Before the food was consumed, MacKenzie and Penelope stood to receive their felicitations. There was a heartfelt hug from Gemma for each of them and allusion toward the expectation of great-grandchildren, an excited giggle from Lady Eugenia who was clearly already planning her own wedding and a wish of eternal good fortune from Kendal whom MacKenzie expected would slip away in a moment’s time.
Lord Hesterton limped up and cast a bored expression at them. “Marriage is not at all what I expected,” he drawled.
His wife, a pretty woman with dark hair, jabbed him lightly in the ribs. Their eyes met and they shared a soft laugh. “It’s far, far better.” He drew his wife toward him and pressed a kiss to her cheek.
“And I didn’t make him say that,” Lady Hesterton said. “Honestly. We hope you find as much joy with one another as we have.” She took Penelope’s hand and her smile widened. “I suspect you will.”
Lord and Lady Hesterton shared a knowing look and moved on to take their seats.
“Oh, Penelope, you do look lovely.” Lady Bursbury’s eyes watered with emotion as she embraced her daughter.
“And we’ve a wedding present for you.” Lord Bursbury grinned. “We’re sending you on a wedding trip to Paris.”
“Your rooms will overlook the Seine. And only for a week,” Lady Bursbury rushed. “And not until at least next month so you may return to the hospital first.” She reached for Penelope’s hand. “We know how much it means to you, dear.”
MacKenzie’s lovely new wife beamed at her parents for the generous gift. It was an incredibly considerate gesture that showed in the way Penelope’s eyes glowed.
Following all the well wishes came the great breakfast feast. MacKenzie and Penelope sat beside one another throughout the feast. Though he should not have been, he was aware of every movement she made, just as he noted the only thing that she ate out of all the proffered food was a couple of toast points and a bit of tea. Well, and a bite of the wedding cake, but then who did not eat wedding cake?
When at last it came time to bid farewell to their guests, they stood at the entryway and embraced each of their loved ones who had come to witness their vows. With each person who slipped away, one pressing question squeezed tighter and tighter at MacKenzie.
Now what?
What did one do with a new wife in their home? He could think of one particular activity he’d find preferable. However, it was one he ought to cross from his mind completely. But with an arrangement such as theirs, what did one do?
He supposed he would allow her time to become acclimated with her new surroundings and then share meals with one another. But outside of that…
“Everyone wishes us to be happy,” Penelope said quietly at his side.
“I imagine our arrangement will please us both,” MacKenzie said carefully. His eye caught something dangling from the ceiling just overhead. Was that mistletoe?
Gemma was the final guest to approach, walking now without the aid of a cane. The daily walks she took with Penelope had Gemma in better health than MacKenzie had ever seen her.
“Yes, my dear grandson.” Her eye twinkled. “That is mistletoe and I’ll not apologize for it.”
Penelope turned her gaze up to regard the plant, her face unreadable.
MacKenzie cleared his throat. “It would appear we are expected to kiss.”
“So it does.” Penelope met his eyes and pressed her lips together. Her expression was no longer difficult to discern: she was nervous.
She had fine lips, full and heart shaped. As lovely as all the rest of her. Suddenly, MacKenzie found himself grateful for the mistletoe and the opportunity to sample her sweet mouth, but only if he could set his new wife at ease.
Penelope’s heartbeat roared in her ears. Mistletoe? How had she not seen it?
“Do ye know how the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe came to be?” Lord Oakhurst asked abruptly.
Penelope shook her head. “I do not. I do, however, know it can be used to assist with breathing difficulties and sometimes even quell fits of mania.”
His stare lingered on her mouth as she spoke, and it made the pulse ticking at her wrist quicken.
“It was the Greeks,” he said. “During Saturnalia, a festival of Saturn performed before Christmas. The Romans used it as well and would resolve their disputes beneath the mistletoe.”
Penelope regarded her new husband with a note of intrigue. “I wasn’t aware of any of that.”
He shrugged as though it were of little consequence. As though he had not just taught her something new. If there was anything Penelope loved even more than medicine, it was learning something new.
“There was a Nordic legend as well,” he continued. “Frigga was the goddess of love. In a show of his usual mischief, the God, Loki, shot her son with an arrow made of mistletoe—a plant Frigga held sacred. She managed to save her son and declared henceforth anyone beneath mistletoe willna only be protected from death, but also deserving of a kiss.”
Lord Oakhurst’s jaw was smooth from a fresh shave. Unlike he had been the week before, when his jaw had been whiskered with a fine prickling of hair that made her want to run her sensitive palm over the bristles. The shadow of a beard had given him a fierce edge that she had grudgingly admitted she found rather appealing. Smooth or grizzled, her husband was a fine-looking man.
“I wasn’t aware mistletoe had such a history.” Penelope licked her lips and Lord Oakhurst’s gaze slipped to her mouth once more.
There was a soft creak of the floorboards as his grandmother slipped from the room, leaving them completely alone. Husband and wife. Penelope’s heartbeat tripped over itself and scrambled to catch up.
He glanced to where his grandmother had departed the room. “We dinna have to do this if ye dinna want to.”
