“I’ve missed you so much,” he said.
“Good. I’ve been perfectly wretched about you.” She drew back enough to look up into his face. “Ever since you left, I’ve been wishing we’d finished what we started. I’ve wished you hadn’t stopped. I’ve wished you had undone all my buttons and strings and didn’t care about the consequences.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he said. He did, and wished he didn’t. He was not made of iron.
“I’m telling you the truth,” she said. “Why should I pretend? I’m always making excuses, telling myself as well as you tales to protect…” Her voice wavered. “I don’t know what I’m protecting. My vanity. My pride.”
“Your honor,” he said.
“Must I protect it?” she said. “Shall I leave now? Why didn’t you chase me away before I spoke?” She pulled away, her lower lip trembling. “Wretched man.”
“My dear…” Oh, he was lost. He wished she’d simply stick a dagger in his heart and be done with it.
“Your dear,” she said. “Your dear.” She gave a short laugh and wiped her eyes. “Oh, don’t look so—so—Don’t look that way. I shan’t weep. I despise women who use tears to get what they want. I was merely overcome for a moment. With exasperation.”
“I should give anything,” he said, “to have it otherwise.”
There was a long, taut pause. Then she said, “You wish I were not a gently bred maiden, is that it? If I were not an unwed lady, what then?” She pulled off her gloves and dropped them on the floor. Then she began to untie her bonnet ribbons. “What then?” she repeated. “What if I were not quite a lady, after all?”
Alistair stared at the gloves and at her naked hands, swiftly undoing the ribbons. “You cannot be…” He trailed off while his mind struggled with an incredible possibility.
She pulled off the bonnet and tossed it onto a chair.
“No,” he said.
She began unbuttoning her pelisse. “I am one and thirty years old,” she said. “I should like to gather my rosebuds before the petals shrivel up and fall off.”
Twelve
THE expression on his magnificently patrician countenance was priceless. If she hadn’t been so nervous, Mirabel would have laughed. But she was quaking in her boots, and if she paused, even to laugh, she would lose her courage.
“This joke is not amusing,” he said.
“I’ve never been more serious in my life,” she said.
He’d said he missed her. He’d said he had feelings for her. Perhaps those feelings simply added up to lust, but that was all right. What she felt was lust, too.
It had been so long since she’d felt desire, so very long since a man had returned her feelings. She had held back with William and preserved her virtue for honor’s sake. She’d let the man she loved go, for duty’s sake. She would not let honor and duty rule this time, not completely.
She and Mr. Carsington were alone, and this time they were not under her father’s roof or at the hotel. No one had seen her enter his bedroom, and no one need see her leave it. Such an opportunity would never come again.
She didn’t want to die a maiden. She had to know what it was like to experience and express passion. She must experience, once, what it was to be made love to by the man one longed for.
He started toward her. She backed away. “You must do up those buttons,” he said so very sternly, “or I shall do them up for you.” He advanced.
She retreated.
The room was a fraction of the size of his bedchamber at Oldridge Hall. Its furnishings, combined with his belongings, created a course of obstacles and left him little space to maneuver round them. She knew he daren’t chance overturning a chair or table or toppling any of the breakables, which seemed to be everywhere. The noise would bring the staff running.
He limped cautiously after her, and she retreated, while her unsteady fingers moved down the front of the pelisse.
“Miss Oldridge, this is a very dangerous game,” he said. “Someone might hear us.”
“Then lower your voice,” she said.
She leapt up onto the bed, and standing a hairsbreadth out of his reach, quickly shrugged out of the pelisse. She threw it at him, and it caught him in the face. He held it there for a moment, then crushed it against his chest.
“You must not,” he said hoarsely. “It is wicked to do this to me. It holds…” He swallowed. “It holds your warmth, your scent.”
Her heart thumped frantically.
“This is most unwise,” he said. “And unfair.”
“You leave me no choice,” she said. “You and your dratted honor.”
“You must not do this,” he said. “You must not.”
“We’ll never have another chance,” she said.
WE’LL never have another chance.
Alistair tried to tell himself it didn’t matter. He could no more dishonor her here than under her father’s roof.
She was struggling with the fastenings of her dress.
They were at the back. He might have undone them so easily.
He clenched his hands and stood motionless.
Without help, she couldn’t get the dress off. He must not help her.
“I’ve spent my life doing my duty,” she went on while trying to twist her dress about in order to get to the buttons and strings. “I don’t regret it. Not altogether. But I know I’ll regret you.”
“My dear—”
“Don’t say that!”
“You are dear. If you were not—But we cannot—We must talk. I beg you to stop disrobing. It’s impossible to talk rationally while you’re doing that.”
“I’m always so rational,” she said. “Always doing the right thing. Why may I not, once, do the wrong thing?”
“Yes, you may, another time. But not now.”
“You said you missed me, you were wretched without me,” she said. “When you go back to London, you’ll have other ladies to make you forget me. I shan’t have anyone like you. I don’t want to wish I’d taken a chance. I don’t want to regret. Now is all I have. Do you not see? Time is running out for me.”
