Finding Bliss (12 page)

Time, air, wind, the ticking of the clock outside the room,
all seemed to stop in that instant. Eric’s mouth pressed against hers for a
moment longer than he realized before his willpower (to not give in to the
temptation of such a willing mouth) shattered like broken sugar glass at his feet.
He opened his lips and let his tongue come out for a taste of her.

Wetting the seam of her closed mouth, he teased until she
opened to him. Eric’s breathing became rough and tempestuous against her cheek.
When the mysterious woman angled her body upward to gain more access to him,
the change in her body positioning broke the connection between them.

Eric jerked backward in surprise. He stepped down from the
platform and began to walk behind the chaise. Turning toward her back to tell
her the exam was over, he noticed something that stopped him abruptly as if
he’d run into an imaginary wall.

There on her shoulder he spied a mark. He leaned closer
before he realized what he was about and tugged the loose neckline of her
chemise downward to have a better view. The birth mark was a near perfect match
to the shape of the South American continent! A wave of familiarity washed over
him with sudden heat.

“Bliss?”

“Took you long enough, Eric,” Bliss said in dry nerve. Then
she sighed. “I suppose that couldn’t be helped, though.”

“What in the devil are you
doing
here?” Eric asked,
not yelling but also not hiding the fact that her deception was clearly unfair.

He stormed around the dressing screen and yanked her day
dress from the coat rack. Snatching her slippers from the floor he marched out
like an angry tyrant. Bliss watched him surreptitiously as he fiddled with the
gown, turning it and gathering the skirt in such a way as to prepare to dress
her like an errant child.

This made her cross, but Bliss wasn’t prone to theatrics. Faking
illness to get someone to do her bidding was one thing. But what they’d done …
what he was nearly tempted to keep doing … that was … what was it? Eric shook
off the naked desire silently warring within him a few moments earlier and placed
the dress over her head without a care.

Bliss sat and moved her arms to assist him in his attempts
to get her sufficiently buttoned and covered. The patience of her acquiescence
made him all the more disgruntled. The moment he put her second slipper onto
her foot, he moved quickly to the door and yanked it open.

“I’m summoning your maid. You shall leave this office at
once, or I’ll personally write to your father and tell him what you’re about,
young lady! What’s her name?”

“Never mind Pauline. She’s having tea with your poor nurse. I
have something to tell you.”

The statement stopped him cold. Whenever Bliss said there
was something to tell, it usually meant bad news. The idea that came next, to
embarrass her like a juvenile, couldn’t be helped.

“It’s kind of hard to tell anyone news with your mouth
involved in slobbering all over them trying to steal kisses,” Eric said
petulantly. Bliss rolled her eyes.

“You’re going to be getting married very soon,” she said
without ceremony. “I know who it is. It will be the result of a compromising
situation you find yourself in. You know, you really should take care not to be
so flippant with your affections, Eric.” Bliss told him with cool disdain. Then
she continued without waiting for him to make a logical reply through his
indignation.

“I’ll be at Uncle Ozzie and Aunt Pen’s house for a while. Whisper
Chase as it’s known. Feel free to call upon me if you like. Oh, and you will
need to examine Aunt Pen. She’s going to have another baby—fairly sooner than
she thinks.”

Bliss dropped to her feet before Eric could formulate another
coherent thought. Not looking at him, she strolled over to the open door and
left the room without so much as a wave.

Eric stood in the examination room
for a full ten minutes. The pronouncement of his impending marriage was most
upsetting. But why on earth did Bliss feel the need to come all the way to
Bristol like this and tell him?

Was she trying to protect him from an unfortunate match? The
idea of marriage, good or bad, terrified him. He was young, barely twenty six,
and willing partners for physical affection were in abundance these days.

Many young widows sought him out for their medical needs,
and he had no problem with their forward natures when it came time for their
treatment period to end. It made him only a little uneasy since these same
women paid him for medical care. But he always managed to forget the uneasiness
whenever they were simply naked and pliant beneath his skilled hands in bed.

