Forever and Ever (13 page)

“Maybe I should have come later.” His hard voice shattered her mood, like a rock thrown through a mirror. “I didn’t know you’d have a man here ahead of me.”

“Oh, Jack.” She reached for his stiff hand, and kept it even when it wouldn’t soften. This was all wrong, ridiculous, not at all the way it was supposed to be! “Come in,” she told him, drawing him into the parlor. He stood in the center of the room, looking around at her things, her furniture, his face tight with an emotion she didn’t fully understand. “That was Robert,” she began, “Robert Croddy. You met him before at—”

“I know who he is.”

“He just—he’s never come here before like this, at night, I mean. He wanted to tell me he can’t come to my tea party. He—he—” She was through explaining. “Jack, are you
jealous
of him?”

Her incredulity finally brought him to his senses. He smiled at the floor, then lifted his sheepish gaze to her. “Hell, yes. I’d like to stuff him in a beer barrel and throw him in the river.”

She laughed. He still had her hand. They came together in a warm, perfectly natural embrace, sweet and welcoming. She hugged him, feeling the relief wash over her in waves. “I sent him away,” she whispered, pressing her palms to his chest. “The perfect suitor. Rich, handsome—”

“Ugly.”

“Strong.”

“Fat.” He kissed her on the mouth. “Stupid.”

“Yes, but rich.”

“Not so rich. Which one of us is holding you in his arms?”

She rested her cheek on his shoulder. Robert
was
the perfect suitor, and she’d sent him away so that she could entertain the attentions of a poor Cornish copper miner. She was giving him
herself
, and he’d been jealous. If she were found out, she would be ruined. Ruined. All the risk was hers, none of it Jack’s.

Suddenly she felt so frightened, she wanted it over with quickly. She held his face and kissed him again and again, her eyes shut tight, desperate to lose her mind, give herself up to sensation. She felt his surprise before he pulled her closer and his mouth turned greedy. This was what she wanted—surrender, possession; to be overcome. She tried to say his name, but his ravenous kisses prevented it. She slipped her hands inside his coat and rubbed them up and down his spine, molding the curves of his muscles under the satin back of his waistcoat. He wore a belt, and she put her thumbs inside it first, then all her fingertips; she couldn’t really feel anything except his shirt, but the bold intimacy fired her imagination. And his—he brought his hands down to her bottom and caressed her, kneaded her through her gown. Her knees went weak; she was trembling, she could barely stand. His open mouth glided across her face to her ear, and she shivered from the delicious sensation. She could have slid down to the floor then and lain with him on her mother’s old flowered carpet. But he kissed her again and murmured in her ear, “Sophie, love, is there some place we can go?”

They caught their breath while they held each other, swaying a little. She wanted to stop making decisions, but new ones kept being required of her. She’d asked him to come, and he was here—wasn’t that enough? Her mind, that coward, had shut down every time she’d begun to imagine what making love with Jack would be like, and so she had never envisioned a place where they would do it. Here? In her room? Her father’s room, where the bed was bigger?

In the end she chose the most natural place. “Would you like to come to my room?” she asked, with her forehead resting on his, their hands clasped between them.

“I would.” He kissed her fingers, one at a time. “If you’re sure about this.”

She didn’t say anything. She just led him out of the parlor and then up the dim staircase, and let that be her answer.

She lit a candle from the one she’d brought with her and set them both on the table beside her bed. She tried to see the room through Jack’s eyes, and for the first time it seemed childish to her: the virginal white coverlet on the tester bed she’d slept in for twenty years, the shelf of school books and pictures of girlfriends, framed certificates and prizes she’d won at various levels in her women’s academy. She’d been the May queen in Wyckerley for two years, at ages sixteen and seventeen, and she still had the silly, ribbon-strewn straw hats she’d worn in the processions tacked to her wall. She was still using the dressing table her father had given her when she was ten, even though the stool was too small and the mirror was so low she couldn’t see herself unless she bent over in half.

Jack was standing by her bureau, looking at the pictures and photographs on top. She went to his side, and pointed to a framed miniature in watercolors. “This is my mother. Wasn’t she beautiful?”

