And Then He Kissed Her (26 page)

When she reentered the kitchen, she saw that Harry had stripped down to just his trousers and was assembling several of the foods they’d intended to have for dinner on a tray. She watched as he placed bite-size chunks of bread, chicken and cheese on the plate, along with grapes, peach slices, and two small pots, one of mustard and one of honey.

“Honey?” she asked dubiously.

“Honey, Emma.” He gave her a wicked smile, and pulled the spoon up out of the honey pot. Emma stared at it, watching honey fall from the spoon, a stream of liquid gold in the late afternoon sunlight.

“Harry,” she breathed, realizing what he intended. She was so shocked, so excited, she could hardly breathe. She licked her lips. “You can’t possibly mean to—”

“Better get undressed,” he advised as he repeated the gesture with the spoon.

She watched his hand, mesmerized, lust pouring over her, lust that was as warm and sweet as the honey falling from the spoon. “But honey will…make me all sticky,” she pointed out even as she began to unbutton her shirtwaist.

He chuckled. “Getting sticky is the whole point, my darling. That’s why, when it comes to
this sort of thing, it’s best if you’re already naked before you start.”

She was down to nothing but her combination before she realized he was making no move to take off his trousers. Instead, he was still playing with the honey, but he was watching her. “Aren’t you supposed to be naked, too?” she asked as she unfastened the buttons of her last undergarment.

“It helps a man prolong things if he keeps his trousers on, and I want this to be a long meal. I’ll finish undressing a bit later.”

“Oh, no, you won’t.” She tossed her combination on the floor with the rest of her clothes and took the spoon out of his hand. “Strip off those trousers, Harry,” she ordered. “Now.”

“Getting awfully bossy, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” She laughed, rather amazed at that discovery. Amazed at herself for standing brazenly naked in a kitchen with her lover, amazed that she was thinking up wicked things to do to him with a pot of honey and a plate of food. “I like ordering you around.”

“Now I’ve done it,” he said as he unbuttoned his trousers. “I’ve let you see that I’m just putty in your hands. We’ll never do anything my way again.”

“Hurry up.” She leaned one hip against the table and lifted the spoon to her lips. “I’m starving.”

She licked the honey from the spoon with a lascivious boldness that she’d never displayed during their lovemaking before, and it seemed
to amaze him as much as it did her, for she saw his eyes widen. She heard him catch his breath. She began to suck on the spoon.

He groaned and slid the trousers off his hips. “I wanted this to be a seven course meal for you, but there’s not a chance of it now.”

“As long as I can have dessert. You know my sweet tooth.” She set aside the spoon and lifted the tray of food from the table.

Naked, they both sank to their knees. Emma placed the tray on the wooden floor beside them, but she wasn’t quite certain what to do next.

He showed her. Taking a chunk of bread from the tray, he dipped it in the honey and brought it to her lips. She ate it. And then, remembering what he’d done that day at Au Chocolat, she licked the honey off his fingers.

“What happened to shy, modest Emma?” he asked, pulling his fingers back and reaching for a peach slice from the tray. He dunked it in the honey.

“I told you, I don’t feel shy with you. Not anymore.”

He brought the fruit to her mouth, rubbed the honey across her lips. “How do you feel?”

“Beautiful.” She started to eat the peach slice, but he pulled it back and kissed her mouth, sucking on her lower lip as if it were a comfit. She flattened her hands against his chest, savoring the hard muscles beneath her palms. She loved the strength in him.

Once again, he pulled back. “Lie down.”

When she did, he followed, leaning over her.
He slid the fruit slowly down the column of her throat, and the feel of it on her skin sent that warm, sweet honey-lust coursing through her body. She stirred, and the feel of the smooth wooden planks against her bottom was erotic, too.

“Do you remember that day when I went with you to Covent Garden Market?” he asked.

She closed her eyes. “I remember.”

“We were at the fruit stands, and you said you loved peaches. Ripe, sweet, juicy ones.” He touched the peach to the tip of her breast, making her suck in a sharp breath. “You said I had an odd look on my face. Do you remember that, Emma?”

“Yes,” she gasped as he began to circle her nipple with the honey-coated fruit. “Yes, I remember.”

