Lady Windermere's Lover (19 page)

“Certainly. It’s only a year old.”

“What have you done with my cat?”

“Warm and snug in my pocket. She’s probably fallen asleep.” His voice turned gentle, with a note of humor, and her indignation slipped away. She’d left because she wanted him to want her. Wasn’t chasing her on horseback through a storm a step in the right direction? She relaxed and rested her cheek against his chest “We’ll get you warm and snug too, very soon,” he promised.

“Thank you,” she replied softly, feeling safe and protected.

She had no idea sharing a horse was such an intimate thing. While his hands were busy with the reins, his arms enclosed her, holding her firm. Her legs rested across his thighs and she grew ever more aware of their sinewy strength beneath his breeches, and of the distinct bulge of what lay in between. The slow jogging of the horse had her thinking of a different rhythm. She nuzzled his neckcloth, inhaling the refined scent of the soap he favored together with the earthier notes of leather and horse, and provoked a slight, almost imperceptible hitch of breath in reaction. Threading one hand inside his coat, she felt the beat of his heart.

“What?” he asked.

“My hand is cold,” she lied.

He urged the horse forward. She would be sorry when the journey ended and also glad. For the inn would provide bedchambers. Perhaps only one.

“I see light up ahead,” he said. “We’ll have you in a warm bed soon.”

She was already beginning to feel quite warm, thank you.

Reaching the inn yard, he dismounted, then lifted her down, keeping her in his arms. It turned out that the The Swan at Egham was a small place that didn’t see many travelers. The innkeeper, once convinced that he had a pair of noble guests on his hands, was all smiles, promising accommodations for the entire party. He dispatched the ostler to help with the carriage and a maid to prepare bedchambers for my lord and my lady. Bedchambers. Two of them. One each.

“I haven’t seen snow like this in years,” the innkeeper remarked. “I reckon most travelers stopped at Staines.”

“Sensible ones did,” Damian agreed, giving her a significant look. She uttered a faint squawk of protest at his needling. “My wife had a slight accident and I need to get her warm at once.”

“I can walk,” she said.

“She’s delirious.”

There were worse things than being carried. It kept her in Damian’s arms.

D
amian bore her up to the inn’s best bedchamber where a servant was plying a warming pan between the sheets of the bed.

“Here you are,” he said, putting her down next to the already glowing fire. “A room this size will warm up soon. Would you like something to drink?”

“Tea would be agreeable.”

“Bring some tea for my lady.”

The servant departed, leaving an awkward silence. Damian held his hands out to the heat. His practiced glibness had deserted him, leaving him staring at his wife in frustrated longing. Holding the woman he adored so close had been a delicious torture. In the course of the short ride, outright hostility had softened to silly bickering and ended in a silent harmony he hadn’t wanted to end.

“I should leave you.” He didn’t want to. “The fire is beginning to take hold. It’ll warm up soon.”

“You just said that.” She tugged at her bonnet and tossed it aside to reveal golden hair incongruously dry. He reached out a hand to touch the shining locks that swept back from her forehead, then pulled back. Clamping his arms firmly to his sides before they got any ideas, he felt a lump in his pocket. “Here,” he said, extracting a yawning kitten. “Here’s your cat.”

“Thank you.” Not for the first time he envied the creature clasped to her bosom. She dropped a kiss on its tiny gray head and settled it on a pillow, where it yawned again, turned over, and went back to sleep.

He stared at the bed. It was a good size and looked comfortable. “You’ll have to disturb her when you get into bed.”

“Pudge won’t mind. She doesn’t mind anything, even lumpy mattresses.” He might have read an invitation in the remark, but he was humble and unsure of himself. He didn’t trust himself to interpret the widening of her blue eyes, the faint curve of her pink mouth. His intention was to subject his wife to a prolonged campaign of wooing before he tried his luck again.

“I’ll leave you to undress.”

“I have nothing to change into until the carriage arrives but I need to remove this wet gown.” She tossed aside her cloak and presented her back. “I have no maid either. Will you undo me, please?”

