Hadrian (16 page)

“Because I am lonely. Now hush, so you might rest after your exertions, and cease arguing with someone who means you only the best.”

She let him tuck her face against his shoulder and for once, did exactly as she was told.

As Avis dozed in Hadrian’s arms, her thoughts went winging back twelve years, to the first and only other time she’d found intimate pleasure with a man—with Hadrian.They’d been on that dangerous cusp of inexperience and bravado. She’d been seventeen to his eighteen and had only recently realized Alexandra didn’t want her sister hovering in the invalid’s room, a
walking
reminder of the worst day of both of their lives. With silent, furious determination, Alex had started getting around on crutches. Less than week after that development, Aunt Beulah had returned to the north, and arrangements had been made for the Portmaine sisters to leave Landover and return to their brothers’ care at Blessings.

Hadrian would soon travel south for his final Michaelmas term at university. Hadrian, who had become Avis’s devoted shadow in the weeks since she’d been assaulted. He’d walked with her all over the rugged countryside, inspiring her to a physical vigor she’d not known before. He’d shown her how to defend herself from such as Hart Collins, and that more than anything had renewed a kind of confidence she’d taken for granted as a girl.

He’d argued with her over all manner of topics worthy of debate by university scholars and shown her that her intellect was the equal of anyone’s. He’d started her reading novels for her enjoyment and found her a copy of the
Scots Musical Museum
, because even earthy, unpretentious songs of love, loss, nature, and rural life gave her something to focus on.

He kissed her—playfully, true, like a cousin, or a particularly nice brother, but Avis knew exactly what he was about. He would push, pull, drag or flirt her back onto her emotional feet, and she’d been grateful.

Not until separation had loomed had Avis found the nerve to trust Hadrian with a question that had plagued her every waking moment.

“Why do women have relations with men?”

On his side of their picnic blanket, Hadrian paused in his reading of
The Lay of the Last Minstrel
. He did not immediately look over at Avis, but she had learned him well in the long weeks of summer.

He was no longer reading.

“Not to have children,” Avis went on. “Having children is dangerous and occasionally fatal. Allowing a man intimate congress can’t be to entice him into marriage, because marriage will simply mean more of same. Who would want to marry a fellow who comes to the altar panting from his naughty exertions?”

A yellow rowan leaf came twirling down, though the sunshine was at its late summer most benevolent.

“You really want me to answer that question?” Hadrian turned a page of his poem, quite the scholar. “The entire business is something your husband will explain to you.”

She wanted the answer to one question, not an entire business. “I won’t have a husband, Hadrian. I wouldn’t want one, and none will offer for me. We know this.”

“We don’t know it,” Hadrian rejoined, setting his poem aside and rolling to his back. “Only you have the power to refuse all comers, Avie, and you’re barely seventeen. You’ll get offers.”

His casual confidence both pleased and perturbed her. Must he be such a relentlessly good friend?

“I haven’t received a single invitation all summer, Hay.” She flopped down beside him on the blanket; they were that at ease with each other. “Who wants to endure all that socializing if the result is supposed to be marriage proposals and what follows?”

“You won’t always feel this way. The right man will earn your trust and show you what pleasure a husband can offer you.”

The only man to earn her trust was soon to depart for points south, to resume drinking, wenching, arguing, and—coincidentally—studying with his peers.

“The right man, a decent, proper fellow who esteems decent, proper women, won’t have me, even if I’d have him. You show me, Hay.”

The idea had come to her weeks earlier, when she’d overheard Harold and Benjamin heartily assure each other Alexandra would someday “get back on the horse.” What was Avis to do, for heaven’s sake? Many proper ladies never graced the back of a horse, but only that pathetic creature, the spinster, avoided intimate congress with a man.

Hadrian bolted to sitting as if the blanket were on fire. “For God’s sake. You are the victim of a crime, Avie. Would you be the victim of a seduction as well?”