Suddenly an involuntary shudder rocked him nearly off his
feet. Bliss! What had he just done with her? They were kissing in his exam
room! He kissed Bliss like a drowning man seeking air!

Much as he wanted to be appalled by the notion, he couldn’t
resist revisiting the kiss in his mind for a moment. The flavor of her warm
mouth still on his tongue, Eric could feel stirrings of his own arousal pulsing
in his lower veins. He clearly needed a cool bath to clear his forbidden
feelings for a girl whom he’d known since she was in short dresses!

There was really no harm in a physical attraction to her,
though. Not now, anyway. Bliss had to be, what? About twenty? Twenty-one years
old? She was five years his junior when they were little, so now she was
definitely within the bounds of decency for him to consider.

“What the hell am I even thinking? It’s Bliss for crying out
loud!” Eric spoke to the empty room.

“Sir?” Scarlet’s voice made him jump a foot off the ground.

“Scarlet! You scared the starch out of me! I’m sorry to be
so rude, but I’m afraid I need to leave the office today. I’ve got some
important business to attend to, and since you’re obviously still suffering
from your head cold, perhaps this would be a good day to close the office and
take a rest.

“Repeat the tonic every six hours and the steam treatment
before you retire for the evening. Send word to any of my afternoon
appointments, would you? Have anyone with an emergency directed to Dr. Stemley.
I’ll be out of pocket for the remainder of the day,” Eric said.

He tried not to look guilty as he slipped past the
bewildered nurse. But the fact that he was suffering from a near painful
erection was difficult to hide. To her credit, Scarlet said nothing of his
uncomfortable state. She merely nodded absently and watched as Eric moved to
his office, grabbed his satchel, and left as quickly as possible.

Bliss, Bristol, March 1811

All in all the meeting went as Bliss
expected, aside from the difficulty of discerning who would instigate the
kisses. Bliss and Pauline hurried back to Whisper Chase intent on making it
back in time to visit a little with Aunt Pen before she took off on her daily
errands.

Penelope was in the upstairs sitting room when they returned
and invited Bliss to sit with her while she worked on her embroidery. Bliss was
glad to have the time to wait with her. Instead of having lengthy conversation,
however, Bliss was subjected to the light sound of a snore as Aunt Pen fell
asleep over her needle work.

It gave her a thrill of wonder at how easily a woman who had
born two children could ignore the obvious signs of her pregnancy. Bliss used
the time while her aunt dozed to reflect upon the meeting with Eric. Specifically
she reviewed the kissing.

Having absolutely no basis for comparison, Bliss was still
rational enough to recognize the significance of the way it affected them both.
Eric definitely responded to her physically. She could see it in his overall
manner the way he had lost himself in the moments of heady affection.

Bliss also wasn’t immune to the way his kisses turned her
into a simpering nitwit! It had been so difficult to sit still and allow him to
redress her and treat her like a naughty child when every fiber of her wanted
to shed the dress, the chemise and stockings and make the blurry visions of her
first sexual encounter come to life.

Releasing a sighed breath she hardly knew she was holding,
Bliss closed her eyes and tried to picture the grainy images of her wedding
night. The vision was there, complete and unaltered in her memory. But the
years and her maturity level still wouldn’t let the scene come into true focus.

Bliss only knew, with absolute certainty, that it was her
future. If it wasn’t, the vision would have changed and another face, another
man, would be there in the room. Her unfortunate blindness to the actual act of
making love left the view woefully chaste.

The only part that was certain was the curve of Eric’s mouth
as he smiled. She held on to that vision as tightly as possible.

A minute later a new vision played for her. In it Bliss was
in an unfamiliar house dining with unfamiliar faces. All save one. The woman
who had invited her to brunch! And there was a flicker of something else in the
vision. A child and … a feather?

What was that about?

Bliss rarely concerned herself with trivial mundane visions
about people she recently met. She recognized the feather from a cap she bought
before the St. Patrick’s Day Ball. It was in her trunk upstairs. But the reason
why she would see the feather in connection with someone’s little boy wouldn’t
gel for her.