Now this was torture. There was nothing in the world he wanted more than to undress his wife yet he couldn’t believe things would end up according to his deepest, most fervent desires.

Focusing on the immediate task, he examined the back of her gown.

A
s she visualized Damian’s long fingers seeking the fastenings of her sensible but stylish traveling gown, Cynthia’s skin tingled. Waves of longing shot down to her belly. Closing her eyes, she heard the faint click as the hooks were loosened, felt the chill on the exposed back of her neck, his cool hands through the linen of her shift. The minute the gown slackened she swayed backward, finding nothing but air and space. He’d stepped away.

“You are undone,” he said in measured tones.

Shaking her shoulders, she let the gown slip to the ground and stepped out of the stiff woolen circle. Pivoting on the heels of her half boots, she faced him. He was beautiful and solemn, like an angel at the last judgment. Did angels have earthly desires? How could he stand there still as a graven image when her intimate core was empty and throbbing, aching to be filled by him. She chose to believe it wasn’t her fancy that his gray eyes had turned dark, dark with need. Need for her.

Oh, she was indeed undone.

“Your shoes are wet.” Never had mundane words sounded so fraught with sensual possibilities.

Without uttering a word, she sat on the edge of the mattress and extended a leg. He dropped to one knee, and worked off the damp jean boot. Then he took the stockinged foot between his palms and rubbed the soles with his thumbs. She let her linen shift rise up, her knees fall open, evoking flared nostrils and a hitch of breath. Nevertheless, he did nothing but continue his blissful ministrations until she removed her foot and offered the other. While he removed the boot she tried an experiment, opening her thighs so brazenly that her intention could not be mistaken. She felt herself grow hot and wet inside. He glanced up the inviting tunnel and smiled. The message had been received. With utter concentration he returned to the massage of her foot.

The curve of his mouth propelled her state of longing into the heavens. He too had delivered a message. He was hers, just as soon as she gave the signal.

“Damian,” she said, stroking the dark hair back from his forehead. It was soft and disordered, unlike its usual impeccable state. She noticed a faint bruise on his left cheekbone and, when he looked up, a reddening and perhaps a trace of blood about the shapely nose. She didn’t want to hear about his fight with Julian.

“What?”

“I want you.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”

He swallowed. “Shall we undress?”

His blazing eyes sent her up in flames. “I want you now. Fast. I don’t want to wait a minute. Not even a second.”

Her husband knew what
fast
meant. He released her foot and pushed her firmly onto her back. Spread-eagled before him with arms extended, bare to her upper thighs aside from her stockings and garters, legs hanging over the end of the mattress, she felt shockingly, delectably open. The air, warmed by the fire but still with a little winter nip, cooled her private parts without in the least diminishing the burning heat inside. Tilting her head, she watched him watch her. Fully dressed in coat and waistcoat, breeches, and tall polished top boots, he offered a picture of masculine grace and strength that evoked a soft vulnerability in her that she could define only as a wish to be utterly possessed.

“I think you’ll have to take at least one garment off.” She cast a taunting little smile, lest he think anything had changed and he was in charge.

“There are so many areas in which your education needs to be improved.” Without taking his eyes off her, he opened the buttons of his sober brown buckskin breeches.

“
Un, deux, trois
. . .” she counted. “
Quatre, cinq, six
.” All the way to eleven.

And the fall of leather descended.

“Your French really has improved, my lady.”

His male member leaped out from a frame of white linen. Far from sober, it seemed unbridled and fierce, darker than the rest of his skin, thick and powerful-looking. This time she anticipated nothing but pleasure. She stretched her arms and legs wider and lifted her pelvis. “
Maintenant, s’il vous plait, monsieur
.”

He stood between her splayed legs and lifted her shift all the way to the waist. She felt no shyness, only exhilaration. “
Enchanté, madame
,” he replied, grasping her bottom with one hand to bring her to the right height. Her head lolled back onto the bed so she didn’t see how he came in, only felt the quest at her entrance followed by a thrust and a smooth, gliding entry. “
Je veux te foutre
.”

