The Lady Who Broke the Rules (18 page)

Moonlight slanted through the windows, casting a ghostly light over the carved bed. Nymphs, goddesses and fantastical sea creatures peered out at them, watching. Virgil said her name again as he looked at her. She could melt from the way he said it. He undid her stays slowly, his smile taking on a new sensuality as he enjoyed the look of her in dark blue satin and pristine white lace. She had always thought the purpose of wearing such exotic undergarments was for her pleasure alone. Until now. The way he looked at her made her bones liquid.

She tugged at his waistcoat. He quickly unbuttoned it, casting it off with his neck cloth and shirt. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of him. Smooth skin, barely a mark on his chest in contrast to his back. Muscles that strained at his skin. Gleaming ebony. She ran her fingers over him, marvelling at the way he shivered under her touch, counting down his ribs.

He sat her on the edge of the bed and pulled off her slippers. They were damp with dew, quite ruined. He rolled down her stockings and kissed her knees, her feet, each one of her toes. He kicked off his own shoes, his silk knee breeches, his hose. She had forgotten how beautiful he was. Her imagination had failed her. His body was hard-packed, the muscles rounded, the whole infinitely male. She reached for him, and his touch became more urgent, tearing at the last of her undergarments, oblivious of the silk and lace and ribbons, interested only in that most intimate of covering, her skin.

Finally, he lay her down on the bed. She relished the weight of him on top of her, the breadth of him, the solidness of him as he held her, breast to breast, thigh to thigh, the hard length of his erection nestling between her legs. Kate moaned, low and guttural.

He kissed her mouth again. Then he kissed her breasts. Hands and mouth on her nipples, on her flank, kissing, teasing, tugging, much more urgent. She was not prepared for how fast it built, her climax. She was sky-high, taut, unbearably tense as he cupped her sex, just cupped her, the heel of his hand pressing against her, nothing more, and she thought she might explode.

Kate clenched tight. Not yet. She bucked under him. Not yet. She mimicked the way he cupped her, and felt him tighten in her palm. Not yet. Virgil moaned. His fingers slipped inside her and she gasped with pleasure. He slid in so easily, she was so wet. Not yet. Not yet, please, not yet. She was tight, tight, tight. His fingers slid over her, over the tightest, hottest bit of her, and she felt herself unravelling.

She slid her hand up the length of his shaft. Thick. Hard. Silky. She wanted him inside her. ‘Please,’ she breathed desperately. He kissed her. He thrust his tongue into her mouth. He stroked inside the folds of her sex, over the hot, tight, hard part of her. She couldn’t hold back. She felt herself toppling, shattering, crying out, and then he thrust, one long hard thrust deep inside her and she shattered.

She came, pulsing, throbbing, crying out, but he didn’t let up. He tilted her up, he wrapped his arm around her back to brace her, and thrust again. She hadn’t ever felt anything like it. Virgil inside her, thick and hard and pushing higher, her own muscles pulsing around her, her climax ebbing and then building, like an echo, as he pushed into her. She held him tight there, clinging to him, watching the effect of what she did to him dancing across his face as he withdrew and she clung and then opened for his next thrust. And his next. It was like a race now. He was pushing her hard and though she wanted to give in to him she didn’t want him to stop, not yet. Higher and harder, she clung and she gasped and then it happened so suddenly, not an echo but something more, as he touched a spot she hadn’t known existed high up and she let go, truly let go, had no choice but to let herself fall, and with a harsh cry Virgil pulled himself free, spilling onto her belly.

He wiped her clean with his kerchief. Such a little thing, but it brought a lump to her throat, for Anthony had never shown such care. Grabbing her cloak from the floor, Virgil threw it over them, and then pulled her back into his arms, spooning her against him, nestling her bottom into his thighs, one hand over each breast, nuzzling the back of her neck. It brought a whole new meaning to the word
bliss
. Kate closed her eyes and floated.

* * *

Later, not much later, Virgil stirred. He kissed her mouth again. Then her breasts. Then lower. Her thighs. And then her sex. He didn’t just taste her, he savoured her, licking into her, around her, thrusting his tongue inside her. Kate was too aroused to be shocked. His tongue teased and stroked and circled. He seemed to know exactly how to bring her close to the edge, and then to leave her there teetering, hovering, wanting to fall, wanting to cling on. She arched shamelessly against his mouth. It felt different this time. More intense. A brighter colour. A wrenching of her guts. When she came he stayed with her, and when she thought she was done, he licked her into another of those rippling echoes.

