Almost frantic now, she grasped him and rose up. She lowered herself and all of her gave a silent moan when he filled her.
She sat back, absorbing him and enjoying the welcomed fullness. Dusk gathered outside, and shadows grew in the chamber. No candles had been lit, so the light had turned gray and soft.
She enjoyed looking at him like this, at his handsome face and intense eyes. She reached out and caressed his hard shoulders and chest, moving down until her fingers touched the new scar, still somewhat red, from the wound he received in the alley. That made her look at her own body and the fine line on her hip.
She rose up and lowered herself again and watched his reaction.
“Slowly,” he said. “So it is a new revelation each time.”
She did it how he wanted. “That is almost poetic.”
He smiled in amusement at her description. It was the first smile of the day, she realized. He reached out and drew his fingertips along that welt on her hip. “I do not think this is the first time you have been hurt, Marielle. There are no other scars, but not all wounds leave them on the body. That is especially true for women.”
She stopped moving.
“There are things I have not thought much about,” he said while he caressed her slowly. “I chose not to, because one thing leads to another and they would all lead back to the mystery of Miss Lyon. But you were a girl when you came here, and you came alone. Unprotected. Were you hurt as you made your way through the hell that was France then?”
She leaned forward until her face hovered mere inches above his. She slammed shut the door in her heart that his words had nudged open, before too much sorrow could escape. “First poetry, then a cruel question guaranteed to ruin my pleasure. I expect you to make amends, my lord.”
“Of course. My social skills still need much work.”
He did make amends. He kept her in that position with kisses while his hands devastated her by teasing at her breasts. Each touch and flick made her tremble where they joined. He moved her forward so he could use his mouth and that made it wonderfully worse, especially since they barely remained connected then so the teasing created powerful shivers of pleasure. He finally released her when she had grown crazed, and she rose up on her arms and slammed her hips down hard so he filled her again.
She took what she wanted then, as he had said to. She moved this way and that, finding relief that also made the marvelous sensations of release begin. He grasped her hips and took over, and no longer was it slow and sweet, but almost violent in how he thrust into her. She came twice before he was done, and again at the end when, limp and exhausted, she accepted the last of his turmoil.
Night had fallen. He did not sleep. Marielle did not either. He could tell, even though she did not move in his arms. She rested in the crook of one, with her head on his chest. Her palm lay flat on him over his heart.
His reluctance to leave the bed came from many things. The comfort of holding her. The new questions that would not leave his head. The roll of muslin out in the sitting room.
“I was not hurt as such,” she said into the silence.
“Do not speak of it if you do not want to. It was churlish of me to say anything.” It had been an impulse, a thought spoken aloud as he looked at that knife wound and thought about Marielle the mystery and how much he had assumed that had probably been very wrong.
She did not respond, so he assumed she did not w
ant to. But she shifted in his embrace and, it seemed to him, huddled closer.
“You said you were at Toulon, so you saw how it could be when rebellions against the new government were put down. It was the same elsewhere. France was as bloody after the revolution as during. There was much killing.”
Especially in the west. She does not speak like a person from Provence, but from the west. Two people had told him that.
“I expect the entire country was not safe,” he said. For a girl to travel alone— He did not want to imagine the kinds of danger she would have seen.
“Not safe at all. Every man loses a part of his humanity in such a world. I saw enough to know how it might be when I fled. So, as I left, I arranged to be protected.”
Of course she had. It had been the smart thing to do, and she was very smart. “Were you hurt?”
“Not the way I think you mean. He was someone I knew, not a stranger. I understood the bargain as I took it. I was not forced, if that is your question.”
That she assumed it was gave him some relief. If Marielle did not know how some men hurt women as part of pleasure, he would leave her with that small corner of innocence.
“It was as if it were happening to someone else,” she said. “That was my only memory of it, in truth. Other emotions, bigger ones, occupied me. I was glad to have a man with a pistol and some bravery guiding me to the coast and helping me find a boat. But, of course, I would never be an innocent again. I had lost so much of my childhood from what I had seen, it seemed a small loss in comparison, however.”
It touched him, how matter-of-fact she spoke of it. He debated anew whether he really needed to know anything else about her. Perhaps all the rest really did not matter.
He laughed at himself, but not happily. Here he was again, finding reasons to avoid learning the truth. He could only hope she did not realize what an idiot he had become because of her. For her. It was a hell of a thing to find yourself counting on the good character of a person you had sworn could not be trusted.
“I expect that you learned to live with fear during that time,” he said.
“It was my constant companion.” She turned and looked down at him. “It is interesting how that changed people. I have noticed that some of us live in fear still. It will not go away now no matter how safe we are. Others of us learned that one must move forward even when afraid.”
“Which are you?”
“I was the latter, but—I have learned that it does not take much for it to own me again.”
He almost wished it owned her, if it meant she did not move forward on whatever scheme she had in mind. She did have one. Those engravings and that visit to the coast said as much. If she was not a spy—and his heart said she was not no matter how often his brain debated it still—then she schemed in some other way. Probably a dangerous one.
He caressed her face until his fingertips found her mouth. They rested there, on their softness. His eyes could not see her face, but his mind could. She had worn many masks with him in the past, but he guessed that now, in the dark, as they held each other, she did not.
“It does not have to own you. If you ever need protection, I will give it to you. Even if we are no longer lying together like this, I will keep you safe if you allow it.”
