“And earrings to match,” the shop man continued. “These are very rare specimens, and priced accordingly.” He mentioned the price in a discreet whisper.
“Money is not an object,” said Tom, who at that moment would have been prepared to forgo his whole estate in order to win her. He took the drop pearl and held it up to the light, entranced by it. It was as if the pearl encapsulated every tribute he wished to pay her, and more. It seemed to hold the memory of the kisses they had first exchanged.
But it would not do to give them to her. He knew that, suddenly and for certain. He remembered what she had said to him in the still room: “Nothing can make it right,” and in her wilful way, he knew she would see a string of black pearls as nothing more than a bribe. He would have to think of another way to reach her heart.
“Sir?”
“Another time, perhaps,” said Tom, putting down the earring. One day, he hoped, he might give her such things.
***
There was only one room in the house in Arlington Street that Griselda had felt comfortable in. This was the breakfast room on the ground floor, decorated in a comfortable ochre colour, with chairs upholstered in checked material and a wall of glazed book-cupboards.
It was here she stood while she waited for Thorpe to come back for dinner, taking down books from the shelves and then returning them, lacking the concentration to read but anxious for a distraction. She had been dressed for some time, in a silver-grey silk gown with an overdress of embroidered black zephyr gauze which had been made by the dressmaker in Stamford, and which had arrived that afternoon along with Thorpe’s messages from the country and a large hamper of game.
“Mr Randall not here, yet Manton?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, put him in the drawing room when he comes. And put some wine ready. I will be down directly I have dressed. Is my lady at home?”
“Dressing, sir, I believe.”
She heard the exchange in the hallway and wondered if she should go out and show herself, but hearing Thorpe running upstairs, decided she would go to the drawing room when she had found herself something to read. After all, that was why she had come in there – to find something to read, not to hide like a poor relation. She was mistress of the house, even if she did not feel like it.
She took a book of Shakespeare’s comedies, and went upstairs to the pale green grandeur of the drawing room. The candles had been lit, the chairs had been set by the fire and the wine tray waited on a side table. She went to the window and opened the book at random, wanting to lose herself in some fine verse.
Several pages into ‘As You Like It’, she was disturbed from the groves of leafy Arden by Thorpe coming into the drawing room.
“Ma’am,” he said, with a nod and slight bow.
“Sir Thomas.”
“I have asked Will Randall to dine with us tonight. I hope that’s agreeable?”
“Of course,” said Griselda, watching as he poured himself a glass of wine. He was dressed in stark black and white, correct full dress for town; but Griselda felt it did not suit him. He stood with his back to the fire holding his wine glass, looking oddly ill at ease, as if he were not the master of the place at all. He is as wretched as I am, she thought, as she put down her book.
She was aware that he was looking her over with a frank scrutiny, as if the delicate gauze and silk of her gown revealed more than she had intended. So she began to walk up the room, intending to look at the Claudian landscape that hung on the far wall, perhaps even to wish that she might be drawn into its hazy golden light and vanish rather than feel his eyes so intent on her.
“What were you reading?” he asked.
“Shakespeare: ‘As You Like It’.”
She looked back and saw him take up the book. She had marked her place with a ribbon and he stood silently reading the pages she had just read before he came in. The stiff awkwardness of his body dissolved as he became absorbed in the play. To Griselda it seemed that he shrugged off his air of formality, and stood as he might in the library at Priorscote, dressed in his somewhat battered crimson sarsanet night-gown, his hair rumpled and his cravat abandoned. It was his private self that she saw, and she felt a sudden longing for it, and for all the intimacies it implied. To be an ordinary wife, loved and appreciated by such a man, married in the ordinary way, with none of the web of complications that hedged round them. And to have him for her own, in her bed, his bare flesh pressed against hers.
She repressed the thought quickly and concentrated on her promenade up and down the room, while he continued to read. He was only reading, she insisted to herself, because it saved him the trouble of talking to her.
“‘Men are April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives’,” he quoted and closed the book with a grimace.
There was a long silence between them for a moment. Then they both spoke at once. Griselda wished she had not, for he instantly deferred to her.
“The Duchess of Renfrew called this morning,” she said.
He frowned.
“What did she want?”
“To ask us to her drum tonight.”
“Oh Lord,” he said. “Well, I suppose we must go. We offend the Duchess at our peril.”
“What were you going to say just now?” Griselda asked.
“Nothing.”
“Are you sure?” she persisted.
“I was going to ask your opinion of Rosalind,” he said. “In my mind she is one of Shakespeare’s finest creations.”
It was a surprising remark. A real attempt at conversation.
“That is because she has licence to speak her mind and her heart. Because of her disguise she may be herself,” Griselda said.
“Because she is pretending. Yes, an interesting irony. To be more truthful when pretending.”
“Her pretence is only superficial. When she is Rosalind again, she is less like herself. It is very strange and yet so true.”
“Perhaps you should go and disguise yourself again,” he said, glancing across at her. “Then I might find you again.”
“I am not sure you would like what you might find,” she said carefully, turning away. She would have walked away up the room again, but he reached out and turned her by the shoulder so that she must face him again. His hand lay warm and firm on her shoulder and his thumb gently traced her collar bone. She shivered with pleasure.
“Why are you so certain of that?” he said. He let his other hand hover by her cheek for a moment before he brushed the back of his fingertips across it, almost imperceptibly. But for Griselda, it felt as if he had touched her with a white-hot sword blade. She flinched, not from pain, but from the pleasure of it.
