“True,” he said, finally. “We should get to shore or at least to the dock, as quickly as possible.”
“No! Not like this! And certainly not the dock! No splinters for me, thank you.” She immediately felt out of her depth. She wasn’t prepared to deal with the consequences of her own desire.
“You shall have to get out sometime, Nora,” he said as he made his way purposefully across the lake toward shore. Damn, Juno had her bathing dress.
“I propose a simple trade,” he said, turning back toward her, his eyes glinting mischievously.
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense. My arms are getting tired.”
“Perfect. I propose we get back to shore where you can . . . rest your arms. And once we are done, I shall give you your dress.”
“Once we’re done?”
“Yes.”
“Out here in the open?!”
“Yes.”
“You’re mad.” And yet she couldn’t quell the swift beat of her heart or the echoing throb lower down her body.
“Probably. Still, you have heard my offer. Do you agree to my terms?”
How could she not? Without a word, she turned and swam toward shore.
As he watched her swim, he grinned. She moved so gracefully in the water. He knew he could outswim her, overtake her even fully clothed, but he couldn’t resist watching her. Glimpses of her calves, her buttocks, her back, as she sliced efficiently through the water, tantalized him. He followed leisurely in her wake, enjoying the view.
As soon as he found his footing, he reached for her. Soaked and clinging, his clothing was an unwelcome impediment to both of them. He couldn’t help but notice that she clawed at his buttons as eagerly as he did, and his desire spiked sharply. They were both still waist-deep in the water when he finally tossed his smalls toward shore.
The water made it easy to slide her body against his, but that didn’t account for the ease with which she slid her legs around him. Her willingness shocked and thrilled him. His want was overwhelming. On impulse, he thrust his cock unerringly into her sheath, hot and tight and welcoming. Her eyes widened as she gasped and clung tightly to his shoulders.
“I am sorry,” he said, instantly contrite at his selfishness but unable to stop himself. “I should have waited. I should have gone slower, should have done more to please you first.”
She laughed. A wild, unbridled sound. Unbelievable. Her laugh rang around the lake. Then she flattened herself against him and kissed his neck. A light drizzle had begun, misting her already wet hair and giving it an ethereal glow.
“As you’ve already observed, I appreciate the direct approach. Don’t worry about me.” She rubbed against him. “I can take care of myself.” She pulled his head toward hers and kissed him deeply.
He groaned at her enthusiasm, and his hips began to move against her, thrusting slow and methodical. But he hadn’t anticipated the effect of buoyancy. Even with them both struggling to get closer, to practically consume each other, the force of their movements was blunted and ineffectual.
“I did not think this through,” he said as he stilled. “I just needed to be inside you.” She panted against his chest, and he felt her shiver not just in his arms but through their joining. The sensation shot through his groin and up his spine, fanning the flames higher. He could not let her go right now, even if the world depended on it. “Just hold on.”
He felt her nod, felt her lightly clamp down on his shoulder with her teeth. He groaned again and, without disengaging, carried her onto shore. He grinned as he identified a convenient boulder, a natural table at the perfect height. For a few moments, they just held each other, her head buried in his shoulder. The feel of her in his arms was beyond words.
“I love you,” he blurted out, shocking even himself, as he braced her against the rock and thrust home. She gripped his shoulders as he began to move in an ancient rhythm, but she didn’t show any sign she’d heard him. The rain grew stronger, drops pelting them both. The only sounds from her were whimpers and pants as her hands slid lower, pulling him to her harder. After she cried out, he lowered her down onto the rock, still hard within her and gave her just a moment’s respite before beginning their dance anew, their bodies slick and needy.
He leaned over her, his head against her neck, and whispered again, “I love you.”
Her arms came up between them and pushed lightly but firmly against his chest.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t use your pretty pillow talk on me. I know what we have here, and we don’t need to pretend it’s anything more than it is.”
