I began to read. It was fascinating. Really, it was.
“Who would have thought,” I said, halfway done with the first page, “that the Corn Laws had been in effect in some form or other since 1361!”
After a few moments, the fire crackled, breaking the silence, and I glanced up. Cambourne had the end of his quill held between his teeth, and he seemed to be staring intently at his journal. Then he looked up. “Enjoying your reading?” he asked, mildly.
“Absolutely.” I turned my eyes back to the page in front of me. “To think! The bullion price of corn is now under sixty-three shillings!”
We went back to our reading, and after a few minutes Cambourne breathed out what sounded like a sigh, uncannily echoing my own feelings. I mean, I was beginning to think 269 more pages on Corn Laws was perhaps more joy than one person should be allowed to have.
As I looked up, he put his book and quill down onto the little table by his elbow. I watched him surreptitiously from under my lashes as he steepled his fingers together and stared into the fire. Despite his contemplative pose, I sensed a certain restlessness. After a moment, he picked up something from the table. I guiltily went back to my reading. Half a page further, in which I learned that the original intent of the laws was importation and exportation duties or tariffs on a sliding scale, I stole another glance at him. He was reading now, too. Although it appeared he’d got much the better end of the deal, as while I was wading through the minutiae of the Corn Laws over the last five hundred-odd years, he was perusing the latest issue of La Belle Assemblée! I scowled at him (to which he was oblivious), and then, once again, returned to my reading.
After a few minutes of this, he said, “Interesting riding habits this season, don’t you think?”
“Hmm,” I replied, trying to sound deeply involved in my reading. “I suppose they are,” I murmured. Really, he was making it exceedingly difficult to concentrate!
“Although I do think this one would benefit from fewer epaulets.”
“These laws could eventually lead to a depressed market for manufactured goods!” I said, and he nodded. “But that could lead to rioting, it says here!”
“I know that also and in fact, am becoming quickly convinced that such an outcome would be the likely result of the laws as they now stand, although your father … your mother …”—he smiled—“vociferously cannot agree. You really should consider having one of these made up.” He looked at me appraisingly. “It’d be extremely fetching on you.”
“Pardon?” I said, looking up. I did my best to give the appearance that I was positively reluctant to put my reading down, but was forcing myself nonetheless: I summoned a casual yawn, and placed the treatise on the floor next to my chair. “Which?” I asked.
He leaned closer and I reached out for the journal. Somehow, though, I did not end up, as expected, with it in my hand. As, instead of giving me the magazine, he grasped my hand in his, our eyes locked, and then suddenly, in the space of a second, I was propelled from my chair and ended up ensconced across his lap.
“This one,” he said, very close to my ear. “Right there.”
I was reeling from the suddenness, from his nearness, and from the shock of my scandalous position. His breath feathered down my neck. The atmosphere in the room had changed, from cozy and domestic to sort of thick and still.
“It is very nice,” I said, through dry lips. “Perhaps I will.”
We were silent for a moment, both looking at the picture. I could feel the rapid rise and fall of his breathing. “In blue, perhaps,” I added.
“Red,” he replied.
“D’you think?” I asked, intrigued. Surely red was for ladies much more exotic than myself?
“Absolutely,” he said, and I was absurdly pleased.
We looked at one another until the air seemed to crackle between us, and then he very deliberately tossed the magazine over his shoulder. He put his hands into my hair. He wasn’t precisely rough, but he wasn’t particularly gentle, either. He pushed my hair down, not slowly and methodically like on our abortive wedding night, but quickly. Pins scattered wildly on the thick carpet.
He threaded his hands through my hair and slowly, very slowly, brought my face to his. I held my breath. Instead of touching my lips, though, he leaned his forehead against mine, and said, “God help me, but I don’t think I can stand this any longer.”