Whatever he said sounded wicked and possessive; she felt wicked and possessed. Owned by him, utterly in his hands to take what he meted out with every confidence that the result would be her pleasure.

“Ooooh, yes,” she crooned on a long breath.

Her very great pleasure.

“All right?” he asked in a strained voice.

“Oh my goodness, Damian,” she shrieked.

Her extreme delight.

“I take it that’s a yes. You are incredible.”

“Don’t stop.”

“Not a chance.”

Both hands held her at exactly the place he wanted, resisting her involuntary convulsions as he withdrew and returned again, and again. With each entrance her longing increased, building to the crescendo of sensation he’d given her with his mouth the night of the bhang. Now she knew what to expect and, as far as his controlling hands allowed, met him thrust for thrust and discovered inner muscles that could clench his marvelous, brilliant member, savagely demanding it remain within, even as each movement intensified her bliss. Her thighs closed about his hips, her legs wound about him, holding him tight.

“
Finalement, je te fous
,” he gasped between heavy breaths. Since she didn’t know this particular French phrase, she guessed that it wasn’t one she would encounter in polite society. Rightly so. There was nothing polite about their joining. It was crude and earthy. The motions were the same as the soulless couplings they had endured after their marriage, but there the resemblance ended. How the same motions could achieve so different a result, she had no idea. He was a silken hammer in her soft cradle and she loved every slick inward drive, each momentary retreat, each return more satisfying than the last. She couldn’t stand the joy and never wanted it to end as she mounted to the same apex of ecstasy she’d enjoyed before. She felt that crest of joy, then the tumbling into delight, no less astonishing for being known.

“Oh, Damian,” she keened, jerking her head from side to side on the counterpane.

“
Oui
,” she screamed. “Oh God, yes!”

As tremors seized her body, his movements sped to a fever until they were wild and unrestrained. She expected the stiffening of his muscles, the arching of his neck, the cry of completion, and the rush of heat as he spilled his seed.

What happened next was different, though. Instead of removing himself from her body and her bed, he collapsed on her, still joined. As she became capable of sensations beyond what she dubbed the earthquake of delight, she registered the scratchiness of his coat rubbing her arms and neck and the tops of her breasts, rising above her stays. He took her mouth in a long, deep, wet kiss of the kind he’d never given her during their previous unions. For the first time she felt a
rightness
about this most intimate of actions, the strange congress of man and wife. More than that. It might just be the best thing the world had to offer.

Eventually, out of breath, they parted. They ended up sprawled on the bed, side by side with only the backs of their hands touching, a fleeting shadow of their devastating embrace.

“Sorry, Pudge,” Damian said when the kitten squeaked and retreated to the hearth to continue her nap. “Was that fast enough for you?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Slow can be good too.” He trailed his fingers over her breasts.

Would it be proper to say
I look forward to finding out
? She settled for “Oh.” Her boldness had vanished, leaving her paralyzed by shyness. Etiquette offered no guidance as to what to say under these circumstances. She wasn’t sure Lady Ashfield herself would be able to advise her on the correct behavior in this situation.

He tucked her head into the curve of his shoulder, making her wince. “Did I hurt you?”

“Just a hairpin. I can’t believe my hair is still up after that agitation.” He helped her rummage among her tousled locks, handing her the pins until they were all removed. The simple task seemed profoundly personal, more so than the energetic union of their bodies. That was a normal function of marriage while hair arranging was not. A strange and illogical truth.

“Why do you smile?”

“No reason. I just feel well.” Discussing her peculiar insight was a further advance in intimacy she wasn’t yet ready to pursue. The intensity of their congress had receded, leaving her physically replete but aware of the weighty issues that still lay between them.

Chapter 20

D
amian awoke feeling sore all over and unsure of where he was. The bed was smaller than he was used to, though comfortable enough. The small chamber was well heated. The window revealed only that it was daylight and snowing. It all came back to him.

