IT FELT A LITTLE AWKWARD, Nathaniel found. He had kept mistresses occasionally in former years and had visited them by appointment. There had never been anything awkward about it. He had called on them for one purpose only. Neither he nor the woman concerned had expected anything else or thought anything else necessary.
It was somewhat different with Sophie. She was not his mistress. She was his friend. She opened the door for him before he had a chance to knock. She was wearing a long loose dressing gown over her nightgown and her hair was down, though it was caught back with a ribbon at the nape of her neck. But she greeted him with her usual smile and bade him good evening before turning to lead the way upstairs, a single candle in a candlestick in one hand.
He had not known whether to bend his head and kiss her. He had not done so. She had not looked as if she expected it. He half expected that she would pause at the first landing and lead him to the sitting room, but she continued on her way to the next floor and took him to her bedchamber. Her dog, lying on the rug before the hearth, thumped its tail several times in greeting and made not even a token objection to his appearance there. That collie, he thought, would win no prizes as a watchdog or as a sheep-dog—it would doubtless welcome the wolf into the fold.
There was another single candle burning on the dressing table—she set hers beside it. The bedcovers were turned neatly back from the bed. The scene had been carefully set.
It had not felt awkward the first time. That had not been planned. This had. And it felt damned awkward. He did not know whether to engage her in social conversation or to proceed to the business at hand. They had not exchanged a word since their initial and rather formal greetings at the door.
“This does not feel right, Sophie,” he said, running one hand through his hair after he had set down his hat and cane and removed his cloak. He smiled ruefully at her.
“You would prefer to leave, then?” she asked quite calmly. “You may do so, Nathaniel. I shall not protest.”
She thought he did not want her.
He reached for her hand and drew her closer to him. She watched him with steady eyes and expressionless face. He lifted his other hand and untied the ribbon at the back of her neck before dropping it to the floor.
“I find it hard to treat you only as a woman I wish to bed,” he said, “although I
do
wish to bed you. I see you as Sophie, someone I have liked and respected for years.”
She half smiled before closing the distance between them and setting her face full against the folds of his neckcloth. He could hear her drawing a slow breath. He could smell her hair. She must wash it in the same soap she used on her skin. He could see it in tight, heavy ripples all down her back.
She looked lovely, he thought suddenly. And it was not only her hair. He realized what it was then. Her dressing gown was a very pale blue. The nightgown beneath it was white. She looked different—delicate, very feminine—in light colors. Not that she ever looked unfeminine, but ...
He lowered his head, turning it so that his cheek rested against the top of her head. He set his hands on her shoulders.
“What do you want?” he asked her. “Straight to bed? Straight into action, so to speak?” He did not believe he would be capable of going into action if she answered in the affirmative. He wondered if this was going to become downright embarrassing.
She lifted her head and looked into his face only inches from her own. “This is a mistake, is it not?” she said, sounding like the sensible, practical Sophie he had long known. “I thought it would feel like the other night. It does not. Yet I do not want you to leave.”
No, he did not want to leave either, though he could not feel sufficiently aroused to do what he had come to do. She was not—
damn it all!
—his mistress.
He touched his lips to hers. She made no move to deepen the kiss, though she did not draw away either.
“Let us just lie down, shall we?” he suggested. “There are no rules for relationships of this sort, you know. There is no rule that says our bodies must be joined within five minutes or half an hour or an hour of my arrival. Or at all in fact.”
“No.” She bit her lip. “You would not prefer simply to leave, Nathaniel? You are not staying because I said I wished you to?”
“Let us lie down,” he said after kissing the end of her nose. “I will blow out the candles, if I may, and remove some clothes.”
It was in some way laughable, he supposed. She removed her dressing gown; he stripped to his breeches. She climbed in on one side of the bed; he climbed in on the other after dousing the candles. They were behaving just like a couple of virgin newlyweds. He reached across and took her hand in his. Their fingers curled about each other’s and clung. The collie on the hearth heaved a deep sigh.
“Tell me about your day,” he said, and then wished he had not started with that particular request. He did not wish her to think he was prying about Pinter’s afternoon visit. Not yet.
But she proceeded to give him an account of her walk in the park with Lavinia—Lavinia herself had declined to say more than that it had been by far the most pleasant afternoon yet of her stay in town—and to tell him how very much she liked his cousin.
“I felt guilty,” he said, “as if I had foisted her upon you, Sophie. She is not an easy companion with whom to have to spend a whole afternoon.”
“She is quite delightful,” she said, her voice warm and very obviously sincere. “She is an acquaintance I very much hope will develop into a close friend. We are only four years apart in age, you know. We are peers and share a great many ideas and opinions.”
“Sophie,” he said, unconsciously lacing his fingers with hers, “what am I to do with her? She is four and twenty, almost past marriageable age, and yet she will not recognize the urgency of finding a husband. I must confess that my concern is partly for myself—I do not know how I will endure her company for another six years—but mainly it is for her. How can she ever be happy if she never marries? Spinsterhood is a dreadful fate for a woman. And in her case there is no need of it. She is wellborn, wealthy, and damned lovely in the bargain—pardon my language. I forget myself.”
“What are you to do with her?” she asked. “Nathaniel, you do not have to
do
anything. Lavinia is an adult, and an intelligent one. She knows what she wants. She cannot yet do it because her father’s will has kept her fortune from her, but she knows. Perhaps you should simply trust her.”
“Trust her to turn down every respectable offer until there is not one unmarried man left in England to make one?” he asked.
She laughed softly. “Yes, if necessary,” she said.
“And what kind of advice is that?” he asked her, exasperated.