Kissing, Penelope knew, was often a prelude to sexual intercourse. And while he had agreed to no children, she knew he would want to consummate the marriage. For it to be truly legal and binding, of course.
She had done extensive research on what transpired between a man and woman and knew well what to expect. Lady Bursbury had attempted the conversation with her several days prior and had left with her hands over her ears declaring Penelope leave off with such details.
It was all just a physiological response to the introduction of arousal into one’s system.
Arousal would effuse their bodies and make them change. He would become hard and she would become swollen and damp. Then he would fit inside her, like a hand sliding into a fitted glove. Or at least one finger of it. She had seen drawings.
Of course, in her time at the hospital, she had been the unmarried daughter of an earl and was barred from any dealings anywhere near the male genitalia. She realized now that it left her at a great disadvantage to be so lacking in knowledge on the topic of what would be, well, going inside of her.
She was just considering which finger the male organ might be—the thumb, presumably—when he delicately touched his fingertips to the underside of her chin and tilted her face upward. His moss-green eyes searched hers boldly in the intimacy of such closeness and a warmth pulsed between her legs.
Arousal, she noted clinically, did not take long to present itself.
“But if ye’d like to kiss, I wouldna decline.” His mouth lifted in the playful smile she found boyishly charming.
Penelope had heard of women speak of their husband’s blind fumbling in the marital bed. If Lord Oakhurst wished to kiss her first and allow arousal to heat her body first, she would gladly accept.
“We owe it to Frigga, do we not?” she replied softly.
His eyes crinkled at the corners with his smile. “Indeed.” His hand glided from his hold on her chin to cradle her jaw, his touch light and tender. The mirth on his face melted to a focused seriousness that made her mouth suddenly go quite dry.
He lowered his head toward hers and she closed her eyes in anticipation for her first kiss. His lips met hers, far softer than she had anticipated. I
t was more than one kiss; their mouths closing against one another twice, then a teasing brush of his lips over hers, then one more kiss. It was foreign and tantalizing and overwhelmingly delightful.
It robbed her of her breath and left a curious tingling at her breasts.
He leaned back and restored the air his presence had stolen, so that she might once more breathe. She blinked her eyes open. Her mouth still tingled where his had touched hers and she tucked her lower lip into her mouth to savor it.
He studied her for a moment, doubtless ready to ask her to his chamber. She would go willingly, of course. Not because she was a wife, but because the power of arousal was far, far greater than she had given it credit for. She was weak-kneed with desire, her skin practically humming with heightened sensitivity. The light smoky scent of him, the sheer masculinity beneath, was altogether too appealing and made her want to breathe him in. She wanted more kisses to feed those lovely sensations until arousal overwhelmed them both.
Certainly, none of the books she had read discussed the grip of lust’s control.
“Welcome to Oakhurst Place.” Her husband stepped back a respectful distance. “The house is yers to do with as ye will. The library is well stocked, though I confess most are books on history.” Again, that boyishly shy smile. “Ye may order whichever books ye like, anything really, through the housekeeper, Mrs. Stevens, who will assist ye with whatever else ye may require.”
Penelope’s mind reeled a moment. Was he not going to have her come to his chamber for consummation?
“Oh. Yes.” Penelope’s face heated with a furious blush. “Thank you.”
“I shall stay out of yer way.” He straightened his back, looking more of a regal earl than the man who had just kissed her so tenderly. “But am here should ye have need of me.”
Penelope nodded. He nodded. And then it was done. He left. Just like that.
She stood for a moment of uncertainty as her body ran hot with the unspent arousal still pulsing through her.
It, unfortunately, did not dissipate as the day went on and she settled herself as much as one could in a new environment. Or rather, it would occasionally clear away until her mind inevitably wandered back to the recollection of that kiss.
Then her blood would grow hot and her breasts would feel heavy and that aching need would prevail between her thighs once more. It was terribly distracting. And she would be lying if she said she did not open several medical texts to revisit the drawings several times more, her curiosity renewed.
Lord Oakhurst did as he said he would. He left her to herself throughout the day. At supper that night, she saw him, as well as his grandmother. Their conversation had been light, focused on the wedding earlier that day, the upcoming wedding trip to Paris. Lord Oakhurst even brought up St. Thomas’s, which was a consideration Penelope appreciated.
And yet through it all, her body remained agitated, raw with the unspent need simmering in her blood.
She’d gone to bed that night with anticipation humming in the air around her. Nighttime was when men came to their wives. The blind fumbling and all that.
Penelope had doused the candle and lay in wait. In fact, she lay in wait for a long time, wide awake, her gaze fixed on the door, her body craving a finish to what had been started.
At long last, a light showed under her door, shadowed by a pair of feet. Her breathing quickened at such a rapid rate, she nearly choked. She straightened in bed and self-consciously brushed her fingers over her hair to smooth any loose strands from her braid.
And then, as abruptly as the booted feet had appeared at her door, they were gone.
