The Lamplighter's Love (5 page)

“It will hurt a bit this time, I think. I’m
sorry, love.”

He leaned in, and Mary felt an unbearable
pressure and then a bright pop of pain as he burst through the
constriction of her hymen. She gasped and rolled her hips, trying
to ease the sting, but Nicholas grabbed her thighs and held her
steady as he pushed deeper with short, determined thrusts. By the
time he reached her limit, the sting had faded to a mild burn. And
when his pelvis fetched up hard against hers, she cried out and
forgot the pain completely.

Nicholas thrust into her carefully despite
his obvious tension, and the friction drove Mary’s pleasure to a
fever pitch, to a bright pinnacle she thought must be the ultimate
bliss. Except . . . except
there, just there
, as he bent his
head to take her nipple in his mouth again, and the change in angle
did something like magic.

The climax came fast and hard, raging
through Mary like a fire, taking her breath and all reason with it.
She reached with her feet, pulling Nicholas in, instinct driving
her to grind against him, drawing her pleasure out. She heard him
gasp, felt his lanky frame shudder as his own release began.

And then there was hot liquid on her thigh,
and the ache of sudden emptiness where just an instant ago her
whole world had been focused on how he was filling her. Mary’s eyes
flew open to see Nicholas leaning over her as if exhausted, his
cock again in his hand. He wore a look of total astonishment, and
she was quite sure it mirrored her own expression.

“So long,” he murmured. He sagged a little
farther, resting his forehead on the part of her lap that was still
dry. “Oh Mary, love, thank you. It’s been such a very long
time.”

She wanted to reach out, to stroke his hair
back from his forehead and hold him close. But the Chair still kept
her from the affection she would have shown. When she spoke, she
heard a dry humor in her voice and wondered where it had come
from.

“So you never did use the prostitutes, I
gather?”

He lifted his head to stare at her, a
bemused twist to his smile. “Not once, no.”

“Can you unstrap me, please?”

“Oh! Of course. And help you tidy up.”

He did so, with his handkerchief and a
certain amount of playful digression. Mary stopped him at last,
placing one hand over his and stroking his fingers before pushing
him gently away. She stood, stretching her stiff arms and smoothing
down her skirt, and when she turned around he was looking vaguely
miserable but determined.

She didn’t want to hear whatever he had to
say. She slid her arms around his waist and nestled her cheek
against his shoulder, sighing with remembered pleasure when his
arms came up to embrace her. Tradition had it that a Lamplighter’s
heart beat in time with his machines, as cold and efficient as his
calculations. But Mary heard the truth beneath her ear, the all too
fallible flesh and blood that made up this complicated man.

“Was that for me,” she asked at last, “or
for yourself?”

He laughed and tightened his grip around
her. “Both, I suppose. It was meant to be for you. I didn’t mean
for it to go quite that far.”

“It was very effective,” she pointed
out.

“I’ve no doubt.”

“You’ve done a cruel thing, you know.” She
pulled back just enough to look at him.

“If they do offer me the post and I refuse,
we both know I’ll have no future here.

They’ve been training me for this for years,
I know that now, and I’m a loss to them if I don’t put that
training to use. But if I accept . . .” Her gaze traveled over to
the Chair, which bore no sign of their recent activities.

“You’d know what you’re missing.” To his
credit, he did sound apologetic.

“Yes I would,” she said, lifting a hand to
push his hair from his eyes at last. “And you’re quite right,
Nicholas. Ten years is a very long time.”

“The first nine years or so weren’t too
terrible, actually.” He traced a fingertip along her collarbone.
“But the last few months have been a living hell.”

Mary smiled at that, unable to resent him
though she knew she probably should.

“So it was for you, after all.”

“There is a third possibility, you
know.”

Mary’s mind was a blank, and her equally
blank stare seemed to amuse Nicholas. This time it was he who
reached to brush a strand of hair back into place, to caress her
cheek. And then, for the first time and with no fanfare, he kissed
her. A sweet, lingering kiss that promised the world.

“You see,” he explained patiently after they
both recovered their wits, “I’m quite fatally in love with you. And
it has recently come to my attention that after the New Year, I’ll
be in need of a countess.”