“Better a seduction than ignorance,” she shot back. “You kiss me, Hadrian, and I like that. I never thought I would, but I do.”

“On the cheek!” He ran a hand through his hair, which he’d kept long in some young male bid for individuality. “On the hand, on the temple. I don’t kiss your mouth, much as I might want to.”

He sounded nearly angry, but not necessarily with her. “Why don’t you?”

“Because it would be wrong. Because I would not want to stop there, and that would be beyond wrong.”

“You’ve seen me,” she said slowly. “Half-naked, bruised, beaten, stupid with shock, and crying, and yet you want me?”

Hadrian rose in one lithe movement and paced off the blanket. “That day, that day was one very bad moment, Avie, a nightmare moment in your life, and mine, but the fault for it lies exclusively at Hart Collins’s feet. That was one awful day, which does not define you, nor does it limit my admiration for you.”

She watched his restless movement, liking the way muscle moved beneath his doeskin breeches, not liking at all that he’d left their blanket.

“At best, I’m a victim. More likely, I’m stupid, shallow, conniving, and got exactly what I deserved.”

Sunday mornings came around regularly, and the churchyard gossips made sure she did penance every week.

“You are not, and you did not.” He dropped back down to the blanket and took her by the shoulders. He’d knelt in the same posture when he’d found her sitting on the steps outside that wretched little cottage.

She met his gaze, willing him to see her acquiescence. No, not acquiescence, not capitulation, her
hope
. She wanted his kiss, wanted his hands on her, wanted things from him she couldn’t even name.

Did he but know it, those very wantings had been responsible for her decision to end her engagement with Hart Collins.

“Damn us both for this,” Hadrian whispered, then pressed his mouth to hers.

Even in Avis’s ignorance, wonder, and rejoicing, she grasped that Hadrian Bothwell was a skilled, even talented kisser. She’d endured her share of furtive, slobbery attempts from the local fellows, but this was lush, lovely, tender beyond imagining.

With only his mouth on hers, Hadrian brought Avis to life in a way she’d known he could, and the change felt
wonderful
. If her soul was a house, Hadrian’s kisses were light pouring in the windows, fresh air wafting through her hallways, and music ringing from the rafters.

She pulled him over her, so she was on her back and he was the sun above her, and still they kissed. Avis kissed him with weeks of frustrated curiosity and passion, weeks of avoiding this moment, and weeks of trying to imagine it into being.

Hadrian took his mouth from hers, and she wanted to weep.

“Avie, we have to stop.” His hair had come loose from its queue, and she speared her fingers through it and brought his face back to hers.

“Don’t you dare stop. I want you to show me.”

He dropped his forehead to her shoulder. “I will not despoil you, not even if you hate me for my refusal.”

“Then just kiss me.” And so it went, with him kissing her within an inch of her sanity, while she’d demanded, pleaded, and begged him to make love to her, and he refused, and kissed her some more. She went so far as to put his hand on her breast, knowing that if it was forbidden, it must have something to do with what she craved.

And, ah, God, his touch was beyond description. Careful, reverent, and both pleasure and torment. She only begged harder, until Hadrian hung over her, lungs heaving.

Another yellow leaf came spinning down through the sunshine to land on his shoulder. “Stop your infernal wheedling, Avis. Please.”

She brushed the leaf away and cupped his cheek against her palm. He shaved now, something else he’d learned among the scholars far to the south.

“I will miss you to the bottom of my soul, Hadrian, and there’s nobody else I can ask. If you deny me, I’ll never know.”

Hadrian trapped her hand in his own and kissed her knuckles, then shifted to brace on his forearms, so his weight pressed Avis into the blanket. “I will regret this all my days. Even if you don’t hate me for it, I’ll hate myself.”

Capitulation. Had he not pinned her to the earth, Avie might have floated with a combination of trepidation and glee.

“Shall we undress?” For she wanted Hadrian to assure her that no trace of her ordeal was visible on her person.

And she wanted to see him, only him.

