by Kate Pearce
“About?”
“Pleasing your husband,” Madam Frau Klaus said without a hint of shame or tact.
“I assure you, I know what to do.”
“Do you?” Madam Frau Klaus’s inquisitive eyes bore into Liberty. “Because it seems to me you two are both as stiff as…well the part of his anatomy you need to get stiff.” She opened the top drawer of the bureau.
Liberty took her meaning well enough. “Is it that obvious?”
“Yes.” Madam Frau Klaus shut the drawer with a snap. “Here, put this on. It’ll fix everything.”
Liberty looked at the little square of bright red fabric Madam Frau Klaus extended toward her. “I don’t think it will.”
Madam Frau Klaus lowered her hand. “Why not?”
“A few months ago our son died and since then…” She blinked back the hot tears that stung the back of her eyes.
“So it’s more that you don’t want to engage in intimacies with your husband?”
“No,” Liberty said quickly, trying to mask her surprise at Madam Frau Klaus’s frankness. “It’s that I can’t.”
“Because?”
“He doesn’t see me that way anymore.” Saying her worst fear and terrible reality took every ounce of courage she had, and yet, it didn’t make it any easier to believe or accept.
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think he sees anyone else like that, either,” Madam Frau Klaus said softly. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you and that’s not the look of a man who has been to an establishment such as this.”
“I know.” The reminder of his earlier words about how he’d have taken advantage of their situation last night echoed in her mind. “I think I broke him.”
Madam Frau Klaus laughed. “I don’t think so.” She aired out the nightgown. “I assure you, he wants to bed you as much as you want to bed him.”
“But he said—”
“Never mind what he said. Men say a lot of things they don’t mean or even more likely word things in ways that could be considered unkind, impolite, or the furthest thing from their real feelings when they’re in the company of the woman they want but cannot have.” She moved behind Liberty’s back and started to undo the row of buttons. “Trust me on this. I might not know how to always be sympathetic or tactful, but I do know men and bedsport and I am telling you, if you put this on, he will definitely see you.” She pushed the edges of Liberty’s soaked gown off of her shoulders. “And I suspect that once he does see you, none of the rest of us will be afforded the opportunity to see you again before the road clears and it’s time for you to go back home.”
Liberty blushed. She could only hope that was the way it’d go.
Paul was such a featherbrain. Had he actually implied he’d have sated his sexual desire with a prostitute the night before had he any desire in the activity? That was certainly not what he’d meant, but that’s exactly how it’d come out and since it had, he couldn’t think of how to clarify what he’d meant without making it worse.
Groaning, he snapped up another tart and ate it before putting four more on a plate to bring upstairs to his wife. He’d taken all of the chocolate ones. Perhaps he could offer them to her as some sort of a peace offering in hopes she’d forget his ill-thought words earlier. A man could hope, couldn’t he?
Knock, knock.
“Come in,” came his wife’s muffled voice from the other side of the door.
Paul opened the door and froze. There in front of him was the last thing he expected to see: his wife lying across the large bed, her head propped up on her elbows and dressed in the thinnest scrap of red fabric he’d ever seen, outdone only by what appeared to be fishnets covering her legs.
“Wha—why?” He swallowed convulsively, his mouth dryer than a desert.
“Perhaps you ought to close the door, Mr. Grimes,” his wife said in a sultry tone he’d never heard her use before.
Stumbling over his own feet, Paul crossed the threshold and quickly slammed the door, then slid the lock. His eyes traveled over her body. Who was this creature, and what had she done with his wife?
“I take it this pleases you?” she asked, reaching her slender fingers behind her head and bringing back with them a lock of her undone hair. She wrapped the hair around her fingers and let her eyes do a slow sweep of his body.
Paul nodded once. “I like it, yes.” An odd expression came over his face. “Are you sure you should be wearing that?”
“Madam Frau Klaus gave it to me.”
His eyes widened. “That does nothing to reassure me.”
“Then perhaps you ought to come take it off of me.”
“Liberty.” He barely recognized the hoarse voice as his. “Is this because of what I said earlier?”
Liberty gave her head a little shake. “No.” She crooked her finger and patted the bed. “I know you aren’t interested in any of the wares offered here.” She winked. “Except mine.”
“Yes, I am very interested in those.” He reached for the end of his cravat and pulled it loose. The blasted thing was about to suffocate him. “But, I don’t want you to offer them because of what I said.”
“I’m not.” Her top teeth caught her lower lip. “Paul, I…” Her checks colored in a very fetching shade of pink. “When Jacob died I couldn’t see past my grief at that moment and while I still feel his loss every day, I don’t wish to spend my entire life buried in grief. I love you—” she swallowed audibly—“and I would like to show you how much.”
“But what if…”
His unspoken question hung between them for a moment.
“Then we’ll have another child,” she said simply. “I won’t love him or her any more or any less than I loved Jacob. And if there isn’t another—” her voice cracked just the slightest—“then we will have a life full of joy with just the two of us.” Tears glistened in her eyes and fear gripped her chest. “At least that’s what I would hope. Don't you?”
