A Lady Awakened (18 page)

“Are you ready?” She drew up her skirts with the other hand, and put her knees apart.

“Soon. Don’t stop.” The look in his eyes could scorch a meadow to bare earth. His hand reached over and across her to the mattress there, and all her insides shrank and shriveled as he left her to make the motion on her own. His angle changed when he got above her. She had to turn her hand, then turn it back, groping for the least awkward way to hold him.

She might perish, literally, of mortification. Because she wasn’t a mere passive hand anymore, prodded about by him as by some puppeteer. She was engaged in this, a participant, working to please the man who crouched over her so big and bestial.

He breathed in long, pleasure-drunk draughts, more unchaste than ever. Worse than this, he bent his head to watch her hand on him. And worse, worst of all, he said some words as he watched. She would not hear them. She would refuse to remember them. Soft words, they were, gentle words, all about how well she did the thing she was doing, and each one fell like a firebomb, leaving a swath of devastation that
cock
and
swive
and
corpse
could only dream of.

At last he leaned down and got his arm under her shoulders, to lift her partway from the pillow. “One thing more,” he said, his voice tight and intent. He knelt, pushing his knees under her legs and bringing her hips up in a rustle of skirts. He took her hand off him, finally, only to bring it round, past her own leg and underneath him where it met with the soft weight of another alien part. Parts. “Here,” he muttered against her ear. “Squeeze when I say so. Not too hard.”

Was he serious? “Why on earth would you want me to—”

“Just … please … do it.” With one last grim look he pushed in.

Once, he thrust. Twice. Three times. “
Now
,” he gasped, mouth at her ear.

Not too hard
. Gingerly she compressed her fingers. “Like this?”

He swore, and brought his head down to her shoulder and swore again, ferociously, an alarming string of every curse she’d ever heard uttered by man, and several she had not.

Oh, dear Lord. Too hard. She’d hurt him. His arms convulsed round her and his head fell back in some kind of agony as he pulled her nearly upright. But no, it was the right kind of agony. She could feel a quick rhythmic pulsing where he was inside her, the seed let loose.

He sank down with her to the mattress, and when the pulsing was done he rolled off and dropped to the place beside her, slack and spent, his eyes closed as though ever to open them again would simply be too great an effort.

“Yes,” he said. “Exactly like that.”

Chapter Eight

H
OW EXTRAVAGANTLY
he enjoyed his pleasure, Mr. Mirkwood. But then he was extravagant in everything. Undisciplined and unconstrained. Generous as well. He might turn that tendency to some more useful end. She might help him to do so.

Help
him. Martha felt an inward flinch. She lay awake, some hour after midnight, staring into the darkness of her bedroom. For as mortifying as the memory of what she’d done this afternoon might be, she must admit he’d succeeded in taking her mind from her cares. The specter of Mr. James Russell’s visit had wavered, like morning mist under a climbing sun, once he’d set himself to distract her. Distraction kept it at bay even now.

Her hands ached with restlessness. She lifted one, and stroked her fingertips across her belly. Certain acts ill became a widow in the first weeks of mourning. But mightn’t those same acts serve to blunt a woman’s appetites, and keep her from succumbing so readily to a man’s touch and to his indecent suggestions? She hesitated, and sent her fingers lower.

There was a man she conjured for these occasions. He bore some resemblance, perhaps, to Mr. Atkins. His features weren’t entirely distinct. But he was a man of principle, and conducted himself as a gentleman would who’d not been given to squandering his affections, but rather saved them up against the day he could join himself to a likewise principled woman, and spend all that treasure on her. He knew, without telling, every right place to touch. He gasped and shuddered, all wide-eyed wonder, as he found his bliss in her arms. And he evaporated, dependably, the instant his offices were no longer required.

But tonight her dependable man was possessed by some spirit of mutiny. He had things to say, things that would make any lady blush right down to her toenails. He made dark promises of what he would do with his mouth. He watched everything her hands did, and urged her to do more. And his eyes glinted blue in the moonlight, his hair pale like split wood, as he drove her to extravagant heights.

That was to be expected, maybe. So she told herself afterward. She’d got out of practice, not having done this for a month or more. Next time it would go nearer the usual plan, and in any case she could surely count on its inoculating effect.

She turned onto her side. Tomorrow promised more decorous distractions, with the visit to Mr. Mirkwood’s laborers. She would watch for opportunities to work on his native kindness, and help him turn it into the foundation for responsibility. Her thoughts of him would be virtuous and improving, and she’d take her best satisfaction in thinking of how he’d go back to London a better man than when he’d come.

H
E WAITED
just inside the familiar copse of trees, eyes on the corner of the house round which she would appear, fingers fidgeting with the clasp of his watch.

Would she be distant today? Cold-mannered, or too embarrassed to meet his eyes? Sorry for what he’d persuaded her to do? That would be cruel to bear, because for his part, he’d never been less sorry in his life. Indeed he could not see how he was to pleasure himself at all in future, his great paw a pallid substitute for the inordinate eroticism of her cool careful grip.

The brown-brick walls of Seton Park glowed warmly in the noonday sun. He flicked his watch open and glanced down at it. When he looked up again, she was there, a small black figure just come into view at the house’s edge.