Another scene came and left with no explanation. She saw
herself in a room. It looked like a dusty office somewhere. It made no logical
sense. Before Bliss had time to vet the details, Aunt Pen dropped her
embroidery hoop and woke with a start.

“Wha … Oh, my goodness, Bliss! What a horrible host I’m
turning out to be! How long have I been sleeping? Shame on you for letting me
doze like that! We need to be more active and move around. Why don’t we take a
turn in the garden and refresh ourselves? I’ll have the housekeeper send a tray
of finger foods and lemonade out to the veranda for when we return,” Penelope
said. Bliss could tell her aunt was embarrassed at her fatigue.

They put on their walking cloaks and boots and met at the
outer path that led through the garden. Penelope walked in a measured slowness
that Bliss understood better than her aunt. Penelope colored and made excuses
for her tiredness, stopping often to sit on a bench, unable to keep moving for
getting too winded.

Throughout the walk Bliss made several pointed arrow remarks
about her mother’s pregnancies with Cori, Andre and the twins. Penelope shook
her head and laughed each time without taking any of them seriously until Bliss
pointed out that her own mother had been past forty when she had the twins.

“Dear, you must remember that your mother also had several
pregnancies since you were born, whereas I haven’t had any since Maxwell. And
he’s just about your age. No, I think you must remember that this is just me
getting on in years. Stop all that nonsense about babies and let’s return to
the house. I’m extremely tired, and I believe I’ll need an early supper and turn
in for the evening. I do hope you can forgive my inhospitable behavior,”
Penelope sighed in defeat.

“Of course, I don’t really mind. I have some letters to
write anyway. And I expect a caller tomorrow. We should want to be fresh when
the gentleman arrives,” Bliss remarked crisply.

“A gentleman caller? Who is coming to call upon you in
Bristol?” Penelope was suddenly more alert.

“He is just an old friend, Aunt Pen. It’s no one to get
upset over. He’s been acquainted with my family for years. You will likely not
remember him. I don’t believe you ever had the pleasure of his acquaintance. He
lives here in Bristol.”

Bliss gave only limited details. Penelope continued to look
intrigued as they walked a snail’s pace back to the house.

Eric, Bristol, March 1811

The long day plagued Eric with
thoughts of Bliss’s message. That wasn’t entirely true. Some of the thoughts
were distinctly of kissing Bliss, but Eric refused to let them invade his brain
for longer than a few heartbeats before he shoved them out forcefully.

Instead of being relieved by knowing his fate, as he’d often
thought he would be, the very idea that forces outside his control would put
him in the way of the vicar and vows made him nauseous.

Most of his afternoon consisted of visiting with a few of
his male shut-ins, checking gouty ankles and prescribing regimens of exercise
to a few of his less-serious ailing complaints. When a messenger reached him in
the middle of the street on his way to his favorite coffee house, Eric realized
that being a surgeon didn’t stop merely because you had a personal crisis. Lady
Normand was in need of his services.

The young widow suffered no serious ailments that he could
figure out. But she did have occasional bouts of hysteria, and he seemed to be
the only one able to alleviate them with any consistency. She often said he
reminded her of her poor Lord Normand.

Her young husband was taken from her too soon by a reaction
to a helping of clam bisque. There hadn’t been any way to save him when
swelling had cut off his airway completely. By the time a surgeon, not Eric,
had arrived there wasn’t anything that could have prevented his death.

Lady Normand’s hysterical attacks usually came whenever
someone inadvertently served anything remotely related to clams, bisque or soup.
She had a morbid fear of soups of any kind. Usually Eric would be summoned to
administer a dose of laudanum or talk her out of any irrational reaction to an
unfortunate brunch where a hostess served a soup course.

The attacks weren’t usually immediate, but when they set in,
Lady Normand was a danger to herself and sometimes the people around her. Eric
ignored the subject of his own troubles and hurried to do his job.