He’d have stood up from his marvellous log, his new favourite seat in all the world, to take her in his arms, or be taken in hers, but after a moment’s stupefaction, he realised that the best place for her must be close in between his thighs while he stayed perched as he was, and so he moved to allow her that greater intimacy, should she desire it. She did, she moved closer still, and his arms went about her, encircling her. She hadn’t specifically forbidden that, nor his legs closing tight about her as they did now. He could hardly doubt that she would let him know in the clearest possible fashion, should something not be permitted. This too was marvellous. He was a simple sort of a man; he’d always liked things to be clear.
Her hands were in his hair now, and she was nipping at his lower lip with her sharp, wicked teeth. He might have moaned; yes, because she chuckled, and did it again. And then her tongue was in his mouth, and he was carried away on a wave of pure, delicious sensation. Their bodies were pressed together, along almost their whole length, her breasts soft against his chest, her thighs enclosed tightly by his. She must be able to feel him hard against her belly through the thin fabric of her gown and under-things. If she was shocked, she gave no sign of it, only wriggled still closer. His hands moved down to cup her buttocks, and now, delightfully, it was her turn to moan into his mouth. He squeezed a little, and then more. Perhaps hewasan ogre, out here in the night. Perhaps that was perfectly fine.
It had been a long while since Alistair had held a woman in a close embrace, and that had been Charlotte. He’d met her at a friend’s house party, one summer, and they’d spent hours talking and laughing together; he’d been bewitched by her delicate beauty, and she apparently fascinated by him, so that their intimacy had grown up quite naturally. It had been the most straightforward thing in the world for him to ask for her hand, and for her to accept. He had been faithful to her during the long months of their engagement and the inevitable separations, with no great temptation to be otherwise, even though their connection had always been entirely proper and honourable, and had not gone beyond kisses – kisses much, much less heated than this.
But then he had been wounded, disfigured and crippled, and her reaction had shown him that they’d never really known each other at all; their relationship had been entirely superficial, with no genuine feeling at the base of it. Certainly not onherpart. He had been hurt and lonely after she left him, unable to acknowledge that he’d had a lucky escape, and dreadfully low in spirits – too low even to lay hands on himself for comfort in the long, dark stretches of the countless sleepless nights. He had felt himself unsexed, until very recently, and hadn’t even had the energy to regret it. And so it was no wonder, perhaps, that Miss Constantine’s effect on him, warm and entirely wonderful in his arms as she plundered his mouth with fierce concentration, should have been… explosive. Overwhelming and irresistible.
He’d become aware that his deplorable loss of control was about to happen just a brief moment before it did, but she was still kissing him with unbridled passion, her hands were still locked tight in his hair, his were still glued fast to her glorious buttocks, and… he simply could not stop himself. He gasped into her hot mouth and shuddered helplessly in her hold, the feeling of release so intense that it was almost painful. He was dizzy with it, the world reeling about him.
‘Good God!’ he murmured brokenly. ‘Good God in heaven!’ And then a moment later, ‘I’m so sorry, Miss Constantine, Cecilia. I… I swear I could not prevent it.’
She was silent, which was bad, but she did not pull away. Perhaps she did not understand. Perhaps she was frozen in horror. He could not know exactly how intense, how prolonged, how intimate those sinful London kisses had been.
‘Oh…’ she said. ‘Oh, you… I did not realise. Maybe I should be the one apologising to you, sir.’
She called him sir, when he had just spent himself in his breeches, hard up against her soft belly.
‘No, no, of course not. The fault was mine. I am horribly embarrassed,’ he told her, aware that this was true, and yet at the same time that he had not sounded or felt so cheerful in a long while.
‘Should I be too? I did not mean, or know…’
He became aware that he was smiling. Grinning, possibly. ‘If you feel you should apologise, if you really must, you might kiss me again, and I will take that as recompense. But only if you want to.Youhave nothing to be ashamed of, not the least thing in the world.’
‘Always only if I want to,’ she whispered, like a promise, to him and to herself, and then she lowered her mouth to his again. This time, she was gentle, not hungry or urgent as before, her lips soft and tender, and he closed his eyes against the astonishing sweetness of it. As she had said, even with his very feeble male brain, he could not possibly misidentify this, whateverthiswas, as nothing more than pity. And what a gift she had given him in consequence. Pity was poison, and this was nectar and ambrosia. Manna in the desert. Water for a man dying of thirst.
After a little while, or an hour, or a lifetime, she pulled away a little, and he instantly let her go, not without regret.
‘Thank you,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I cannot say, I do not have the words, but thank you, Cecilia.’
‘No thanks are needed, Alistair. I acted only as I wanted to, no more or less, as I am determined always to do from now on. This is a kind of freedom men are accustomed to having, and most women are not. But if I understand correctly, you owe me a debt, is that not right?’ She paused rather deliberately and said, outrageously, superbly, ‘A debt of pleasure. Be sure that I will not forget. And a gentleman always pays his debts, does he not?’
