by Jo Goodman
"It is a good thing they are not identical," she whispered. "It is all that stands between you and perfection."
West gave a shout of laughter that was cut short by Ria clamping her hand over his mouth.
"Have a care," she said earnestly. "Else the entire school will know you have returned. Your earlier ruse will have been in vain."
He nodded and felt the pressure of her hand lifting. Catching her wrist, he held her close a moment longer and placed a kiss on her fingertips. "You're beautiful, you know."
"It is a pretty compliment, but unnecessary."
"Compliments are never necessary. They are simply... compliments." West folded her fingers so that his hand enclosed hers. "Did you think I meant to flatter you? To what purpose? I am already in your bed, and you know now that my purpose was never to sleep here, so if I say something to you, it is because I mean it." He squeezed her hand. "You are beautiful, and I should have said I thought so from the first."
Ria was properly skeptical. "You did not think so from the first, so it would have been a lie—and highly improper to say so, even if it weren't."
That made him pull her close; his arms wrapped tightly around her. He nuzzled her neck and growled low against her ear, "And you know all about what is proper."
He kissed her then. Deeply. Hard. Wonderfully hard. Ria felt herself respond in kind, offering herself up to his greedy mouth, because in giving, she was also given.
He turned onto his back, and she came with him, lying full length along his solid frame. Working in tandem, they raised the hem of her nightgown to her hips, then her waist, past the level of her breasts, and finally pulled it over her head. It twisted and tangled in their hands before they were free of it, making them both laugh softly at the clumsiness born of haste.
West stroked her back, the heels of his hands running along the outside of her ribs. He tickled her nape with his fingertips, pushing aside the heavy curtain of hair. "What's this?" he asked. His fingers traced a thin ridge of flesh that rose from her shoulder, across the back of her neck, and disappeared into her hair. "Did this happen when you fell?"
"No." Ria drew his hand away from it. "It's nothing," she whispered. "A very old scar." She kissed him. "Nothing."
Sitting up, she straddled him and urged him to help remove his drawers. They managed it with considerably less difficulty than her nightshirt, then West lifted her and helped her find a new seat, this one joining them ballocks to buttocks. He watched her face as she eased herself onto him, the way she looked at him with something akin to wonder, her eyes darkening with pleasure, her lower lip caught in her teeth to make her cry a whimper. Her nostrils were drawn in as she took a measured draught of air. Her head fell back and exposed the slim length of her neck to his hands. He raised them there, brushing the hollow of her throat with his thumbs, then letting his hands drift lower.
Her slender form gave way to the fullness of her breasts. He stroked them lightly. The nipples puckered and became erect. His thumbnail grazed one, and Ria's entire body shuddered. She found his wrists and held him there so his hands were open across her breasts, then she moved against them, thrusting herself into his palms as part of the same slow, undulating movement of her hips.
She held him that way even as he urged her forward. He used his strength to move his hands at the last moment and take the tip of one breast lightly between his lips. It didn't seem to matter that she held him captive when she was the one surrendering to the hot suck of his mouth.
Ria heard a soft, mewling sound and realized it was coming from the back of her throat. Her skin was hot and too tight for her now. She felt stretched taut by the rising curve of pleasure she was riding. Her hands uncurled around his wrists and slipped into his open palms, the fingers splayed wide so they could thread with his. Their clasped hands tightened into fists. Her breath caught as he bucked hard under her. She rolled with him when he drove her onto her back. Urgency stripped away any pretense of gentleness as they were enjoined in a battle.
She wrapped her legs around him tightly as her hips rose and fell. The tip of her tongue wet her parted lips. She saw his eyes drop to her mouth and darken. He strained against her, grinding between her open thighs. She tried to lift her head and catch his mouth with hers, but he avoided that touch and placed his lips against the curve of her shoulder instead, nuzzling her hair aside, kissing her just where the faint ridge of scar tissue followed the line of her neck.
She wanted to wrestle him onto his back, but he was too strong. He only gave up to her what he wanted to, but what he wanted to do was please her. Ria felt herself being lifted just as she began to contract around him, and then they were both sitting up, her legs across his thighs and curved around his back, his folded under him to make a throne of his lap. She stared at him, startled by this new position, face-to-face with him and as secure in the nest as a fledgling bird.
"Do it again," he whispered against her ear.
She did not know what he meant; then the muscles of her vagina contracted involuntarily, and she heard him give her throaty encouragement. Her brows lifted slightly as she realized that she was like a fist around him. When her muscles contracted again, it was done of a purpose. She laughed in delight, heady with this new power, fully aware that he had given it to her.
"You are a good man," she said. Lifting her pelvis the narrowest fraction, she tightened herself around him as she rose. Her hands slid to his shoulders and her breasts scraped his chest. "A very good man."
West did let her catch his mouth this time. He supported her hips as she continued to squeeze him rhythmically, her outward movements so slight as to be as invisible as her inner ones. He slipped his hand between their bodies and made a trail to her open thighs. She shivered lightly as he began to stroke her. Touching her here was like dipping his fingers into honey. Warm. Viscous. Sweetly scented. He caressed her more intimately than before, sliding back the slick hood of her clitoris just once and letting her experience a pleasure so intense that it was like sparks being struck when a steel blade was forged.