“Yes. You look like her.”

“Thank you. Other people say that, too. I can’t see it myself. These are my parents.” She touched another picture, this one an oil painting. “They’d only been married a month. I love this picture, because they look so happy.”

“Is this Guelder?” He pointed to a sepia-colored daugerreo-type, frayed and fading under the glass.

She nodded. “Fifteen years ago, not long after my father leased it.” She was fond of that picture as well, because in it the mine looked like nothing but a tumbled-down engine house and a ladder sticking out of a hole in a great muddy yard. Over the years, Tolliver Deene had turned it into a fine, profitable business, and she was following proudly in his footsteps.

She leaned against Jack’s arm lightly, wishing he would touch her. She was back to being nervous again. She wanted to be swept away, she wanted to stop
talking.
But he wasn’t going to seduce her, she could see that; he was going to let it be her choice every step of the way.

Right, then. She left him and crossed to the bed, bent over and blew out both candles on the table. She’d forgotten the moon was full; the room wasn’t nearly dark enough. With a deep breath for courage, she began to undress.

At first she was afraid he wouldn’t come to her, that he would stand still and watch—and she couldn’t have borne that. But his big, shadowy body moved toward her slowly in the dark, and his hands when he touched her, to help her with the buttons at the back of her gown, were warm and sure. He opened her dress and eased it over her shoulders, and she could feel his breath on her skin, ticklish and exciting. “I’m sorry, Sophie,” she thought he whispered. “I can’t resist you.”

She turned to face him. “I don’t want you to be sorry. I don’t want you to resist me.” She kissed him, fighting against the last of the reluctance she could feel in his body, hear in his voice. If they were really going to do this, she wanted it to be a celebration.
But how can it be? He’s going away!
She shut her ears to that, shut her mind. Thank God she trusted him. If they never met again, she wouldn’t regret this. She had saved herself for him, Jack Pendarvis, and the fact that he couldn’t stay and marry her, be her lover forever, might be tragic but it was also irrelevant. “This is right,” she told him, “it’s right, Jack,” and she believed it with her whole soul.

Her certainty was his undoing. Even when she called him by his brother’s name, Connor couldn’t stop. Too late now; he had no choice but to believe she was right. And love her, and give her the best of himself.

“Ah, Sophie,” he breathed, filling his hands with her hair. She had on a soft cashmere chemisette under the bodice of her gown, and he tugged it down over her breasts, revealing the dainty white corset cover she wore—with no corset under it. “Such pretty clothes you always wear. I don’t know anyone else who dresses like you.” She liked that, he could tell by her smile. A row of tiny pearl buttons ran down the front of the last garment. He leaned in close while he unfastened them one by one, and she put her hands on his neck, stroking him softly, kissing his hair. Moonlight silvered her bare skin, and made her breasts look cold and untouchable, like some impossibly lovely marble statue. The reality was different. While she held her breath he caressed her, and she was warm and silky-soft, her fine-textured nipples coming to life in his palms. He couldn’t believe he was seeing her like this, Miss Sophie Deene, the object of near-constant fascination among the miners, and plenty of coarse but heartfelt wishful thinking.

“The men speak of Guelder as if it’s a woman,” he told her, nudging dress, blouse, and slip over her hips. “Like a ship. ‘She’s killer hot today,’ they’ll say, or ‘She fought us for every inch last night.’ ”

“Do they?” She tugged at one end of his necktie, smiling.

“Sometimes I’ll catch myself thinking they’re talking about you.” He frowned at the waist of a pair of white cambric drawers, wondering where the fastener was. “‘How is she today?’ a new man will ask me on the ladder, and I’ll have to stop myself from saying, ‘You wouldn’t believe it, she’s even prettier than yesterday.’ ”

Sophie laughed, and sighed, and put her head on his shoulder. He found the little lace ribbon and pulled on it, untying an inside bow, and the drawers slid to her knees, then her ankles. Nothing left but her stockings—she’d already stepped out of her shoes. He set her away from him a little, to look at her, and she shivered once but kept her hands at her sides, not trying to cover herself. “Are you cold?” She shook her head. “Sophie, you’re beautiful,” he told her, wishing he knew more words. She was perfect, exactly as lovely as he’d known she would be. “Beautiful. But you know that.”

