AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I have decided I like you,” she told Geraldine. “What have you to say to that?”
“I’m delighted,” Geraldine replied, cheerfully enough. “But I cannot think it is me you like, as you don’t know me at all. I must warn you, I can be a handful.”
“That’s all for the best,” his grandmother said airily. She leaned forward, her hands propped up on that cane. “Lionel is a good man, but he has been raised to consider himself above all others.”
“What man has not?” asked Geraldine.
And Lionel could not say that he particular cared for the way Geraldine and his grandmother both laughed at that, a wealth of understanding between them.
“I have always told him that I require an innocent,” the older woman continued, her gaze moving from Geraldine to Lionel, then back again. Looking for evidence, Lionel rather thought. “And this is not simply because I am an ancient relic. It is because, in the fullness of time, I believe that a man is more likely to treasure something he knows has always and ever been his. They are so possessive, you see.”
“I’m standing right here,” Lionel reminded her.
Geraldine didn’t even look at him. “Are they? That does not seem to be a universal experience. Besides, pledging one’s troth to another until death seems to cover all the same bases without putting the weight of an entire marriage on one poor bride’s virginity.”
“My dear girl,” his grandmother said mildly, though her gaze was intent, “I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But I think you will find that it is often the wife who carries the weight of a marriage, like it or not. Virginity has nothing to do with it.”
“Does anyone possess enough purity to please the nearest priest?” Geraldine asked, lightly enough. “I’m not sure that’s something to aspire to, if I’m honest.”
Doña Eugenia leaned forward, then. “Purity is not for priests. Priests are but men. It is for the husbands who proclaim that they care little about such things, only to find themselves awake in the middle of the night, fretting over situations that can never be changed. You understand.”
Geraldine looked as if she might. Lionel wished that he did—because all that made him do was replay what he knew of his grandparents’ chilly marriage, wondering how it had ended up that way.
Another topic he did not care to explore.
“In the absence of a bloodstained sheet to wave about in front of the villagers,” Geraldine said with what Lionel found to be admirable calm in the face of such provocation, “I suppose you will simply have to take my word for it that if your grandson is awake in the middle of the night, wracked with concern over my past, I will be more than happy to wake up and talk him through it.”
Lionel fully expected his grandmother to take issue with that in the way she took issue with so much else, always. But once again, she surprised him. Because all she did was look at Geraldine for a long while, then laugh yet again.
“Marvelous,” she said. “I wish you both every happiness in the world.” And when Lionel found himself gazing back at her, in something like shock, she waved her hand toward the dance floor again. “Dance,nene. For soon enough, you will be sitting where I am and wishing that you had. While you still could.”
And once again, Lionel obeyed her.
“I think that went well,” Geraldine said as he took her in his arms again. “Though I suppose I wouldn’t know.”
“You would know,” Lionel assured her.
But he did not wish to talk about his grandmother any longer.
Because Geraldine was in his arms, and he was certain that everyone who looked at them believed that they had spent many long, sleepless nights in his bed. How else could they move together the way they did, with such ease and grace?
When only the two of them knew the truth. That they had barely kissed.
Lionel spun her around and around. In between dances, when he had to put space between them or cause a scene, he took her about the room, on his arm. He introduced her to all of these bright and shining creatures he considered friends—though he would cut them all off in an instant if they tried to sharpen their favorite little knives against his bride.
And it was much, much later, so late that there were already the hints of the new day in the sky, when they finally made it back down to his house. He helped her from the car and they walked inside to find everything hushed and the lights down low.
Lionel was not certain that he could bear this. Or perhaps it was that he did not want to. That he did not know how anyone could.
“Tell me,” he urged her in a low voice as he stood there, much closer to her than was necessary, now they were alone. And not dancing. Not in any sense of the term. “Tell me what you want, Geraldine.”
Because he already knew what he wanted. He already knew exactly how he wished to kiss her first. How he longed to slide his hands all over the marvelous hourglass of her body. How he wanted to kneel somewhere, and this would do, so he might get his mouth between her legs at last.
Lionel already knew, beyond any doubt, exactly how he wished to learn her.
She was even more beautiful here, in this soft light. Or perhaps because he could hear the way she caught her breath, here in the space between them. Or because he alone could see the way her green eyes gleamed with a light he considered his own now, and her cheeks flushed, pinker by the second.
He reached over and traced a little bit of that flush with his fingers, marveling at the warm satin of her skin. And the way she quivered there before him as if the way that ran through him, electric and intense, was lighting her up inside, too.
