How Pietr longed to take her hand, and not because the way could become slippery.
She grasped his arm about the elbow, as if she’d divined his thoughts. “To suspend the carved birds on silk threads, as if flying about, was your idea?”
“I was idling at my desk one day, watching the birds at the feeder, grateful for how much delight they give me. What of the people in the towns and cities? They do battle with rumbustious pigeons, or see swans in the parks, but the finches, nuthatches, and robins don’t frequent those surrounds in great numbers. It occurred to me that the Wiles family could alleviate that sad poverty. I suggested the idea, and Mr. Wiles gave it form. The prototype—three doves and some olive branches—hangs in our church vestry.”
“You will send out his work as Christmas gifts?”
“To my sister, to my bishop—a parting gift—and to my former in-laws. Our ducal families have put in orders as well, and I hope the Wileses will have a somewhat merrier Christmas this year than in years past.”
Despite the cold, Pietr was in no hurry to reach the vicarage, and apparently neither was Joy.
“What of your Christmas, Pietr? You have a genius for seeing how all things can work together for the good, but what of your good? Will you spend Christmas alone?”
She’d quoted Romans, a difficult passage. “I will be besieged with visitors, and I will of course attend the Boxing Day open houses hosted by our ducal families. They are lavishly generous, and we are fortunate that both dukes are in residence at present. There are rumors that even Rothhaven will put in an appearance at tomorrow’s assembly.”
“Like Father Christmas?”
“Like our beloved duke in residence. He prefers Yorkshire to London, unlike His Grace of Walden. Walden is clearly daft. Ask any soul in Blackwell’s common room. They will tell you the same.”
“You love those souls in the common room,” Joy said, “and more to the point, they love you. Why are you leaving this place, Pietr?”
They had reached the vicarage, but Pietr was reluctant to go inside. Hiram was in there, doubtless fretting and muttering, peering through the curtains at the traffic passing through the innyard. Going inside would mean the day’s activities were coming to a close. All that remained was an evening meal, some reading, and then this wonderful, sweet, miraculous day would be at an end.
“I am coming to see that I took the post at the cathedral because I have been lonely here.”
Joy paused on the front porch as the sunset faded from fiery hues to peaches and grays. “And you think at the cathedral, where only Köttr will know you, that you will be less lonely?”
“I wasn’t thinking.” Ideas connected in Pietr’s mind as words formed to express them. “I have found no family of my own here. No wife, no children. I can pass out acres’ worth of baked potatoes and christen every little soul born to this village, but in some way, as long as I rattle around that vicarage in solitude, I am a man apart. I belong to all of them and to none of them. I am weary of being a man apart.”
Was it self-pity to admit the truth? To finally admit the truth?
“In my family,” Joy said, leaning against his side, “I am the woman apart. My family doesn’t think. They don’t see the consequences of their actions. I have begun to join Papa for his meetings with the solicitors because I don’t trust them. I manage what staff we have. I inspect the work they do lest they take advantage of Mama’s poor nerves. Lady Apollo Bellingham will never have to count the silver. She will never have to ration the coal. She will never have to ask a scullery maid how to make bread. I complain of privileges, I know, but I, too, am weary.”
“I will soon have been here for twenty years,” Pietr said, wrapping an arm around Joy’s waist. “I asked myself, Will I spend another twenty years here, feeding birds and wishing? Fashioning polite replies to Clara’s carping letters? I committed myself to the post at the cathedral in what I hoped was an act of faith rather than despair, and now events have taken on the momentum of change.”
“Precisely,” Joy said. “Events have taken on the momentum of change for me as well. My family has pinned all of their hopes upon my becoming Lady Apollo Bellingham, a consummation devoutly to be wished, but, Pietr, I don’t think her ladyship will be very happy. She will make herself content and useful. Her station will be the envy of many, but I can promise you she will have regrets too. Profound regrets.”
The encroaching darkness and the overhang of the porch roof ensured they had privacy, even from curious eyes spying across the green. When Joy went up on her toes to kiss Pietr, he allowed himself to kiss her back. When she stepped away precious moments later, he let her go.