She opened her lips and caught his finger between them. Then she pressed them to his chest. She sat up, and gave him a little poke. “You may not have a stomach, but I do. There is food waiting.”
They ate her stew on the little table, both in dishabille. He wore pantaloons and a shirt, and she her chemise and her shawl. He built up the fire some so the night would not make them cold in such undress.
“This is good bread,” he said, breaking off another piece. “You have a better baker than I do at Ravenswood.”
She nibbled on her own, secretly pleased at the compliment. From where she sat she could see that roll of muslin that he had brought. She wondered what it was. Not a gift for her, from the looks of it. Perhaps one of those men would visit tomorrow and take it away.
“You said that you would not be leaving on your journey for several days at least,” she said. “Or perhaps not at all?”
He used some bread to sop up the sauce from the stew, which also gave her pleasure. “I am committed to go at some time. I await some information first, so the exact day is not clear.”
“But it will be soon?”
“Yes, I think so.”
She had assumed that his suggestion that they try this affair for two weeks had something to do with this journey’s start. She had made her own plans accordingly. Now she wondered how she would make changes if his own departure were delayed.
Her brain began calculations but her heart hoped he would be delayed forever. If so she would not be able to execute any plans, and be free of them for a while, and instead continue this idyll of pleasure and safety. How quickly this cottage lulled her into forgetting the world that waited back in London, and in France.
“Where are you going?” The question emerged without her choosing to speak. Her heart gave it voice, not her head.
He said nothing.
“I am sorry. You would have spoken of it if you wanted to. Of course you cannot tell me.”
“Why do you think I cannot?”
A good deal of joy instantly vanished from the little chamber. Rather suddenly he appeared very much an army officer again. “You cannot because you do not know who I am, as you once said. I am a mystery and might yet be the spy you suspected.”
He reached for her hand and held it firmly. “Why do you think a spy would have interest in this journey? I could be planning a circuit of the family properties.”
“I suppose I thought—that is, I assumed that—your discretion on it alone suggested it was something more.” She stammered, uncomfortable now, and guessing each word she said only made it worse. “And those men, the ones who come here to talk to you—”
He smiled, much to her relief. “You may not be a spy but you would make a good one.” He lifted her hand and kissed it, which relieved her even more. “To speak of it would only spoil our time together, and perhaps cause you unnecessary concern.”
Just the mention of concern caused her some. She had assumed he was going to conduct some surveillance somewhere, of some other possible spy, or of the southern coast, or whatever it was he did. “Are you up to something dangerous? Is this about that colonel and what happened at Toulon?”
“Let us not talk about it. I am trying to spare you unnecessary concern, remember?”
He did not say it would not be dangerous, however. So while her unnecessary concern dimmed, it did not go away.
She cleared the remnants of the meal. As she did, that odd cylinder of muslin kept distracting her. When she was finished she pointed to it. “What is that?”
He turned his head and looked at it over his shoulder. He gazed its way a long time. One might think he had forgotten he had brought it with him. With resolute abruptness, he stood and walked over and picked it up. “It is something for you.”
He carried it over and untied the muslin. As soon as he did the fabric fell apart and a roll of paper unfurled on the table.
It was a stack of her own engravings. The ones she had lost in the alley. Only they had not been lost, since he now had them.
She fought the urge to scold him for lying to her. She wondered why he had taken this long to return them. She stared at them, fighting anger and disappointment, telling herself that of course he had lied to her. He thought they were secret documents that day. Perhaps he even wondered if she hid information among the figures and words.
He sat, and rested his fingers on the edge of the top print. “They are not colored. They are more of the ones you send to France.”
She nodded.
“I am told you make them yourself. Not only ink the plate and pull the print, but
use the burin to carve the lines.”
“Who told you that?”
“Is it true?”
Perhaps Emma had told him. That was how Emma found her in the first place. Or maybe Cassandra. Or even Madame LaTour, who was too impressed with the visits from a viscount to remain discreet. Or someone else might have revealed it. She had kept this skill and work a secret as best she could, but eventually people figure some things out when they have nothing else to do.
“It is true.” She did not look at him. She did not want to see how he regarded her. A few minutes ago she was at least possibly the niece of a comte. Now, unless he truly was Handsome Stupid Man, he knew she was not. It changed everything. Everything.
“Who taught you? It is not a skill one learns on one’s own.”
Her heart weighed heavily in her chest. She wished they had never left the bed because whether he intended it or not, he was at long last interrogating her the way he had initially planned that day they first spoke.
She considered what to say and whether to speak at all. She could refuse, and wait the long hours before André arrived pretending to sleep in one of the chairs.
“My father taught me. It was his skill and trade.” There, now he knew. Her birth was far below his. She was not a woman to whom such a man as he gave affection. If he took a woman like her, it was not a romantic liaison, but something baser.
She did not think she could lie with him ever again now. She would not want to see if it made a difference in how he treated her, or kissed her. She would know if it did with the first touch.
“How did you know how to—” He caught himself and stopped.
She finally looked at him. Instead of a new scorn she mostly saw intense curiosity. “How did I know how to act like a lady? Is that your question? How was my birth not obvious every time I spoke or took a step? My mother worked in the household of a baron. I would visit her there, and see the ladies and how they moved and spoke and carried themselves. So much is in the carriage. Even more is in the mind. It was not hard to imitate. Even as a child I had started doing so, although there were those who thought me bold to dare such airs.”
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