Flowers From The Storm (59 page)

“I know what thou art doing,” she said.

“Primp… myself pretty.”

“Thou art pouring the butter-boat over me. Giving me jewels and flowers.”

He shook the blossom from his ear and let it drop into his hand. “Is it working?”

Her cheeks pinkened. She dropped her eyes. “Working to do what?”

“Turn up… sweet.”

“To what end?”

He shrugged. “So… don’t have to sleep… in the dressing room.”

She looked around at the flowers that covered every table and cabinet. “This expense… only for that?”

With the blossom caught between his middle fingers, he caressed it lightly over the back of her hand.

“Only?”

She blushed vividly. “It is thy house. I never said thou shouldst sleep here or there or anywhere. It isn’t my place to say.”

“”Your place to say… you want me there.“ He slowly circled the petals over her skin. ”With you.“

“Oh.” Her breathing had become agitated. “Is it?”

“You say. You tell me… you want me.”

She watched the flower. “I don’t know,” she said miserably.

“Don’t know, Maddygirl?” he asked softly.

“Oh, why art thou so—so carnal?” She snatched her hand away. “I ought not!”

Christian felt an immediate rise of his spirits. Here was something perfectly familiar—a lady who ought not but very likely would. On that note, he made a strategic withdrawal. He could be patient. “Very well,” he said with dignity, and left her, walking round his desk to sit down before the ledgers again.

He bent over the books. After a few moments of silence, he looked up. “One other. Another thing…

too. In a month, we will have… a ball for five hundred.” He pushed the jade bowl with the largest number of cards in it toward her. “Invitations… to these.”

He didn’t come that night, as he had not the night before. Maddy was left alone in his bedchamber to contemplate a ball for five hundred people, and what he said it was her place to tell him.

She wanted to be angry at him for these outrageous new extravagances. The flowers, the jewels—they were sly worldly tricks. He had admitted it outright, guileless, with an orange blossom behind his ear—
Isthis working
?— stealing from her the immunity of virtuous indignation.

She felt herself slipping, sliding into his net.

In the morning, they worked together again in the flower-filled library to unravel his affairs. He labored with a concentration that clearly wearied him; by noon his speech had deteriorated, and he slammed the books closed impatiently.

“Perhaps thou ought to rest,” she said, when he had been trying to give her the amount of a payment and had to recalculate it three times. “It is difficult for thee.”

“Not… difficult!” He threw himself back in his chair. “Simple. But it… it is… slips… it goes away. As if… try to work and… listen to… talk. Can’t… both.” He leaned his head back and put his hands over his eyes. “I’m not… stupid.”

“I didn’t say thou art stupid,” Maddy murmured.

He sighed heavily, dropping his hands, still staring at the ceiling. “I feel… stupid.” He groaned. “Bloody damned idiot.”

She sat looking down at her lap desk. She fiddled with the corner of the paper, rolling it up, and then unrolling it. “Christian,” she said, watching her fingers. “Wouldst thou please come tonight?”

For a moment he didn’t do anything. Then he steepled his hands and lifted his head from the back of the chair, resting his chin on the tips of his fingers, gazing at her.

“Why wait?” He smiled. “I’m here… now.”

Maddy’s eyes widened. She looked at the paper, and back up at him uncertainly. “Thou art giddy.”

He laughed, low and soft. Maddy thought it prudent to set the lap desk aside. She stood up, tucking papers into neat piles. When he rose, she almost dropped an inkpot, fumbling.

He caught it from her fingers and set it safely down. “Giddy?” he asked with amusement.

“I believe Calvin has a luncheon prepared—”

“Later.”

“It is time for eating, Jervaulx. It is daylight. I did not say to thee—” She lost the tail of her sentence as he came behind her and brushed his lips across the nape of her neck.

“Want me, Maddygirl?” he murmured.

She shuddered with the exquisite hot tickle. “It is
daylight
!” she exclaimed, her voice high and faint.

He gave that rich, soft laugh again, his breath warm against her skin. “Didn’t ask… time of day.” He traced his finger down the line of her throat to the buttons at the back of her neck. Maddy felt the first one pop open.