“No, I don’t, Jack.”

Her hushed voice gave her away—she was scared. And he was an idiot for not realizing it sooner. He put his arms around her and held her gently, cupping her shoulder blades, tracing the fragile bumps of her backbone with his fingertips. “It’s all right. Everything’s going to be fine.” Her body softened enticingly. She gave him a kiss, and he deepened it, keeping her still with a hand on her waist while he shrugged out of his coat and started on the buttons of his shirt. Then she turned away from him to pull down the covers of her bed. She sat on the edge, her gaze skittish but interested when he stripped off his trousers. He’d wanted to take her stockings off for her; but watching her do it, her hands slow and her eyes dreamy, almost absentminded, was even better.

She scooted back, making room for him, and they lay down. There was only one pillow. Her narrow mattress sagged slightly in the middle, so they rolled together naturally, their hands eager and welcoming. “I’ve thought about this,” she confided, barely brushing the healed white scar on his side with her fingers. “I’ve wanted it. Jack, I think about you
all the time.
”

“I think about you constantly,” he whispered back. “Since the first time I saw you. Do you remember that day as well as I do? I thought I’d never seen anything so lovely. Not just your body, which is beautiful, and not just your beautiful face and your beautiful hair—Sophie, you have the most
beautiful
hair. It’s like sunlight, it’s like yellow flowers—”

“Oh, Jack.” She huffed out her breath, delighted and embarrassed.

He laughed with her, pressing a kiss to her forehead. Her right breast fit his left palm just right. He fondled her while he said, “But that wasn’t it. I was with my brother that day, and we both felt it.”

“What?”

“It’s hard to explain. The way you were with the children. Your gentleness. Grace. Sophie, you are . . . sweet.”

“Not always.” Her face was a study. She was smiling with her eyes closed, intent on what he was doing—stroking his middle finger across the pink tip of her nipple.

“Do you like it?” he asked needlessly, and she answered by biting her bottom lip and moaning. He put his mouth on her, murmuring, “And this?” before he sucked gently at her little peak, soothing it with his tongue. The soft sounds she made fired him, and he thought again that this was a miracle, being with her in her girlish bed, touching her and making her sigh.

“How long,” she breathed, then trailed off, distracted.

“How long . . . ?”

She cupped his cheek with her hand. “How long do we do this before we really . . . before the real thing?”

“As long as you want,” he answered recklessly.

“Oh. I thought . . . I didn’t even know people did this. Does everyone?”

“Mmm, don’t know.” He was caressing her silky flat stomach in circles around her navel. “What did you think they did?”

“Just the one thing. I didn’t know there was all this . . . beginning part. Isn’t it nice?”

“Very nice.” He trailed his fingers down to the soft mesh of her pubic hair, playing with the little curls, listening to her breathing change. She turned her head to kiss his mouth—or maybe to hide her face when he fluttered his fingers so gently against her. She parted her thighs for him when he asked her to, and he stroked her slowly, intimately, making her gasp.

“Jack?”

“Mm?”

“You said as long as I want.”

“Mm.”

“Now . . . let’s do it now . . .”

He kissed her as he came over her, whispering, “Open your legs, Sophie.” She hadn’t touched him yet; he used his own hand to guide himself to her. She was unique in his experience; he’d never known what to expect from her. At the last second, he said, “Tell me if I’m going to hurt you.” The confusion in her face was his answer, and he knew he’d been a stupid fool for asking. “Ah, Sophie, I’m sorry.”

“Why, Jack?”

Was it better to warn her? “Because I have to do this.” Steeling himself, he pushed into her all at once, and she gave a gasp and a startled cry. “It’s over,” he assured her, after a second of such intense pleasure he couldn’t speak.

“It’s over?” she quavered.

He couldn’t keep from smiling. “The pain,” he explained. He framed her face with his hands and kissed her softly, again and again. “Now, nothing but pleasure. I promise.”

XI

Brandy at midnight—what a decadent delight. And the smoky, prickly taste was only part of the pleasure; the best part was sipping it in your night robe with your lover, while you gave him a tour of your house.

