by Edith Layton
When she could think, she thought vaguely that she ought to say something, and so, it seemed, did he. But when he pulled his head back and looked down at her, he only murmured something indistinct and drew her close once more. Then his lips begged hers to open and as she tried to reply, they did, and he kissed her more deeply and banished coherent thought for her again.
Her mouth was warm and soft as he’d believed it would be, and far more innocent than he’d imagined, and yet it soon grew more accomplished than he could have hoped, for it seemed with each moment that she followed him further, as though she caught fire from him. When her lips opened beneath his, he tried to bring her closer to him. But finding that that was no longer possible, he found himself trying to invade her with his tongue, taking advantage of the admittance he was offered, and discover her with his hands, seeking to appreciate more fully the curving line of her hips and then the awakened tight buds on her breasts that he’d felt rising against his chest through the thin material of both their garments, while all the while he tried, impossible as it was, to bring her closer still.
It was when he opened his eyes again to see all that he was feeling that he saw his own hand where it was caught in the glorious tangle of her pale hair, and that, more than any of the other warning voices which were whispering to him, stopped him. He shuddered, as much with the effort of finding control as with the image that instantly came to him when he saw that large, thin, dark hand locked tight in all the light fine glory of her hair. It was the goblin he saw again then, despoiling the fair lady, yet for once he was glad for the unsought, punishing image. It gave him the spur he needed to end what he’d begun.
She didn’t try to stop him, for she was entirely lost. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for that kiss, or for the embraces which followed. Nothing in the storybooks hinted at it, nothing in her school friends’ giggling gossip had anticipated it. And although she’d abandoned all higher reasonings when his mouth touched hers, still she’d been dimly aware with each new sensation his touch evoked that it was entirely too delicious to be right, but she didn’t know if she would have stopped him, or if she could have done so. It had been so entrancingly new and thrilling; he was, after all, her friend, she trusted him entirely. Since she’d ceded all control to him, she was unprepared when she felt his body tighten and his mouth grow still and his whole strong lean frame tremble as though he struggled with some enormous effort, as he wrenched his lips away. Then he quickly stepped away from her as well. Only then did her thoughts come streaming back. Only then, when she opened her eyes at last and saw Warwick Jones standing and staring down at her in amazement, did she begin to know a real disgust with herself and feel deeply shamed.
He gazed at her with wonder, and shook his head again. He could scarcely believe that a man of his wide experience would become so aroused at having taken what were, for him, only the simplest, most basic first steps to seduction, and more staggering still, that he would have taken them at all when his only aim had been to begin a gentle courtship.
“You didn’t cry, ‘No, don’t!’ in time this time,” he said, on an unsteady laugh, still fighting so hard for control of his face and body that he didn’t notice how white-faced she’d become. “See how far I can go with that sort of wild encouragement to spur me on?”
When she didn’t answer with so much as a weak smile, his heart sank. He found himself wondering if he’d disgusted her beyond her ability to conceal, and had reason to be glad, at least, that she’d kept her wide dazed eyes upon his face as he composed himself. Yet with the remembrance of the enthusiasm of her embrace, he found it difficult to believe he’d shocked all her sensibilities. He might well understand her being angry, but she didn’t appear to be enraged. Whatever her emotions, he wanted to know of them, for he felt very vulnerable now and was confused at her continued silence. It was unlike her.
“Oh, Warwick,” she cried then, looking stricken, and yet still so enticing with all her hair down about her face and her gown in some disorder that he had to clench his fists to keep from comforting her again, and thus distressing her again, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. Can we still be friends?”
He checked. And then looked at her with his head to one side, but he could hear no mockery in her voice, nor see anything but real despair in her eyes.
“Ah, but that’s what I’m supposed to say,” he said carefully. “I believe you’ve got the text the wrong way round.”
“But what must you think of me!” she cried, sinking to sit down on the rock, looking to her hands where they wrung her skirt in her anxiety.
“I think only that I owe you an apology, for I was only joking, you really didn’t encourage me, if that’s what’s disturbing you. But after all, in self-defense, remember you rejected my promise not to try that again. Even if you had accepted it, I might have gotten round that, for you’ll admit circumstances are very different this time: it isn’t night now, for one thing, this isn’t my house, and I wasn’t comforting you. In fact, as I felt you’d just insulted me rather badly, I believed I deserved some comforting myself.
“Susannah, at least look at me,” he said a little desperately when she didn’t answer, not at all the cool gentleman he normally was, his face so earnest that it would scarcely have been recognizable to her had she dared to look up at him. “I’m still Warwick Jones, gentleman eccentric, you know. Has what I’ve done sunk me forever?”