“Calvin!” she said desperately. “He’ll be coming in!”

He unbuttoned another button, placing a kiss on her exposed nape.

“Thou art weary!” She seemed rooted to the spot, feeling the electric caress flow down her body to melt in heat and carnal places—the tips of her breasts, and lower, lower. “Thou shouldst… thou ought to…

rest.”

“No answer yet,” he said, loosening all the buttons and the ribbons of her corset, finding the opening in her camisole. “Want me, Maddy?”

“Thou art—” A scratch on the door made her give a small helpless whimper of panic.

“Yes?” Jervaulx said toward the door. He held her still with his hands on both shoulders, pressing her dress together with his thumbs.

Calvin stood in the entry. “”Luncheon, Your Grace.“

“Serve here,” Jervaulx said, expressionless. He dropped one of his hands, running his finger up and down the open slit in her dress, bright erotic sensation against her spine.

Maddy flushed, staring at Calvin, unable to move or speak. The butler merely bowed. “Directly, Your Grace,” he said, and withdrew.

“There,” she said, trying to shrug her dress up from where Jervaulx was drawing it down off her shoulders. “Now showest sense! He will be back—in a few moments—no! No, thou must not—not here!”

Her bodice fell loose. He held her against him, kissing the curve of her shoulder through her thin cotton camisole. His hand explored upward beneath her open corset, skimming over the cotton. His palm grazed her nipple through the fabric: a sweet shot of delight. She sucked in her breath.

“Want?” he murmured close to her ear.

“They’ll come,” she moaned. “They’ll come, they’ll come.”

His arms tightened. “Want me?”

Noise at the closed door brought her to panic. She began to push at him, but he held her harder. He drew her back into the deep narrow space between a bookcase and a cabinet, half-hidden. Then he let her go, leaving her standing in brazen undress. As the door opened, he moved in front of her and pulled a book down from the shelf.

He stood perusing it, his back to the room, obscuring the servants from her view. She heard the rattle of trays and dishes, saw around him the flash of white stockings as a footman passed the place where she hid in broad daylight. She feared that she must certainly be visible, though she herself could see nothing past Jervaulx’s broad shoulders.

He turned a page. “Here,” he said, as if he’d just discovered some passage he’d been searching for. He looked up at her with laughter brimming in his eyes. “Hamlet. ”Lady, shall I lie in your lap?“” Maddy squeezed back against the wall, pressing her lips together, frowning at him with frantic severity. His look changed to exaggerated innocence. “‘I mean, my head upon your lap?”“

“Don’t!” she whispered furiously.

He grinned at her. “Right here… in the play. I only… read it.”

She heard the door open and close. For a long moment Jervaulx stood watching her, holding her trapped by modesty and by himself, solid barrier to escape. Maddy listened for any sound, and then mouthed
Are they gone
?

He turned his head, looking over his shoulder, first one way, and then the other, theatrically. He looked back at her. “Don’t know. Better stay… here.”

She gave him a push. The book slid down; he held it out behind him and let it fall with a flutter and thump as he leaned forward to kiss her mouth. He caught her body in his hands, his thumbs passing provocatively over her breasts, caressing the tips, back and forth. The feel of it drew a liquid arching, a breath and a pressing flex of all her muscles toward him.

“Want me?” he whispered, licentious, the Devil at her ear in full daylight: a man’s firm elegant hands on her body, blue eyes and long dusky beautiful eyelashes.

She whirled, her back to him, pressing her fiery cheek to the smooth cool leather of the library wall. He stroked the naked skin of her back, pushing her undergarments aside. He ran his hands over her torso, up beneath her arms: creating delight and embarrassed agony as she could not stop the shivering of pleasure. “It is day,” she moaned, hiding her face, pressing it to the leather-covered wall. “Thou shouldst not.”

He ceased his touch on her bared torso. But he didn’t move back; he moved closer, holding her against the wall. She could feel the crushed lace of his shirt against her skin. His scent mingled with the smell of leather. He began to draw her skirt up in his hands.