He’d shifted to his side, close, but not as close as she wanted him. “We shall not, lest I lose my last pretensions to honor. Close your eyes, Avie, and hold on to me.”

A few more moments of attention to her breasts, a few more of those shockingly pleasurable kisses, and a deft, determined exploration of what lay under her skirts, and Hadrian sent Avis’s world spinning.

All without removing a stitch of his own clothes and without letting her do more than kiss him.

When Hadrian rolled to his back, Avis tucked herself against his side. An echo of the dazed, detached, feeling she’d experienced right after her assault crept up on her, but the sunshine was warm,
Hadrian
held her, his scent enveloped her, his heartbeat thundered right beneath her ear.

Oh, God. God in heaven.

“I hope you comprehend now,” he said, “why a woman might allow a man, the right man, intimate liberties.”

He spoke so sternly, so disapprovingly, that the lovely haze of newfound knowledge thinned.

“You did find pleasure, didn’t you?” He might have been a schoolmaster scolding an unruly little scholar.

“I did.”

“Thank God for that.”

He was relieved, while Avis had, for a few lovely moments, been pleased—so pleased.

While Hadrian was disgusted? Or worse, disappointed—in her? The last of the warm, happy sense of well-being left on a spate of exasperation.
What had she done
?

Hadrian withdrew his arm and sat up. “We’d best be on our way. The clouds are gathering.”

“Hadrian?”

He busied himself finding his boots and passed her hers as well. Sometimes, he put them on her, but not today. Not ever again, most likely. With his face set in such harsh lines, he looked more handsome than ever, but also different. Not her Hadrian, but some angry angel, forced to sin.

“I’m not sorry,” she’d said, pulling on her boots.

“This wasn’t well done of me, or of you. I wanted—”

“I know what you wanted,” she interrupted, yanking on the second boot. “You wanted me to live the rest of my life in complete ignorance, with memories of Hart Collins all I had to sustain my interest in the opposite sex. You were very clear on that.”

“Avie, no.”

She glimpsed shame in his eyes, heard it in his tone, the one thing she’d never wanted to bring down on her only friend. Avie got up, shook out her skirts, and made him a stupid little curtsy.

“Good day, Hadrian. I wish you every success when you return to school.”

She’d flounced off, making it to the safety of the trees and their horses before she heard him behind her. Silently, he boosted her to her mount, and just as silently, he escorted her back to her own stable yard. Angry, disappointed, or even hating her, Hadrian would not let her come to harm.

“We have to talk, Avie,” he said before she dismounted. “Things today did not go as they should have.”

“No. They did not.” Though what had she expected? That Hadrian would tolerate her wanton inquiries without thinking less of her? Did he think less of himself?

He helped her to dismount, and she stood beside the horse, her hands on his muscular arms, just as she had many, many times before. His blue eyes held concern now, and Avis knew—she just knew—he was about to apologize for giving her the single glimmer of hope she’d found in an entire summer of lonely self-doubt.

Pride had her whirling away when what she wanted was to fall weeping against his chest. She’d done that before too, too many times to count, and her tattered dignity came to her rescue.

Off she stomped, refusing to be home to him for the next three days, and then he departed to Oxford a week early. When Harold told her a month later that Hadrian was studying for the church, she’d nearly spilled her tea.

And now, twelve years later, Hadrian was no longer a churchman, he was no longer a young man shatteringly disappointed in a friend, he was offering instead to be a fiancé.

“You’re awake.” His arms stayed around her, and his lips brushed her brow. “Have I learned anything worth knowing in twelve years?”

“Will you use my answer as a pretext to disappear for the next twelve years?”

A significant part of her feared he would.

“I will not.” He spoke easily and steadily, and this time he kissed her ear.

Avis nuzzled his collarbone. “Then I’d say you are more knowledgeable than ever.”

Hadrian gathered her closer without her having to ask. “Go back to sleep. We’ll talk when you’ve rested.”