He felt that the night air had suddenly become several degrees warmer.
“Shall we?” he asked, and they started off down the path in silence.
Every time her dress rustled against his leg, he felt his excitement grow. Her fingertips brushed against the top of his hand as they walked, and that simple touch was more erotic to him than the naked embrace of any other woman he had known.
“Thank you,” she said.
For a second, he was quite thrown. “For what?”
“For introducing me to Lord Pemberly and telling him about my writing.”
“Oh. Of course. It was my pleasure.”
“It is not always in this day and age that a person keeps his word, so… whether Lord Pemberly likes my work or not, I thank you.”
Evan thought of his ‘word’ that he would not touch a servant in his own household, and grimaced.
“As I said, it was my pleasure. And I am sure Pemberly will find your writing quite satisfactory. Whether he will publish it, I cannot say, but that may be out of his control. He was telling me his business will soon be dictated more by… market forces than by his own personal opinions.”
“What market forces would those be, sir?”
The need for scandalous, prurient, and titillating material,
he thought, but did not say it out loud.
“He was not specific.”
“I see.”
They walked in silence for a few more moments before she spoke again.
“I would also like to… apologize,” she said quietly.
Her words broke through his haze of desire. “What? Why?”
“For misleading you before, when we met. I mean, about the books I have read…”
He imagined her again, in her bedroom back in London, reading some scandalous novel while her fingers slowly pulled up the edge of her dress, then crept up the silky skin of her thighs…
“Think nothing of it,” he croaked, trying to force the image from his mind.
“I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“That you would think less of me.”
If you only knew how I think of you, you would think less of me,
he said silently.
“I do not, I assure you. Think less of you, I mean. I was merely… surprised.”
There was a hint of anxiety in her voice. “Why, if I may be so bold?”
“Well… you seem like a very… innocent young woman.”
The anxiety changed to amusement. “And what do you think of me now?”
“I must confess, I… see you as a bit more… worldly than I had originally imagined.”
The tips of her fingers glided like silk over the back of his hand. It nearly drove him mad with longing.
“And is that a good or a bad – oh!”
She suddenly stumbled.
Evan reached out in a flash and caught her with his other arm.
Unfortunately, in doing so, his hand pressed firmly against her breast.
He did not realize it until he had hoisted her fully to her feet. Then he realized that he could feel the swell of her bosom beneath her dress, firm yet yielding to the touch.
He jerked back his hand as though he had touched a hot iron.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his face scalding hot in the moonlight.
“Yes,” she breathed… then began to sway dangerously. “No.”
He stepped forward just as she fell against him, her body pressing hard against his.
He flung one arm around her waist, the other pressed against her back.
Her head tilted back in the moonlight, and her eyes fluttered open.
He gazed into them. They were deeper than the night sky, more beautiful than the stars.
Her lips parted, soft and moist.
Her breath was sweet as strawberries.
He could not help himself.
He leaned down and kissed her.
Soft at first, so soft. But then, when she returned his ardor, he kissed her harder, his hunger growing, his appetite monstrous.
She tasted like the ripest fruit of the harvest, bursting with sweetness.
He devoured her.
She gasped for breath and he pulled away. He took the opportunity to run his lips light as a feather down her neck, then back up again. He brushed his lips across her ear, tracing the curves down to her lobe. He breathed just barely, so that she heard only a whisper of a sigh as she felt him tickling her skin.
She moaned and clutched her fingers in his hair, then drew him back to her lips and kissed
him
, doubling his own passion, a wild animal released.
As she drank in his kisses, his hand crept to her breast and he cupped its softness. Under his thumb he could feel the nipple stiffen beneath the cloth. He rubbed around it softly, spiraling slowly inwards, until it hardened even more beneath his gentle touch.
She groaned and arched her body against him.
He pulled back to free his hand, so that it would be free to roam and undo her dress –
Her dress.
His wine-bleared eyes focused on the black cloth and white apron of her uniform.
A servant girl, in my own house.
He stepped back in horror at what he had been about to do.
Her upturned face went from ecstasy to confusion. Her eyes fluttered open and she stared at him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered hoarsely. “I should not have done that.”
She raised her arms out to him, silently imploring him to return to her.
He stepped back again, shaking his head. “I… I am sorry. I should not have done that.”
And then he was stumbling as fast as he could along the garden path, back to the house, the taste of her filling his mouth, the heat of his desire threatening to engulf him in flames.
Marian was miserable.
She lay in bed for hours, unable to sleep, with the aching, unfulfilled throbbing between her legs the only thing to keep her company.
She cried a little, too – silent tears that trailed down the sides of her face and wet her hair as she lay on her back, staring up the ceiling.
One question kept circling through her mind, over and over:
Why?
Why did he stop?
It had started out so marvelously.
Actually, no, it had started out abominably, with that rude little imp of a man in the parlor drunkenly insulting her.
Before she could stop herself, she threw the insult back in his face.
It had been like that her entire life. When someone was rude to her or to someone she loved, the affront seemed to bypass her commonsense, and she just let loose her tongue without thinking. It had landed her in serious trouble in the past.
“Did Marian let slip the dogs of war again?” her father had asked her harried mother on more than one occasion.
It could have been the end of her publishing career.
Luckily the imp could take as good as he gave. For that she was thankful. It became a game… which she supposed she had won.
But when Lord Pemberly asked what books she wrote in the style of… she had to tell the truth.
What else could she have done? All her writings were rather lurid romances. She could hardly tell the man she was writing the next
Gulliver’s Travels
and then hand him a salacious novel about a sultan’s harem.
The only problem was that she had to tell the truth in front of Mr. Blake.