“Good morning!”

Now this was a sight worth waking up to. Cynthia, clad in blue with her golden hair neatly dressed, smiling at him from a seat near the fire.

“What time is it?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve been up a couple of hours but I decided to let you sleep.” Pink roses suffused her creamy cheeks. “You had a long ride through the snow.”

“It’s still coming down, I see.”

“I doubt we’ll be going anywhere today.”

Perhaps not tomorrow either. She couldn’t escape him, and enforced proximity would give him the chance to woo her into staying with him willingly, joyously. Yesterday’s lovemaking had been a good start.

“There’s food in the next room. Since we shared a bed”—she blushed again—“and the inn doesn’t have a private parlor, I ordered breakfast upstairs. There is bread and butter and cold meats. The tea is probably cold but I can ring for fresh, and something more substantial if you wish.”

“I’m sure it will do very well. Uh, how did we come to share a room and why don’t I remember?”

“You came with me upstairs after dinner, removed your coat, lay down on the bed, and fell asleep.”

The sheer bliss of ending a long sexual drought, and in sensational fashion, had temporarily numbed the havoc wrought by a brutal fight followed by a long, hard ride in poor conditions. The triumphant charge had ebbed over dinner. Damian had much to say to Cynthia and no idea how to begin. Perhaps it was as well that they had dined in a public room, under the interested eye of the innkeeper and his wife and a stranded commercial traveler who was the only other guest.

“That wasn’t very polite of me. Apparently I at least had the decency to remove my boots too.”

“As a matter of fact I pulled them off. It was quite a struggle.”

“I am obliged.”

The pink roses turned to deep red as she fixed her attention on the large sketch pad she held on her lap. She’d been bold enough in the grip of passion, but he rather hoped her grasp of French didn’t extend to the crudities he’d used in bed. In five minutes he returned, still wearing only his shirt and breeches.

“Since we’re not going anywhere today, I don’t see the point of dressing. I brought my breakfast in here, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

With Cynthia occupying the only chair, he perched on the end of the mattress, the recent location of long-delayed satisfaction. Thinking about that incredible bout had him ready for a repetition. But she looked so ladylike and serene this morning that it was impossible to believe she’d opened her legs and demanded he take her. He bit into a sandwich of bread and ham, concentrated on chewing it thoroughly, and watched her draw.

“Another window view?” he asked.

“It wouldn’t be very interesting since there’s nothing to see but snow.” She peeked at him from under her lashes. “I attempted to draw you while you slept. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Would you show it to me?”

Without a word she handed him the block. Remembering the less than flattering portrait she’d produced before, he looked with some trepidation. For a moment he scarcely recognized the face. He’d never seen himself with his eyes closed, but that wasn’t the reason. He stared at a man he hadn’t seen in years, one he’d once known well. A young face, innocent and carefree in repose, smiling faintly in his sleep, the only shadow a dusting of bristles on his chin. He couldn’t quite define the difference from the earlier drawing. The features were the same.

“You’re frowning,” Cynthia said. “Do you think it very bad? I was quite pleased with the likeness.”

“Is this how I always look when I am asleep?”

“I haven’t enough experience to judge so I’ll have to let you know.”

“Do you think I look the same when awake?”

“Not always. You do today.” As she studied him, he wanted nothing better than to kiss the gravity from her bewitching features and fluster her into blushing smiles. “Openness,” she said, with a nod. “Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve been closed off, self-contained, giving away nothing. As I drew you sleeping I saw you without a mask.”

“I am a diplomat. It is my job to be diplomatic.”

“Do you have to be like that with me?”

He did not. He hadn’t always been so with others either. Under the influence of Radcliffe, he had hidden his emotions and buried them so deep they’d almost ceased to exist. The lessons had fallen on fertile ground. Or frozen ground, rather. He’d come to Sir Richard in a state of shock and readily assimilated precepts that had numbed his pain. “I don’t want to be.”

“Tell me about yourself.”