He hadn’t asked anything, but there was a question there nonetheless. I met his eyes, through the curtain of my hair. “No,” I agreed. My voice sounded odd to my own ears. I wanted desperately to give in to the pull, to allow him to lead me along just … because. Not in exchange for information or power or anything. Just for him, to be with him. But surely I couldn’t agree so easily? It wasn’t at all seemly! (Not that what I wanted him to do to me was either, mind you, but a lady really ought to at least object!) “I mean, no. I don’t know, Cambourne.”
“I had to do it, Gwen,” he said carefully. “I hadn’t any choice, but right now I don’t give a damn about that. I want you.”
The heat rose in my face. “But is there more?” I asked. “Or is it just in your bed that you want me? Because I won’t deny it, the pull is strong, Cambourne. Strong enough, perhaps, to make me forget the things I should remember.”
“There’s more, Gwen, and we both know it.”
“I see.” I needed to think clearly, and couldn’t do it with his hands in my hair and his words, and his breath so seductive against my skin, so I lifted my head and looked down at him. “You want this that badly, then? That you would be willing to go ahead and damn the consequences?”
His lips curved into a slow smile, the one that always seemed to tighten something corresponding in my stomach. “For this and conversation across the breakfast table?”
And then, he was kissing me, hard, soft, one kiss after another. And the idea that I would resist this slid out of my mind as if it had never been. I clung to him, returning each kiss. It was as though we could not get enough of each other. Our harsh breathing was audible in the quiet room. After a time, he tore his mouth from mine, and we both sat for a moment, catching our breath.
He leaned his head back against the chair. His eyes held mine. “This, between us, will never be easy,” he said, his hands still cradling my jaw.
I nodded to show that I understood, that I was relinquishing my only chance at annulment. Just at that moment, I didn’t care. I should have, but I didn’t.
“Show me.”
He was going to force me to accept responsibility, to be a willing participant. I debated how, exactly, to show him, for the space of a second. I leaned down and brushed my lips slowly across his.
“Gwen,” he breathed. “I’m greedier than that. Touch me.” His eyes were dark, almost black. His voice was level, but even in the firelight, I could see a wash of color in his cheeks.
Heat lurched through me. I slowly leaned forward and placed my palms very deliberately against his chest. His eyes fell closed. He was solid under my hands, and his heart thumped with a pleasingly rapid rhythm. Experimentally, I slid my hands up. He moaned softly, almost as though he were in pain. A quick shock of excitement coursed through me. I was doing this to him.
Encouraged by this success, I toyed with the ends of his neckcloth. “Yes,” he said, his voice urgent now, “take it off me, Gwen.”
And no sooner did he say it, but I realized that I wanted to do exactly that. And of course, the other part of my mind could not believe what I was doing. This, I knew with certainty, was not how well-brought-up ladies conducted themselves. They did not encourage gentlemen (particularly those who had married them under false pretenses) to relieve them of their virginity in the library. They did not sit on said gentleman’s lap at seven of the clock on a Tuesday evening, unwrapping him as though he were a Christmas package. I knew this, of course, but I could not find it in myself to care: In truth, I had to resist the urge to tear the cravat off.
I began to unwind it, slowly, deliber
ately undoing his perfect waterfall. I took my time about it, enjoying both my own boldness, and the sharp intake of breath on his part that it had elicited. Until at last, when it was completely unknotted, I pulled the starched cloth off his neck and let it slip from my fingers. I swallowed as I turned my concentration to the column of bared neck rising out of his shirt. I was reaching out to touch his skin—even as I pushed down the thought that what I really wanted was to put my mouth on the pulse point at the base of his throat—when his hand came up and stilled mine.
“It’s my turn,” he said, his dark eyes holding mine. “Now I get to take something off you.” More heat flooded through me and into my face at the thought, and he said: “You choose.”
I pretended to think for a moment, enjoying the way the expression in his eyes belied the coolness of his tone, and even the way my own body seemed to vibrate in expectation of his touch. I shifted a little in his lap and he groaned. I moved again, to see if it elicited the same reaction, and this time he leaned forward, and, taking my face in his hands, said, “Have a care, my love. I shouldn’t do that again, else I can promise it shall all come off you at once.” Then he kissed me, slowly licking his way across my upper lip.