“Warwick,” she said, raising her head then, misery so plain on her face that he winced, “I told you and I told you—”
“I know,” he answered with suppressed anger at himself, “I ought to have listened. I am very sorry, Susannah, I am—”
“—but you didn’t believe me,” she sighed, being so intent on what she had to say that she disregarded his words entirely, “but now you should understand why I don’t fit in here, you see why it’s no use, I’m simply not a lady.”
“Susannah,” he said patiently after a puzzled pause, “whatever are you talking about? I just pressed my attentions, in the most literal sense imaginable, upon you. Although that makes me something society doesn’t permit me to pronounce in front of you, it makes you no less of a lady.”
“But you’re my friend,” she said softly, lowering her gaze to her lap.
“Precisely,” he sighed.
“And I’m not in love with you,” she said very quietly.
“Very true,” he agreed, wishing she’d struck him instead.
“And yet I didn’t stop you,” she whispered very low.
“What a very good friend you are, indeed,” he complimented her sourly, as he sought diversion by dusting off the knees of his breeches.
“Because I didn’t want to,” she confessed, and then he stopped and stared at her.
“It was very…pleasant,” she said in such a soft voice that he drew closer. “I found it exciting. A lady wouldn’t.”
“Because I’m only a friend?” he asked curiously. “But such things happen,” he said quickly, realizing that she was too inexperienced to understand all the ramifications of sexual desire, and too well-bred to understand, as he and so many gentlemen did, that what the body experienced was often, or indeed, sometimes sadly, always, at odds with what the heart felt.
He was wondering how to couch this simple biological fact in sufficiently proper terms so that he could tell her of it, when she replied, “Because a lady doesn’t feel such things at all. Oh, it’s just another reminder of how I don’t belong here, Warwick. I do believe I should go home.”
“Yes, to get your head carefully examined. What are you talking about?” he asked angrily.
And so, looking away so that he wouldn’t see her face, in very much the same manner, she thought in disgust at her cowardice, that she’d read that Australian ostriches hid from their enemies, she explained, although she wondered why she had to, about how she’d always believed that ladies never acknowledged such feelings, because they didn’t suffer from them. It was
an odd thing to discuss with a gentleman who’d just been making improper advances, but since those advances had been so enthusiastically accepted, she felt it was a thing he already knew. She also discovered that she’d rather think and speak about that part of her response to him, no matter how embarrassing it was, than cope just now with some other aspects of what she’d felt and done a few moments ago. She was badly confused and so her most pressing need was to have things back the way they’d been before that disturbing embrace had begun. She badly wanted her good friend Warwick back again, and he’d certainly been one of her best friends.
But she began to doubt that when she’d done, for all he did was to stand and stare and say, “Rot! Absolute rot,” he said, as annoyed as if she’d said a cruel thing about him. “I know some idiots of both genders who subscribe to that notion, but I promise you, Susannah, it is not true. There are females who earn their livings at such doings who find no pleasure in them, and great ladies who are trollops because they enjoy them so much.”
But here he paused, because he didn’t know very much about great ladies, having avoided them assiduously all his life. He did know human nature, though, and so continued confidently, “It is very individual. Some gentlemen prefer to play cards rather than, ah, play at other things, and some very proper ladies prefer it above all things. Well, it’s an appetite like any other. I like olives, after all, and I note you always roll them to the edge of your plate and would hide them under your napery if you dared. You, on the other hand, adore custards, which 1 believe only condemned prisoners ought to be forced to eat. Does that make either of us less a lady or a gentleman?”
“Only an appetite?” she asked disbelievingly.
“It is part of life,” he said quickly. “Lust, of course, changes it to a craving, style can convert it to an art, and love, of course, transforms it to something altogether ethereal. Or so they say. It’s also, I assure you, entirely possible to enjoy with someone you do not love,” he said on a twisted grin, “just as it’s possible to dine when one is not hungry. Yes, that’s a poor comparison, it’s very intimate, of course. So intimate, in any event, that proper young females are not expected to indulge outside of marriage,” he added, feeling uncomfortably priggish for doing so, “and so, my humblest apologies for forgetting that. But I fear I’m one of those who might be compared to a glutton. Seat me at a lavish table,” he said on a sidewise grin, “and I can’t help picking up my cutlery. Oh, sorry. You see? There’s no hope for me, I will forget my manners,” he said airily, feeling much better for it.
But then he noted her complete unsmiling attention focused on him, and sighing, said, “Quite seriously, my dear, I believe there’s no sane man who’d think your enjoying his attentions made you less the lady. No,” he added, “most men I know would be delighted.”
He hadn’t said “Julian,” but from her expression of relief, he thought he might as well have done. For she rose to her feet and began to arrange her hair again, and asked, in a sprightlier manner, if he didn’t think they ought to be getting back to the others.
He hesitated.
“There is one other thing, since we are speaking of matters of propriety with such impropriety,” he said slowly. She thought he looked more uncomfortable than she’d ever seen him as he bent his head in thought, and then raised it and gazed at her with no expression she could read upon his solemn face. She stopped with a hairpin poised halfway to the neat coil she’d made of her hair, to listen closely to him.