“I was imagining this.”

Stunned, she opened her eyes and looked into his. “You were thinking of doing this? With me?”

He nodded and fed her the peach slice, then he reached for another, dunked it in honey, and resumed his task, rubbing the fruit round and round her nipple. The stickiness of the honey pulled at her, puckering her nipple in a way that was so unbelievably erotic, she could hardly breathe. Emma stirred again, her lust growing deeper, hotter. When he let go of the fruit and bent his head to suck it from her breast into his mouth, she jerked, her body arching into that carnal kiss. “Harry,” she groaned. “Oh, God, this is so wicked.”

He laughed and ate the fruit, then lifted his head. He started to reach again toward the tray,
but she seized his wrist. “No, no. I told you, I’m hungry, too.”

She sat up, pressing her hand against his shoulder to roll him onto his back. Then she reached to the tray. “Like salty things, do you?” she said and picked up a chunk of cheese. She dipped it in mustard and fed it to him, then followed it with a bite of chicken. After coating a peach slice with honey, she put it between her teeth, then leaned down, using her mouth to feed that to him as well.

“Mmm,” he murmured, gently biting the fruit in half and taking his portion into his mouth. “I think you’re good at this.”

She swallowed her half of the peach slice, pretending to be doubtful. “I don’t know about that, Harry. I think I need more practice.”

She took another peach slice, coated it with honey, and mirrored what he had done to her, rubbing the fruit around the flat nipple of his chest. He groaned out her name, and she smiled, loving the sound of her name when he said it this way. She dropped the peach onto his chest and sucked it off as she reached down to take his penis in her hand.

She began to caress his hard shaft the way he’d taught her. His breath began coming faster, harsher, and she knew the rest of their meal was going to have to wait. With her free hand, she gently cupped his testes.

His hips jerked, and his hand tangled in the knot of her hair. “Take me inside you.”

She was savoring the pleasure she was giving
him at this moment, enjoying it too much to move on. She rubbed the underside of his penis with her thumb. “But I’m still hungry.”

“You’re killing me,” he panted, his hand tightening convulsively in her hair. “Killing me.”

Never had she felt bolder, more confident than she did right now. “Do you really want to be inside me?”

“God, yes. Come on, Emma. Come on.”

She didn’t comply, but continued to stroke and caress him, her own excitement rising.

“Emma, for God’s sake—”

“When you want something,” she murmured, savoring her power, “it’s polite to say please.”

“Please,” he said at once. “Damn it, please.”

She laughed. Straddling him, she eased his penis into her, savoring the feel of him, hot and thick inside her. Tilting her head back, she began to move above him. Her hair, already loosened by his hands, tumbled free of its combs. She moved in a slow, rocking motion, teasing him.

But she wasn’t the only one who could tease. She felt his hand on her tummy, and then he touched her in the sweetest place of all. She moaned.

“Like that, do you?” he asked, brushing the pad of his thumb back and forth over her clitoris. “Do you?”

“Yes,” she gasped, shivering. “Yes.”

As he stroked her, she could feel the rising, thickening pleasure, and she began to move faster.

“Told you this was going to be a short meal,”
he panted, thrusting up hard to meet her as his thumb caressed her.

Beyond words now, she could only nod, frantic. She pumped her hips even faster, and he matched her pace, until they both reached the peak. She came first, crying out his name as she surrendered to the pure, white-hot bliss. He followed, climaxing inside her with one last, hard thrust.

She collapsed on top of him with a groan of utter satisfaction. She felt him kiss her hair, and she smiled. He always did that afterward.

They laid there several minutes, with him still inside her, and her cheek against his shoulder. She loved the aftermath almost as much as the lovemaking. Sometimes she loved it more, for there was a special sweetness to it, something poignant and precious. Something fleeting.

She shivered suddenly, as if a cool autumn wind had just swirled through the room.

Harry wrapped his arms around her. “Cold?” he asked, his palms rubbing her back, stirring her hair.

“No.” She sat up. Still straddling him, she caressed his face and smiled. “You were right, you know.”

He kissed her palm. “About the short meal?”

