And Then He Kissed Her (25 page)

There was a bed, a big one, with an old-fashioned oak headboard. It had a thick, horse hair mattress with a chain-spring one beneath it, and it had been provisioned with sweet-smelling linens and pillows. Mrs. Bartleby, she assured Harry, would approve of such a bed, though not, she added somewhat ruefully, what went on in it.

That particular fact, however, was one she and Harry did not discuss further, and one upon which Emma did not dwell. Because of what Mrs. Morris had overheard that evening in the parlor, the landlady knew Emma was not Mrs. Bartleby’s secretary, but was instead the famous author herself. Mrs. Morris also knew there had been no proposal of marriage in the offing for dear Lydia’s niece. Though delighted by Emma’s celebrity and pledged to keep that fact a secret, Emma felt sure the other woman suspected the real reason for her weekend trips to do “research.” But to her great relief, Mrs. Morris asked no questions and gave no lectures, and Emma tried not to care about the expression of concern on the older woman’s face whenever they chanced to meet in the corridors of the lodging house.

She had no regrets about the choice she had made, and little time for worry. There were plenty of other things to occupy her attention when she was with Harry and plenty to savor when they were apart. During the next four weeks, every moment with him at their cottage was filled with fascinating discoveries and joyous adventures.

She loved watching him shave. It confounded him, but observing him as he performed this daily ritual never ceased to fascinate her. “It’s so…well, manly,” she tried to explain, earning herself a shout of laughter for her trouble.

“I should hope so,” he’d said severely, when he’d stopped laughing. “Shoot me with a pistol the day I do something girlish.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I,” he said with emphasis as he set aside the razor and picked up a towel.

“Watching you shave is…” She paused, leaning against the wall next to the washstand, studying him as he wiped away shaving soap. She ran her gaze over his bare torso, the powerful muscles of his arms and shoulders, trying to find the right word. “Arousing. It arouses me.”

“It does?” He stopped and looked up from the mirror to meet her gaze, a hot, hungry look in his blue eyes with which she was becoming very familiar. She loved that look. They almost always made love after he shaved.

He taught her to fish, and she loved that, too—loved standing in the shallow brook in her bare feet with her skirt tucked up around her knees and feeling the excitement of patience rewarded when she flipped the evening’s dinner onto the grassy bank. Harry studied her bare legs in the water and declared fishing to be his second favorite pastime. She already appreciated full well what the first one was.

He told her things no one had ever dared tell her before, such as the reason for her monthly
and what certain intimate parts of the human body were actually called—hers and his. She learned how to spit—a disgusting habit—and how to make a decent bowline knot, and how caressing the underside of his penis just beneath the head drove him absolutely wild.

He introduced her to pleasures she’d never dreamed people did together: the cool delight of making love outside in the grass at night, the tender pleasure of letting him brush out her hair, the sweet intimacy of standing side by side at the washstand with toothbrushes and powder, the cooperation of cooking eggs and bacon in their tiny kitchen, the lovely relaxation of lying in a hammock together for an afternoon nap.

The hot days of August went by. They took long walks, exploring the countryside, and sometimes they encountered another couple who also seemed to enjoy walking. Though both of them looked at least seventy years of age, whenever Harry and Emma encountered them, they were always holding hands like sweethearts.

Harry took her punting on the stream. Emma couldn’t swim, but he took her in the boat despite her misgivings, assuring her the water wasn’t over her head, and vowing that one day he’d teach her to swim. She vowed that would never happen, and they argued about it. Her opinions mattered to him, and they argued passionately over other things, too. Things like politics, and manners, and the value of matrimony in society, and whether Blake was a better poet
than Tennyson. He made her laugh at least a dozen times a day, and she discovered she could make him laugh, too, especially when she wasn’t trying. But she didn’t mind that. She liked the sound of his laugh.

He taught her to play poker, and Emma made another discovery about herself that amazed her: she liked gambling. Although, as she told Harry, she couldn’t ever wager for real money, a statement which earned her another accusation of being miserly. But using matches as a substitute, one match being equal to one guinea, was exciting enough for her, because it was the challenge of competing against him that she liked. Adding to her excitement was that she had an incredible amount of beginner’s luck.

“I’ve nothing left to wager,” he told her when she raised him another ten matches and she’d already taken all his others.

“That’s a shame.” Emma grinned at him across the card table in the parlor, giving the lie to her words. “You have to fold, then, I imagine.”

“Not necessarily, Emma.” He paused. “There are things to wager other than money.”

Something in his voice made her start tingling all over. She glanced at her four kings, then met his eyes across the table, hers wide with deliberate innocence. “Do you have something I want?”