Afterwards, she rolled over on top of him, taking him by surprise, wanting to taste him and to taste what he did to her. She could feel him, hard and hot between her legs. She wriggled down his body, enjoying the way his skin rubbed on her breasts, relishing the contrast of her skin on his. She slid down, until she had the tip of his shaft against her lips. His eyes were glittering when she looked up. She licked him and felt him jerk under her. She licked him again. He moaned. She liked making him moan. She flicked her tongue down the length of his shaft. She licked back up. She drew him into her mouth. A tiny bit. A bit more. She could feel him swelling. That’s how he knew to tease, she thought with satisfaction, to bring her to the brink. So she stopped.

She looked at his face, and saw exactly what she’d felt when he’d done it to her. She took him in her mouth again. Stopped again. But when she went to do it again, he caught her by surprise, his arms on her waist, pulling her up his body, positioning her, and instead of her mouth, the pulsing tip of him was inside her and she forgot all about teasing and slid down on him and set about riding them both hard to a climax that felt as if it turned her inside out.

She forgot to be careful but he did not. He lifted her clear of him as he came. Wrapping her hand around him to capture the last pulsing of his seed, Kate felt a deep sense of loss.

Time marched relentlessly on. They touched but did not speak. Words were pointless. They had said everything. Kate resented every moment that passed, hated every minute which brought them closer to the hour of his departure.

They made their way, still silent, back to the big house. One last kiss at the door. Bittersweet. More bitter than sweet. She would not cry in front of him. In the morning she must say a composed goodbye. Covering her mouth with her hand, Kate fled up the stairs to her bedchamber.

* * *

She did not sleep. Heavy-eyed but determined to say farewell with the dignity Virgil expected of her, Kate was dressed and downstairs for breakfast by seven the next morning, but he was already gone.

‘The mail leaves the Rothermere Arms at seven,’ Giles told her.

‘He told me nine. Did he leave a message?’

‘Said all that was proper.’ Her brother drew her one of his sharp looks. ‘Was there something in particular you were expecting him to say?’

‘No.’ Kate poured herself a cup of coffee. Her hands shook. She sat down at the table and began to pick at a bread roll.

‘I liked him, Kate. He’s a sensible man. An impressive one. But…’ Giles broke off frowning, and took a long draught from his tankard. ‘I hate to agree with our aunt, but in this she was right. It would never do.’

‘I know that.’ Giles pressed her hand. It was this small token of affection, so very unlike him, which was Kate’s undoing. ‘I know!’ she said, dashing her hand over her eyes, for to cry in front of him would be to admit that there was something to cry about and how could there be?

Kate pushed her cup aside. Coffee splattered over the polished surface of the table. ‘I must get on. I have a hundred things to do today,’ she said, and fled from the room.

There was no sanctuary in her bedchamber, where Daisy was making up the bed. ‘Mrs Landes-Fraser was looking for you, my lady,’ the chambermaid told her. ‘Said to tell you that she was going over to inspect the Dower House to make sure all is well for the lady’s arrival tomorrow, and that she’d expect you there at your convenience. I told her I was sure you’d got everything under control, but you know what she’s like, Lady Kate. Thinks no one can do anything properly but herself.’

Kate liked Daisy, and encouraged the girl, who was in her opinion far too bright to earn her living as a servant, to work at her lessons with a view to helping Miss Thomson out at the school. This morning, however, she managed only a perfunctory smile. She couldn’t face her aunt yet. She couldn’t face anyone at the moment. Alone in her bed last night, she’d worked so hard at persuading herself that Virgil’s leaving was not the momentous event it felt. Finding him gone had made her face up to the fact that she’d retained a tiny sliver of hope that he would stay. With that hope extinguished, she was forced to admit that she had wished for more. A lot more.

‘If my aunt asks, you haven’t seen me,’ she told Daisy. ‘I’m going for a swim.’