Ria came in a violent shudder, sparks spinning like pinwheels trapped under her skin, brilliant white heat and light rising from the center of her. She was lifted, arching away from West's body, crying out softly at the loss of him. Even then, in the moment of her sharpest pleasure, she knew what he was about. For the span of a heartbeat, she thought of denying him the right to let her go. Caution, good sense, fear—these things asserted themselves, and she knew she would not betray him or herself with such a selfish act.
He came as she fell back on the bed. He followed her down, taking his weight on his forearms as he leaned over her. Their breath mingled—hot, ragged, no longer synchronous. They stared at each other for a long time, candlelight chasing shadows across their faces. Fine beads of perspiration made their skin glisten. In the cold room, heat rose from their bodies.
West lowered his head slowly and kissed her once. Then again. Infinitely gentle now. He rolled to the edge of the bed. Ria reached for him, but he was already standing, light and lithe on his feet, and her hand merely hovered in the air before she withdrew it. He disappeared into her dressing room and reappeared a few minutes later with a basin in his hands and towels folded over his arm. He washed the evidence of their lovemaking from her body, just as he had from his own; then he set the basin on the floor and the towels beside it.
"Do you want your shift?" he asked.
She nodded. "Please."
He handed it to her and put on his drawers. For the second time this night, she held the covers up for him, and he climbed in beside her. He offered the shelter of his shoulder, and she accepted it. One of her arms lay across his chest; her head fit neatly into a hollow that seemed carved for it.
"What do you make of us?" he asked her when she had settled at his side.
The question was not asked lightly. Ria did not have to lift her head to know that his eyes were grave, and there was no humor shaping his mouth in that singular curve. "I don
't allow myself to think on it," she said. "I think it might make me very sad."
He nodded slowly. "You would not consider being my wife, then?"
"No."
"My mistress?"
"In London, do you mean? With a house and servants and a phaeton to take me to the park? Your Grace has already taught me how to sing—there is no need to cage me as well." She regretted her words as soon as they were out. Not only did they seem flippant and vaguely cruel, but they were in her mind because of what the dressmakers had said about Jane Petty. "I'm sorry," she said quickly, rising up to see his face and know that he could see hers. "It was a horrible thing to say. You have done nothing that I have not asked you to do. Even tonight, I hoped you would come back. I wanted to lie with you again. This will have to last me the whole of my life, you know." Tears welling at the lower rim of her lashes spilled over and fell on his cheeks. "I don't expect there will ever be anyone else, not because you say there shouldn't be, but because I am not a woman who will ever go from one man's bed to another, seeking naught but my own pleasure. What you have taught me, I shall cherish." Her tears fell in earnest now, and her body began to shake with the force of her sobs.
She had cried before in his arms, but this was different. The last time it had been for fear of what she had done to Jane. This time she feared what she had done to herself.
West let her cry. A woman's tears did not frustrate or frighten him. He had known them at an early age at his mother's knee. She had laughed through them sometimes, tousling his head so that he would not be alarmed. At other times she would excuse herself and hide away in her bedroom for an afternoon, an evening, sometimes an entire day, emerging when the melancholia had passed, or when the duke came to take her away.
He did not know why he began to tell Ria these things, but once the first words came, it was a little like weeping, and he discovered there was good reason to see it through to the end. Life had been an ache in his chest for a very long time; humor had never served to deflect it, only to keep it contained.
"My mother's name was Meg," he said. "Did you know that?"
Ria shook her head, knuckling the last of her tears away. She used a corner of the sheet to erase the trail they had left on his cheeks as well, then slipped beside him again.
"Not Megan or Margaret or Meggie. Just Meg Marchman." He felt Ria's arm slide across his chest, and he laid his fingers over her elbow and stroked the soft inner curve. "She was the daughter of the widowed tutor employed by the seventh Duke of Westphal for his son, the future eighth duke. She grew up with my father as her companion and confidante until he was sent away to school. The duke arranged a good living for her father as schoolmaster for the village's children. You might not credit it, but both of my grandfathers were progressive in their ideas about education."
Ria had not known this, either. She wondered if it did not perhaps explain why the duke had finally indulged her decision to teach. It seemed that his tutor, as well as his own father, had had some measure of good influence on him.
She closed her eyes and let the images form in her mind's eye as West unfolded his tale. She saw the young Meg, winsome and quite lovely at seventeen, become more than a companion to William Fairchild as he came into manhood. Straight, broad of shoulder, he cut a handsome figure and could have had his pick of any of the young ladies presented to him during the Season. He vowed he would have no other than Meg, but he spoke the vow only to her. They were not so naive that they believed either of their fathers would bless a union between them, but neither were they willing to be parted. They married in secret, by special license, and William promised that it would not remain secret forever, that he would wear his father down eventually. Their love was true, his father would come to understand that, and they would prevail. Once again, he spoke the vow only to her.
