Rakes and Radishes (27 page)

She wore the same plain white gown under her blue pelisse. Around her neck, the ruby pendant glinted. A thread hung down from where she had tied the broken clasp together. She seemed pensive, wringing the letter he’d written in her fingers.

Lady Kesseley stepped in from the parlor, but seeing Henrietta, she turned and hurriedly closed the door without even saying hello.

“Is she angry with me?” Henrietta asked.

For a moment, Kesseley couldn’t speak, the words choked in his burning throat. He tried again. “No one is angry with you.” He came down the stairs and stood before her. “I’m sorry your father didn’t find the planet. I—”

She held her finger to his lips, hushing him. Tears gathered in her eyes and started to run down her cheeks.

“Oh, Henrietta.” He wanted to draw her to him and comfort her, but she stepped back.

“I wanted to tell you that you are wrong,” she said, her voice brittle and shrill. “You are a gentle and good man. You have such joy in being in the world. You marvel at the smallest thing, the things most people miss. You watch and wait for the world with a patience I will never possess.”

He clasped her hands and held them to his chest.

“You ask me to forgive you,” she continued. “I will and a thousand times again, but you must forgive me. I didn’t mean to waste all those years. When I told you that you weren’t the one I was supposed to love, it was because I was lost in my fantasies. I didn’t understand that I might turn my telescope to the sky and nothing would be there, that my dreams were empty and immature. Your love taught me what is real and what isn’t.”

He wanted to feel her against him. This separation, a mere foot, was agony. But she continued, staving him off longer.

“There is a part of you in everything that is mine. Every memory, every moment. You know me beyond how I know myself. And you—you still love me and I don’t know why, nor do I feel I deserve it.”

“No—”

“My father has come undone. He calls for my mother. Mr. Van Heerlen said if I came to see you tonight that I wasn’t the honorable lady he believed me to be. But I had to see you. You always say I only come to you when something is wrong, but it is because…” she swallowed, the tears coming down harder, “…because I love you so much.”

He closed his eyes, feeling as if he were tumbling freely as his head descended. Her soft lips caught his, moving like silk across his skin, tasting him, exploring him. She pulled herself closer, as if she could nestle into his heart.

He slid to his knees, trailing kisses down her neck and tops of her breasts. “My dearest, beautiful lady. You tempt me too much. I will take you as my wife in our little village church, then I’ll show you a hundred different ways your husband can love you. And I do love you, Henrietta. There has not been a day that I did not love you.”

Two weeks later

Several hours after the wedding and feast and music and wishes for their happiness, Henrietta waited alone in her chamber in Wrenthorpe. With every small noise, her nerves tingled and her eyes darted to the door leading to Kesseley’s chamber. She had changed out of her wedding gown and into a delicate silk chemise edged with lace and embroidered with tiny white flowers.

She picked up a silver-handled brush and smoothed her long, loose curls as she crossed to the tall windows along the back wall. A fat white moon shone through the trees, making long shadows of boxwoods growing in the garden below. This was her home now. It didn’t seem real. Perhaps she wasn’t really Lady Kesseley, this wasn’t her chamber and at any moment a footman would come to tell her that her carriage had arrived to take her back to Rose House.

Her poor dear papa. How sad she felt leaving him alone tonight. He didn’t talk about the planet anymore. The library door had remained closed since they returned. At dusk, Henrietta and he took long strolls hand in hand through the fields just as the stars came out.

“Do you think she sees us?” he always asked.

“I know she does,” she told him.

That morning she had taken his arm as they walked to her mother’s grave. She laid upon the gray stone a wreath of red poppies matching the ones crowning her thin veil. She had rubbed her pendant and said a small prayer to her mother to bless her forthcoming union. Then Lady Kesseley and Lord Damien met them outside the church door. Lady Kesseley, tears in her eyes, fussed over Henrietta’s gown. It was a delicate silk miracle that Henrietta, Mrs. Potts and the village girls had tirelessly sewed.

When the church door opened, Kesseley turned from where he stood at the altar. Her heart soared. He was so handsome in a smooth black coat and breeches, the tips of his white collar brushing his hard jaw line. He wore a simple but elegant cravat, just like in London. But those twinkling gray eyes, they belonged to her dear old Kesseley. When he saw her, his lips parted, letting out a silent, wondrous sigh, reminiscent of the shy boy he had been once.

Together they knelt at the altar, their trembling bodies barely touching.

I vow to forsake all others and keep only unto him so long as we both shall live.

She heard a soft tap and she jumped.

“Henrietta, might I have a word with you?” It was Lady Kesseley’s light voice.

Henrietta set down her brush and let her in. Her mother-in-law appeared exhausted— having to oversee a banquet and houseguests was an exhausting task—but happy.

She embraced Henrietta. “You were so lovely today.”

“Thank you. But I can never outshine Lady Kesseley in love.” Henrietta held up the dowager’s hand, letting the sapphire ring on her finger sparkle in the candlelight. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

Lady Kesseley smiled, flustered, like a young girl. “But you are Lady Kesseley now.”