“That, yes, but you were right about something else, too.” Emma leaned down again, her hair falling all around their faces. She kissed him, tasting the lingering, sticky sweetness of peaches and honey on his mouth. “I
am
a hedonist.”

T
he hot days of August melded into the cooler ones of September, and Emma’s affair with Harry settled both their lives into a new routine. They had their weekly meeting every Wednesday, left London for Cricket Somersby on Friday afternoons, and returned on Monday mornings. The frenetic, euphoric bliss of the first month eased into something different between them. In the second month it became
something more comfortable, something that for Emma, felt deeper and richer.

During the week, when she stayed at her flat, even falling asleep to the steady purr of her beloved cat could not ease the emptiness she felt at not having Harry sleeping beside her. In fact, her flat didn’t even seem like her home anymore. It was alien to her. The cottage was her home now.

She took pains to avoid Mrs. Morris as much as possible, for every time she saw her landlady, she had the feeling the other woman knew the dishonorable things she was up to. To her credit, Mrs. Morris asked no questions, but for Emma, the secrecy became harder to bear with each passing day.

Things only got worse when she stopped by Inkberry’s Bookshop one afternoon in mid-September. She’d gone there with the intention of looking for books that might spark her imagination about weddings, for she was supposed to meet with Lady Eversleigh in less than a fortnight, and she hadn’t come up with a single idea she liked. Mr. Inkberry had chided her for never coming to visit anymore, and he insisted she stay and have a cup of tea with them. “Josephine would be furious with me, my dear, if I let you get away,” he told her as he locked the door and turned the sign in the window to show the establishment was closed.

So she sat in the Inkberrys’ parlor, just as she had done dozens of times before, but this time everything was different. She was different.

“I hope you are enjoying your new situation, Emma, dear.”

She gave a start at those words. She turned her head to stare at Mrs. Inkberry and felt a blush creeping into her cheeks. “Situation?”

“Working for Mrs. Bartleby.” She paused and gave Emma a pointed stare. “So much better than working for that divorced, disreputable scapegrace, Viscount Marlowe.”

Emma glanced at Mr. Inkberry, remembering she had introduced him to Marlowe. He must have told his wife the name of Emma’s friend. Given Marlowe’s views and reputation, and the fact that he’d kissed her, and in a public place, too, it was no wonder Mrs. Inkberry was looking at her with such severity. If only she knew how many kisses there had been since then.

Emma’s blush deepened, but she struggled to maintain her poise. “Yes, I am enjoying my new situation very much. My, it’s awfully warm for September, isn’t it?”

Her situation was that she was living a lie. More than one lie, actually. Not only was she an unmarried woman having an illicit love affair, she was not secretary to the famous Mrs. Bartleby, and she was still working for Viscount Marlowe.

A sudden wave of melancholy washed over her, and as Emma sat in the parlor of Mr. and Mrs. Inkberry, sipping tea and evading questions, she realized that there was no aspect of her life now that she could discuss with the people she had always considered her friends.
Webs of deceit were not only tangled, they were also very lonely.

At Cricket Somersby, Harry was waiting for her on the platform as usual that Friday, for he always took the earlier train so they wouldn’t be seen together at Victoria Station. He took her bag and they had just turned and started for the waiting carriage when a hearty male voice called out to Harry.

“Marlowe, by all that’s wonderful!”

Both of them paused, and Emma glanced over her shoulder to find a blond-haired man of about Harry’s age crossing the platform toward them, smiling in greeting.

“Wait here,” Harry told her in a low voice, then set down her bag and began walking toward the other man. “Weston, wonderful to see you. What on earth are you doing in this isolated little place? Did you just get off the train?”

Emma watched out of the corner of her eye, and it did not escape her notice that Harry steered the man called Weston away from her, no doubt to avoid performing an introduction. She also saw the man give her a quick, assessing glance over his shoulder.

She turned her back at once and pretended an enormous fascination with the surrounding countryside, trying not to wonder what questions Harry’s friend might be asking about her. It seemed an eternity before Harry rejoined her.

He picked up her portmanteau. “Shall we go?”

She didn’t look back to see if the man was watching her, but instead walked beside Harry to their hired carriage without a backward glance. “Who was that man?”