Why in blazes had he waited until six and twenty to dally with a widow? What a piquant, forbidden pleasure she looked, her black draperies marking her as another man’s property even while they encouraged his eye to linger on her pale, sweet skin. Her skirts swayed in time with her sturdy gait, their fluid motion hinting at the shape of her legs.

He knew the shape of her legs. He knew how it felt to stroke a hand up her shin, with its small soft hairs, over the rounded knee and to her thigh, smooth and silken. He knew which muscles flexed when she drew her thighs apart, and which ones stretched and clenched when she crossed her legs behind him.

He gave himself a quick shake. No profit in this line of thought unless he was intending to back her up against one of these trees, and he was not quite low enough for that.

When she reached the edge of the woods she peered in, a quizzical cast to her eyes, before she discerned him and came on. “So,” she said. She carried a basket, covered with a cloth, and now moved it from one arm to the other. “This is how you go, every day.”

“Didn’t I tell you it was convenient?” He took the basket from her. “Good God, woman. What are you bringing to these people? Bricks and rocks to make an insurrection with?”

“Only some bread and cakes and fruit from my orangery. Perhaps a few books as well, in case they have an interest.”

“I see.” Under his gaze she rather resembled a child caught with her hand in the jam pot, albeit a defiant one. “You aim for the slow and subtle style of insurrection.”

“I do no such thing.” She answered with an ease that seemed nothing short of miraculous. No fretfulness. No blush. No undercurrent of reproach. “I only picked out a few volumes such as I thought the women and children might enjoy. Not
Waverley
, because I’ve given it to Jenny Everett. Though I will gladly lend it to any of your people, once you’ve finished it yourself.”

What very optimistic hopes she had of this visit, and of his cottagers. A pity Mr. Barrow would be away at work—she wasn’t likely to find much conversation in any other house.

“You said you have families on the parish relief, didn’t you?” Today’s bonnet flared outward, to show more of her face, and as she turned partly toward him he could see her cheeks flushed with happy purpose. “I’d especially like to visit them, if we may. We ought to begin where we can do the most good.”

He’d take her to the Weavers, then. Left to himself, he would have avoided that cottage for the rest of his term in Sussex—but she wished to do good, and residual tender gratitude would bend him to her will.

T
HE YARD
was just as he remembered. Geese and more geese. “Watch your step,” he said to Mrs. Russell, though that implied there was any clean place to set her foot. The pig came jogging from behind the house, clearly scenting opportunity. Through a window, he could hear the baby’s squalls.

A glance at his companion found her to be preparing herself in little ways; ways a man less acquainted might not notice. Shoulders back. Head up. A deliberate deep breath.

“They’ll be honored by your visit,” he said quietly. Could she really be doubting? He touched her elbow once, in case she wanted courage, and came away with new courage himself. They went to the door.

There the farce of the pig repeated itself, to greater inconvenience this time as he was the one doing the introductions, but they got inside—Mrs. Weaver lapsing into this much civility, at least—and the door shut behind them.

“I’m sorry I’ve never called before now,” said Mrs. Russell, all polite determination. “With nobody in residence at the house, one isn’t quite sure what’s proper. But I’ve been speaking with Mr. Mirkwood on some matters of land, and the opportunity finally arose.”

He looked about him as she spoke. The same disposition of children, and—this gave a jolt to his stomach—in the corner, the eldest daughter, her face turned to the wall as though meaning to hide. She must have done that the instant he came in.

“… close to eleven months now, and I know so little of my neighbors. I shall be glad to know more.” She allowed a little pause, which Mrs. Weaver made no move to fill. The baby replied in his usual style. Theo set the basket down on the kitchen table’s one clear spot. Perhaps she’d like to get on with dispensing the gifts and bring this call to a merciful end.

But she had other ideas. “What a beautiful baby,” she said. “May I hold him?”

He would bet money that no one had ever expressed that sentiment, nor made that request, before. Mrs. Weaver looked as though she weren’t quite sure of having heard it. Probably she must often be uncertain of what she had heard, with that constant squalling in such proximity to her ear.

“What is his name?” She did have an admirable focus once she’d made up her mind to want something. She went without hesitation to where Mrs. Weaver stood, and petted the baby’s few wisps of hair.

“Job,” said the woman. Yes, it would be. She let Mrs. Russell take the child from her arms. The widow arranged its head and limbs to suit her, and turned his way again.

Well. This was how she would look, holding a baby. Though of course her baby would be handsomer. It would have hair. It would have wide inquiring eyes, dark brown like her own. Or perhaps dark blue with flecks of gold. Odd to think of. One would be able to see the eyes, at all events, which was more than could be said for Master Job, who registered the change in arms as an outrage against which he must screw all his features into disorder and bring some cryptic modulation to his yells.

Undaunted, she smiled down at the baby and bounced it lightly in her arms. Give her a better infant model and she might sit for one of those Madonna-and-child paintings, all grave lovely radiance and almost painful to look at.

Why should she be painful to look at? What was the matter with him? But he did look away, when she raised her eyes from the baby to beam at him as though they shared some marvelous secret.

She had every right to beam. They did share a marvelous secret. He was the means by which she would get her heart’s desire and secure her future. And perhaps in the years ahead he might come sometimes into Sussex, to manage something or other at Pencarragh, and then pay a visit to Seton Park to see how the child—Mr. Russell’s heir—got on.