The look on Amberherst’s face told Mary
everything she needed to know. He was not hearing anything new in
this meeting of the Guild Council. She was sure of it. As she heard
the scheme described for the first time, and reacted accordingly,
he remained smug and impassive. The arrogant, grasping bastard.

She wished two things as she sat before the
leaders who had decided on this fate for her. One was that the
Lamplighter was in attendance, because she suspected he would have
a great deal to say to the Council about their so-called
modernization scheme. And second was that she had simply followed
her heart and accepted Nicholas’ proposal on the spot, after that
frantically ecstatic interlude in the Chair.

Curse my own notions of fair play
,
she chastised herself. Because she hadn’t wanted him bound to a
decision while he was still so ill at ease with the world at large,
she had told him her answer must wait until he was back in that
world for at least long enough that the sky no longer caused him to
panic. She thought he would surely come to his senses shortly after
receiving his title, and marry somebody far more appropriate to the
role of countess than a nineteen-year-old Master of Lampworks who
had been trained to spend her life alone in a room looking at
figures. And if by some miracle he decided he still wanted Mary,
they would be none the worse for having waited a short time.

“But perhaps I’m not hearing correctly. If I
may ask for some clarification, sir?” she found herself asking. “As
stated, it sounds as though I would in fact be filling the post
some ninety-eight hours per week, compared to Master Amberherst’s
fifty-four. Yet he would bear the title of Lamplighter, as well as
the full salary, and I assume would therefore also be the only one
to accrue the benefits usually enjoyed by the Lamplighter after
retirement?”

The Elder master, Cyrus Smith, smiled at
her. It was a benevolent beam that would do any grandfather proud.
His voice was so soothing and reasoned it was difficult to disagree
with anything he said. Or so Mary had found in the past.

“But surely you can grasp, Miss Cross—”

“
Master
Cross,” corrected Alice
Temple, the Second Elder. She looked none too pleased at the
information her colleague had conveyed thus far, but she hadn’t
spoken out directly. Mary knew the Council’s deliberations were
always completed prior to any public discussion. If Master Temple
had voiced objections, they had already been overruled.

“Of course. Master Cross, surely you can
grasp,” Smith repeated in a tone that somehow suggested his belief
she was, in fact, not capable of grasping anything more complex
than the alphabet, “that Master Amberherst will have, in those
shorter hours, the lion’s share of the work. The busiest times for
traffic, both on the roadways and in the shipping lanes. The peak
business hours. These operations will keep him very busy, while
many of the hours you will spend monitoring the engines are not
even manned at this time. Most of the functions are automated and
will require no action on your part, absent some emergency.” He
made an expansive gesture, as though granting Mary a boon.

She sat there, stunned, unable to think of
anything to say in response. The words springing to mind were not
utterable in the current company. After a few moments of pained
silence, the Elder master nodded and went on.

“Master Amberherst has already agreed to
take the Chair at the New Year. It is our hope that you will join
him at that time. That you will embrace this rare opportunity to
pioneer a new position within the Guild of Lampworkers.”

“And if I don’t?” Mary whispered then
quickly bit her lip, hoping she hadn’t been overheard.

“Sorry?”

She cleared her throat and stood, speaking
in as clear a tone as she could muster.

“Thank you for your time and consideration,
masters. I will give the offer some careful thought.”

Of the six men and three women, only Master
Temple met her eye before the meeting was brought to an end.

Mary had no thought of where to go, what to
do, after leaving that room. Only to go, to walk away, as far and
as fast as possible. She needed to outpace the horrible knot of
sorrow, anger, rage that threatened to choke her where she
stood.

But Amberherst intercepted her, a light of
ferocious glee in his eerie pale eyes. “A word, Master Cross?”

His fingers were already wrapped around her
upper arm, bruising her, as he yanked her into an empty meeting
room next to the Council hall.

“Not now, Amberherst,” she hissed, jerking
away from him and barely restraining the urge to claw at his
face.

“
Now
, Cross. I heard you in there.
And if you don’t
? If you don’t, what do you suppose will
happen to you, you stupid cow? Can’t you see you’re finished here,
ruined, if you don’t go along with this?”