“This was my nursery,” Sophie told Jack, leaning against his shoulder, just to touch him, and holding the candle high in the doorway so he could see into the spacious, blue-and-yellow-papered room. “Needs dusting,” she observed. Needed airing out, too; the mattress on her old crib was probably responsible for that mildew smell. The crowded shelves brought back a flood of memories. “That was my favorite doll.” She pointed to a yellow-haired china doll in a blue brocade gown, enthroned in a miniature upholstered chair, the place of honor in the doll collection. “Her name was Norah. I pretended we were sisters.”

“She looks like you.”

“It would have thrilled me to hear that when I was seven years old.”

He slipped his arm around her waist. “You had a rocking horse.”

“His name was Midnight. We went on a lot of rides together.”

“Did you take Norah with you?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes the cook would pack lunch for me in a little box, and I’d eat it on Midnight, pretending I was an American cowgirl riding the range.” Jack smiled at her. “I was spoiled, I suppose. Compared to most children.” Compared to him, she was thinking. She’d had a hundred toys; most of them were gathering dust on shelves in this room—books and puzzles, blocks, games, chalks and paints, paper dolls, stereoscopes. She thought of the book Jack’s tutor had given him, the one about the boy who could make himself invisible. His brothers had spoiled that book for him—but at least he’d had brothers. Maybe she hadn’t been so very much better off than him after all. At least not in that one way.

“This was Mrs. Turner’s room,” she pointed out, continuing the tour. “She was my nurse. And this—this was my father’s bedroom.” Unconsciously she dropped her voice, as she always did when she came into this room. She’d given most of his clothes away to the parish, but otherwise the spare, stately bedchamber looked just as it had on the night he died. The heavy mahogany four-poster’s curtains were closed, and sometimes—not so much anymore—she imagined that her father was sleeping behind them; that she was bringing him tea or the newspaper, and he would yawn and stretch and say, “Morning, Sunshine,” the way he used to.

Jack put a soft kiss on her temple. “You still miss him.”

“I do. Would you like to see his study? Or—is this dull for you, Jack? It’s all right, we don’t—”

“No, I’d like to see it.”

“Truly?”

“Of course.”

She took his hand and they went downstairs, carrying the candle and their brandy glasses. She was barefooted; Jack had on his trousers and waistcoat, no shirt. She felt wicked and free and sophisticated. “I love this creaky old house,” she confided. “I’ve been wanting to show it to you for so long.”

“It is a wonderful house,” he agreed, to her delight. “It suits you. But don’t you ever get lonely here all by yourself?”

“Oh, no. Well—yes, sometimes. But I’m not really by myself, I have Mrs. Bolton. And Maris, and of course Thomas.”

In her father’s study, she handed Jack the candlestick while she went to close the curtains—the room was at the back of the house, and she was afraid Thomas might see the light from his bedroom over the carriage house and wonder about it. She turned back, and tried to picture the study through Jack’s eyes. “Everything’s a bit dingy,” she realized. “Honoria’s always scolding me for not doing something about the house—refurbishing it, you know.”

“But you don’t want to?”

“I wouldn’t mind. But I’ve been turning all the profits from Guelder back into the mine. There really isn’t any money right now to do anything with the house.” She ran her hand over the cracks in the leather of the chair behind her father’s big desk. The floorboards creaked under the tassled rug, which had a worn-down path from door to desk. But Sophie loved everything about this room, especially the two walls of shelves crammed with books, facing each other on opposite sides of the door.

“Have you read all of these?” Jack held the light high to read the titles.

“Not all. Most of them, though. They’re mostly about mining.” He grunted and shook his head, and she imagined he was thinking she was a very odd sort of girl.

“You love the mine,” he said, smiling at her, coming toward her and sitting down on a corner of the desk.

She sat beside him. “Of course. It’s my life.”

“Why do you like it so much?”

“Mmm . . . my father loved it.” That sounded like a strange answer, but it was the truth. “And . . . I like doing something well. Something that matters. I like the feeling of being proud of myself.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. He understood that.