“My shoe,” I said, breathless, against his mouth.
He lifted his head, his eyes glinting. “Very well,” he said. “But I must insist on both together.”
I pretended to give this due consideration. “I only took the one thing off you,” I said, as he swung my hair out of the way to better run the tip of his tongue down the side of my neck. I shivered with the pleasure of it.
“I’ll allow you two items the next time,” he said. “Now give me your foot.”
I was not sure of precisely what gentlemen wear beneath their garments, but I was guessing it was considerably less than we ladies do. I had a chemise, a corset, my newfangled underdrawers, and stockings beneath my wool gown, so I was assuming that he would be fully unclothed long before I was. Secure in my thinking, I bent my knee to give his hands access to my foot.
He unlaced the ribbons of the left slipper with a deftness that put Crewes’s nimble fingers to shame, and slid it slowly off my foot. With our gazes locked, he dropped the shoe, and stroked his finger up my instep. I shuddered. His hand glided over the silk of my stocking, as he traced up the top of my foot to loosely circle my ankle. He trailed his hand up my calf to the back of my knee.
He whispered my name in a low voice, which seemed to add another layer of heat to the excitement lurching inside me, and stroked his hand, slowly, back down. “Say my name,” he said, low, into my ear. “I want to hear it on your lips.”
“Cambourne,” I whispered.
“Harry,” he said urgently. As he kept up the maddening stroking. “My name.”
“Harry,” I managed to get out. I had truly never supposed my body capable of such feelings: the back of my knee had always been just that. I was beginning to understand exactly why the ankles were always kept hidden from gentlemen! I let my eyes drift closed, and my head fall back on his shoulder, giving in to the sensations that were licking at me, as he began the same process on my right foot. When he had finished, I forced myself to sit up—although I could have sworn I was boneless—and attempted not to eye him with unseemly relish.
He still had his boots on. I could certainly choose to remove them. But somehow the prospect of kneeling and pulling and tugging at them was not altogether appealing. His waistcoat—an elaborately brocaded item, since he was Milburn today—offered more intriguing possibilities. I wet my lip with the tip of my tongue while I debated.
“Never tell me that you are preoccupied with the bullion price of corn,” he said softly.
I shook my head.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, looking hard into my eyes.
I looked hard back at him. “The truth?”
A trace of a smile crossed his face. “Unless it’s something I’d prefer not to know.”
I stiffened my resolve. “I was thinking about what to remove next. Your boots or your waistcoat.”
“Waistcoat,” he said.
He drew back to allow me access, and I parted the heavy fabric. He was very still, waiting, I thought, for me to touch him. When I did, sliding my palms up his chest, his breath hissed out between his teeth. I pushed the waistcoat the rest of the way off him, and it remained trapped behind his back and the back of the chair.
I was too busy, though, running my hands up his chest and arms, listening to his harsh breathing and marveling at the way his muscles seemed to jump and tense beneath my hands, to spare much concern for the fate of the garment. I moved my hands to his shoulders and ran them slowly down the muscles of his arms, paying strict attention to the way his hands clutched the arms of the chair. I was preparing to do it again, when one hand shot out, and grabbed both my wrists.
Still holding my wrists, he sat up straighter and kissed me again. His mouth closed hotly, hungrily, over mine. My eyes drifted shut. After a moment, he lifted his head. “Let me see.” And even with my eyes closed, I could feel his gaze sweep my body. “I believe I was deciding whether or not to play by the rules.”
I opened my eyes. “The rules?”
“Yes. You know, you remove an item, I remove an item?”
I nodded. Thus far it had been working rather well.
“Exactly how many layers do you have on under that gown, Gwen?” he asked, releasing my wrist. His gleaming hair fell over his forehead, and that elusive dimple came and went.
“Ah. A few, I suppose.”
“A few dozen, more like,” he said.
“Is there a problem with that?” I asked.
“Well, yes and no,” he said, smiling, and I found myself unable to tear my gaze away from his lips and the faint brackets that surrounded them when he smiled.
