His One Woman (13 page)

‘We shall miss you,' she said, and sincerity rang in her voice. Here was the one man to whom she would give her charge without compunction, for she still thought of herself as Marietta's guardian. She might not have been so happy had she known of their coming secret tryst, for neither of them mentioned it, and when Marietta left the house on the next day Aunt Percival assumed that she was making one of her regular visits to an old friend and relative.

‘Comfortable, but not luxurious,' was Marietta's verdict on Jack's rooms. He had taken her bonnet and placed it on the dresser which occupied one wall. He had a spirit lamp with a kettle boiling on it, a tea-pot and cups and saucers ready for her. There was even a plate of small sweet biscuits on the table before the sofa. Everything, indeed, seemed orderly and proper—except the inward emotions of the two principals in this impromptu tea party.

Actually drinking the tea compelled them to behave themselves as though they were in the Senator's
best parlour. If Jack had thought at all of what might happen when Marietta visited him, he might have imagined them engaging in some light and amusing conversation after which he would ask her to marry him. Once he had done so, they might perhaps indulge themselves in some light and juvenile lovemaking guaranteed not to frighten an untried maiden lady in her late twenties.

At first everything went as he might have imagined it would, for Jack had absolutely no intention of seducing Marietta and she was equally determined not to be seduced. Even their brief bout of passionate lovemaking on the Van Horns' terrace had not warned them of how strong their feelings were for one another.

Matters began to go wrong—or was it right?—shortly after the tea was drunk and the biscuits eaten. Jack moved the table away from the sofa and sat down beside Marietta, who was glowing as though she were in her late teens. First the strong wind through which she had walked to Jack's lodgings, and then the combination of tea, biscuits, Jack's exciting presence, and the knowledge that she was doing something daring, had all combined to excite her. Her eyes shone and her voice trembled.

She looked so enchanting and inviting that as soon as Jack had sat down beside her he could not stop himself from turning towards her and taking her in his arms and kissing her. The kiss began as an innocent, friendly one, but as a result of Marietta's en
thusiastic response to him it rapidly turned into something more passionate.

In an instant they were lost.

She was so warm and welcoming in his arms that Jack could not restrain himself from stroking her intimately, only to discover that beneath her prim dress she was not wearing stays or any of the usual carapaces which ladies saw fit to put on beneath their dresses. This knowledge excited him so much that he went on to become even more bold and definite.

First he unbuttoned the high neck of her walking dress and pulled it down so that he could get more easily at the treasures which it hid. Far from preventing him from unveiling her most private self, Marietta assisted him—not only by undressing herself but by undressing
him.

She removed his stock: next his shirt took on an abandoned air when Marietta briskly unbuttoned it so that she might return his caresses with interest. All of this was accomplished without the necessity for speech, unless broken and breathless endearments, freely offered to one another, could be counted as such.

Given that Marietta's previous lovemaking had been confined to a few chaste kisses offered by Avory, it was surprising how quickly she mastered the basics of it, and at times took the lead herself. It could have been a matter for debate which unbuttoned the other the more readily, their clothing seeming superfluous to the matter in hand.

There was no doubt, indeed, where their ultimate
destination lay. They saw and felt only each other as they struggled, mouth to mouth, across the room and through the door into Jack's bedchamber.

Marietta, whose body vibrated as though it had been invaded by a thousand butterflies, suddenly felt the bed behind her knees through the thick fabric of her dress, and then she was on her back on it, Jack above her, his hands busily removing her remaining clothes. What shook her most in memory afterwards was that she could not wait to be free of them, she wanted him so.

She remembered how, long ago, one of the women servants at the old Percival plantation had told her what men and women did in the act of love, and how it had horrified her. The servant had given a fat laugh. ‘Oh, you'll want it, right enough,' she'd said. ‘When it happens to you, you'll see.'

And now she did want it. Oh, let him not be a gentleman and stop, I could not bear it. He is all I want—and this—for her body was suddenly free of clothing, and was his for the taking.