“Baron Weston. We’ve known each other since Harrow.” He handed her bag to the driver, assisted her into the open carriage, then stepped up to sit beside her.

“Is he a close friend of yours?” Emma asked. When Harry nodded, she went on in a low voice so the driver on the box couldn’t overhear, “Close enough to know I’m not one of your sisters or a cousin?”

“Yes.” He glanced up as the driver mounted the box. “Walk on,” he instructed.

“Did he want to know who I was?”

“No, Emma.” Noting her skeptical look, he went on, “He didn’t ask me a thing about you. Men have a certain code about matters of this kind.”

“Don’t ask and don’t tell?”

“Quite so.”

That seemed to be the end of it, but Emma knew what sort of woman Baron Weston took her to be, and she knew she didn’t like it.

All evening she couldn’t help thinking about Baron Weston, and about Mrs. Morris, and the Inkberrys, and the secretive, oppressive realities of an illicit love affair. It left her feeling rather dismal.

“You’re awfully quiet to night,” he said as they washed their dinner dishes. “Are you brooding about Weston?”

“I’m not brooding,” she answered as she handed him a clean, dripping-wet plate.

“Emma, he doesn’t know you,” Harry said as he began to dry dishes. “He doesn’t know your name or anything about you. He’s only down here because a horse of his is racing in the Kent Field Derby. It isn’t as if he has relatives in the neighborhood. We shall probably never see him again.”

“No doubt he thinks I’m some cancan dancer or actress, or some other woman of low moral character.”

“Well, if that’s what he thinks, he’s wrong, isn’t he? My feminine companionship is much more high-minded nowadays.” Harry tossed aside the dish towel and stepped behind her to slide his arms around her waist. “It isn’t as if Weston is going to hurt your reputation. As I said, he doesn’t know you. And even if he did, I already explained that men exercise discretion in these situations. So what does it matter what he thinks?”

“It matters to me, Harry. I’m not like you, you know. I can’t just shrug off other people’s opinions the way you do.”

She stopped washing dishes and looked up, staring out the window at the countryside, and she couldn’t help thinking how limited the horizons of her life had become. She could see the future, and it hurt to know that secret weekends in the country was the most she could ever have with him.

She thought of the old couple who always
walked holding hands, and knew she’d never have that with Harry. There would be no growing old together. She thought of the red velvet packet. There would be no children with him either. Her heart suddenly felt like lead, because she knew that one day, this affair would be over, and memories of him would be all she had.

Harry’s arms tightened around her waist. “There’s no sense in fretting about what Weston thinks,” he said and pressed a kiss to her temple, “since we can’t do a thing about it anyway.”

You could marry me.

The moment that thought came into her head, Emma tried to shove it out again. She’d always known Harry would never marry her or any other woman. In embarking on this affair, she’d made a fully informed choice, and in their two months together, she had never regretted it. She was happy.

Blissfully happy, she repeated to herself with firmness. She dried her hands, put her arms over his at her waist, and leaned back against the strong, reassuring wall of his chest. Happier than she’d ever been in her whole life, she thought. That was the most dismal part of it all.

Emma’s mood did not lighten the following day. She had never been a talkative person by nature, but she seemed especially distracted this weekend, and Harry knew she was still upset about what had happened the afternoon before. He wouldn’t change a hair on her head or a freckle on her face, but sometimes he wished
she could stop being so damnably concerned about the opinions of other people.

He looked up from the contracts he was reading to glance at her sitting in bed beside him, and he noticed that although she had her lap desk across her thighs and a quill in her hand, she wasn’t writing anything. Instead, she was staring off into space.

He leaned over and noticed that with the exception of a few doodles and an ink blot or two, the page was blank. “It’s coming along nicely, I see.”

“Hmm? What?”

“Your list of ideas for Diana. Isn’t that what you were supposed to be doing to night? Coming up with ideas for her wedding to Rathbourne?”

“Yes.”

He leaned over to take another look. “Ah,” he said with a nod, trying to sound enlightened. “Blank pages quite fashionable this year, are they?”

She gave a little laugh. “Goodness, I haven’t written a thing.”

“So I noticed. What’s wrong, Emma? Are you still dwelling on that business with Weston?”

She shook her head. “No, I was just wondering about that couple.”