She saw the look in his eyes. The shock.
But after that look… she was not so sure.
He was expecting a blushing, dainty virgin in white,
she had thought bitterly at the time.
Well, I am not that.
He was attracted to her before, she knew it. The very first look he had given her, the day she arrived, had sent her into raptures. That was followed by polite coldness when he found out she was a servant. At first she thought it was because he despised her for being a commoner – which made her angry, but also made her want him more, if she were going to be honest.
Then he had saved her from his brother’s advances, and shown a renewed interest that led her to be too forward. As a result, he had retreated into coldness again and left her standing there alone.
Hot, then cold. Hot, then cold.
Then the parlor and the introduction to Lord Pemberly. Blake’s hilarity at her witticisms, his attempts to come to her aid.
His shock at her admissions.
She had left the parlor quite sure that he would never speak to her again. In fact, she had been sitting in the garden fretting over it – to come so close to his affections yet again, only to have him yank them away.
And then… what had transpired in the garden.
Good Lord.
She went over the whole thing in her mind again and again: the muscular firmness of his arm. The warmth of his skin. The dark pools of his eyes as he looked down at her… the smell she had breathed in, clean and masculine, that had scented his shirts in the wardrobe… the taste of his mouth, spiced with wine, as his lips found hers.
The thrills of pleasure that had shivered along her skin as he had traced along the curve of her neck.
The lightest sigh of breath in her ear, and the fierce heat and wetness it had brought to her thighs.
The way he had cupped her breast and slowly grazed her nipple with his thumb, torturing her with wanting more.
The unexpected hardness and size of what she had felt beneath the cloth of his trousers when she pressed against his body – which had only doubled the heat between her legs.
She had wanted him to take her right then and there, to lay her down upon the ground and enter her, to possess her, to fill her entirely.
And then… he had backed away.
She remembered his look of horror, as though he could not believe what he had almost done… with a
commoner.
She had held out her arms to him, begging him to come back to her.
He turned his back on her once again.
Hot, then cold.
This final barrage of fire and ice had finally broken her heart, she was sure of it.
She had not slept a wink when the morning sun began to peek through her blinds.
She hauled herself to her feet, her eyes scratchy with invisible sand, and trudged through her preparations for the day.
At breakfast she ate nothing. No one spoke to her – they only gossiped about Lord Pemberly and all his ‘degenerate exploits’ in London.
She froze in horror.
Lord Pemberly.
The manuscript.
She ran back upstairs and flung open her wardrobe, then rifled through the piles of papers on the floor. Several were tied with ribbon, and she looked back and forth between them anxiously, wondering which she should give him.
Finally she settled on her most recently completed work. It was not her most polished, but the characters were the best, and the romance was by far the most ardent.
She flew back down the stairs into the great hall – only to realize that no one was stirring yet but the servants. And of course old Lord Blake, who was yelling in the dining room for his breakfast.
She worked in an agitated state the next few hours, checking the windows every few seconds, afraid that she would see Lord Pemberly racing away in his carriage, waving back at her mockingly.
At lunch she ate only a few crusts of bread and drank a little tea, her stomach was so tied in knots. Between Blake and Pemberly – the two men who held her happiness in their careless, fickle hands – she was almost on the verge of hysteria.
Finally, at half past twelve, she heard the clopping of horses’ hooves on gravel.
Her heart seized in her chest, and she ran to the nearest window, terrified that she would see the coach-and-four receding in the distance.
It was only pulling up to the circular drive.
She raced down the stairs, clutching the manuscript in her hands, and burst through the front door – only to find the startled footmen loading up the luggage.
She stood over in the bushes and waited, praying that her aunt would not find her there and force her back into the house.
After about fifteen minutes of waiting, Blake and Lord Pemberly exited the front door into the courtyard. The imp was dressed impeccably, but his face was haggard and pale, and he lurched a bit as he walked. Besides trousers and boots, Blake wore only a loose shirt that showed off his muscular chest and shoulders.
Marian’s heart skipped a beat, though she was furious with it for doing so.
“Are you sure you’re well enough to make the trip?” Blake asked.
“Some hair o’ the dog that bit me shall set me right,” the imp burped.
“It’s seven hours’ ride.”
“Luckily the dog had quite a bit of hair.”
Blake laughed. “I hope last evening was worth it.”
“Pemberly’s First Axiom of Alcohol: the epic scope of the night before can only be judged by the resultant pain the following morning. Judging from my current condition, dear Blake, I dare say we bested both
The Iliad
and
The Odyssey
combined. Perhaps with
The Aeneid
thrown in for good measure.”
She did not want to approach Pemberly with Blake present, but what choice did she have? No choice at all, unless she wanted to dash her only opportunity against the rocks… and hope, perhaps for years, for another passing chance.
Blake had given her a sleepless night and made her feel a fool, damn him. She would not let him rob her of her dreams, too.
They were already at the carriage door. In a moment he would be gone.
“Lord Pemberly!” she cried out as she ran for the carriage.
The servants all looked alarmed.
Blake turned around, his face suddenly whiter than Pemberly’s.
The imp shuddered and closed his eyes. “Not… so…
loud
.”
“I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly, and held out her manuscript with the ribbon tied around it. She refused to look at Blake, who stared at her as though he had seen a ghost.
Pemberly squinted down at the sheaf of papers as though he couldn’t quite make out what he was looking at.
“My book,” she prodded him. “You promised to take a look at it…?”
His squinting eyes rose up to hers. There was not a bit of recognition in them.
Her heart nearly stopped. She had never considered that all his agreements were made in a drunken stupor, and that he might not remember them the next day.