He wanted to protest, wanted to tell her how true his words were, but the realization was still so fresh that he feared it. He didn’t trust himself to speak again and so he let his body, already so close to exploding, speak for him. Their moans mingled and echoed across the lake, and when she cried out in ecstasy again, he tried to cover her mouth with his, not to muffle her but to taste the intensity of her pleasure. And when his own peak overcame him, he groaned his love into her damp hair and emptied himself into her.
As their breathing slowed, he lay next to her with his arm draped possessively over her breasts. The downpour eased to a gentle but steady shower. Suddenly, she leapt up and began spinning in slow circles, her head thrown back and her arms spread wide. He loved the sound, and the sight of her—unrestrained, unburdened, celebrating the moment with abandon. He suspected she was a pagan in a previous life. When he said as much, she raised her head and laughed.
“I can’t help myself. This all feels so unreal. I’ve never dreamed, never imagined how wonderful it could be to dance naked in summer rain. It’s as if we’re Adam and Eve in our own private Eden.” Her spins grew faster and more erratic until, midway across the shore, she stopped and swayed dizzily. Her arms began to undulate, in imitation of the Eastern dancers they’d seen at the Exhibition. Some music in her head made her hips to sashay back and forth, a vision that mesmerized him. Eyes closed, she continued to move in a private rhythm until he simply had to swoop her into his arms. And dance with her, slow and close.
“You are so enamored of the weather that I can only deduce our interlude must have been rather unsatisfactory.” He hoped his tone was suitably light, masking his uncertainty. But she looked up at him shrewdly.
“You can’t seriously doubt how very satisfactory that was, exquisite even. It would be clear to anyone within a mile’s radius, anyone who had the capacity of hearing. Could you possibly be insecure about your prowess? Impossible. You are man at his most elemental. You are Adam before the fall.”
“Then why will you not say you love me?”
She stilled, immediately sober. Her hands pulled out of his.
“This is a fantasy, a momentary respite from the real world. You do not love me. You cannot. And I cannot love you.”
He reached for her again. “How else can you explain this? You feel it too.”
“Just accept what we have. Nothing like this can last. You will need to marry one of those lovely girls who attends balls in bell-shaped white dresses, who can manage your household proficiently, and bear you children to carry on the noble Devin line. You most definitely don’t need a—” She couldn’t bring herself to continue. She shivered.
“We shall discuss this later. It is getting cold, Nora. I should get you back to the house and in dry clothes.”
As they walked back, weighed down by their sopping garments, the grounds brought back memories of her childhood: the mist, the scent of damp earth and crushed weeds, even the slight suction of mud on her feet.
“My father taught me how to swim. During the week, while he worked at the shop, my mother and I resided at Poppyfield Manor. Don’t laugh, it really was called Poppyfield. He would spend his days off at home with us. Whenever we had the chance, he took me to the pond to swim. Such a long time ago . . . I took those golden days for granted.”
“I think all happy children do.” His tone disturbed her.
“Were you not a happy child, then?”
“My childhood was what can be expected for a viscount. I was raised to be a man. What made you so happy?”
“My parents doted on me. We didn’t have much money, and my father didn’t have much free time. But I realized in adulthood that whatever they had was devoted to me. My father taught me to read, to swim, to ride. It didn’t matter to him that I was a girl. He taught me everything he knew. Minnie’s parents were our only servants, so loyal and dependable. I’ve known Minnie all her life. They were like family. She and Erich are all I have left. It’s been a long time. I’m sure my memories reflect brighter because of the distance, because of their loss. I only remember the good.”
“The last time I spoke with my father,” he said haltingly, “the day before he left for his fatal trip, we argued. Our relationship was generally cordial and polite. But that day it was as if he felt some push to bare his soul. He talked about how much he loved my mother, how deeply he loved each of us, and I laughed in his face. He talked of how he wished he could share the magic of his voyages and excursions with us, the joy of discovery, the wonder of unexpected beauty. He told me he wished I would—how did he put it?—that I would let my soul take wing and seek out my own adventures. It was infuriatingly self-centered. And I told him so.”
“You loved him.”
He shook his head.