Jack was beyond being a gentleman. The long weeks of continence, of seeing her, of suddenly wanting her, and not being able to do anything but hold her hand, had brought him to this. Her face, called plain by others, was never plain to him: he saw her bright intelligence, her wit and her gallant spirit shining through it. He loved her so much that he could almost have killed Sophie for her mockery of her cousin at the Van Horns and before that, when
she had tried to demean her after Marietta had saved her at Manassas.

Her body, divested of its clothing, was as beautiful as he had thought that it would be. All of the rules which he had made for himself, of respecting untried, unmarried women, were cast to the winds when her passionate responses fuelled his, until, linked together in mind and body, they climbed the mountain to where joy and fulfilment waited for them both.

They had celebrated their first happy meeting over their mutual delight in food and drink, and now it was their bodies' deeper demands which they obeyed on their last meeting before Jack left for New York.

Afterwards they dozed off, with Marietta's head on Jack's chest. She woke up to find that Jack now had his head on her stomach and was kissing it gently, doing improbable things with his tongue. The butterflies which had undone her earlier when she had first arrived at his lodgings were undoing her again.

Jack suddenly raised his head and looked up at her.

‘I shouldn't be doing this,' he told her earnestly, ‘any of it. It is all quite wrong. I never intended to seduce you, things just got out of hand. You must believe that, Marietta.' Having said that, he started to seduce her again, so that even her toes curled up as a consequence of the sensations he was creating in her errant body!

She felt a wild desire to laugh immoderately, to
do a delighted jig around the bedroom; instead, she said to him, equally earnestly, ‘Pray do not stop now, on my account. The deed is done.'

Such odd feelings were coursing through her that she found speaking difficult. ‘We may as well continue to enjoy ourselves,' she gasped out at last, ‘since we seem to deal so well together…oh…oh…oh…' Speaking suddenly became impossible: gentle groaning seemed to be in order.

After a few moments of bliss Jack lifted his head again to say wickedly, ‘It is all your fault; you should not be so beautiful. It leaves a poor man no defence.'

‘There is no need to resort to empty flattery to excuse your behaviour,' replied Marietta severely. ‘I am well aware of my own lack of looks. I can only be surprised at finding myself where I am, doing such impossible and improper things. Oh, please, don't stop,' she begged him when he looked up again. ‘It is far too late for repentance. I am well and truly ruined!'

‘I was not referring to your face, although you have a very nice face,' said Jack, before addressing himself to her nether regions again, ‘whatever that cat Sophie says of it. No, I mean your body, Marietta. How fortunate I am that I am the only man to see it—you would be knocked down in the rush to get at it if it ever received as much exposure as your face. Your legs, my darling, are superb,' and he proceeded to favour them with his attentions, too.

Marietta thought hazily that this was all quite different from what she had occasionally pictured might
happen to her. She had expected a decorous wedding night—if she ever married, that was. How was a decorous wedding night ever possible? Could this…this…experience…ever be decorous? This wild and irresponsible lovemaking without benefit of clergy, after matters had got out of hand so quickly once they had drunk their tea, came as a considerable shock to her.

Was tea taken alone with one's lover an aphrodisiac? She had, by accident, come across the word once and had read about it with some disbelief. With savages, powdered rhinoceros horn seem to be involved, but she could hardly believe that Jack had fed her
that
. Really, though, all that aside, the biggest shock of all was her own willing and gleeful co-operation in her downfall.

Fortunately for her reasoning mind, Jack's ministrations produced such a delightfully hazy sensation that the ability to reason disappeared altogether. Sensation took over again, and really, she thought, when for a moment everyday Marietta Hope surfaced again, since I have been well and truly seduced, and I am now transformed into a wanton, I might as well enjoy myself to the full. For who would have thought that I would ever be here, in bed with Jack, doing this…?