“And you shall be Lady Damien.”

A soft light brightened in the future Lady Damien’s pale eyes. She looked shyly away, taking in the chamber, letting out a sigh. “I remember my first night here years ago. I thought my life was over. I was frightened and alone. But life is longer than they say and filled with so many unexpected turns and rebirths. Tonight I only feel joy.” She squeezed Henrietta’s hand. “I thought we might talk—as mother and daughter.”

Henrietta squirmed. She felt she was nine again, running to her mother, worried. “Kesseley said a stallion puts his big thing in another horse to make a baby horse, just like a man does to a lady when they want a baby,” she had cried. That had led to a very uncomfortable discussion.

Lady Kesseley—Dowager Kesseley—must have sensed Henrietta’s hesitancy and laughed. “My dear, your time together as husband and wife should be joyous.” She leaned closer. “Love my son and let him love you.”

There was a quiet knock on the door leading to Kesseley’s chamber. Henrietta felt those hot splotches on her cheeks.

Dowager Kesseley kissed Henrietta’s cheek. “Enjoy each other,” she said, then hastened out of the chamber with a mysterious smile on her lips.

Henrietta glanced one last time at the mirror. Her eyes were wide and luminous and filled with nervousness. She took a big breath and opened the door. Kesseley stood collarless in a green coat and his old loose doeskins.

Perhaps she’d misunderstood the marital dance. “Kesseley, you’re wearing boots.”

“I brought some for you.” He held out the scuffed shoes she used to tromp about the countryside. “And these.” Her blue pelisse, gloves and a bonnet.

She looked askance at his offerings. “You’re up to mischief.”

“Yes, I have been working very diligently, and I will not have you spoil it by tempting me with that beautiful chemise and your bare feet. Now sit in that chair.”

She did as her husband asked. Kesseley knelt before her, took her bare foot into his palm. His lips brushed her ankle while his thumb rubbed soothingly into her arch. She released a humming moan at his touch. Tonight there would be no other voices crowding her mind, reminding her of propriety and other such nonsense. Tonight she didn’t have to say no to that urge swelling inside her.

He slipped the ugly old boot on as if it were a golden slipper, then rubbed her other foot, not neglecting it of its fair share of soft caresses with his lips. Coming to her hands, he kissed the diamond ring he had put on her finger, not taking his dark, secretive eyes from her face. Each finger got a slow kiss, but her thumb he took into his wet soft mouth and tenderly sucked it. Henrietta’s lips parted with a quiet gasp. That warm, heavy need Kesseley always solicited blossomed inside her.

Suddenly she didn’t want to be a part of Kesseley’s scheme. She wanted him to take her to the bed waiting not a few feet away. To pull off this chemise and feel his skin, his weight, his muscles against her.

She heard a chuckle rise up from his chest as if he could read her mind.

Yet he wouldn’t satisfy her so easily. Instead, he removed her thumb and placed a cold glove over her fingers.

She refused to let him torment her other hand and ripped the dangling glove from him and shoved it on her hand.

He frowned. Displeased.

Then he grabbed her, crushed her against him and pressed his tongue through her lips, deep into her. Henrietta tilted her head back to accommodate his violent plundering of her mouth. Her nipples surged to feel his touch again. She thrust herself against him, but he pulled away.

“Mustn’t forget your bonnet,” he said airily as he put it over her head and primly tied its ribbons.

Something came out of her mouth that wasn’t a complete word, just a frustrated vowel.

And the way his lips slowly nibbled at her neck and earlobes as he slid the pelisse over her arms was plain cruelty. When Henrietta told him as much, he responded that she was his most cherished wife whom he loved beyond all rationality and principle.

Like two naughty children, they crept through the dark corridors on their tiptoes, using the escape route Kesseley had devised in his youth. Except they didn’t climb out the library window with a rope and freefall down a story, but sensibly used the servants’ back entrance.

Outside, the moon was enormous and shining over the lawn, an accomplice to Kesseley’s clandestine mission. He took her hand in his and they snuck behind the labyrinth of boxwoods, then made a quick dart from the garden to the woods, only slowing once they had made it past the outbuildings bordering the lawn. Henrietta clung tightly to Kesseley as he guided her along a path he knew by memory, holding the low branches to let her safely pass. She wanted him to stop and kiss her in the darkness, but he tromped on until they stepped out of the trees and the Great Ouse expanded before them.

The current gleamed like tiny silver threads on the water. A gentle breeze blew off the water, cool on Henrietta’s cheek. Beyond the other bank, the full moon shone above the horizon of fields. So large, Henrietta could see its craters and mountains.

“I love you, Thomas,” she whispered, in reverent awe.

“You told me the stillest, most silent place in your heart was by the river.”

“With you,” she reminded him. “You omitted the most important part.” He lifted her chin and gave her that yearning kiss that had destroyed her immature fantasies and upset her old existence. She drew him closer, wanting to smell his dark and sweet scent, marveling at how perfect she felt tucked in his embrace.