“You always play by the rules, Cambourne,” I reminded him, suddenly nervous.
He raised a brow. “Perhaps not so much as you think,” he said. “It would surely be breaking them were I to tumble us both onto the carpet and tear your clothes off so I could feel your skin against mine this very instant.”
“Oh!” I said, thinking that it sounded like an appallingly good idea, if a bit shocking.
He smiled. And then tipped us out of the chair, so we lay sprawled on the carpet.
I regret to say that I did not protest the indignity.
“It is only,” he continued, moving over me and propping himself on his elbow, so he was looking down at me, “by dint of recalling word for word the salient points of Adam Smith’s ‘Digression Concerning the Corn Trade and Corn Laws,’ that I have managed to wait this long.”
I said. “And?”
He smiled, slowly, and heat seemed to lick up my legs. “It seems that Mr. Smith had fewer salient points than I had recalled.”
“Oh,” I said again, this time looking up into his eyes.
“I have come to the end of them, you see,” he said.
“How disappointing.”
“Or not,” he said as he bent his head and kissed me fiercely. His tongue curled possessively over mine, and my head whirled with dizziness. He brought me closer and pulled me against him. I could feel him, hard against me. I knew both what it was, and that he had let me feel it on purpose.
I should have been shocked, recoiled in modest horror. Problem was that, in truth, it excited me even more. I pressed back against him and he moaned. I wanted to reach down and run my fingers along him, but didn’t quite dare. So instead, I reached my arms around his neck and pulled his mouth to mine again, to let my tongue curl possessively around his.
He lowered himself to me, so I could feel his heartbeat thundering against mine. Neither of us said anything more for quite a long time, lost in a whirl of hands and mouths and the untucking of shirts, and undoing of buttons and laces. For a while the only sounds were some sighing and murmuring, the occasional gasp, and the crackling of the fire.
He had just managed to bare my breast, by dint of
pushing my bodice down. After lifting his head and looking at what he had bared for a long moment, his eyes glittering, he had said, “Do you know what you’re doing to me?”
And you to me, I thought, but didn’t say, as I seemed to have lost all facility with words. I moved my head jerkily. Let him interpret that however he would.
“Let me show you,” he said, running his finger down my neck, over my collarbone. I wanted to move, to thrust my breast in the path of that finger, but didn’t dare. I held my breath, and waited and waited in an agony of anticipation until, at last, he circled the nipple and then touched it. I almost came up off the floor as I gasped. I arched my back, forcing my breast more fully into his hand.
He groaned and lowered his head, taking it into his mouth. I was on fire. I grabbed his head and held him there. His hand came up and cupped my other breast as he gently bit down on the nipple. “You’re perfect,” he said in a rough voice. “So absolutely perfect, I think I’m finding religion, here, Gwen.”
My breath was coming in little pants. “That’s blasphemy,” I managed to say.
He laughed, his breath blowing cold air against my burning nipple. I gasped, as his hand moved upward, pushing my gown with it.
“No,” I whispered.
“Yes,” he said, as his lips met mine. His hand stilled for a moment, and then, when I was thoroughly lost in the kiss, began to move again.
I felt the cool air on my legs, as he pushed my gown over my thighs, but no longer cared. In fact, I let my legs fall apart like the complete wanton I had obviously become.
Even so, when he reached the edge of those newfangled underdrawers, and said, “I like these,” and slid his hand inside, I had a moment of utter shock.
“Harry,” I whispered, scandalized. “Don’t! You can’t!”
“It’s all right, Gwen,” he said, his voice strained. “It’s all right.”
I half wanted to restrain his hand, but then his fingers moved gently over me, touching places no lady even mentioned. My eyes fell closed, and I was as good as gone. His fingers seemed to skim and dance and then grow more purposeful. I almost screamed. His mouth moved over mine, and at the same time, the stroking went from gentle to sure. I could no longer breathe. I let my head fall back, away from his kiss, because I needed air.
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