Penelope collapsed back into her bed and wondered at the possibility of expiring from the force of one’s lust. She closed her eyes and willed sleep to come. When it did not, she did as she always had when sleep eluded her. She started at the bottom of the human skeleton and began to list the bones.
“Distal phalanges.”
The way Lord Oakhurst had studied her before leaning down for the kiss.
“Intermediate phalanges.”
How he had lowered toward her, his eyes closing.
“Proximal phalanges.”
The softness of his lips.
“Metatarsals.”
The smoothness of his chin.
She squeezed her eyes tight, suddenly fortunate for there being 206 bones in the human body. For she might have cause to recite every one of them that night.
MacKenzie splashed a finger of whisky into the cut crystal glass. A bit of it sloshed from the decanter and puddled on the polished surface of his desk.
Forgetting generally took eight glasses of whisky. At least that was what it had taken when his father died ten years prior. When Lady Judith and Gilbert had announced their engagement, its suddenness had required eight glasses.
MacKenzie lifted his ninth glass that evening. Even as it burned its way down his throat, he could not forget.
The way she had gazed up at him, with wide, innocent blue eyes.
Sip.
Flushed cheeks and lips. God, she had tasted sweet. Like the cake they had eaten. Like freshness and raw sensuality, a honey more enticing than he’d even known.
Sip.
Her skin had been so soft under his touch, as smooth as the porcelain it resembled.
Sip.
All of her would be that way.
Sip.
He curled his hand into a fist and clenched it with all the frustration roaring through him. He’d spew up the liquid sloshing in his stomach before his mind would relinquish those teasing thoughts. It was bloody hopeless.
She’d said she had no interest in lovers. Stated so simply, and with unquestioning assuredness. He knew well what that meant. No interest in carnal delights. A lack of desire to stay up through the wee hours of the morning, licking and tasting one another, rolling in the sheets until they were tangled and damp with sweat.
Nine glasses weren’t enough to make him forget, but at least it had made his cock finally go soft. Thank heaven for small mercies.
He pushed himself up and the room tilted slightly. He gritted his teeth until the feeling passed and staggered from the room.
During his time in Scotland, he’d been on several boats. And on more than one occasion, they had hit rough seas. The elegant townhouse on Park Street suddenly left him feeling as though he were in turbulent waters now, aboard one of those rickety boats, knocking him about and leaving him reeling.
Even still, he knew her door when he passed it. He paused and stared, swaying with the nonexistent waves.
He’d stopped on the way to the library earlier too. But he hadn’t knocked. Not when her room had been so silent and dark within. He knew the marriage for what it was: convenience. There was not sex with convenience.
Even if one’s wife was the most beautiful woman in all of London and Scotland, even when her kiss made his body burn like the blue center of a brilliant flame. Even when nine glasses of whisky could not make him forget how badly he wanted her.
He turned away from her door and made his way to his own chamber, to his own bed. The fire in his hearth did little to stave off the cold from the capacious chamber. He peeled back the bedding and lay down in his clothing without even bothering to slip off his boots.
As he waited for the world to stop swinging wildly about him, she entered his thoughts once more, and he knew with certainty that he should have made it ten whiskies.
7
The following morning did not find Penelope well rested. She had gone through all the bones in the body and then had started onto muscles before sleep finally claimed her. Even then, her slumber had been restless, fevered, peppered with pages of drawings of the male genitalia and how it fit inside that of a woman.
After dressing in a soft gown of white muslin and having her hair pulled back in a loose knot, she made her way down the elegant stairs to where breakfast would most likely be underway. She pushed the door open and stopped short.
Lord Oakh
urst sat at the table with an odd-colored green drink in a crystal glass beside a cup of tea. He looked up from the paper he held and greeted her with a slow nod. Though he was dressed in a tailored waistcoat and shirt sleeves, he’d cast aside his coat and had opted not to shave. The result was intimate and altogether quite alluring.
Bashfulness twisted suddenly at her empty stomach. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.” There was a gravelly gruffness to his voice that suggested he might have just woken recently. “I trust ye slept well.”
“Yes, thank you,” Penelope lied, but then added truthfully, “my chamber is lovely, and the bed is quite comfortable.”
A light smile touched his lips. “Gemma will be glad to hear it. She spent the better part of this week traversing all over London, making sure everything she ordered would be just right for ye.”
The Dowager Lady Oakhurst had clearly gone through tremendous effort to make Penelope feel welcome.
“That was very kind of her,” Penelope said with sincerity. “Is she about? I’d like to see if I might join her in a walk later today.”
“She should be down later,” he replied.
Penelope slipped in the chair opposite him at the small table and found the most recent copy of Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, which was published by the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London. Beside it was a plate with toast points and an empty teacup. She glanced to Lord Oakhurst.
He tilted his head at the periodical. “If ye prefer scandal sheets, my grandmother has a few of those fetched from time to time as well. And the kitchen can bring ye something else if ye prefer.”
“This is perfect.” Penelope pulled her plate closer to her. “Thank you for all of your considerations.”
“I want ye to feel welcome.” He lifted his glass of green liquid and drank it with a wince.
She couldn’t help but give a small laugh. “What is that?”
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