26
Cecilia made her way inside with a light step, locking and bolting the heavy oak door behind her as she had promised. She’d been out far longer than she intended, and had done and experienced things that had been very far from her mind when she’d walked out onto the lawn and down the steps in the growing dusk. But she found she did not regret a moment of it.
It was true that she’d been kissed before, once or twice or three times. She’d done it and in the main, she’d liked it. Some men would kiss girls they had no intention of marrying, but some wanted – and this was not unreasonable, she’d always thought – to try and see if they might enjoy kissing a girl, and she him, before they committed themselves to marrying her and, presumably, being obliged to kiss her, and a great deal more, for as many years as their lives and their marriage should last.
For one reason or another, none of these encounters had led to anything beyond a few moments of heated, snatched embrace on a terrace or in a shrubbery at a ball. Dangerous, because of the fragility of any woman’s reputation should she be caught in compromising circumstances, but undeniably exciting too. There had been a certain unspoken pressure to go further, on one occasion at least, which she had resisted with great firmness and only a little regret. That had put an end to that, and she had been lucky, she knew – there had been no further consequences for her, as there easily might have been. At this distance, she could barely remember the names of the boys, for they had been boys, with whom she had exchanged eager but inexpert kisses.
But now, her circumstances were utterly different. Thrillingly so. In her previous life, she had had to wait for those boys to initiate kisses, and then respond to their ardour, or not; what would they have thought of her, if she’d suggested such intimacy, even shown herself in advance to be eager for their embraces? If one of them had chosen to spread rumours of light behaviour across London, she would have been ruined, and not just her. Her whole family’s prospects could have been damaged, her sisters’ chances of respectable marriages destroyed.
But marriage was no longer a necessity for any of them; it might happen one day, it might not, but thanks to Augusta Albery, she had a year’s precious breathing space in which to look about her. She had promised that she would not engage herself to any man in the next twelvemonth, officially or unofficially; there had been nothing mentioned about not kissing Major Bartrum passionately on a tree trunk out on the moonlit beach. Nobody had thought to tell her that he must not grow thrillingly hard against her, nor shudder deliciously in her arms, lost in pleasure in a manner she thought she must always remember. Nor, for that matter, had anyone cautioned her not to scheme for some further clandestine meeting, where he would pay her back in full for the release that she had somehow given him. She did not mean to marry him, or anybody, just now, but she had tasted precious freedom for the first time in her life and she meant to make the most of it.
There were still some unavoidable constraints on her behaviour, of course. She must continue to have a care for her reputation, if she wanted to live here in comfort and security and not bring scandal on her sisters. That just meant that secrecy was necessary; she had no quarrel with that. Secrecy, she thought, might even be enjoyable in itself. And she must always keep her head; she could not risk falling into what was so ridiculously known as a delicate condition – as if there was anything in the least delicate about being pregnant – since even an heiress would not easily survive such a scandal. But she had heard, and her own native intelligence told her, that there were many ingenious ways around that danger. She must indeed be excessively wicked; she had every intention of finding out just how wicked, and what was worse, she very much looked forward to seeing Major Bartrum in church on Sunday. He would, she thought, be embarrassed. He would blush. She could hardly wait to see it.
Cecilia climbed the stairs, ready for her bed at last, but was checked when Bea’s door opened part way, and her dark head poked out. ‘Is that you, Ceci?’ she hissed.
‘No, it’s pirates, dashing female ones, come to ravish you and carry you off. Or carry you off and ravish you. Or both. Of course it’s me.’
‘Come in here before you disturb the others. You sound excessively odd; have you been drinking in secret?’
Cecilia followed her into her boudoir and sat down upon the ugly little sofa there. ‘Drinking? No, much better – I’ve been kissing Major Bartrum on the beach. You note the manner in which I say it? That’s because I instigated the whole thing. He was powerless to resist me. He didn’t even want to. Being a man must be like this, I should imagine – the freedom of it. It was wonderful, Bea. I mean to do it again as soon as possible. And more. A great deal more. And why not?’
Beatrice did not appear to be unduly surprised, and was certainly not shocked. ‘Well, I cannot criticise you for it. There must be something in the air down here. Perhaps we are running mad, both of us. I’ve been deflowering – I’m not sure if that’s the word, but it doesn’t matter – Miss Pallant. Repeatedly. And being deflowered, which definitely isn’t the word, as well. All afternoon, while you were out buying potatoes.’
Cecilia had noticed Bea’s instinctive reaction when the beautiful Miss Pallant had first called on them; she could not be surprised that matters had advanced rather rapidly since then. ‘That’s wonderful news. Congratulations. Your afternoon was far more thrilling that mine, then, Bea, and my evening than yours. That seems fair.’ She was excessively pleased; everybody deserved to be happy, she considered, especially her sisters. She did feel slightly intoxicated, it was perfectly true. Probably Bea did too, and no wonder.
‘Yes. Thank you. Theywereexcellent boiled potatoes, though, so your afternoon wasn’t entirely wasted either.’
