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Laurence stopped, realizing he had leapt from his chair and rushed to her side, arms outstretched to envelop her in a comforting embrace. Unsure of the wisdom of this action, instead he stood an arm’s reach away, hands held awkwardly down at his sides as Alicia tottered before him, tears running down her cheeks and dappling her skirt.
Licking his lips as he fought against his impulse to hold her, Laurence waited a moment before asking, “It’s Grace, isn’t it? She wrote something disturbing or…or cruel in her letter to you?”
“Yes,” said Alicia with a tremble in her voice, scattering more tears to the floor as she nodded. “It was terrible, I’m afraid. Worse than I had expected, even.”
She paused, then continued before Laurence could respond. “But…it’s not just that. By now I’ve almost grown used to being treated the way Grace treats me if you can believe it. She is my sister, after all. And for all her delusions about my getting married before her, she really was worrying over nothing. I had always thought her jealousy hurt only her.”
Alicia wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth, a pained look on her face. “Now, though, just when I feel I finally have found something precious to me when I might know what it is I want from this blessed life…to think that Grace might take it away from me purely due to her own spiteful nature…”
“What do you mean?”
Alicia looked to him with a ferocity that was almost frightening, doubly so when Laurence realized he had asked this question aloud when he’d meant merely to think it.
“She is still trying to control my life, as she always has. Every man who has approached me has so clearly been after the Ramsbury fortune—I have never found them anything more than irritating, you must believe me about that.”
“I do,” Laurence answered softly, without thinking at all.
“But to Grace, they are all equally improper. She finds one thing or another wrong with them, over and above whatever banal reason I find to dislike them…but really, any man would be unacceptable to her.”
Alicia sniffed, looking up to the ceiling as though airing her complaints to the heavens. “She is the elder sister,” she said, this time answering Laurence’s question before he could ask it. “If I were to marry before her, it would be a scandal. She would be forever looked on as the old, ugly, unwanted Ramsbury daughter, and would be consigned to live the rest of her life as a bitter spinster.”
She emitted a short, mirthless laugh. “That’s what she says, at least. I think she hardly needs to find another excuse for her bitterness.”
Laurence sighed a long, weary sigh, the gravity of the situation finally sinking in. In a somewhat cold voice, he said, “It will be all right, Alicia. Grace…she is your sister, not your mother. And when you find a London gentleman you truly wish to marry, I’m sure she can be persuaded to—”
“Oh, you complete donkey!” Alicia laughed at him, tears flowing freely down her face once more. “Don’t you see? I want to be withyou!”
The world churned around Laurence. He was afraid to draw breath, as though he might frighten away this miraculous thing that had just happened. All the sound of creation faded away in the thrumming in his ears, and as he fought to keep his heart going, hardly daring to believe it, Alicia’s lovely voice cut through the mist.
“Isn’t it just the most terrible thing you can imagine?”
Now his heart stopped entirely, and he reached out a hand to the bookshelf to keep himself from collapsing. “Wh…what do you mean?” he stammered.
Alicia bit her lip, her hands clenching together anxiously. “I feel like such a terrible fool. Even besides the objections that she would raise to any man, Grace would never, ever consent to my marrying a man so outside our social class. The scandalwouldbe enormous, without a doubt.”
Social class,thought Laurence, unable to stop himself from wincing.You idiot, did you really think even if she would have you that it would be permissible in her world? That she would be allowed to give up all her money and social standing to come live in your pathetic little farmhouse? Or she would bring you into her world, her pet farmer that all the noble ladies and gentlemen could gawk at?He turned to rest his weight on a table, struggling to draw a clear breath.
“I’m sorry I did this to you,” Alicia cried, her hands extended weakly before her. “I should never have accepted your invitation, never brought this pain into your life. I never wanted…I didn’t think of what I was doing. And now, because of my blind stupidity, I have caused you such hurt. I’m just…I’m so, so sorry, Laurence.”
Despite his occasional passion for books, Laurence had never thought of himself as a particularly intellectual sort. Nature had always been his first and only love, and as he saw things, instinct was far more reliable than thought in almost every case.
Now that his mind was utterly blank, his intellect throwing up its hands at this quandary, he surrendered to his instinct and wrapped his arms around Alicia in a colossal embrace. He felt her immediately slacken, letting her body be suspended by his strong arms, and the two shook with whatever combination of tears and fury consumed them both.
“What am I going to do, Laurence?” Alicia moaned, looking up into his eyes. Her cheeks were red and streaked with tears, and as he held her soft form close to his body, he could feel her bosom heave with her ragged breath.
As before, as their eyes locked, there was the feeling of a thunderbolt that shook their limbs and drew them closer. They closed their eyes as though to shut out the blinding, divine light that radiated from within them, and their bodies came even closer and closer until there was a collision of mind and sense that shook the very pillars of the world in a glorious, ecstatic kiss.
Laurence wanted to tell her that it would all work out. He wanted to say that she should never have to live her life according to anyone else’s desires, that if she stayed right there with him and forgot about everything she knew, he would take care of her forever and always. But instead, he kissed her, long and deep, and that seemed to work even better.
Hot tears stinging his cheeks—he did not know if they were his or hers or both of theirs mingled together—they kissed as a drowning man gasps for breath. Their lips sought purchase on one another’s warm, plump mouths, their tongues exchanging short jabs and long, tender caresses as they drew languid moans from one another’s throats.
Laurence felt himself pull her closer to the wall, resting her back against a closed door, and he felt her grasp onto him with remarkable fierceness. Her fingers ran through his hair and brushed against the surprisingly sensitive skin on his tanned neck, pulling him closer to her, and closer still.
“Yes,” she panted as his teeth nipped at the edge of her shell-like ear. He felt her hot breath whisper more encouragement into his ear as, consumed with animal lust, his hand felt along the smooth curve of her hip. “Yes, Laurence.”
His hands were everywhere at once, feeling at all the marvellous turns and corners of her body. Even as his fingers consumed the globe of her plump derriere, the perfect round fullness of her breasts, he felt Alicia’s own small, delicate hands reach down and brush against his insistent hardness, provoking a bestial grunt from deep within him. All the while their lips continued to explore one another with an all-consuming hunger.
At long last, their breaths coming in short, hungry gulps, afraid to pull their bodies apart, they collapsed together on a nearby sofa. Though the fire still burned hot and needy within Laurence, and he felt the heat from within Alicia as he saw it smoulder in her shining green eyes, somehow they pulled back from the brink.