* * *

It didn’t do much good. Her thoughts circled as she made her laps of the lake, but the usual calm which the physical effort of swimming invariably gave her failed to descend. She understood that he had left without seeing her again to spare them both pain, but she couldn’t help wondering if he was running away.

As she abraded her icy skin with a towel in the little changing room under the fishing pavilion, shivering, her numbed fingers struggling with the ties of her garters, she told herself she was being irrational. She pulled her gown over her head and began to wrestle with the fastenings.

‘To be sure,’ she muttered to herself, ‘Virgil Jackson is a fascinating person but there are surely lots of equally fascinating people in the world.’ Though not another who had understood her the way he had. ‘That is simply because I’ve never confided in anyone else,’ she told her shoes firmly, slipping her cold feet into them. ‘Virgil is gone and will not be coming back. I should be grateful to have met him, and I won’t forget him, and absolutely will never forget last night, but I must put all these other silly thoughts out of my head else I will end up a weeping willow with absolutely no cause.’ She nodded decisively. ‘It is a mistake to waste energy on things one cannot control. Far better that I focus on what I can. Like making sure that this poor woman is given the welcome she deserves. Always assuming she deserves it. Which I must do, until it is proved otherwise. So that is what I shall do,’ she told the changing room door staunchly.

Closing it behind her, quite convinced, for the moment, that she meant every word she said, Kate strode off towards the Dower House to see what havoc her aunt had wreaked in her absence.

* * *

It would have been some consolation to Kate to know that Virgil was having a similarly difficult time in rationalising his feelings. Thinking him by now well on the way to Manchester, she would have been extremely surprised to learn that he had in fact been forced to delay his departure by at least one and likely two days. Snow had come suddenly and unseasonably early in the north and the mail coach had fallen victim the day before, breaking an axle, delaying its journey south and thus its return journey north, so the landlord of the Rothermere Arms explained to him.

It had been a wrench to leave Castonbury without saying goodbye to Kate, though he had no doubt it was for the best. It would be a mistake to return, no matter how much he longed to do so. For Kate’s sake, he told himself. He would like to reassure himself that she was coping. But that putative relative of hers arrived tomorrow, and they had, after all, said their goodbyes.

Sitting in the private parlour he had bespoken at the inn, Virgil tried to distract himself with business, but images of Kate smiling, laughing, frowning, Kate kissing and Kate swimming and Kate lying in his arms, and Kate crying out as she climaxed, crowded his head. He put aside his notes on the new venture with Josiah Wedgwood and turned to a collection of recent essays by Robert Owen on the formation of the human character.

It was not easy, but Virgil was a very determined man, and by the time dinner was served, he was quite caught up on Owen’s
New View of Society.

* * *

The Dowager Marchioness of Hatherton arrived in the ducal landau the next morning, having been collected by John Coachman from the Rothermere Arms, where the London mail had deposited her. It being another pleasant day, the hood of the carriage was down. As John Coachman brought the horses to a halt, and Joe Coyle opened the door with a flourish, Kate thought for a moment that the woman inside looked terrified. But when she looked again, her countenance was smooth and shyly smiling.

Giles was making a stiff bow. ‘Welcome to Castonbury.’

Ross had not underplayed the lady’s charms, was Kate’s first thought. Jamie’s wife was very pretty indeed. Petite, slender and angelically fair, she had a pair of blue eyes which Kate had no difficulty at all in believing Jamie had fallen victim to. Her travelling dress was neat but shabby, several seasons out of date, but she carried herself with dignity, and her smile was just the correct mix of confidence and deference.

‘This is Lady Katherine, my sister, who has been making all the arrangements for you and your boy, ma’am.’

Giles’s introduction was cool. Despite the fact that her brother was dead set against inheriting the title, he seemed also dead set on proving this woman a sham. It made Kate all the more determined to welcome her. She beamed, and instead of dropping a curtsey, enfolded her new relative in a warm hug. ‘You must call me Kate, since we are to be sisters,’ she said, unable to resist casting a defiant look at Giles over her shoulder.

‘Then you must call me Alicia, if you please. I don’t feel entitled to call myself a dowager marchioness, for Jamie and I were married such a brief time.’

‘Long enough,’ Giles said shortly. ‘Is this the boy?’