“Heaps of things. The question is, which one do you want the most?”

Her heart began to race with excitement, but
she didn’t show it. Instead, she tried to be very blasé. “Hmm, I seem to remember you said that one day you’d kiss your way up the backs of my legs and over my bottom.”

“So I did. Is that what you want?”

“More than that, Harry. I want you to kiss me all over.” She smiled. “For an hour.”

“An hour?” He groaned. “I’ll never be able to hold out that long.”

“An hour, Harry. All over. Just kissing.”

“Can I touch you all over, too?”

She tilted her head, pretending to think it over. “Yes, I’ll allow that. But nothing else for an hour.”

“All right, all right, if you’re going to be stubborn about it.” He laid down his two pair.

Emma got a full hour of the most blissful kissing and caressing she’d had yet, and though he grumbled that such a long prelude was pure torture for a man, they never wagered over matches again. Best of all, she realized, was the most valuable thing she’d learned in her first month of their affair: How to admit to herself what she wanted. And how to ask for it.

T
he following weekend, Harry finally got his way and taught Emma to swim. It took some doing, however. First he tried to persuade her by pointing out it was something everyone ought to know for reasons of safety. His concern didn’t seem to impress her.

“That’s sweet of you, Harry,” she answered, shifting beside him in the hammock to settle her cheek in the dent of his shoulder, “but unnecessary, since I’m not going anyplace where the water is over my head.”

He had no intention of giving up. “This isn’t at all like you. You enjoy learning new things.
Besides, you’re a sensible person and refusing to learn to swim just isn’t sensible.”

“Sensible.”
She lifted her head and made a face at him. “Horrid word.”

“It isn’t a horrid word.” He kissed her nose. “I like my sensible Emma.”

She still shook her head, and he frowned at her in puzzlement. “What is the real reason for this hesitancy? Tell me. Is it that you don’t trust me to teach you?”

“Of course I trust you. I just…” She gave an aggravated sigh as he continued to look at her, waiting for an answer. “All right, if you must know, I just don’t feel comfortable with taking off my clothes outside in broad daylight.”

“Wear something, a combination or some other undergarment.”

“Once you’re wet, that’s almost like being naked.”

“Yes.” He gave her a leer like some villain in a comic play. “Yes, it is.”

“Harry, I’m serious.”

He could tell that she was and sobered at once. “Shy, are you?”

“I’ve always been shy. Modest, I mean. You know that.”

“God, Emma, you don’t still feel that way with me, do you? I’ve seen you naked in daylight, and I thank heaven for it, too, by the way. Every time.”

“I don’t mind if you see me, but someone else might see me. I’d be mortified if that happened.”

“That’s why you won’t learn to swim?” When
she nodded, he laughed and kissed her. “Woman, why didn’t you just say so straightaway? I’ll teach you at night.” He kissed her again. “Naked. Damn, that is such a ripping idea, I’m amazed I didn’t think of it to begin with.”

That night, Harry got his wish, Emma got her first swimming lesson, and when he had her floating on her back in the water, moonlight washing over her bare skin, with her lips curved in a relaxed half smile and her eyes looking up into his with absolute trust, he was heartily glad no one else had ever taught Emma Dove how to swim.

“Dogs are better.”

“Are not.” Emma took a blackberry out of the fruit basket that sat between them on the blanket, and popped it into her mouth.

“Are, too.” Harry reached into the picnic basket, pulled out a loaf of bread, and tore off a chunk. “Dogs are friendly and loyal.”

“So are cats.”

He made a sound of derision as he slathered butter on bread for both of them.

“Mr. Pigeon was very friendly to you,” she reminded him. “And how can you say he’s not loyal? He brings me birds.”

“Dead ones.”

“It’s the truest sign of cat loyalty.”

“Emma, he coughs up balls of hair. It’s disgusting. How can you possibly love any creature that coughs up hair?”

“How can you love any creature that drools?” she countered and began to eat her bread and
butter. “I think I’ll bring Pigeon next time so you can get to know him better.”

“Absolutely not.”

“He adores you already, remember?”

“For your sake, my sweet, I’d like to say the feeling is mutual, but it’s not. Nothing against Mr. Pigeon, but I loathe cats.”

Emma didn’t respond to that, for her attention had been caught by something in the distance. “There they are again,” she murmured and gestured to an elderly couple, the same pair they saw at least once every weekend. Hand in hand, they were crossing the meadow about fifty yards away. “They always walk holding hands.”

“Do they?” Harry pulled a hunk of cheese and a pot of mustard out of the picnic basket. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“It’s very romantic.” She paused, struck by a thought. “We walk all the time, Harry, and we never hold hands.”

