Emma (61 page)

“Say it again, Emma darling.”

“I am yours,” she laughed, unable to contain her joy as the truth flowed between them. “You are mine. My Mr Knightley. My very own.”

Mr Knightley pulled her skirts high. Emma’s pulse accelerated as she prepared herself to be taken, but it was not as she expected. Mr Knightley did not lift her leg or pull her to him. He guided her gently back to lean on the banister then sank to his knees, his eyes never wavering from hers.

Mr Knightley took her behind one knee. Emma wobbled until she leant back on the railing. No words were uttered, yet every hungry thought seemed conveyed through his expression—so much so, Emma could scarce collect her breath. Mr Knightley draped her leg on his shoulder, parting her limbs to the open air as her lower body showed unprotected to the garden.

Emma gasped, her cheeks colouring with mortification as he then parted her pantalets. His face so near her pussy, his hot breath followed by cooler afternoon air, his gaze enraptured by her nether regions as he looked upon her in full, with her thigh still thrown over his shoulder, quite set her on edge.

“Mr Knightley, please,” she urged him, for what she could not be certain, excepting that if someone happened on such a display it would be her undoing.

He petted her cunny with the backs of his fingers and something new stirred within her. Her breath caught for a different reason as the mix of trepidation about being caught so near to the house and excitement for the risk they took consumed her worries. She was his, she knew, and he hers. Was there any other perfection of the claim than to do so as they had begun? With their bodies in harmony and in wonder of the sensations they created in one another? She could not think so!

He stroked her continually, but his touch became bolder still, harder, and already her body began to ache for him inside. His touch remained outward, unfulfilling yet beautiful. She did not wish to stop him while every sense begged her to speak and make her feeling grow by urging him on.

One finger traced her cleft, first one side, then the other. Emma groaned as her standing leg weakened beneath the attention. On the second pass, his finger pushed deep within her channel. Emma shook with urgency only to suffer scandalous delight to see him withdraw the errant digit and take it into his mouth.

“Better than the finest wines, my love,” he murmured. “Secure your support. I mean to taste you.”

Had not he done so already? But what bliss! She no sooner rested her hips to the rail than his handsome face and wicked brown eyes crinkled with mischief. He pushed his lips, his nose against her heated apex. Emma squeaked, one hand rushing to clutch his head—whether to pull him off or hold him to her remained a mystery, for soon his wet tongue dragged through her pussy, taking with it all remaining vestiges of her sensibilities.

His lips closed on her nub and he pushed his fingers inside her. They curled deep, where he found a hidden, new source of nerves she had not known existed, and stroked it firmly. Emma could no more still her voice from crying out than she could hush the call of a starling in the meadow. His tongue worked magic on her heated flesh, he strummed his fingers on her finer than any instrument. She, the played harp, barely kept herself upright as building notes of the coming crescendo crashed around her. Her knees buckled. Mr Knightley supported her and still he tasted, ate of her, licked and suckled her into oblivion into a final silent scream she offered to the sky when her voice could no more take the pleasure wrought upon her.

Mr Knightley stood then. Still insensible, he turned her, pressing his hand to her back so that she bent over the railing. Her skirts again lifted—now from behind as he gave her two solid whacks to her bottom. Her mind cleared and she reached around her.

“Mr Knightley!”

“One for the momentary lapse of judgement that led you to find generosity in your heart for Mr Churchill,” he told her. “Another for the lack of consideration shown to Jane Fairfax, who had no recourse but to accept the meanness of her betrothed’s actions.” His voice roughened. To Emma it became apparent that he enjoyed the stinging reprimands. As did she!

“Another for discouraging the match between Mr Martin and Harriett Smith which did not deserve your interference.”

He swatted her bottom again and her recently, delightfully abused pussy quivered with the slow burn his hand caused with each smack. Emma bent farther against the rail, lifted her hips back to him. She discovered that parting her legs allowed her nether lips to shimmy with each strike, to throb, and the ache inside her grew leaps and bounds.