It would be easier to show her. “May I borrow your pencil?” She handed it over without any comment but a raised brow. “Would you mind standing? You have the only chair.” He posed her at the end of the bed, the cheap worsted curtains providing a swirl of drapery to complement her graceful form. “Look at the window, please, to present a three-quarters profile.”

“Oliver said you used to paint.”

“Hm.” He outlined the bedpost, curtain, and the sweep of her skirts in half a dozen deft strokes. “I don’t suppose you have any charcoal.”

“In the pencil case.”

He rummaged in the utilitarian wooden box on the floor next to the chair. “I always found I could get a better effect with charcoal. For shading.”

“Did your mother teach you to draw?” Cynthia asked.

“I think I told you my sister had no talent. It turned out that I did. I always wished I could be an artist.”

“But you had to be an earl instead.”

He shrugged and applied the fragile black stick to the outlined curtain and smudged it with his finger. He hadn’t forgotten the technique, though he badly needed practice. With hands occupied, and half his mind too, he found it easier to talk about the past.

“My father insisted it was no profession for a nobleman, or any man for that matter. He had no interest in the works of man’s creation, be they literature, music, or visual. He preferred the products of nature, especially when they could be cultivated for profit or killed for sport. He tolerated the habit in my mother, because he loved her. And because she was a woman.” As he sketched the details of Cynthia’s figure he remembered the late earl’s reaction when he drew pictures of horses instead of riding them. “My enjoyment of drawing lessons was a source of strife between my mother and father. But they came to an accommodation. At Amblethorpe, for most of the year, I was my father’s son. But we spent a few months each year at Beaulieu where I was allowed to do as I liked.”

She turned her head to show eyes glistening with tears. “And after she died?”

“We didn’t go to Beaulieu anymore.”

C
ynthia held her breath. Beaulieu loomed over his past and their marriage and she wanted to hear more. His dark head bent over his paper and she feared his confidences had come to an end. “Why not?”

“After Mama and Amelia died, my father couldn’t bear to go there. But she had left it to me and on my twenty-first birthday it was mine. I intended to live there.” His expression was flat again, not closed off so much as bleak.

“Oh God,” she whispered. “And then you lost it.”

“Julian told you, did he?”

“That’s why you married me.”

“The only reason. I don’t care about the rest of your uncle’s money. All I wanted was to get my mother’s house back.”

“I’m sorry.” What else could she say?

“I was too, but not now. I am the one who should apologize. I thought when I had Beaulieu back, I would feel happy again, but it made no difference. I could win back the house, but not the people I loved.” He spoke slowly as though the words were hard to summon. Her eyes prickled and she wondered if he was close to weeping himself. “In my anger I treated you unfairly.” He looked up, and the candor in his expression sent her heart flying. “I hope you’ll give me the chance to make amends. Might you be able to forgive me?” Hearing him own up to some of his past mistakes was a balm to her wounds.

“There’s one thing I want to make clear,” she said. “I never betrayed you with Julian.”

“I know that now.”

“I am not wholly innocent. I encouraged his attentions because I knew they would irk you. And I came near to surrender.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. I believe I could have forgiven you, but it would have been hard for me to forget.” He sketched away for a minute then looked up with a steely glare. “I won’t let you go to him.”

Why?
Her chest was tight and she couldn’t speak, even if she’d dared voice the question.
Tell me it’s more than possessiveness and jealousy.
She groped in her pocket, seeking a handkerchief.

“You moved.”

She had forgotten she was posing for him. “I beg your pardon.” She hoped he’d say more but he was intent on his drawing. “May I look?”

“Very well,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “It’s very rough and I am sorely out of practice. I would only show my work at this stage to a fellow artist.”

It was rough, but even this unfinished sketch amazed her. “You are good. But you’ve flattered me.”

“On the contrary. I haven’t begun to do you justice. You are a beautiful woman, Cynthia.”

The simple statement meant more to her than any of Julian’s clever compliments. “Thank you. Did you stop having lessons after your mother died?”

