Sinful in Satin (25 page)

“Why do you ask?”

“Do you never simply answer questions, Jonathan? Do you always dodge them? I ask because I have been thinking of her a lot today.”

“Because of me?”

She laughed. “My, you are conceited.” She knew what he meant, though. And what he feared, she supposed. “Perhaps because of you, a bit. I have come to realize, however, how little I really knew about her. This house, for example. Her past.”

He pulled her back into his embrace. “She knew my mother. When my mother became ill, she visited. When my mother died, Alessandra was one of the few to attend her funeral. She informed me years later that she had told my mother that it was fine to love the earl and to be his mistress, but that she must demand a settlement first. My mother had ignored her, rather deliberately, it appears. I do not know why.”

I do.
His mother had not wanted to be the earl’s whore. She had either hoped for more, or she had preferred it just be an honest liaison.

She would not explain that to him. He really did not need to know.

“After I left university, Alessandra wrote and invited me to call on her if I ever needed a friend. So I did, since I knew few people in town then.”

“She offered an unusual entrée into society, but one of sorts, I suppose. You were able to meet all those men of the ton at her parties and dinners.”

“That was how she saw it. It was kind of her to even remember me all those years later.”

It explained much, Celia thought. Why this young man was there even although he would never be acceptable as a patron. Why Alessandra had let him that attic room. She had been helping the son of an old friend who, in the name of uncorrupted love, had foolishly not provided for him herself.

“Did she know about your work for the government? On the coast and such?”

“I think she guessed. She never asked where I was going when I took my leave of her, which is why I think that. It was as if she knew not to ask.” It was his turn to prop up on one arm. His other hand began caressing her. “You have been thinking hard about this. Too hard for the night. You require distraction, I think.”

His slow touch made thinking impossible soon enough. She closed her eyes and allowed the pleasure from that hand flow through her.

“Who taught you to use your mouth the way you did, Celia?”

She opened her eyes in surprise. “She did.”

“You never did that before in reality?”

“Are you going to be jealous if I did?”

He watched his hand while she watched his expression. “Yes.”

She could not decide if that was charming or annoying. She decided the former, but then, the teasing pleasure encouraged such a view. Better he feel jealous than guilty, though. She suspected he had the potential for the latter. They probably taught men all about guilt at university.

His gaze speared her. “You are not going to tell me?”

“It is undeniable that you were my first man in one way. It could hardly be hidden. The rest is not your business to know.”

The vaguest smile formed. Humor warmed his eyes. “You are not as clever as you think, Celia. That alone tells me much. The rest I can see in your eyes and hear in your cries. It is one thing to know about these things, and another to be experienced in them. Do you think I can’t tell the difference?”

“I don’t think you are noticing much one way or the other.”

He lowered his head and kissed her breast. “Oh, I am noticing. If you were taught I would not notice, an error was made.” He took her two hands and raised them above her head. “I will have to be sure that you are noticing too, in the event you were taught to ignore the man you are with.”

How did he know that lesson? Perhaps he just guessed that it made sense for many women. It was possibly a necessity for most of them.

He did not have to make sure of anything. She could not ignore who she was with. She saw him in the beautiful firelight, his hair falling along his face, while he caressed her. Even with her eyes closed, even when he made pleasure shriek through her as he used his mouth on her breasts to arouse her and his hands moved over all of her, even when the whole world became a dark place of excruciating need and impatient, pulsing desire, he was there.

He held her hands together above her head the whole time, so she could only feel and submit, so she barely could move to relieve the building fury. In the end he held down her legs with his own while he caressed into her cleft, making sensations burst in her, each one more intense, until she was mad, lost, crying, and moaning. She grasped him to her when his body covered hers and he positioned her knees to accept him.

Heaven then. Perfection. She could not believe how good it felt, how the fullness and pressure and rightness astonished her. When he moved in her, braced above her, when his strength dominated her and commanded new thrills to tremble through her completely, she could only accept it, and cry for more, for relief, for the frightening drive of the pleasure to find the finish it seemed to demand. When it did, when the crescendo reached its peak and broke apart in its climax, then, and only then, was he not there. Nor was she in truth, nor the world, nor thought, nor even her body.

His own hard finish was like a salve after that. She loved the feel of him in her so hard, so strong, and the way relief flexed through him at the end. She wrapped her legs around him and held him to her, his hard breaths on her hair and his tight muscles within her embrace. She held him like that as long as she could, with all of her body touching him, and allowed herself to feel all of him, all of it, even the aching poignancy that carried danger within itself.

 

 

T
hey pretended the next day that the night before had never happened.

Jonathan found it a little ridiculous to do so in front of Marian. Bella was another matter. She appeared to be a frightened mouse of a young woman who had, he suspected, seen a hard life. She idolized Celia, and it probably was just as well that they maintained discretion around her.

That was hard to do. Neither he nor Celia could keep merriment out of their eyes when they greeted each other upon his coming down the next day. The formalities became a joke.

“The table here is clean, and Marian still has the breakfast pans out, if you want something to eat, Mr. Albrighton.” Celia gestured to a little table in her back room while she handed some plants to Mr. Drummond.

“I was not expecting board, Miss Pennifold.”

“It is a wise man who does not expect anything not paid for, sir. An unassuming manner makes generosity all the more welcome.”

“I was just thinking last night how you are nothing if not generous, Miss Pennifold.” He availed himself of that generosity this morning, much as he had last night. He sat himself and watched her deal with Mr. Drummond, and issue commands on which of the pots of forced bulbs were to go where.