“I’ll find us something for supper,” Joy said. “I know how to fry bread in egg batter. With butter and honey, it’s adequate fare. Hiram will want ham with his.”
I’m not hungry—for food. “That sounds delightful. I’ll be down to the kitchen to help in a moment.”
“To help and to snitch.” She bussed his cheek and slipped through the door.
Pietr needed the cold air—kissing Joy was the surest aphrodisiac he had ever encountered—and he wanted to keep an eye on the weather. Alas for him, stars were already winking into view on the eastern horizon. The night would be clear, bitter, and magnificent, but not a single snowflake was likely to fall from the sky anytime soon.
Hiram had tried at supper to make conversation, but his topics of choice had been Lord Apollo’s matched grays, Lord Apollo’s hunting box in Oxfordshire, and Lord Apollo’s fine town house in London.
Pietr had appeared patiently amused, while Joy had nearly pitched her plate at her brother’s head. She’d peeked into Debrett’s after supper and looked up Lord and Lady Beacham. Hiram had, of course, assumed she was brushing up in anticipation of the august company to be encountered at the Bellingham family seat.
Joy had passed him the book and retired for the night rather than cosh him with the peerage he so slavishly admired. Her bedroom was warm thanks to Pietr’s consideration, and her wash water was warm as well. Her heart, however…
The parsonage was large enough to accommodate a sizable family, though several of the bedrooms were empty. The guest rooms were by contrast comfortably appointed, and Joy could thus assess her reflection in the folding mirror atop her vanity.
She was not beautiful.
She was too short.
Her hair was an unremarkable brown.
She liked to read, and much to her surprise, she liked to fill a home with the heady scent of holiday baking. She liked watching Pietr Sorenson work his ingenious kindness on this village, and she liked very much kissing him and sharing confidences with him.
She did not particularly like Lord Apollo. He exhibited charm when he wanted something, but had little else to recommend him and much to give a lady pause.
Pietr hoped that his decision to take the cathedral post had been an act of courage rather than an act of despair. Marrying Lord Apollo would be both. He had told Joy to expect a proposal at Christmas, informed her of her impending good fortune. She’d smiled and acted enormously pleased when all she’d been was enormously relieved.
Such a difference between those two emotions. A whole vast moor of difference.
The room across the corridor was silent. Pietr had apparently settled in to read his racy French novel or some Norse philosopher, maybe a little of both. Reading was a pleasure, but a solitary one. He had endured as a man apart for years, and Joy would still be a woman apart when she married Lord Apollo.
But she was not Lady Apollo yet. Before she lost her nerve, she rose, blew out the candle on the vanity, and crossed the chilly corridor. She did not knock. She simply slipped into Pietr’s room.
“I have come a-viking,” she said. “To steal a night with you all for myself.”
He rose from the chair by the hearth. His room was not quite as warm as hers, but it was comfortable. He wore only a blue velvet dressing gown and pajama trousers, and his feet were clad in worn s
lippers.
He held a book in his hand, keeping his place with a finger between the pages. That boded ill for Joy’s plans, as if he’d thank her kindly and just as kindly escort her back to her own bed, then resume his reading.
“I debated coming to you,” he said. “I did not want to presume. I suspect in another quarter hour…”
Joy advanced toward him, intent on touching the bare flesh of his chest. “Yes?”
“In another quarter hour, I would have crawled across the corridor on my knees, prepared to beg. This is not wise, Joy.”
“Yes, it is. To spend this night apart would be unwise.”
He took her hand and pulled her near. “In the morning, we will have to live with the memories.”
“At least I will have those.” She kissed him, and yet, he remained unyielding. “Pietr, if you tell me to return to my own bed, to toss and turn all night, wishing and hoping, then I will do as you ask. I would much rather for once do as I please.”
He set his book on the mantel. “As we please. I am not merely complicit in your desires, Joy. I am indulging my own as well. Are we clear on that?”
