Almost a Gentleman (29 page)

Quickly, abruptly, he thrust himself upward a few times, and then, when he felt himself comfortably within her, he lifted both himself and her out of the chair and walked to the bed. She could see them, so joined, in the mirror as he carried her past it. She was still wearing her stockings, though one of her shoes had fallen off and the other was just about to. Pink stockings, black garters, long crimson ribbons dangling from her shoe—how oddly, ineffectually civilized it all looked in contrast to his dark, animal body, legs thickly muscled and covered with just a bit too much wiry black hair. She hugged his waist more tightly with her legs.

"Satyr," she whispered, twisting the thick locks of hair on his head until they stood up like goat horns.

He'd whispered something back, but she couldn't hear it over the creak of bedsprings. She was on her back now; he smiled down at her as he lifted her legs over his shoulders—was he really going to drive even more deeply into her? It seemed that he was. Throwing her hands back, she grasped the bed's headboard; thus anchored, she moved her hips in vigorous harmony with his.

They each came quickly—merrily, even—like an orchestra hurrying through the final chords of an overture. They lay next to one another for some minutes, looking, resting, considering. Slowly, they stretched their hands toward each other as the curtain rose on a slower, more passionate drama.

Laughing with delight or groaning with passion, they moved together through the portals of a world that seemed to create itself at their touch. Each of them dared the other to go further—with eyes wide and shining, bodies taut, and senses ready to be astonished, they coaxed each other into new positions, each with its profound or novel sensations, its possibilities for new and daring intimacies to be stolen or granted. He nibbled her ears, stroked her eyelids, kissed her slowly and lusciously on the insides of her thighs until she moaned and whimpered. She tickled him under his balls, sucked his nipples, licked the sweat that pooled in the center of his chest, took his testicles into her mouth, rolling her tongue around them as though they were a ripe, double fig.

He sank back on the pillows; she straddled him, leaning over him while he tongued her breasts and squeezed her buttocks in his hands. He guided her onto himself, his hands cupping her while she rode the shaft of his penis. Until finally, spent beyond the limits of her endurance, she shuddered and collapsed on top of him, falling into his arms while he climaxed mightily below her.

And just as she'd told him it would—had it just that morning or had it been several lifetimes ago?—his purring, comforting snore lulled her into delicious, refreshing sleep, her head atop his chest.

She might have slept all night if her empty stomach hadn't awakened her, perhaps an hour later. She stretched her muscles, trying not to disturb him. He was curled around her, arms around her breasts, belly sweetly curved around her buttocks.

"You're up, are you, Phoebe?"

"Ummm, yes. And I'm absolutely starving."

He laughed, and padded out of bed to light a lamp—a satyr still, she thought, but perhaps a domesticated one. Or perhaps not.

"Stay there," he called. "Now where did we put that basket?"

"Oh, thank heaven, the basket. Is there anything good to eat in there?"

"A cold veal roll in aspic. A Stilton. Bread, oranges, and a bottle of excellent ale. Wait. I'll bring it to you."

He joined her against the pillows where she sat, among the twisted disarray of sheets and quilts that were strewn about them like spent ammunition after a battle. Her stockings were bunched around her ankles. She pulled them off, smoothed them, and put them on the bed table, along with a garter that had somehow lodged itself under a pillow.

Her muscles ached as thoroughly as if she'd been fencing. Well, it
had been
rather a battle, she thought. A delicious, mock-heroic epic. She was ravenous.

"Here, try some of this." He popped a bite of Stilton into her mouth, following it with a slice of veal; she sucked his fingers between the morsels of food he fed her. Another slice of meat now, this time with its rich jelly folded within it. A bite of crusty bread.

"My goodness, what lovely food. There isn't a cook in London who could do a better job with this veal."

"It is good, isn't it? Alison's father was French. He'd had a good job as chef for an aristocrat who'd emigrated during the Terror. Her favorite childhood memories are from when he'd bring her down to the kitchen with him. His only legacy to her was a precious portfolio of recipes; both parents died when she was twelve, you see, leaving her to the care of her father's employer, who promptly tossed her out onto the street. Luckily, she was pretty, which allowed her to survive. And unluckily, she was pretty, which rather determined how she would survive out there."

"She praises your kindness to her."

"When she's not praising me in other ways."

"Perhaps it was just as well that she'd prepared me for you." Her hand had crept under the sheet and into his lap. He slapped it away.

"Not until after I've fed you properly. You need to eat, to keep your strength up. Otherwise I'm in danger of wearing you out, tempted as I am to fuck you until you're but a pale shadow of yourself."