“All I see at the moment is a filthy,
scheming worm,” Mary said coldly, making each word as crisp as she
could.

“Idiot. Did you really think some little
girl from the countryside had a chance at becoming the Lamplighter?
Have you bought every single lie the guild ever spewed to coddle
you along? Well, of course you have, haven’t you? The girls always
do.”

“What are you talking about?”

Amberherst smirked, his self-assurance
causing a cold chill to race through Mary’s bones. “I was raised
here because my mother was guild. My father’s another matter.”

“What are you talking about? Your father’s
guild, I’ve met him. He’s a metallurgist,” Mary said, feeling lost
when Amberherst laughed in her face.

“No. That’s the man my mother married. My
father was her youthful fling. Or rather, she was his. And now my
father is in line for a dukedom when
his
father dies. And if
his wife continues barren, as she has these many years after giving
him only one daughter, then my father will need his heir. He plans
to adopt me, which will also solidify certain vital trade interests
between him and the guild. But obviously his heir can’t just be a
guild master, or even just the Lamplighter. I’ll need to be
something else entirely, something new. In order to be accepted
before I’ve even served as Lamplighter, I’ll need to have already
been in society when he introduces me. So obviously I’ll need my
evenings free. And I’ll need a wife who can mingle with the
ton
.”

He preened, causing Mary no end of disgust.
“After I’ve taken my official position in the Chair, and the
adoption has been formalized, I’ll be marrying Lady Olivia Munson.
She’s a third cousin or something, I gather. Some horsy-looking
girl from Sussex.”

“But what about Jocelyn?” Mary asked.

“What about her? Won’t she be the lucky one?
Not many in her position have a gentleman friend as well-connected
as I’m going to be.”

A mistress. He was planning to keep Jocelyn
as a mistress, while he married the horse-faced cousin and turned
the position of Lamplighter into a political sinecure. The guild
itself was planning this.

Mary tried to catch the fleeting threads of
her thoughts but couldn’t seem to pin anything down. It was all too
much to take in, and she wanted to pinch herself hard, wake herself
up from the nightmare the day had become.

But there was more. Amberherst blocked her
when she tried to stagger away, yanking her roughly around to face
him. “This
will
happen, Mary. And you will do as the guild
has told you to do. Mark my words. Or you’ll regret it.”

“What do you think you can do to me,
Amberherst? What more is there?”

He looked her up and down with a leer.
“Well, there could certainly be more. For instance, it wouldn’t be
to your credit, or to the guild’s, if it got about that you—a
supposed guild master—were really no better than the Lamplighter’s
resident doxy. If the word spread that for the past two years at
least, you’ve been going down there and servicing him? After all,
it’s even in his contract. Money for whores, even if it’s not in so
many words. Did you know that,
Mistress
Mary?”

Without pausing or thinking, she slapped
him, the sound of the blow as clear as a gunshot in the small,
quiet room. And then, horrified at herself, terrified of what
Amberherst had threatened, she ran from the room as the tears began
to fall. The last thing she heard was the sound of his cruel
laughter, chasing her down the corridor.

* * *

The apprentice had brought her Nicholas’
reply within twenty minutes or so. He would arrange a later shift
for Amberherst, as she suggested, and meet her at the Pig and
Sprocket at eight o’clock.

His handwriting was jittery, barely legible.
Mary wondered if his joints were aching. It was snowing again,
unseasonably cold if beautiful. She wrapped a woolen shawl under
her cloak, and a thick knitted scarf around her neck, but she was
chilled nonetheless by the time she had braved the wind and frost
and made it to the warm glow of the pub’s common room.

She felt an illicit excitement as she
secured a room for the night, glad for the master’s garb that
granted her leave to do so without suspicion. An unmarried woman,
carrying only a small valise, still raised many an eyebrow if she
tried to obtain a room in an inn. But the publican at the Pig and
Sprocket didn’t seem to notice or mind what she was carrying. She
was clearly just another traveling tradeswoman to him, no doubt on
her way to or from some training or special job of work. He
pocketed her money and summoned a boy within seconds to take her to
her room, granting her all the deference her uniform demanded.