“Your vicarly conscience won’t trouble you?”
“Vicars, let it be noted, are human. We have hearts and bodies and hopes. You are not spoken for. Neither am I. If you choose me for your own, for this one night, I am ecstatic to be claimed.”
He’d worked out the theology of viking to his satisfaction, apparently, while for Joy, theology didn’t come into it. Seeing herself, her needs, her desires, her wishes—and seeing Pietr—did.
“To bed with us, then,” she said, resting against him. “Please, to bed, and for once, I am grateful that winter nights are so long.”
He scooped her up in his arms and gently laid her on the turned-down quilts. “I will love you to exhaustion. I promise you that.”
“How many times?”
He laughed, a low, naughty chortle. “I adore you, Joy Danforth. I will love you to exhaustion and revive you with my kisses. I will need reviving too.” He unbelted his dressing gown and hung it on the bedpost. “Your dressing gown, Miss Danforth.”
Ye gods, he was a fine specimen. All that shoveling, chopping, and marching about the village had honed him into magnificent fitness. His pajama trousers hung low on lean hips, and his…
Joy knelt up on the mattress and fumbled with the belt of her dressing gown. “What were you reading?”
“Nothing. I was staring at some book or other and thinking of you taking down your hair, undressing, washing just yards from where I sat aching and debating.”
“I ache too, Pietr.” Joy’s heart ached, for as he’d said, tomorrow would come, and she would climb into a westbound coach to cross the moor. But now, her body ached, wonderfully. She was hot and needy and breathless while simply kneeling on the bed.
She passed him her dressing gown and situated herself under the covers. Pietr pinched out his reading candles, banked the fire, and joined her. The sensation of the mattress dipping, the piney scent of his soap, the book set aside on the mantel… All so domestic and precious.
“Promise me something,” he said, slipping an arm around her shoulders. “Promise me you will not regret this, Joy. Promise me that you will be wildly self-indulgent with me, you will demand anything you please. Not simply ask, demand it of me.”
She eased herself over him. “We will ask each other. No regrets, no holding back.” She began her spree of wild self-indulgence—what an intriguing notion—by kissing Pietr’s brow, then exploring the contours of his chest one caress at a time.
The rhythm of their lovemaking began slowly, reverently, with each taking turns. She explored his textures and tastes, he revealed to her the exquisite sensitivity of her own breasts. She listened to his heart and stroked his cheeks with the pads of her thumbs—he’d shaved just before bed, apparently—and he touched his tongue to the pulse beating at her throat.
By subtle degrees, Joy came out of hibernation. She set aside worries and schemes, she abandoned rules and reservations and purely delighted in the bounty Pietr set before her. By the time she was on her back, fifteen stone of Viking lover atop her, she had learned much and loved much.
“If you stop now, Pietr, you will break my heart.”
“I’m savoring. The next part is…” He smoothed her hair back from her brow. “Holy, for want of a better word. Precious. Beyond precious.”
He eased closer, and Joy guided him to her and rolled her hips. “There,” she said. “Right there. Please.”
He was an excruciatingly patient lover, which only made Joy all the more desperate. To be joined with him, to be as one flesh, inebriated every sense. His weight, his warmth, his strength, his mouth, his hands… She devoured the sensations until they gathered into a storm of pleasure that left her clinging to him and panting.
Her first coherent thought was that the poets had not lied after all, but even their words failed to convey the magnificence of Pietr Sorenson’s loving desire.
“You cannot fall asleep after that mere opening gambit,” he said, lips very near her ear. “When I said exhaustion, I meant exhaustion, Joy.” He moved, and the result was another little shock of pleasure.
“A moment, please.”
In this, too, he was generous, rearranging them so Joy was sprawled on his chest, the better to put her in charge of the next engagement.
Gambits, sorties, flourishes. She lost track of where one pleasure ebbed and another began, until she was floating on the edge of sleep in a bliss so profound as to defy description. Complete relaxation, utter peace, and transcendent bodily joy settled around her in Pietr’s embrace.