He struck again.

Emma moaned.

“Another for your earlier treatment of Mrs Bates and Miss Bates.”

“Mr Elton,” she encouraged. “I should not have sought a match for Harriett with Mr Elton.”

He smacked her again. His hand gentled on her, stroking her hot, sore bottom. He squeezed it and Emma thought she might die if he did not take her soon. He must have been of a similar thought, for she felt the push of his cock against her swollen entrance. She gasped as he inserted something into her anus as he shafted her pussy. A finger? Perhaps a thumb? It burned, felt foreign and against nature, but she did not wish him to cease. He moved his thumb in and out of her, hooked inside and pulled towards her spine as his other fingers rested on her lower back. His cock moved and her body rubbed, vibrated on each drag and thrust within her.

“Oh, Emma,” he murmured. “You’ve borne it all so well. Every demand I make of you, every criticism, every lesson you take in full. You are a rare gift.”

She wanted more. Tears sprang to her eyes as his words soothed her, his body sweetly invaded her and she knew Mr Knightley had taken residence in her heart as surely as he had her body. The possibility that she could have lost him to another fell fresh upon her—that she might have lost all of him and his ways, all his tenderness, his stern instruction, his fearless lovemaking—seemed a loss too great to bear. She could only celebrate the joy in knowing a day would not pass again when she did not have her Mr Knightley in every way. The idea of marriage, once so abhorrent to her, only brought her joy. No wonder Mrs Weston had married! No wonder she had claimed her man after the collection of trysts they had stolen before the nuptials. Emma could not see it any other way. A fool she had been to think she could have Mr Knightley as a friend and lover, without taking him as beloved husband also!

Mr Knightley spent his passion upon her, grunting as his body emptied and sprayed deep inside her and Emma again found mindless release. He collected her into his arms, showering her with kisses, holding her close to his chest and professing her as his treasure. There could be no finer moment than this! She knew for certain, made sweeter still because she had not the words—only the promise of longevity in love—to know how deep her sentiments for him ran. How beautifully the confession unfolded!

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure, seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken, but where, as in this case, though the conduct is mistaken, the feelings are not, it may not be very material. Mr Knightley could not impute to Emma a more relenting heart than she possessed, or a heart more disposed to accept of his.

He had, in fact, been wholly unsuspicious of his own influence. He had followed her into the shrubbery with no idea of trying it. He had come, in his anxiety to see how she bore Frank Churchill’s engagement, with no selfish view, no view at all, but of endeavouring, if she allowed him an opening, to soothe or to counsel her. The rest had been the work of the moment, the immediate effect of what he heard, on his feelings and their physical response to each other.

The delightful assurance of her total indifference towards Frank Churchill, of her having a heart completely disengaged from him, had given birth to the hope that in time he might gain her affection himself, but it had been no present hope—he had only, in the momentary conquest of eagerness over judgement, aspired to be told that she did not forbid his attempt to attach her, and it communicated to her how unassuming of her affections he was despite the evidence of their lovemaking. The superior hopes which gradually opened were so much the more enchanting—the proof that she anticipated showing again and again. The affection which he had been asking to be allowed to create, if he could, was already his! Within half an hour, he had passed from a thoroughly distressed state of mind to something so like perfect happiness that it could bear no other name.

Her
change was equal. This one half-hour had given to each the same precious certainty of being beloved, had cleared from each the same degree of ignorance, jealousy, or distrust. On his side, there had been a long-standing jealousy, old as the arrival, or even the expectation, of Frank Churchill. He had been in love with Emma, and jealous of Frank Churchill, from about the same period, one sentiment having probably enlightened him as to the other.