She gave up fumbling with the dress fastenings and grabbed the bedpost instead. She lifted her right foot, un-fastened her half boot, and after a short struggle and a few stumbles, pulled it off.
He could not let her continue. He started toward the bed.
“Don’t think of it,” she said. “I am very nervous and liable to scream.”
Alistair took a step back. She was nervous already. Very likely her courage would soon fail her altogether—before his resolve failed him, he prayed. Before he forgot what honor was. He must pretend. He was good at that. He must pretend he felt nothing.
He moved away, brushed her ugly bonnet from the chair, sat down, and folded his arms. “Very well,” he said. “Take off all your clothes. Writhe in the bed naked, if you wish. It is nothing I haven’t seen before and won’t again. As you say, there have been and will be other women in my life. Many other women. If I grow very bored, perhaps I shall take another turn about the garden.”
He watched the other boot sail past him. Luckily it was soft, and the carpet was thick. It landed with a faint thud.
Her garters went next.
Alistair stared at his boots.
Something soft and slithery landed on his head. He snatched it off, opening his eyes. It was a stocking, still holding the shape of her leg. He swallowed a groan.
Another stocking landed at his feet. He stared at it, dragging his fingers through his hair.
He heard a faint whoosh, and a pair of silk knit drawers swirled onto his knee and slid to the floor.
He told himself to pretend it was something else, but he couldn’t. In his mind’s eye he saw feathery, pale copper curls in the most secret, most feminine of places. Slowly he looked up toward the bed.
Her fiery hair was tumbling about her shoulders, and her dress was twisted sideways. She had her skirts hiked up to her thighs while she
worked at untying her petticoat. He had already seen her ankles and calves, the first time he’d seen her. He knew they were shapely. But he hadn’t seen nearly so much of them, and he hadn’t seen those sweetly curving limbs bare.
She had a beauty mark near the crook of her left knee.
“Miss Oldridge,” he said thickly. “Mirabel.”
“I have never had to do this from the inside out before,” she said. “It is no small challenge.” She tugged the petticoat down and stepped out of it. She stood for a moment, her skirts bunched in her hands, and looked at him.
“Your legs are very beautiful,” he said. Please cover them up, he should have added. He didn’t. Not that it would have made a whit of difference.
She glanced down at her legs. “Yes, they are good, I think. But no one ever sees them. The rest of me is good as well. And it is all going to waste!”
Then at last he saw the trouble.
She lived in this out-of-the-way place with a father who was mainly absent, in spirit if not in body. She worked day after day, and no one took much notice of what she did. There was no one to applaud her accomplishments, let alone to admire or flirt with her. There was no one to tell her how pretty she was, no one to appreciate her wit, her intelligence, her caring and affectionate heart.
Why should she care how she dressed, or whether her hair was tidy or not, when she was, to all intents and purposes, invisible?
“I see you,” he said. He got up and crossed to the bed. She stepped back, out of reach.
“You are beautiful,” he said. “I would give anything in the world to have you. But I cannot, because I am not in a position to marry you.”
“Of course we cannot marry,” she said. “It is very likely you will build your horrid canal and destroy everything I hold dear, and I shall hate you for it. If you fail, it will be my doing, and you’ll hate me for it. At this moment, we are in charity with each other, but it cannot last. If we do not make love now, we never will. You will have other opportunities with other women, I know. But I am not likely to meet another man for whom I have feelings as strong as those I have for you.”
She spoke quietly and composedly, but the color came and went in her cheeks. She stood stiffly, her skirts still bunched in her tightly clenched hands.
No tears glistened in her eyes, and her lips didn’t tremble, but her chin jutted out, brave or defiant or merely obstinate, he couldn’t tell.
All Alistair knew was that he wanted what she wanted, and he felt like a beast, making her beg. He would feel like a beast afterward, too, no matter what he did.
He would do what she wanted and what he wanted, and work out the moral difficulties later.
After all, he told himself, he wasn’t a schoolboy. He knew ways to make love without ruining her.
He and Judith Gilford had taken full advantage of the rare, brief occasions they’d been alone together. He’d had time enough to relieve his affianced bride of her virginity. She, certainly, hadn’t tried to protect it.
Yet he’d controlled himself.
He might be stupid, but he was not without scruples.
He told himself this as he pulled off his coat.
He tossed the coat aside, unbuttoned his waistcoat, swiftly removed it, and threw it on top of the coat. He untied and unwound his neckcloth and flung it aside. It landed on top of her drawers.
Alistair heard her suck in her breath.
His own breathing was shallow. He told himself to calm down and keep a level head. He pulled off his boots.
Then he looked at the woman standing on the bed, letting his gaze travel slowly from her bare toes upward, over the graceful turn of her ankles, the sweet curve of her calves, the teasing dot at the crook of her knee…and up the gentle swell of her thighs.
He climbed onto the bed and on hands and knees crept toward her, across the counterpane marked with her boot prints.
She didn’t move a muscle, only stood holding her skirts as before. Nearing, he saw the tiny beauty mark was a misshapen heart, upside down. He kissed it. Her leg trembled.
He hooked his arm round her knees and brought her down.
He heard the soft, choked cry of surprise and the light thud as she landed among the pillows. Then he was crawling over her, and she was clutching fistfuls of his shirt and pulling him down to her.