“My father used to tell me I could be anything I wanted to be, because I was as smart as a man.” She smiled self-consciously, trying to look modest, as though she didn’t believe it herself. But she did. “We were partners. It felt like—like a conspiracy. Us against the world. When I lost him, the mine is what saved me.” She fiddled with the belt of her silk dressing gown, thinking how natural it felt to be telling Jack these things about herself. Of course they were lovers now, but she hadn’t anticipated that he would become quite so much a
friend
afterward. “Do you like being a miner?” It seemed curious that she’d never asked him that question directly before.

“No, I hate it.”

His vehemence startled her. But after a second, she felt glad. “Then why do you do it?” That question she
had
asked him before, and he’d always cut her off to avoid the subject. But things were different now—surely; being lovers must change everything. “Why, Jack? I’ve never understood it, not from the beginning. You could be so much more, you could be—”

“Why does it matter to you so much?”

“
Why?
Don’t you know why? Oh, Jack—”

“Let it go.” He put his hand on her thigh and spoke softly. “We’ll talk about it later. I want to talk about it, but not tonight.”

“All right.” She put her fingers through the spaces between his. “But tell me why you hate it. At least tell me that.”

The look he sent her was faintly incredulous. “Sophie, have you ever been down in a mine? Gone down in it on the ladders with the other miners?”

“Yes, of course.” But only once, she had to admit. She’d been nineteen, and for five years before that she’d begged her father to let her go down in Guelder. On her birthday, he’d finally said yes.

“Did you like it?”

“I don’t know. Yes,” she decided. “Yes, I enjoyed it.” But enjoying it hadn’t seemed relevant at the time; she’d simply wanted to know what a copper mine was like. Jenks had taken her down to the twenty level, and she’d watched a tribute crew costean to the twenty-five. Everything about it had fascinated her.

Jack was staring at her. “You
liked
it? What if you had to go down every day? Think about it, remember what it was like. Every day, Sophie, every— Oh, hell. I said we’ll talk about it later. But not now, not tonight.”

“Fine.”

They went down to the kitchen, and the slight strain between them lasted until they began to fix a midnight snack. Then it floated away, forgotten under the weight of more interesting dilemmas, like whether butter or mustard was the right accompaniment to slices of pork on thick pieces of Mrs. Bolton’s barley bread. They sat side by side on a bench at the scarred and scrubbed oak table, sipping tea and brandy and munching on their sandwiches. They talked about food they liked, food they hated, the best meals they’d ever eaten, why they thought the reputation of English cuisine for being the worst in the world wasn’t fair. Laughing with him, bumping shoulders, saying silly things, Sophie reveled in the easiness of the conversation. Except for the interesting fact that they were intimate now and had just made sweet, spectacular love with each other, being with Jack was like being with a dear and trusted friend. She felt there was nothing she couldn’t tell him about herself, and more than ever she wanted to know everything about him. The brandy was making her a trifle light-headed, and she asked him if he’d ever been drunk.

“Really drunk? Only once. I’d just turned sixteen, and my brothers took me to Redruth to celebrate my manhood.”

“Wait, now. Do I need to hear the rest of this story?”

“You asked for it.”

“But I have delicate ears.”

“I know.” He pulled her hair back and kissed her on the ear, a loud, smacking kiss that made her squeal. She retaliated with a hard squeeze on his thigh, where she knew he was ticklish. “Anyway. As I was saying. They took me to a tavern called the Black Bull. That I remember. The rest starts out hazy and ends in the pitch-black.”

“Heavens. What were you drinking?”

“Blue ruin. Gin.” He gave a mock shudder. “Never been able to stomach it since. Can’t even bear the smell.”

“What does it feel like, being inebriated?”

“It feels like bloody hell.”

“Yes, but that’s afterward. What about when you’re just starting out?”

“Then it’s fun. Haven’t you ever been drunk?”

“Certainly not.”

“Never?”

“Of course not. Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, it couldn’t happen, because my cousin is always with me on drinking occasions.”

“So?”

“So? You’ve met her, Jack. Could you let go of yourself and have a jolly good time with Honoria watching you?”

“That’s a good point.”

She put her hand on his bare arm. “How different we are,” she mused. “Do you think about that, too? How unlike we are?”