It was his jealousy of Frank Churchill that had taken him from the country. The Box Hill party had decided him on going away. He would save himself from witnessing again such permitted, encouraged attentions. He had gone to learn to be indifferent. But he had gone to a wrong place. There was too much domestic happiness in his brother’s house, woman wore too amiable a form in it, Isabella was too much like Emma—differing only in those striking inferiorities which always brought the other in brilliancy before him—for much to have been done, even had his time been longer.

He had stayed on, however, vigorously, day after day—till this very morning’s post had conveyed the history of Jane Fairfax. Then, with the gladness which must be felt, nay, which he did not scruple to feel, having never believed Frank Churchill to be at all deserving Emma, was there so much fond solicitude, so much keen anxiety for her, that he could stay no longer. He had ridden home through the rain, and had walked up directly after dinner, to see how this sweetest and best of all creatures, faultless in spite of all her faults, bore the discovery.

He had found her agitated and low. Frank Churchill was a villain. He heard her declare that she had never loved him. Frank Churchill’s character was not desperate. She was his own Emma, by hand and word, when they returned into the house, and if he could have thought of Frank Churchill then, he might have deemed him a very good sort of fellow. From that to this, oh, the beauty, the rapture of flowing from the absolute depressed state of being—the certainty of rejection and impossible want—to the pure acceptance and consummation of their love. There was no other words for it than that. Love. She loved him. He loved her. From the lowest of lows to the highest of highs, there would always be this.

Chapter Fourteen

What totally different feelings did Emma take back into the house from what she had brought out! She had then been only daring to hope for a little respite of suffering, she was now in an exquisite flutter of happiness, and such happiness moreover as she believed must still be greater when the flutter should have passed away.

After she had cleaned up, they sat down to tea—the same party round the same table—how often it had been collected! And how often had her eyes fallen on the same shrubs in the lawn, and observed the same beautiful effect of the western sun! But never in such a state of spirits, never in anything like it, and it was with difficulty that she could summon enough of her usual self to be the attentive lady of the house, or even the attentive daughter.

Poor Mr Woodhouse little suspected what was plotting against him in the breast of that man whom he was so cordially welcoming, and so anxiously hoping might not have taken cold from his ride. Could he have seen the heart, he would have cared very little for the lungs, but without the most distant imagination of the impending evil, without the slightest perception of anything extraordinary in the looks or ways of either, he repeated to them very comfortably all the articles of news he had received from Mr Perry, and talked on with much self-contentment, totally unsuspicious of what they could have told him in return.

As long as Mr Knightley remained with them, Emma’s fever continued, but when he was gone, she began to be a little tranquillised and subdued—and in the course of the sleepless night, which was the tax for such an evening, she found one or two such very serious points to consider as made her feel that even her happiness must have some alloy. Her father—and Harriet. She could not be alone without feeling the full weight of their separate claims, and how to guard the comfort of both to the utmost, was the question.

With respect to her father, it was a question soon answered. She hardly knew yet what Mr Knightley would ask, but a very short parley with her own heart produced the most solemn resolution of never quitting her father. She even wept over the idea of it as a sin of thought. While he lived, it must be only an engagement, but she flattered herself that if divested of the danger of drawing her away, it might become an increase of comfort to him.

How to do her best by Harriet was of more difficult decision—how to spare her from any unnecessary pain, how to make her any possible atonement, how to appear least her enemy? On these subjects, her perplexity and distress were very great—and her mind had to pass again and again through every bitter reproach and sorrowful regret that had ever surrounded it.

She could only resolve at last that she would still avoid a meeting with her, and communicate all that need be told by letter, that it would be inexpressibly desirable to have her removed just now for a time from Highbury, and—indulging in one scheme more—nearly resolve that it might be practicable to get an invitation for her to Brunswick Square. Isabella had been pleased with Harriet, and a few weeks spent in London must give her some amusement. She did not think it in Harriet’s nature to escape being benefited by novelty and variety, by the streets, the shops, and the children. At any rate, it would be a proof of attention and kindness in herself, from whom everything was due, a separation for the present, an averting of the evil day when they must all be together again.