“Wise advice, I hope,” she said. “Most women by the time they leave the schoolroom wish for nothing but homes and husbands and families of their own. Your sister Georgina is one of them, I believe. She will be happily married before Christmas, I dare predict. I was one of them too. I met Walter, he offered for me, I accepted, and I thought that at the age of eighteen I had achieved everything necessary for my life’s happiness. But there are some women who are different, who feel that there has to be more to life than marriage to the first man who offers—or even perhaps to the one hundred and first. Lavinia is such a woman. Trust her.”
It was such very sensible advice that it was hard to admit to himself that he had not really considered the idea before. But trust Lavinia? She would make a disaster of her life if left to herself, would she not? But then he respected Sophie’s judgment. He had heard something else that had distracted his mind from Lavinia’s problems, however. He raised himself on one elbow, propped the side of his head against his hand, and looked down at her—his eyes had grown accustomed to the dark.
“Poor Sophie,” he said. “You thought to have had a lifetime’s happiness with Walter and yet all you had was—what? Six years? Seven?”
“Seven,” she said.
“And no children.” He had never really thought of Sophie’s childlessness until now. He smoothed the fingers of his free hand through the hair at her temple. “Did you long for them?”
“At first,” she said. “But we could not have subjected children to the kind of life we led and it was important that I stay with Walter.”
A thought struck him. Actually it was a thought that had been niggling at him ever since the night before last. “You know a way of preventing it from happening, then?” he asked her.
She smiled at him. “All army women know a dozen ways,” she said, “though most of us would not admit it even under torture, in normal circumstances.”
“I would not wish to get you with child,” he said.
“You will not.” She was gazing calmly back into his eyes.
“If I did—if I
do
—you would have to marry me, Sophie,” he said, “like it or not. I would not allow any argument.”
“It will not happen,” she told him.
He wondered then why she had not married again, why she had told him the day before that she had no wish to do so. Had the dreams of her eighteen-year-old self died in the ten years since then? Did she no longer want the home and husband and children that would have brought her lifelong happiness? Or was it just that the dream could never now come true since Walter was dead? She had seen to it that she did not conceive during the years of her marriage because it had been important to her to be with Walter. Did she wish now that there had been at least one child after all?
But he could not ask her. The question was too personal. He did not have the right. He was only her friend and her temporary lover.
He bent his head and kissed her, lightly at first, prepared to draw back his head if it became apparent that she was still not ready for intimacy. Her lips softened and parted beneath his. He slid his tongue past her teeth and deep into her mouth. She sucked gently and he could feel himself harden into arousal.
“I think we should remove a few more layers,” he said.
“Yes.” She waited for him to remove her nightgown but she lifted first her hips and then her arms to help him. She did not help him remove his breeches.
The awkwardness had gone. They had talked for perhaps half an hour, something that he would have expected to make the situation of their being in bed together more awkward still. But it had not. It seemed the most natural thing in the world now to turn to each other and begin the play that would bring them both sexual pleasure.
Not that Sophie knew a great deal about play. He supposed it was understandable that a respectable married woman would not even if she
had
been married for seven years. A man perhaps would not think of teaching his wife to give or receive pleasure. A marriage bed, after all, was seen by most men as the place where his children were begotten. Most men did their playing elsewhere. Though Sophie’s marriage bed had not been for that—Walter had died too soon, before they had had a stable home of their own. And Walter was definitely not the sort to have kept a fancy piece on the side.
But Walter was the last person he wanted to be thinking of at the moment. Indeed, he did not want to be
thinking
at all.
He gave her pleasure with his hands and his mouth. He knew soon enough by her tautened nipples and her soft sighs and the wetness between her thighs that she was pleased. He would not be demanding tonight, he decided. He would not bewilder her. He would teach her on another occasion how to use her own hands for both their pleasure.
“You are ready for me?” he asked her eventually, his mouth against hers. He parted folds with his fingertips, pushed one a little way inside her, and felt her close about him. “You want me, Sophie? Here? All the way inside here?”
“Yes.” She twisted against him, parted her thighs without coaxing as he came over her, made a cradle of them as he lowered himself, and lifted her legs to twine about his own. She thrust her breasts upward to rub her hardened nipples against his chest. Her eyes, he noticed when he looked down at her, were closed. Her mouth was open in an agony of wanting.
He had given her more than pleasure, he realized in that moment. He had aroused desire and need in her. He had seen it feigned in countless women. This was unmistakably the real thing.
He positioned himself carefully at the entrance to her body and pressed hard inside, watching her face all the while. She moaned and tipped her head back against the pillow.
Sophie. Oh dear God, Sophie.
He had intended to work her slowly as he had done two nights before, in order to give her more pleasure before he allowed his own release. But he realized suddenly that she was going to come to climax herself—if he gave her what she needed. But he had no experience ...
He pumped hard and repeatedly into her, giving her his full length, driving past the tightness of her inner muscles. But she could not seem to let go and he did not know how to help her.
Oh yes, he did, though.
He slid one arm down between them, found the small area that he knew would help her, and rubbed his thumb very lightly over it.
Her climax came violently. She shouted out his name and shuddered against him quite out of control. He held still and deep in her, lowered most of his weight onto her, clasped both her hands tightly in his own, and set his cheek against the side of her head.
And this was Sophie?
he said to himself in wonder over and over again.
This was Sophie?
The collie was sniffling and whining softly beside the bed, he half noticed.
When she was quiet and relaxed and—yes, asleep beneath him, he lifted some of his weight off her again and worked to his own quieter, but utterly satisfying release. Before disengaging and moving to her side, he saw that her eyes were open, watching him sleepily.
“Sophie?” He took her hand in his and raised it to his lips. “It was good?”