“The last time we spoke, I told my father that he was a miserable example of fatherhood—that, with all his talk of wonder and beauty, he sacrificed his family’s happiness for his own selfish desires. I told him he was not truly a father, just another occasional guest regaling us with entertaining stories and pretty artifacts. I told him he should be ashamed of himself.”
“Oh, Alex. You were young.”
“I was all of eighteen, old enough not to be so petulant and emotional.”
“You were young,” she said firmly, “and you’d obviously been concealing your pain for a long time.”
“It was not pain. It was fury. How dare he abandon my mother time after time? How dare he abandon us? Andrew and Amelia needed a father; they needed guidance and direction only a father can give. My mother needed a true spouse, an active partner. Instead, he gallivanted and played, focusing only on his own whims.”
“You loved him, and he loved you as well as he knew how.”
“If he had not gone, he would not have died.”
“You don’t know that. Any of us could die as a random fluke at any time. My father died crossing a city street; he didn’t need to travel hundreds of miles.”
“I was not the son he wanted. If I had been, he would not have felt the need to leave.”
She wrapped her arms around him, wishing she could offer him absolution.
“I know it to be an irrational thought, but there it is. I was a disappointment to him. I was not manly enough, not brave enough, not worldly enough. I live a small life, and this life was a disappointment to him.”
His words echoed her own self-doubts so astutely, her eyes watered.
A small life.
“You’re a good man, a fine man. You are the most sober, responsible man I know. You could never be a disappointment.”
“He wanted me to be like him, to take risks, to embrace danger and adventure. He saw me as a bore and a coward.”
For a moment, she saw the child in him, desperate for approval, and she longed to comfort him. But she knew such reassurance would be meaningless to him, coming from anyone but the one person whose validation he most needed but could never have. She knew the feeling of not living up to the expectations and values of a parent long deceased. No one else could assuage the guilt; one only learned to live with it.
Chapter Fifteen
Evans Principle . . . well, not so much a principle as good advice, dear: Expect the unexpected, especially in a room filled with books!
I
n the light of a new morning, Honoria berated herself for being old enough to know better than to succumb to purely physical pleasures. The guest room wasn’t large enough for her to escape her thoughts so she practically ran to the one room she could trust as a refuge in any building: the library. She breathed a sigh of relief to find it unoccupied. Even though she’d only been in this particular library once since her arrival, there was always something soothing and familiar about being surrounded by so many paper and leather volumes. She decided to start at one end of the room and work her way around to see how the books were organized. Every house had a system; the most practical and literal would alphabetize while the more creative and fanciful might group books by topic or theme or personal whim. She’d sorted through many an estate that had a wall for practical matters like agriculture, another for philosophical texts throughout the ages, and yet another for literary value. Activities like this were exactly what she needed to distract her from the emotional chaos of what had happened the day before at the lake.
As she made her way carefully through the shelves of this room, however, no particular system announced itself to her. With Dante between Mary Wollstonecraft and Olaudah Equiano, there didn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to the arrangement of books in this room. She started at one corner, making her way methodically along a wall. Broad mahogany columns interrupted the shelves on each wall, separating them by quarters. Eventually, each quarter seemed to resolve into a different personality. On each wall, the right-most quarter she examined seemed without logical organization whatsoever, the second followed a very mundane alphabetical order, and the third (usually made up of political treatises) was organized by political party. It took her until halfway around the room to realize the sections must belong to different members of the Devin family. She guessed that Amelia was the right-most quarter, in part because it held more novels and light, happy pieces. She sensed that Alexander’s sections were not the alphabetized ones, which would be rather too obvious for him. Instead, she surmised that his was the left-most section on each wall, with books grouped by purpose and then alphabetized within each group. When she reached the last wall, she noticed a small, worn volume with an open back on a shelf above her head; a dun-colored item, little more than a stack of rough pages sewn together, shouldn’t have drawn anyone’s eye amid so many elegant stacks of books, but she couldn’t resist a closer look at the unusual binding and yellowing parchment. She had to stretch on her toes and lean against a mahogany dividing column to be able to reach said volume, and was so intent on the prize that she was startled when the wood beneath her fingers slid sideways.