“Which couple?”

“You know, the old man and woman we sometimes see when we’re out walking.”

“We didn’t see them today. What’s put them in your head?”

“Your sister’s wedding. I was sitting here, just trying to let ideas flit through my head, and I started wondering if your sister and Rathbourne would be like that old couple years from now, if they’d walk down country lanes holding hands. And I started to imagine what those two old people were like, and if they were married. Or maybe, I thought, they’re like us, living in sin on weekends in some love nest. Maybe they are the local village scandal. Maybe—”

“Listen to you,” he said with a chuckle, trying to lighten her mood. “Wondering about those people, inventing things about them. You should write a novel.”

“Me, write a novel?”

“Why not? You’re a good writer. You could do it.”

“This from the man who said when I’m writing Mrs. Bartleby, I’m writing with Aunt Lydia’s voice,” she reminded him ruefully.

“I was in a state of acute male frustration when I said that. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

She stopped doodling on the page. “Truth usually does hurt.”

“Emma—”

“I’m not hurt anymore,” she assured him. “You did warn me I’d need to learn to take it on the chin. Besides, you were right. When I write Mrs. Bartleby, I do hear Auntie in my head. It’s not really a problem, since I’m writing factual sorts of things. But I couldn’t write fiction. I don’t have my own voice.”

“Yes, you do. You just have to find it, and that
takes practice. I think you should try your hand at a novel. Or short stories, if you think that would be a less overwhelming way to start.”

Emma put her quill back in the inkstand and turned to set her lap desk on the floor by her bed. She blew out the candle on her bedside table. “I’m no storyteller, Harry,” she said and slid down under the sheet.

“Stuff,” he contradicted and put his own work aside. “Tell me a story.”

She turned her head and looked at him. “What, right now?”

“Right now.” He leaned back against the pillows. “Give it a go, Scheherazade.”

“And if you don’t like it, do I get executed at dawn?” she asked, smiling.

“The worst punishment you’d get from me is a critique, but I won’t even do that, I promise. I’ll just listen. In fact, I’ll even help you out and start it for you. Once upon a time…”

She groaned. “That’s so clichéd.”

“Well, this is a rough draft. C’mon, now. Stop stalling. Just tell me a story.”

“Oh, all right.” She laid there a few moments, thinking. “Once upon a time, there was a young girl who wanted a diary.”

“Good,” he encouraged. “Very good. Keep going.”

Emma sat up. “She was lonely, you see, and she had no one to talk to. Her mother had died five years before and she was very shy and didn’t have many friends. She was thirteen years old and girls are so terribly muddled at
that age. She was frightened, too, because she was bleeding every month, and didn’t know why. She thought perhaps she might be dying. No one had ever told her anything.”

Harry began to feel a tight, painful pinch in his chest. She wasn’t making this up. He leaned back against the headboard and watched as she curled into a ball, hugging her knees to her chest.

“There was no one she could ask about things. She wasn’t allowed to write to her aunt, who didn’t get along with her papa. And the maid who came every day to do for them was this stout German lady, much too formidable for a painfully shy girl to talk to.”

“Perfectly understandable of her to want a diary.”

“Her father wouldn’t give her the money for a diary—they were very poor, and he couldn’t afford something frivolous like that, he said. But she wanted one so badly, she went to a barber in the village where they lived and had her hair cut short. She sold her hair, and bought herself a diary. When she got home, her papa was already gone to the pub.”

The tightness in Harry’s chest began to burn into rage. He couldn’t afford to buy his daughter a diary, but he could go to the pub? Bastard.

“She stayed up very late that night, writing and writing and writing. Boys and pretty gowns and what her wedding would be like, all those other things girls dream about. Being a man, you probably don’t know much about that.”

“Ah, but I do know. I have three sisters.”

“Then you understand, a little, how she felt.” Emma turned her head, rested her cheek on her knee, and smiled at him. “It was wonderful for that girl. It was such a relief, to pour out all these things, all the things she thought and felt and wanted to know about life. Then her father came home and saw what she’d done. At the time, she’d known he’d be angry, but she did it anyway. After all, hair grows back, she thought, and no harm done. Her father didn’t…quite see it that way.”