This was so exquisitely pleasant that thought flew away again. It had no place on the wilder shores of love. Neither had guilt, nor shame, nor remorse—although they might reappear later.

The gods looked kindly down on the lovers en
twined on the bed. On the experienced Mr Jack Dilhorne, who thought that he had found his life's love at last, and on the novice Miss Marietta Hope, the earnest bluestocking, who had just discovered that she was as good at lovemaking as at everything else she did. Better still, she had also discovered that an athletic body and an enquiring mind had their uses in bed, particularly when she was in it with someone as dear to her as Mr Jack Dilhorne was proving to be.

All delights come to an end, some harshly, some gently. Marietta, resuming her clothes, those thick encumbrances which hid the true woman from the world, was tenderly aided by her lover whose care and consideration removed any embarrassment which she might have felt in the aftermath of passion.

In turn she fastened his shirt for him and tied his stock, hiding away his own good body which had pleasured her so, and would again, she hoped, when he returned to Washington.

Jack was suddenly shy, and was a little, but only a little, ashamed at what he had done. It was a strange condition for such a usually self-confident man.

‘You must forgive me, my darling,' he said when, fully respectable, they sat side by side on the bed. ‘I was wrong, Marietta, to do what I did, to seduce you—for seduction it was. But, oh, it has been torment for me to be near you these last few weeks.'

‘And for me, too,' she said gently. ‘If there is
blame for what we have done, then I must share it. For it was I who willingly came to you, who encouraged you, who made no effort to stop you, and would have been distressed had you done so.'

He shook his head. ‘But I am the man, and the experienced one. I knew what I was doing, and where we were going. It was my part to hold back—'

She put her hand over his mouth. ‘No, Jack, I am no young girl. I am in my late twenties. I knew perfectly well what we were doing and where it would end. I came here intending to be your lover in every sense of the word; you must know that. I even left off my stays, and if that makes me wanton, then that is what I am. I could not bear the thought of you going away without ever having known you in love.'

‘Yes, Marietta, my darling,' he said eagerly. ‘We must be married, as soon as possible, you know, because, because…'

‘Because of the possible consequences,' she said. ‘I knowingly took that risk.'

He took her hand and kissed it. ‘No risk, because I love you, and I am only sorry that I may not stay in Washington with you. I will write to your father, asking for your hand as soon as I reach New York, and I know my address there. If there are…consequences…then we must be married at once.' Jack laughed at his own eagerness. ‘Oh, Marietta, I am so determined that you shall be my wife that I have not even proposed to you properly! I have taken your consent for granted.'

He stood up, put his hand on his heart and bowed
to her. ‘You will marry me, I trust, Miss Hope, and make me a respectable man at last.'

‘Only if you intend to make me respectable, too, Mr Dilhorne!'

Marietta's face was rosy and relaxed. Her body felt more supple than she had ever known it; she was so exquisitely aware of every part of it, from the soles of the feet which he had kissed so passionately, to the crown of the head which had been equally favoured.

‘We may write to one another,' she said, smiling, ‘and I promise you I shall live for the postman's knock.'

‘And I, too,' he said. ‘Oh, we must be married soon. I want you with me, not only to make love to you, but also to be my companion, my other self. I must stop, Marietta, or I shall begin to make love to you again, and you must be home soon, or be ruined. Oh, how stupid I am! I have already ruined you.'

‘If this is being ruined, then we must do it more often,' she said, smiling at him, and nearly depriving him of common sense again as she did so.

‘Please be serious, my darling, if only for a moment. You have been away from home so long that I grow fearful that you might cause some suspicion.'

‘Do not worry, my own heart. I am a born intriguer. I have spent the afternoon with an old friend. I walked there, and shall walk back—my passion for exercise is well known.'

‘Then let me come with you for a little way,' he said ardently. ‘There is still time before my train
leaves tonight. I am sorry that the Senator is away from Washington so that I may not speak to him of our marriage before I leave. Still, I must remember that it will not be long before we are together for good.'