“In some circles,” he said, choosing his words with great care, “in our circles actually, what I’ve done is tantamount to a declaration. That is to say, many people would expect me to offer for you now, considering that I’d compromised you. I…” He paused, and then, thinking that there was a look of something very like horror on her face as she lowered her arms and gaped at him, he went on quickly, “I do so offer now, Susannah. Or at least, I want you to know that I’m prepared to do the correct thing. And I assure you,” he said on a small uneasy laugh, “I wouldn’t find it any hardship. In fact, I think I…” He hesitated again, feeling awkward as a boy, trying to gauge her mood, trying to select the precise words.
But after he gazed steadily at her, his attitude changed abruptly. What he saw in her eyes caused him to bring his head up high, and then, with far more ease and brightness than he had before, since he’d already read her answer in her expressive face, he drawled, “I do believe we could make the most of a bad bargain, don’t you my dear?”
“Yes, of course we could, but no…no,” she stammered, brought close to tears by his gesture of friendship, and distraught, after an already profoundly confusing day, by this further evidence of his gentlemanly consideration.
“Oh no, but thank you, Warwick,” she said, so embarrassed by his infinite kindness to her that she wanted to sink into the ground. “It’s not necessary. No one need ever know. But thank you for asking.”
“You’re entirely welcome,” he said with a sad smile.
He watched in silence as she resumed arranging her hair and finished putting herself in order. Then he offered her his arm. But before they left the wood he looked down at her curiously.
“Then I’m forgiven?” he asked.
“It is all forgotten,” she said on a smile, and nodded.
“Oh, but 1 didn’t ask for that,” he said gently.
* * *
Lady Marianna Moredon was telling the Viscount Hazelton about her trip into Brighton and what she’d seen there. There were a great many interesting things to talk about, from the glimpse she’d gotten of the Prince’s new carriage to the hat she’d purchased there. They’d found a patch of shade under an oak, and he’d gotten chairs for them, and he sat and held her fan and listened, but all at once she had the uncanny notion that he’d stopped listening and was somehow much further from her than her side.
He was, and it troubled him. Today he’d been privileged to have his lady with him for several hours, longer than he’d ever been able to get her to himself since he’d begun courting her. It was true that most of the time was passed in plain sight of a throng of people, still he’d never been able to keep in her company for so long before. But now something had happened to take his attention from that delightful fact. Susannah was missing.
He couldn’t call her absence to anyone’s attention for fear of ruining her reputation. Some young women had wandered off with their beaux; he, after all, had himself had the glory of having Marianna entirely to himself for several long, delightful moments before the picnic. He’d gotten her alone in a thicket of trees, he’d been granted a few gentle kisses, and if he’d wanted more, he’d understood when she’d taken alarm and pushed him away. He’d have been surprised, in fact, if she had not. But now Susannah had been gone for over a half-hour, and he’d not a clue to where she was or whom she’d gone off with.
The only comfort he had was that Warwick had obviously noticed the same thing, and since he was also nowhere to be seen, was likely searching for her. But since he too had been gone for a very long while, Julian wondered not only if he’d found her, but if he had, if they mightn’t have gotten into some sort of difficulty together. Warwick, he was sure, could handle himself against any of the gentlemen here at the picnic, but what if they’d stumbled upon a crew of thieving itinerants, or a band of Gypsies, or even, he thought, glancing at his lady in some alarm, another collection of villains sent by her brother?
“Yes,” Lady Marianna said with a silvery laugh, “it was absurd, you’re quite right to look so alarmed, just think—a chip straw bonnet with black ribbons on it! ‘Is it for mourning?’ I asked. ‘Oh no, my lady,’ the little clerk said, “tis for afternoon’!”
She laughed a great deal at that, and it was unusual for she seldom laughed so openly, or so loudly. This was because she didn’t believe a lady ought to show her teeth. But the richness of her own jest was too much for her, and she laughed immoderately, holding her hand over her mouth as she did so. A great many people at t
he picnic looked over to them then, and nodded, and commented to each other, as they always did, about what a handsome couple they were, and then, in softer voices, about his finances and her brother.
When Marianna’s mirth subsided, she went on to detail the more important moments involved with the selection of her new hat, and Julian’s attention drifted again. He would’ve given a great deal to be able to tell her what was worrying him, a good deal more to make her notice that he was worrying, and, he suddenly realized to his considerable confusion, much more to have been able to simply stand up and bow and say good-bye and leave to seek his friends.
“Julian,” she finally said, in answer to one of his unspoken wishes, but as she said it rather flatly, in the letter but not the spirit of it, he realized it was best to be specific even in one’s wishes, “that is the third time you’ve consulted your watch.”