Ria tried to imagine William broaching the subject of his feelings for Meg with his father. It would have been difficult for him. He would have wanted to appeal to his father's reason and found the going treacherous. Perhaps he had not even tried so very hard. West was of the opinion that he had not.
"My mother told her father about the marriage as soon as she realized she was going to have a child. She begged him not to go to the duke, but to allow her husband more time to influence his own father. He agreed, most likely against his better judgment, but he honored his promise and spoke to no one, even when he saw his daughter's belly begin to swell and knew the truth of her pregnancy would become apparent to all."
West threaded his fingers through Ria's and tapped his thumb lightly against hers. "The fact that my mother was going to give birth put pressure on William to do something quickly. What he did was confess to his father that he was my mother's lover and that he had got her with child. If he hoped to add that he had already married her and that the child had been conceived in wedlock, he never had the chance to speak of it. His father vented his spleen by striking him across the face and then offered his reluctant congratulations on the impending bastard birth."
Ria winced. It was less a reaction to West's description of events than it was to the edge of ice in his tone. It was not overtly chilly; rather, it spoke to a hard-frozen center that had never known a thaw.
"I don't know what my father thought—I can only judge him by what he did," West said. "And what he did was agree to marry his father's choice for him, Lady Jane Caldwell, the proper daughter of an earl with an inheritance in her own right. My father demonstrated neither courage nor charity by not telling my mother himself. She heard of the impending marriage when the first banns were read."
Lifting her head, Ria glanced at West again. His features remained stoic, almost without expression, and she had a sense now of the cost to him. She laid her cheek back against his shoulder and quietly wept the tears he could not.
"She went to the duke," he said, squeezing her fingers so they folded around his. "And she told him about the marriage. He demanded proof, and she could offer none. Those papers were left in her husband's care, and when he was confronted, he not only did not produce the proof, he denied every part of her story. Official record of the marriage also disappeared. My mother was made to be desperate—which she was—and scheming—which she was not. Her lawful husband married Lady Jane the following year, shortly after I was born. That is how I escaped the name William for my own. As the first son, it surely would have been mine, just as it was for every duke before me."
West's chest rose and fell on a deep sigh. "Lady Jane and her bigamist husband conceived one son who lived and five others who did not. The miscarriages took a considerable toll on her health, and she was confined to her bed through many of the pregnancies and then afterward as well. My mother's father died when I was yet an infant, and without his income, my mother had to find employment. She was a good seamstress, so she began to take in mending and later, fashioned dresses. She accepted money from the duke—not my father, but the man who was rightly her father-in-law—and opened a shop in the village. Do not think my mother was not a proud woman. She was, but circumstances compelled her to also be practical."
Ria dashed surreptitiously at the tears still welling in her eyes. "Do you think the duke believed her story, and that is why he offered her money?"
West shrugged. "He may have, but he was also of a pragmatic nature. He had ambitions for his own son, and he wanted to assure that my mother would not raise the subject of the alleged marriage again. The money was foremost a bribe, though it may also be as you said. Even if the duke came to realize his son had lied, what could he do? There had been a very public wedding with Lady Jane. He could not expose his son as having two wives."
Easing his fingers free of hers, West gave Ria a corner of the sheet to wipe her eyes. In return, she gave him a watery, slightly embarrassed smile. He shook his head. "No one has ever cried for me before."
Ria glanced at him, frowning. "But your mother... you said she cried a great deal."
"She did, but not for me." He bent his head and k
issed the crown of hers. When he spoke, his breath brushed silky tendrils of her hair aside. "For all intents and purposes, I was a bastard, but she was a bastard's mother. In a village so small as Ambermede, it did not make her an outcast, but it always set her apart. The duke died when I was three, not long after Tenley was born, and my father was made Duke of Westphal. That is when he began to come around again."
"She took him back?" asked Ria.
"On occasion. She loved him and hated herself, or hated him and hated herself."
"But she loved you," said Ria. "She always loved you."
His smile was a trifle crooked a little weary. "Is it so important that she did?"
Ria simply stared at him, her heart in her throat.
"Ease your mind Ria," he told her gently. "I was not unloved."
Her mind was not eased not when he said it in such a fashion as he had. "What was she like, West?"
He was a long time in answering. "I think you will not believe me in light of what I have told you, but she was cheerful. Determinedly so, perhaps. She held her head up and made no apology for what others believed about her. What she knew to be the truth was her shield. She was my champion, after a fashion. No one called me a bastard in her presence."
"But when she was not around?"
"A different kettle of fish."
"You did not know the truth then?"
"No. Never. I understand now that she did not trust me with it. My father was becoming considerably influential in politics, and his continued success depended upon her silence—and mine. I was always recognized to be the duke's son. No one questioned it. That he had a bastard was never more than a nine days' wonder except in Ambermede. My mother also pitied Lady Jane, though this feeling was hardly mutual. The duchess hated my mother, but she probably feared her more."
"She knew about her husband's other marriage?"