“If this be exhaustion,” she murmured, kissing him languidly, “then we have made the most of it.”
He eased from her and, in a few lazy thrusts, spent on her belly. “Amen.”
She did not recall him tidying up, other than a few gentle swipes of a cloth across her middle. Then she was wrapped in his arms and drifting toward oblivion.
How glad she was that she’d come to him. How glad she was that she’d seen the woman in the mirror as a person whose needs and wants mattered. How delighted she was that Pietr’s needs and wants had mattered to him too.
She had not been entirely honest with him, though. She’d promised him that their night of loving would result in no regrets. She was already regretting that she would have to leave this bed, get into that westbound coach, and never again make love with Pietr Sorenson.
“John Coachman, attend me.” Pietr adopted his Wrath of Yorkshire voice, which generally lost effectiveness on anybody over the age of six. Still, the blood of Vikings flowed through his veins, as did the blood of a Rothton pie-contest judge. More to the point, he was Joy Danforth’s lover, however fleetingly.
John Coachman peered down at him from the box. “Aye, guv?”
“That’s vicar to you. Pass me your flask.”
A dented silver vessel was tossed down. “Fancy a nip?”
“I do not fancy a nip of the hog swill you have doubtless procured for your morning’s work. Nor shall you overimbibe any further than you already have, though I’m well aware you likely have a second flask in your boot.”
“Bloody cold in these parts, Your Reverence. If you don’t mind my—”
“There is a lady present,” Pietr snapped. “Mind your tongue. You have already proven your inability to navigate the local surrounds. I have given Miss Danforth a detailed map of your route. If she tells you to turn left, you turn left. If she tells you to halt and rest the horses because a hill approaches, you halt and rest the horses.
“That one,”—Pietr went on, gesturing with his chin toward Hiram—“is cargo, do you understand me? He can whine about needing to warm up, he can wheedle for you to dawdle with him in the various commons of the posting inns, and you will ignore him. You heed the lady, or it will go very hard for you. We have two dukes in this village, and they will think nothing of conveying their displeasure with you to any
lowly marquess or his spare.”
“Two dukes?”
“Walden has a temper, as is known the length and breadth of London. Rothhaven has never needed to so much as raise his voice to convey his ire. Heed the lady if you want to keep your post.”
“Can I have me flask back?”
“Miss Danforth will return it to you when she has been safely delivered to her destination.” Not before. Pietr had discussed this with Joy as dawn had approached, and she’d seen the wisdom of his precautionary measures.
The first post coach had come in from the west shortly before noon, and two stagecoaches had followed. Joy had tarried over her midday meal, then she’d sat at Pietr’s desk watching the birds when she ought to have been penning a note to her mama. She’d towed Pietr up to his bedroom, there to kiss him farewell beneath a fading bunch of mistletoe.
And now she was leaving, as she must, and Pietr must let her go.
Hiram strutted about pigeon-fashion on the porch as if disdaining to allow good Yorkshire snow to touch his boots—the boots Pietr had polished for him—while Joy supervised the securing of the luggage at the back of the coach.
“All ready,” she said, smiling at Hiram and motioning him down. “Mr. Sorenson, your hospitality has been the greatest kindness. I will always be in your debt.”
“The pleasure was mine. Safe journey, Miss Danforth.” They’d said their farewells in Pietr’s bedroom, throughout the night, and again when weak winter light had slanted in the window. With my body, I thee worship… The words of the old wedding service had resonated through Pietr’s heart and soul with every caress and kiss.
“I will miss you,” Joy said quietly as Hiram minced down the steps, slapping his gloves against his thigh.
Pietr adjusted the scarf he’d given Joy so it lay more snugly about her ears. “I awoke this morning to a revelation, Joy Danforth. I have been lonely. I have rattled around in a house meant for a large family, and I have regretted the many empty rooms. I regret them no more. All the years of feeling set apart, all the nights of wondering, brought me to a moment when I was apart no longer. I have known soul-deep joy, and for that, I will always be fiercely grateful.”
A Rogue in Winter Page 9