“Because…” She was struggling to resist the impulses of her body. She wanted to surrender herself to his embrace and let him kiss her, let it be just as it had been in the inn. She wanted nothing more than to kiss him in return, to wind her arms about like brambles and never release him again.
He bent and kissed her, not on the lips but softly on the forehead. Griselda tipped back her head, feeling like a marionette whose strings had been cut. She could scarcely support herself. Her desire for him had overwhelmed any sense of restraint in her, and she felt a quickening sense of triumph when he caught her around the waist as she staggered backwards. He began to kiss her throat with tender urgency, his arm about her waist growing tighter as he circled his hand around one of her buttocks, a feeling that was intensified by the softness of the fine linen shift she wore next to her skin.
Then in a moment he had caught up her skirts and his hand lay against her bare flesh. At the same moment he kissed her on the lips, and she kissed him back, with the eagerness of a child guzzling a ripe peach. He closed his eyes. She sensed his dizzy pleasure, and she kissed him more, enjoying the heady scent of his sandalwood cologne, as she pressed her lips to his temples and neck.
“Come,” he said, and taking her hand, lead her to the settee.
They sat together for a moment scorching each other’s mouth with their burning lips. Then he pushed up her skirts and then delicately lifted away the last layer of her shift, which had become entangled between her now twitching legs. With one finger he stroked her hair, and Griselda pushed up her legs, eager for more.
Now she lay flat on her back while he sat over her, his mouth still on her lips, his hand caressing between her legs. She felt she was like a fiddle in the hands of a master musician, able to produced the most extraordinary effects and sounds. She lay there, her eyes widening in astonishment, as he went on, touching and touching her, making her dance to a rhythm she had been longing to dance to for weeks. And above her, the elaborate painted plaster ceiling of the drawing room, with its gilded lozenges and pouting cupids, blurred as her body collapsed and collapsed again under an onslaught of extraordinary pleasure.
“Oh… I…” She could not form words.
“Le petit mort,” he murmured, pressing his hand gently against her and sending final shock waves through her body. As she gulped for breath he wrapped his warm arms around her and held her against him. She closed her eyes, burying her face in his silk figured waistcoat. And suddenly she wanted so much more, and began to kiss him again, almost frenzied now, wanting to feel more than his fingers, wanting to feel him within her and see him reach those heights with her. She slipped her hand to the fall of his breeches. She began to undo the buttons clumsily, and laughing slightly, he helped her. Quickly he stood up, pulled down his breeches, and sat down again, pulling her towards him, kilting up her skirts as he did so.
“Come, kneel over me,” he said, his hands on his waist, as if he were about to turn her in a country dance. But instead he gently brought her down onto him.
She could not help crying out with amazement as she felt him slide up inside her.
“At your service, ma’am,” he said, and then began to rock her back and forth, until she understood the movement for herself, and realised the power it unleashed in her.
And also what it did for him. She saw him again, no long Sir Thomas Thorpe, but the beautiful stranger from the inn, an extraordinary living sculpture with his head thrown back, eyes closed, soft gold hair tumbling back, more brilliant in texture and colour than any of the golden objects in the room. She saw his tongue lick his lips in slow pleasure as she rocked on and on. She pressed her hands to his cheeks and kissed him, stopping for a moment.
“No, don’t stop…” he said, in a half whisper. “I beg you.”
In truth she was now beyond the point of stopping herself. That tremendous sensation of excitement was building in her again, and she could feel that he too was near to it.
He let out a low groaning bellow, as he found his release and clasped her, while she soared on, laughing with the sheer animal pleasure of it, feeling that strange warmth wash over her body.
“Steady there,” he said. She looked down at him. He was smiling and wincing at the same time. Gently they prised themselves apart, and sat for a second or two in speechless exhaustion. Then he took her hands in his and kissed them.
“You are such a sweet creature,” he said, smiling at her. “And your hair is all coming down.” He brushed her hair back from her face. “Shall I call your maid?”
“No…” she said, still in a daze. “I can pin it up myself. There is still not so much of it, since I cropped it with the sheep shears at Glenmorval.”
He got up from the seat and buttoned up his breeches laughing. Then he stretched out his hand to her and gently pulled to her feet.
“What have I done to your gown?” he said, as she stood up. He reached out and attempted to smooth her skirts. “Well, if the creases do not come out, it does not matter. Perhaps you will set a new fashion – for sweet disorder in the dress.” And he put his arms around her again and began to kiss her on the lips. “My darling…”
“I ought to look to my hair,” she said, detaching herself from him and going to the pier glass. Her hair that had been so carefully put into place by Hannah now looked like wheat battered down after a sudden summer storm, whilst her cheeks were a flaming red. A guilty red, she could not help thinking, as she touched one of them with her fingertips and felt the heat of it.
“Do you know,” he said, coming up behind her and looking at her reflection, “I don’t believe I have ever seen you look finer.” And he took both her hands again, and bent over them, and kissed them.
“Please… no,” she said, suddenly uncomfortable. She felt the tide of pleasure drain away from her to be replaced by confusion. “I…”
“What’s wrong?”
“I scarcely know,” she said moving quickly away from the glass and its reflection which had now begun to disturb her. She realised now why – at Cromer she had seen him kiss Caroline’s hands, when he had made that public promise to her.
“Griselda?” he said, moving towards her.
She put up her hands, palms out, to make him keep his distance.
“No, please. Please do not. I do not want you to be kind to me.”