The food arrived just as she completed her chore. She sat with him while he ate. She did not speak, but it was impossible to keep the night out of the gazes they exchanged. The memories hung between them without a word being said. All the same he felt words were needed. They had been trying to form since before he left her side at dawn.

“Are you going out today, Mr. Albrighton?” Celia asked while Bella cleared the plates away.

“I thought to.”

“Perhaps, before you do, you could spare me a few minutes. I would like to show you something.”

He politely followed her to the library. She closed the door after they entered, then rose on her toes and kissed him.

That was not enough. It never would be now. He took advantage of their privacy to embrace her and kiss her properly. “You will have to show me something in the library several times a day,” he said.

“It was not a ploy for some secret kisses, Jonathan. I really do have something to show you. Look over here.”

She took his hand and led him to a table. A folio rested there, the kind made out of two taped paperboards covered in marbleized paper. She opened it to reveal a stack of papers of good size. The top one bore a watercolor view of the house’s garden. She lifted it and a stack of the rest to reveal what was below. More drawings, each of which depicted a coat of arms.

“These were in Mama’s trunk. Remember that day I found them in the attic, at the bottom? These were beneath those watercolors of the garden and such. I think they contain a clue about my father. You said you might be able to help if I had more information. Now I do.”

She pointed out numbers on the back and explained her theory that they were dates. She showed how the ten colored ones seemed to imply long relationships, with three covering the year before she was born.

He stared at those crests, and their dates, and the identities that they revealed. Damnation. Celia had stumbled upon the list of Alessandra’s lovers that Edward wanted him to find.

“Do you think this will help?” she asked.

“Help?”

“Help you find out which one is my father?”

“I will take all of this above to my chamber and put my mind to it.”

She cocked her head to one side, puzzled. “Why would you need to do that? I know who these three men are. Enderby, Barrowleigh, and Hartlefield. Verity identified the coats of arms. As for the rest of them—” She gestured to the larger stack without color. “They do not signify.”

Oh, they signified. He needed to spend a good amount of time with those drawings, and their dates, and some books on heraldry. He wanted to see which ones had dates much more recent than Celia’s birth. Dates from around five years ago, when he went to an ill-fated mission on the Cornish coast. He needed to—

He realized that Celia was watching him closely, as if she saw more than he knew his expression ever revealed.

He looked in her quizzical, concerned eyes, then at the drawings. Answers rested in the stack of coats of arms, he was sure. The truth about Alessandra, and probably the clue to the man whose indiscretion had resulted in that trap. With these drawings, in a day or two he might know it all.

Then what? The question presented itself starkly.

He pictured the lovely face in front of him, disillusioned when she learned it all too. What would she think and feel if she discovered that her mother had betrayed this country, and perhaps even her own daughter, during those negotiations with Anthony?

“If they do not signify, perhaps you should burn them,” he said.

“Why would I do that? They are like her journal. They are by her hand. She left me very little, especially of herself.”

“They are potentially embarrassing to some of the men with whom she had liaisons.”

A twinkle entered her eyes. “Only if the wrong person sees them, and comprehends those numbers on the back. I doubt that will happen.” Her delicate fingers came to rest on the top colored drawing. “Now, about these three—”

“You think that you have narrowed the field, but you cannot be sure.”

“Let us assume that I have. Can you help me, with this smaller field?”

He flipped through the three drawings. They were names, for all intents and purposes. That was more than he usually had for some of his missions.

“If I do help you, what will you do if you learn who he is, Celia?”

“I told you. I just want to know his name.”

“You think so, but it will not be enough when the name is securely yours. I think that you will be compelled to speak to him.”

She stiffened, and looked on him less kindly. “Are you going to refuse, to prevent that?”

She did not deny how he thought it would go. Which meant she already knew he was right. “If you confront this man, you will probably face insult from him. I fear that if I help you learn who he is, in the end it will break your heart.”

Her stiff poise wavered. Her eyes glistened now, but with tears. “That will be
something
at least. He will have to speak to me in order to do that. He will have to meet me, and see me, and admit I am his in order to repudiate me in that way. I will risk the heartbreak, Jonathan, for a few minutes of that most basic acknowledgment from him that I am alive.”

He wanted to argue, to dissuade her. He wanted to tell her that it was not worth it. Only he knew that he would do the same thing. Knowing that his own father had acknowledged him as his son provided an anchor to his history, to who he knew he was. Celia’s need to know this man’s name for certain was not a small thing that could easily be put aside.

“I will see what I can learn,” he said.

She rose on her toes to kiss him. “Thank you. I do not ask that you do anything that would be obvious, or cause him to hurt you. I just thought that perhaps you can do your investigating, and learn things quietly.”

He embraced her, doubting that he could ask many questions before the men in question learned of it. Still, it was possible a conversation with Uncle Edward would eliminate one, or hopefully even two.

As he held her soft warmth and let it distract him from misgivings about the final cost to her of his agreement, he saw those drawings on the table behind her.

“Leave the folio here, Celia. I want to look at your mother’s drawings more closely. There may be more to be learned from them.”

“I
need your advice, Jonathan.”

The words drifted through the night, infiltrating the profound contentment he experienced lying in the dark holding her. His body wrapped hers from behind and his hand cradled her breast. Her climax had been violent, abandoned, and she had pulled him along with her until he shattered at the end.

Her voice now helped the pieces gather together once more, but the ecstasy still remained, too vivid to be a memory yet. Words formed to describe it, words that had been impossible a few minutes ago. Perfect. Astonishing. Pristine. It had been full of something that a man did not relinquish easily.