Paul crossed the room with only two strides and closed the space between them. “Yes. That’s exactly what I imagined.” He brushed away the tears racing down her left cheek with his thumb. “I want that very much.” He pressed a kiss against her forehead. “I should hope the Lord sees fit for us to be blessed with another child, but if not, He’s already blessed me so much with you.”
“Do you still desire me, Paul?” She couldn’t believe she’d blurted that until it was out. But she had to ask, she needed to know.
Wordlessly, he took her hand and moved it to his rigid groin. “Does that answer your question?” He gently squeezed her hand. “Nothing could make me stop desiring you.”
“Good—” she cast him her best attempt at a coy smile—“because not only did Madam Frau Klaus assure me these sheets get laundered every day and teach me a new word for your—” she patted his groin—“love musket, she also instructed me on a few things I’d like to try.”
“Well, Merry Christmas to me,” Paul exclaimed before snuffing the candle and showing her just how much he loved and desired her now and, come what may for them, he always would.
He Came Upon a Midnight Clear
Sandy Raven
Chapter 1
“I’ll be fine, Elke,” Merry Anna Hughes told her employer, Frau Elke Klaus, proprietress of Klaus Haus, one of the busiest establishments in all Canterbury on this winter night. “The babe isn’t due for another few weeks yet, and I am in fine health.”
The snow and sleet had been falling for days now, off and on, and the freezing temperatures made the roads impassable, leaving travelers stranded in their city. Every inn in Canterbury was full to the rafters with people headed somewhere for the holiday. Now that the inns were full, their brothel was filled with travelers. And Elke was going to show their guests as much of a traditional holiday as she could manage without Chef Pierre. Elke had given him the time off long before the storm set in, so he could go visit his family in Brighton. Realistically, Christmas wasn’t usually a busy time in a brothel, with
most men remaining in the bosom of their families, and no one had anticipated a winter this fierce.
“I worry for you, my friend,” Elke said. “Make certain to take extra wool blankets. Not just one for to put on the hay. You will need several to sleep under. When I was in Germany we were so poor we could not afford to keep the fire burning all night. I slept under a mountain of blankets that weighed as much as I did…”
“And here you are, hale and hearty for it!” Merry Anna said, wanting to move on to her bed. She didn’t want to seem rude to her employer, but she was extremely exhausted and wanted nothing more than to sleep until the sun rose. Besides, she’d heard this story before. Many times. “I will be fine,” she reassured her friend, “and thank you for the extra blankets, Elke.”
Ilke closed the cupboard. “You shouldn’t feel as though you have to let this girl take your bed for tonight. She can sleep on the floor in the room with her mistress.”
“Her mistress is occupied with one of your girls this night,” Merry Anna said. “How dreadful that their vehicle was filled to capacity, and the girl forced to travel in on the outside of the mail coach. Poor thing was frozen to the bone.”
“But you are with child!”
“Believe me, I know it,” Merry Anna said, one hand on her lower belly while holding her wool blankets in the other. “This babe is resting on my bladder tonight. Either that, or he’s stretching and pushing everything out of his way.”
“And you will call for Bríet if you go into labor?”
Merry nodded firmly. “I will.”
“Then get yourself to bed,” Elke said. “I will see you in the morning early to help me cook, ja?”
Merry Anna nodded, left the hallway near the warm kitchen and hurried across the road, making sure to step only in freshly fallen snow and not in the tracks of others so she wouldn’t slip and fall. She wanted to protect her child from everything until Richard came for them. She prayed for his return each night.
She pulled the wool scarf over her head tighter so the wind didn’t catch it and rip it away. A horse clopped up to the entrance of the posting house, and the rider went inside, leaving his horse with one of the boys who worked in the barn.
Merry walked into the stable, and stopped in the work room to let Mick, the grizzled head groom, know she was going up now. “Thank you again, Mick. I really felt badly for that young girl on the back of that mail coach. If she didn’t get warm soon she was going to freeze to death.”
“Ye be too kind, m’lady,” the old groom said. “And you bein’ with child and all. I pray your man shows up soon. I told you about the dreams I been havin’, didn’t I?”
“You did, Mick,” Merry replied. “And I hope you’re right, because I miss him terribly.”
“Well, I fixed a nice place for ye in the loft, right above us here,” he said. “I went up there after you said you needed a bed for the night and picked ye a nice warm spot. Though, if you’d let me done what I wanted, the boys’d be sleeping up there and you’d be in this room.”
“Those children need a warm place to sleep,” she argued with Mick as he took the stack of wool blankets from her arms. “Besides, I’ve got plenty of blankets and I’ve enough heat with this babe inside me that I may not need those extra covers at all.”
He shook his head, but gave up arguing. “I don’t like it, but if ye need anything, just call out and I’ll be up in a jiffy.”
She reached for the first rung of the ladder to follow Mick into the loft. Old as he was, he was nimble enough still that he could climb the ladder with one hand while he carried her stack of blankets in the other. Mick set them down on the worn but soft coverlet he’d already spread on the mound of hay, again admonished her to call if she needed anything, and disappeared back into the work room below.