“Oh, no,” she cried, muffled. “No, no—it is indecent! Christian!”

He closed his teeth on her shoulder, his pressure against her more urgent, his body pinning hers to the wall. She tried to thrust back from it and only brought herself closer to him. He kissed her all along the curve of her throat and shoulder, kissed and nipped and sucked at her skin, pulling her hands down and back away from the wall until they fluttered helplessly without purchase. Her skirt was caught up between them; she felt shamelessly exposed, her legs and stockings uncovered to her garters.

But he didn’t stop there. He pulled her petticoat and dress higher, cupping her hips and her buttocks with his bare hands. He made a rough, ardent sound near her ear. He bit her, hurt her, kneading her body in his palms, but it was sweet pain and sinful ecstasy. She felt him release his own buttons; his hard male part pushed and pressed, and she began to pant in desperate guilty excitement.

Like stone melting, her body slackened, her legs allowed him between. The sound of his breath was caustic, an animal engine, brushing heat across her nakedness. He pressed her hips, a rash hard grip of his fingers, making her close her legs on his shaft.

He forced his hands between her body and the wall, dragging her skirt up in front. He caught her wrists.

“Touch me.” He brought her fingers to the place between her legs, to hot moistness and his smooth head.

“Yes,” he groaned, moving suddenly, demandingly against her. “Yes—yes—Maddy.”

With their hands entwined, jammed to the wall, he slid his fingers against her private place, massaged and teased and pressed deep in rhythm with the thrust of his body against her. His man’s part moved between her legs, an unimaginable pleasure, a sensation that flowed to her breasts, made the nipples full and tender, like flame pushed against the cool leather. Wet hot dew spread over her fingers and his: she molded her hand to the head of his arousal, taking deep and lurid satisfaction in the sound she drew from him.

“Want me?” His voice was grinding, insistent, taut with extremity. “Maddy… inside you.”

She bit her lip, her face turned aside to the wall. “I want thee.” she said, on a sob. “I want thee.”

And he showed her how, then. How to bend and submit for him, in bondage to him, in daylight, sinking together on their knees to the floor, with him deep inside her, over her and around her, his hands holding her breasts, his mouth against the nape of her neck—lost in him and in his coupling with her. She cried out with violent joy at the height, her voice mingling with his masculine groan: the two of them no more, and no less, than every wild creature that God had made of clay to walk the earth.

He bought her a carriage. Two carriages, one with a team of four white-stockinged chestnuts and one with a pair of cream-colored ponies—for the park, he said, as if she were ever going to go driving there in it.

Maddy told him that she did not want such things. She insisted that he put a stop to his ill-advised purchases and gifts. He bought her an antique marquetry cabinet from a selection that the dealer fetched to Belgrave Square, and began to redecorate the back parlor, a perfectly smart and comfortable room that had hardly seen a year’s use, transforming it into an outlandishly expensive boudoir full of gilt and red satin.

Maddy berated him for wastefulness. He purchased her a small magnificent Rembrandt by private treaty, the complement of the one in his bedroom at Jervaulx Castle, a study of a serious youth who looked as if he might be the brother of that mischievous girl. Maddy read afterward in the newspaper that the duke’s offer had been so generous, it had forestalled the painting’s scheduled auction at Christie’s, sending the cognoscenti into paroxysms of jealousy.

She lived in misery and delight in the small world of the duke’s house. They were never at home to callers, nor went out except at dusk, conveyed by a carriage to some secluded country lane beyond the city, where Jervaulx stretched his long legs into a walk that had her striding to keep up. Around a corner, or beside a shaggy hedge, with the dim autumn sunset casting shadows across mats of fallen, frosty leaves, he would stop and kiss her—and sometimes more than that. He touched her often; he looked up across the library desk with a smile that knew too much of her. She felt utterly owned by him. The gifts were nothing; it was her own hunger that enslaved her—she
wanted
to be touched; she wanted him to take her, in any way, any place and time, with no care for modesty or decent conduct.