"How awful. Why don't I find it a fearful prospect?"

"I expect that you're too brave for your own good."

He took an orange from the basket and peeled it, feeding it to her a section at a time. She chewed slowly, letting the sweet juice slide down her throat.

"Not too brave, really," she said. "When I took risks as Marston, I thought that I was only endangering myself. Which didn't matter, you see. I'd already lost every that mattered."

"You mustn't think that way. You matter to
me
. You matter terribly." He ran the tip of his thumb around the outside of her lips, watching intently as her eyes and mouth softened.

"But you must try the ale," he added quickly. "Ernest Cockburn's brother brews it. Here, I'll pour you a glass."

She took a long, thirsty draught. "I don't usually drink ale, you know. Hmmm, it's sweet…"

"That's the malt."

"And bitter, too, in a rather haunting way."

"Yes, those are the hops. Sweet and bitter in a rather haunting way. You're exactly right, James Cockburn's as much a poet as a brewer. His ale is as subtle as the best champagne."

He laughed. "Enough about poetry. I fear I've given the ale rather too foamy a head. Come here, let me lick off that bit from the corner of your mouth."

Which led to a kiss and another bout of lovemaking. ("I've lost count," she whispered afterwards. "Good," he whispered back, "I don't like counting in bed.")

"Mr. Cockburn's brother brews a marvelous ale."

"Yes, I think so too."

"We spilled a little of it on the sheets, though. We should have taken care to finish it up before we became otherwise engaged."

"It's your fault, you know, for being so irresistible."

"And not yours, for being so… at the ready?"

"Oh well, maybe a little." He blew out the light and gathered her to him under the chaotic tangle of bed linens.

She sighed contentedly as he rested his lips on the back of her neck.

"But do you think, David, that we shall ever make love in a way that is not quite so… combative?"

"I think that we shall make love in every conceivable way in the lifetime we'll spend together. Now go to sleep. I don't want you dozing through your first view of my countryside."

A lifetime
. The word drifted through her head as his purring snore stared up. Pretty word,
lifetime
, she thought.
Well, I'll simply have to make do with as much of a lifetime as we can cram into a week in the country
. She nestled into him, cradling her buttocks against his belly. His hands were tight around her breasts. His penis—lively even in sleep—quivered softly in the cleft of her arse.

A real lifetime together—the sort of happy, productive married life he had in mind, anyway—simply wasn't possible. But she wouldn't let regrets spoil their first night together. And anyway, she thought, it was impossible to feel anything but profound happiness—the sweet and bitter of it simultaneously—while his big body enveloped hers. They'd have a week together. Two weeks, perhaps. She'd live every moment as fully as she could. And then she'd state her terms. They wouldn't be what he wanted; she'd understand if he found them impossible. And if he couldn't comply, well then, the memory of these weeks would have to suffice.

"I see." Lady Kate Beverredge raised a graceful fluted teacup to her lips as she endeavored to understand everything Mr. Simms had told her.

As Phoebe had known he would, he'd had taken the earliest possible opportunity to inform Kate of the previous night's events, begging leave to see her just hours after Phoebe's departure. As Phoebe had predicted, he'd told the story in meticulous and scrupulous detail. But what Phoebe wouldn't have imagined was the extremity of the anxiety with which he'd recounted what had happened. His face seemed somehow caved in; for the first time in Kate's memory he looked old. She was startled by how the violent events had taken their toll on him; his teacup rattled in its saucer.

Poor dear man, Kate thought. Well, of course the blood and screaming must have been most harrowing, not to speak of the pain and terror the boy had had to endure. "But we mustn't worry about our beloved friend," she told him. "She'll be absolutely safe with Lord Linseley. He's a good man, Mr. Simms."

Mr. Simms sighed. "He seems so. But I'm afraid it's going to be difficult for me to cease worrying about her, your ladyship. Worry has become rather a way of life with me, you see. Somehow, no matter how outrageously she acts when I'm under the same roof with her, I feel that I can protect her. But with her gone so far away…"

"Yes. Well, she's led us all a merry chase these past few years. But perhaps she's finally found what she's been looking for."

His eyes looked skeptical.

Kate smiled apologetically. "Of course, she did choose rather an eccentric manner of searching for her heart's desire. But I expect that in our secret souls we're all eccentrics."

She paused. "And then again, there's the fact that she's kept our lives from being as tedious as they might have been these few past years."

He nodded. "Well said, Lady Kate. I've certainly been grateful for the excitement. But lately I've come to think that a tedious patch or two might not be such a bad thing at my age. Of course, not
at your
age, obviously. For may I tell you how very well you are looking this morning?"