Merry rested against one of the massive vertical timbers supporting the trusses overhead. The posting house stable was a large barn, but full up on a night like this. The temperature in here didn’t bother her; neither did the quiet sounds of horses shifting in their tie stalls, or the occasional breaking of ice in the buckets to drink.
She spread the extra blankets over the pile already covering the mounded hay, and just as she was done, one of the mottled black-orange barn cats came to perch atop the rail and watch her. Sitting on the stool that Mick left for her, she unlaced her boots, and carefully lowered herself to her bed. She punched up the hay under the spot where she would lay her head to make a pillow of sorts. These days she had to sleep on her side, because the babe was so big it was impossible to lie on her back without the contents of her stomach coming up.
She crawled between the covers and remembered six months ago, she had been the unfortunate one on the outside of the mail coach, riding with a mother and her son, and getting soaked to the skin each of the three days it took to travel to Canterbury. Merry and the boy’s mother sheltered the little one as much as possible to prevent him from catching a fever of the lung. This was one of the reasons she wanted the young girl from today’s coach trip to take her bed. It was on the back side of the kitchen hearth, which kept her room toasty warm.
Lately, she felt it was too warm. She smiled as her babe moved inside her, and the cat sauntered over and curled up next her back. A tear trickled from her eye and she blamed it on the hay, or the blankets.
She prayed for Richard’s well-being, and hoped that Mick really did have the gift of dreaming the future, because she did miss her beloved terribly. Knowing her father, and recalling his rage at discovering their plan to leave and marry, she feared Richard Poole might have found himself unwillingly conscripted to the Navy. Her father had been an officer in the first war with the Americans nearly twenty years earlier, and even after he’d lost an arm in battle he continued to sail—just as Nelson had later. Her father sailed until his much older brother died without issue, and Papa had become the Baronet Hughes. Their mother died shortly after they’d moved into Hughes Manor at Haywards Heath, leaving Papa a widower with three adolescent daughters and no sons. So he planned to use his connections to marry off his daughters into higher-born families and pat himself on the back.
Merry Anna was the third daughter, and when she turned eighteen, her next eldest sister, the middle of the three—Catherine—had begged off providing Merry entree to London society, as she was heavy with child and not traveling with her husband for the season. Merry had written back that she understood completely, and would hope for some time with Catherine after her child was born. Of course, that hadn’t happened.
Her eldest sister—Adeline—lived in far northern England, close to the border, and from the time she wed she’d not set foot in London, nor had she ever returned to Haywards Heath. That sister had already given her husband three sons, and she was pregnant with another at the time Merry’s father forcibly ejected her from home after discovering Merry carried Richard’s child.
She often wondered how her father and sisters were, but they’d obviously not given her a second thought. If they had they would have asked Lucy, their upstairs maid at the manor, where she was. All knew she and Lucy had been friends, despite their difference of status. Yet no one had written her in the months she’d been gone.
She wiped the tears as she wondered where Richard was, and if he missed her as much as she did him. Merry loved his smile, his good nature, and his quiet optimism about life. He had a way of making her feel that all would work out for them after they married. Richard’s father was the steward at Blakeney Hall, home of the Marquess of Carteret-Rolle. Richard lived with his family at Blakeney and helped his father. After she and Richard would marry, they planned on living near Blakeney, and Richard expected to one day be steward there as well.
Except that wasn’t good enough for her father. When he’d discovered they were planning to elope, he’d gone to see Richard and his father. Richard Poole was gone from his home that very night, no one knew where. Evidently Richard told her father that he and Merry were expecting a child, which infuriated he
r father even more. Richard hadn’t showed up at the crossroad where they had planned to meet. Merry waited two hours, and when it was dark she walked back to her home, to find her father more drunk than she’d ever seen him before.
As if the vile, vulgar things he said and the names he’d called her weren’t enough, he beat her and threw her from the house. Lucy had taken her around to the back and they went into the servant’s quarters, where Lucy helped her get cleaned up and put her to sleep in her bed. The next day Lucy had Merry’s packed valise, reticule, and her wool cape ready for her. As soon as her father had drunken himself into oblivion again, Lucy’s brother arrived with his cart, and he helped Merry by taking her all the way to Uckfield to catch the mail coach. Merry began to feel herself growing drowsy. She was going to have to thank Mick in the morning for selecting this warm corner for her. She covered her head with a blanket, leaving just her face free to breathe. Reaching out from under the mound of blankets, she stroked the cat who became her new guardian, at least for this night.
Chapter 2
Merry hovered in that sweet space between asleep and awake, snug among the blankets in the hayloft, when she heard the creaking of the wooden ladder that she’d climbed not an hour earlier. In the dim light of the lanterns below, she saw a large man reach the landing some fifteen feet from her. She wrapped her hand on the hilt of a kitchen knife she’d brought with her. Closing her eyes tight, she struggled to control her breathing, fearing this might be someone looking for “comfort” from a woman. Merry was not one of Frau Elke’s working girls. Merry worked for Frau Elke, but she was kitchen help. She scrubbed pots, stirred sauces, and cut vegetables for Chef Pierre, who was as French as Merry was—that is, not the tiniest bit.