“I dismissed my drawing master out of deference to my father, though I resented it bitterly. The following year I went up to Oxford, determined to continue my studies along with Latin and Greek. The teacher I found recommended I copy the statues in the Ashmolean Museum.”

“That’s how you met Julian.”

“The museum was located in the basement of the Bodleian Library. He laughed at my tutor’s hidebound method and said I should travel to Europe and learn to paint like the Old Masters. A few months later, after we’d been summarily ejected from Christ Church College and ordered never to darken the precincts of the university again, that’s what I did. We went to Paris.”

“That must have been fun.” Cynthia sat on the edge of the bed.

“Oh it was. And it vexed my father greatly. We spent the next four years having the time of our lives, in Italy, Germany, Holland, and above all France. I studied drawing in Amsterdam, oil painting in Rome, and both in Paris. We saw the Bastille fall and breathed the heady oxygen of La Liberté.”

“Were you a revolutionary sympathizer, Damian? I find it hard to believe.”

“I was,” he replied stiffly, much more like his usual self. “Until it all went wrong. The revolution turned to cruelty and violence and we came home. The principles that sounded so fine in theory soon created chaos.”

“What about the others? Julian and your friends. Did they feel the same?”

“Robert continued to mouth revolutionary platitudes while gambling away his inheritance. Marcus didn’t much care.”

“And Julian?”

Damian shrugged. “I thought I knew Julian as well as any living soul, but I can’t tell you exactly what he thinks of the way Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity descended into mass murder. He went back to Paris alone after Robert and I came home for good. Something happened to him there. And then
it
happened. My towering folly and great disaster.”

“I don’t understand why you blame Julian. You lost to Robert, and it was he who lost Beaulieu again.”

“We played all the time and lost to each other. Vast sums. Marcus makes his living from gaming and Robert was mad for cards and dice. It was an obsession with him. I didn’t care for play, except in fun, and Julian, with no money to risk, only ever bet chicken stakes. Throwing the deed to Beaulieu onto the table was stupid. I was among friends and very drunk. Drunker than I realized. I passed out, and this is why I blame Julian. He encouraged me to make the bet and then he took me home, damn him. The next day I went to Robert to redeem the estate but it was too late. He’d never have lost Beaulieu to another gamester if Julian had been there to stop him.”

“Julian meant it for the best.”

“Did he? I doubt it. He pretended to apologize. And he had the gall to offer the consolation that I would still eventually inherit Amblethorpe. I hated Amblethorpe and he knew it. Robert at least was genuinely sorry.”

“Did you speak to either of them again?”

“I went north to tell my father and decided I had to become an upstanding member of the nobility. I wrote to Robert and Julian and told them I was changing my habits, that I couldn’t continue the wild life I’d been leading since I was sixteen.” He pulled a rueful face. “I daresay I was a bit pompous.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, though under the circumstance you could be forgiven.”

“Apparently not. I had been back in town a couple of weeks when Julian invited me to breakfast. I was actually pleased. I had missed him and thought we might make up our quarrel, even if we no longer did everything together.” Throughout the recitation Damian had been wound up, intent on his tale of the painful past. She had never seen her husband blush but she was fairly sure that underneath his tan his cheekbones turned red. “I shouldn’t tell you this next bit. Not suitable for a lady’s ears.”

“I believe I will survive.” She couldn’t imagine what he would say that was more shocking than those Persian paintings. Not to mention what they had done together yesterday in this very spot. “I am a married lady, after all.”

“That’s the trouble. The next bit concerns a female who was neither a lady nor married.”

“You had a mistress? How shocking! I thought you had resolved to turn respectable.”

“There’s nothing untoward about a single man having— Never mind. I see you are teasing.”

“I’ve spent hours in Caro’s company.”

“The lady in question was a dancer at the opera and not my mistress, though I intended that she would be and was not without hope. Until I called at Julian’s lodging and found him in bed with her.”

“Oh dear! Did you love . . . her?”