For several moments they clung to each other, swaying with the wind, their breaths harmonized. Then he stooped down, ran his arm under her knees and whisked her up. She rested her head on his shoulder as he carried her farther down the bank to their favorite oak tree. Beneath its strong boughs, an impressive tent stood, made of heavy woolen blankets and suspended by a complex web of rope. Henrietta laughed at her husband’s ingenuity.

He set her down slowly, their bodies rubbing together as she slid down his leg. “Why don’t you go inside and remove these unappealing boots and wait while I light a fire?” Henrietta hid her desire to grumble. She didn’t want to wait, and she didn’t want to be away from him. She drew back the blanket flap to find a sweet little room. Kesseley had layered blankets upon the ground and then strewn them with fragrant flower petals. Her knees sank into the soft wool as she crawled in. Fat golden and burgundy pillows bordered the edges of the tent walls. Lavender-scented sheets had been stacked in the corner. He had made all this for her. She smiled at her dear husband, although he couldn’t see.

***

She closed the flap, took off her boots, pelisse, bonnet and gloves, placing them neatly in the corner. With only her chemise on, she drew up a pillow and hugged it. She hated being separated from her husband. Her nerves were giddy. Her feminine core felt heavy and hot with anticipation. She could hear the crackle of the fire and his feet shuffling on the ground. What was taking so long?

Then the blanket swung open, and the light from the fire illuminated the tent. Kesseley entered, not a stitch of clothes on his beautiful, sculpted body.

The firelight flickered on his hard face and the lines on his neck. The shadows and light pronounced the bulge of his muscles on his arms and chest. Her gaze lowered to his taut belly and then to the dark curls and impressive member beneath. Henrietta gulped.

Suddenly, he appeared shy, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

He spoke sheepishly. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to upset you. I just thought you might be more comfortable if I—” She didn’t know what he was trying to say. Her brain had stopped working. She leapt at him, desperate for his lips, his skin, his touch. Her body writhed against his, knowing something her mind didn’t.

He kissed her back thoroughly, his tongue thrusting so deep she could feel the edge of his teeth. He broke free, whispering into her ear, his voice thick and hoarse. “Do you like me?”

“Yes,” she cried. “C-can I touch you?”

He laughed as his lips caressed her neck. He clasped her hand and guided her to him. His penis felt rigid and hot. It jolted at her touch. She heard her own uneven inhale.

“May I show you how to please me?” he asked.

She nodded against his cheek. With his hand over her smaller one, he tutored her. She gazed at his face in the firelight. His eyes were closed. A snarl curled his lips.

“Am I doing it right?”

“Oh God, love.” He leaned his head on her shoulder, his hand moving hers faster up and down his sex. Then he released her and entangled his fingers in her hair. He murmured her name, almost like a groan. She explored his contours, learning she could make him shudder if she stroked him all the way down his length, or elicit a gasp if she moved her fingers over the tip. Her heart swelled knowing she was pleasing him.

Then suddenly his whole body stiffened, and he yanked her hand away.

She was mortified. “Did I do something wrong?”

He drew her against his chest. “No,” he said harshly in her ear. Then he kissed her again as he eased her down to the pillows.

“Wait!” she cried.

He released her, almost too fast. His eyes searched hers. “Are you frightened?”

“I-I want you to see me.”

She edged over to the open flap, where the firelight danced. Ignoring the cool air seeping in, she gathered the edge of her silk chemise in her hand and raised it over her thighs, revealing her dark curls. She lifted her eyes to his shadowed face. His intense gaze made her feel self-conscious, yet dangerously sensuous. She swallowed and continued, slipping the cool silk over her nipples, then up over her head. She shook her curls free and let them fall about her shoulders. He was silent as he studied her curves, her breasts, her thighs, taking in the smallest details.

“Me,” she whispered, then repeated the question he had posed to her. “Do you like me?”

He didn’t move. She shivered, waiting, feeling very vulnerable.

“Henrietta, I’ve imagined you like this since…well, since I knew desire.” His voice cut through the silence. “But, my God, you’re more beautiful than I even conceived.”

She went to him, away from the cold, and took his hand, placing it upon her breast. He stroked the sensitive tip on his fingertips, sending a tingle to her feminine parts.

He pushed her gently onto the pillow, his mouth taking in her other breast, sucking, licking, its taut nipple. She dug her fingers into his hair, shamelessly pushing herself against him, unable to get enough of the sweet, acute sensation his tongue elicited.

He lifted his head and gazed at her from below her wet, reddened breast. “Can I please you?”

“Aren’t you?” she cried, barely keeping her voice from flying away.

The way he chuckled made goose bumps break over her skin.

His fingertips glided like feathers down her body, over her belly, lower and lower. She stopped breathing when his hand lingered in her curls. He kissed the inside of her thigh as his finger slid down her wet, feminine folds. Her legs tensed and instinctively she tried to close them.

“I love you,” he whispered, his breath like a caress over her skin. “We don’t have to do any more tonight. I’m content to just hold you.”