“Yes.”

They fell quiet, thinking their separate thoughts. When they finished eating, Sophie washed the plates and put them away so that Maris wouldn’t find them in the morning. Hand in hand, they went upstairs and wandered out to the sunroom, to watch the moon go down.

“Look how bright out it is. Almost like day.”

“We could go into the garden,” Jack suggested. “Would you like to?”

“Yes, but we’d better not. If Thomas woke up, he might see us.”

“Or hear us.”

She shook her head. “He’s deaf.”

Below the terrace, white foxgloves and Canterbury bells gleamed in the moonlight, and tall white Madonna lilies. The ever-present scent of roses perfumed the still air; somewhere nearby an owl hooted; bats wheeled and whirred over the apple trees in the orchard. Jack’s arm around her shoulders felt solid and real, and yet Sophie couldn’t stop thinking about the strangeness of him, his essential separateness from her. A man and a woman, joining together physically for the first time—beyond the nearly unbearable excitement, how could they know what was real about the other and what was only fantasy, wishful thinking? Early love was like a fever: it destroyed the critical faculties and made you giddy. Jack was so thrillingly alien, so
other
, and she felt absolutely driven to learn all his secrets. Impossible to say if they were as opposite to each other as they seemed to her right now. She hoped not, but only time would tell. Did they have time?

“I’m afraid, Jack.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to lose you.” She came into his arms and held him close, shivering a little, and he murmured to her and stroked her back. “I know you have to go, and it’s all right.” Then her arms tightened reflexively, and she told the truth. “No, it’s not. I thought I could do this and say good-bye to you afterward. Oh, God, Jack—”

He kissed her mouth, slowly and tenderly, stopping the words, and she understood that he was as sad as she was. But he didn’t want to talk about it, and perhaps his way was right. Why think about what a mad idea this had been
now
? Why ask herself why she’d deliberately opened herself up to hurt and heartache when she still had him, when his kisses and his hands and his whispered words were irresistible? To have him tonight, to be lovers, to lie together—all the pain in store for her was worth it, because she loved him.

“Lie down, Sophie. Here.”

He urged her toward the long, rush-covered chaise by the window. Her heart began to beat faster. Memories of what they’d done before made her feel breathless, as if there weren’t quite enough air in the room. She lay down, and was surprised when he knelt on the floor beside her. “There’s room for you,” she whispered, smiling tensely.

“Not yet.” His dark silhouette loomed over her, formidable against the bright night behind him. She felt him tug at the sash around her waist, and then the warm slide of his hand on her skin. He didn’t kiss her. His eyes were all she could see of his face, lucid and intent, while he stroked his fingers across her stomach. He pulled away the lapel of her robe to bare one breast, and her toes curled while she waited for him to touch her. Just his fingertips, making the tiniest circles, then the gentlest little pinches. She put her arm over her eyes to keep him from seeing her—to bear it—to make it more intense. Now his lips, plucking lightly, driving her higher, and now his tongue, caressing her, his teeth, making her gasp from the excruciating pleasure. He was squeezing her other breast with his hand, and she wanted more of everything, had to have his weight on her. He took her arm away so he could kiss her, deep, drowning kisses, long and ravenous, burning into her, breaking her down. He had his hand in her hair, and he put the other one between her legs and began to knead the skin inside her thigh almost roughly, using his nails, squeezing her there, and she couldn’t recognize the sound of her own voice when she cried out to him, called out his name. He stopped her mouth with another hot, luscious kiss, and in the middle of it he opened her with his fingers and stroked her, all sleek and wet, throbbing for him. Her eyes were shut tight, she was shuddering, and the edge was coming closer, closer. Jack crooked his fingers inside her and at once she flew up and over it, soaring and soaring, out of herself, shot through with absolute pleasure. How could she live through this? It was exquisite, it was too much—slowly it released her and she began to float back to earth, and then she wanted it all over again.

He was taking little nibbling bites of her ribs, the undersides of her breasts. His mouth tickled. “Good thing Thomas is deaf,” he mumbled against her wet skin, and when she realized what he meant, she put her hand over her mouth and blushed crimson.