He meant to be gentle and careful, but it was nearly impossible. He was like a man who’d wandered the desert for days, weeks, years. She was the oasis, fresh and clean and sweet. Every other woman he’d ever known seemed merely a mirage. Only she was real.
Her scent was everywhere, dizzying. He’d held her pelisse to his face, inhaling her helplessly, and the scent brought back everything he’d tried to forget: the first taste of her, as fresh as morning, and the artless ardor of her kiss…the warmth of her body on top of his, her heart thumping against his chest, her hair tickling his chin.
Now she was here, in his arms.
We’ll never have another chance.
He deepened the kiss, and the sweetness darkened. A lover’s dusk settled in, with darkness to come. All the world gone…only they two, alone.
His hands moved to her back, and he undid the fastenings he’d vowed not to touch: first the dress’s buttons and tapes, then the corset strings. Then he was pushing the lot—bodice, corset, chemise—down to her hips…
…and then he forgot how to breathe.
He’d pictured in his mind the shape of her breasts, but he could never have imagined how perfect they were, firm and velvety smooth, tipped with delicate pink buds. He had not quite envisioned the flawless curve of her stomach and the enticing dip of her navel. He had not imagined he would stop suddenly, and look at her, and realize she was everything in the world he’d ever wanted.
“Mirabel,” he said softly. Wonderful. Miraculous. He drew his hand, so lightly, over her breast.
She rose to his touch, the delicate bud tightening and darkening. “Oh,” she said. It was the softest of sighs, the gentlest exhalation, yet it told him everything—of the pleasure she took, the trust she gave, the wanting she felt, undisguised.
He slid his hands over the silken curve of her belly. She moved under his hand, her uninhibited response urging him on, and his touch grew less delicate, more possessive. He stroked over the velvety skin, the perfect curves, and she moved with every stroke, giving completely, trustingly, without fear or shame. The more he tasted and touched, the more she gave, and the more he wanted.
His mind was a haze of wanting, and she was everything he’d ever wanted.
He kissed her deeply, as though he must get to the heart of her, and she caught her fingers in his hair and answered with the same urgency. The taste of her was so clean and sweet, innocent but not shy. It was like drinking the nectar of the wildflowers blooming defiantly in the most forbidding moorland.
“Mirabel.” A murmur against her eager, welcoming mouth.
“Yes, yes, yes,” she whispered.
Yes yes yes.
He pushed dress and corset and chemise over her hips and down, scarcely heeding what he did, only wanting them out of the way. He shed his own remaining garments in the same mindless way, caring for nothing but to taste her mouth again, and her skin, and to learn every inch of her body with his hands, his mouth.
Perhaps he was aware, in some distant corner of his mind, of where he was and who she was and what he’d intended, of what was right and what was wrong. But the awareness slid farther and farther away while her hands moved over him, too, as she learnt from him to be bold, as she discovered how to stir his hunger for her.
Right and wrong receded and faded while desire blazed ever fiercer and wilder. Her tongue tangled with his, her fingers dug into his shoulders, and their bodies tangled, too, as he rolled with her onto their sides. All the while they demanded more of each other, and the clinging kiss deepened, into a heated mimicry of coitus.
He was still aware, in some faraway place, of what he’d intended and what honor demanded. But she
clung to him, and he’d rather die than let go of her, so warm, and silken soft, and passionate.
He dragged her up tight against him, and heard her soft gasp.
“It’s all right,” he whispered.
It wasn’t. She was an innocent, else his arousal would not have shocked her.
Stop, he told himself. Stop now.
But she didn’t recoil. She wasn’t afraid, though his swollen membrum virile throbbed against her belly.
“Oh, my goodness,” she said, her voice a choked whisper. She moved her hips against his. Then, “Oh.”
He had no thoughts left, only a hot haze of consciousness. “I want you,” he growled. “So very much.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, please.”
Yes, please.
He slid his hand between her legs.
She made a soft, startled sound, then relaxed and yielded, trusting him.
He slipped his fingers through the feather-soft curls and gently caressed her. Again she stiffened, and again, in the next moment, she surrendered to the intimate touch, moving against his hand, seeking more. Her soft hands moved more possessively over his shoulders, his arms, sending rivers of heat coursing down to the pit of his belly, making a hot darkness of his mind.
His caresses grew less gentle, and her hands tightened on his arms. “Oh, yes, please. Oh, yes. Dear God I—” and then she was shuddering to a climax, then another, and another.
He felt her pulsing pleasure ricochet through him, felt it course through his veins and reverberate in muscle and sinew. She was slick under his hand, and he was half mad with joy and need. She writhed against him. “Oh, please. Please.” She caught her fingers in his hair and dragged his mouth to hers, and it was sin he tasted this time, hot and sweet carnal sin. He needed to drain every drop, to be inside her, to feel that madly pulsing pleasure from within.
Still half lost in the tumultuous kiss, he drew her leg up over his hip. He stroked more deeply with his fingers, readying her, though she was silky moist already, and his fingers trembled with need. She wanted him. He wanted her, more than anything in the world.