“Don’t we?” His voice was light. “How very British of us.”

What she’d said bothered him. She could tell, though she couldn’t fathom why. She thought about pushing the subject, asking him why he never held her hand, but something in his face made her decide against it. Instead, she ate the last of her bread, took another blackberry out of the fruit basket, and rolled over onto her back to stare at the clouds and sky overhead.

“Consuelo and I used to walk holding hands. It was the only remotely romantic thing we were allowed to do.”

Emma froze, the blackberry poised halfway to her lips. This was only the second time in all the years she’d known him that he had ever mentioned his former wife. She ate the berry, waiting for him to say more, but he did not, and after a few moments she spoke. “How odd,” she said in the most neutral tone she could manage. She rolled back onto her stomach. “Americans are usually much freer about the proprieties of courtship than we are.”

“Consuelo’s father was half Cuban. He was also one of those very strict, old-fashioned types, and her mother was that way, too.” Harry began to pare slices of cheese off the wedge in front of him without looking at her. “We were never allowed to be alone. All our conversations were in front of others, unless we were dancing. All so respectable, so proper. The only time I was allowed to speak privately with her before we became engaged was when I asked her to marry me. And even then, her mother was right outside the door, listening at the keyhole, I’m sure.”

Emma heard the contempt in his voice, and she didn’t know what to say.

“After we became engaged,” he continued, “we were allowed to hold hands, and we could walk ahead of the others in our party if we wished to converse privately. But how private can a conversation be when a couple is surrounded by people barely out of earshot who can see everything you’re doing? And as for anything like kissing, it simply wasn’t possible.”
He paused and looked up. “The first time I was able to kiss Consuelo was on our wedding day.”

He gave a humorless laugh. “Is it any wonder our marriage was doomed? I was passionately, madly in love with a woman—girl—I knew nothing about, and I had no chance of getting to know her. Had I had that chance, I might have seen past my own infatuation and figured out the truth. But I was so young then, so stupid. I felt something was wrong, but I was only twenty-two, in a foreign country. I didn’t want to mess things up by offending her or her family. It didn’t help that we were constantly swarmed by the American press. They followed us everywhere, and most of them thought I was marrying her for her money and she was marrying me because I had a title and social position. They got it half right, didn’t they?”

His hands stilled. The wedge of cheese was in shreds. He looked up. “Consuelo never loved me. She was a seventeen-year-old girl who had been forced—bullied, coerced, what ever you want to call it—into marrying me by her parents. I think Estravados had me in mind for a son-in-law from the moment he met me. You see, unbeknownst to me, Consuelo was already in love with someone else, a man her family considered completely unsuitable.”

Emma nodded. “Yes. Mr. Rutherford Mills. I know.”

“She tried unsuccessfully to elope with him, and that was part of the reason they watched over her so carefully. They thought she’d run off
with the fellow again. I wasn’t worth much more than Mills at the time, but Estravados liked me. More important, I had a title and an estate, and some powerful connections, and he wanted to do business in Britain. To him, I was a far better choice for his daughter than Rutherford Mills, who had nothing to offer her.”

Harry poured himself a glass of wine and downed it in one draught. “So, after a quick but carefully supervised courtship, an even quicker engagement, and a hasty society wedding, there you are with a viscount in the family, social entre in Britain, no unsuitable suitor hovering by to steal away your daughter, and everybody’s happy. Everybody except Consuelo, who proceeded to spend the next four years in abject misery, blaming herself when she wasn’t blaming me. I tried to make her happy. God, I tried—”

He broke off abruptly and stood up. He walked a few feet away, leaned his shoulder against a tree, and stared across the meadow, his profile to her. “But you can’t make someone happy. You can’t make someone love you. Frustration sets in, resentment, too. And pain, discovering that your feelings aren’t reciprocated, being made to feel like a cad for wanting to make love to your own wife, realizing you’ve been lied to.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “Consuelo and I spent four years making each other thoroughly miserable. Acting pitiful and laying blame became her weapons of choice. Avoidance, deflection, and biting wit became
mine. It reached the point where we could no longer speak a civil word to each other. She kept shutting her bedroom door, and truth be told, I reached the point where I lost any desire to open it. It was hell.”

“I see,” Emma murmured, appreciating how lonely he must have felt in such a marriage. Loneliness was something she understood very well, and her heart ached for him.

“I didn’t know she’d begun to secretly correspond with Mills. Heaps of letters, pouring out stories of woe about what a nightmare it was living in En gland with me, assuring him that she’d always loved him, begging him to come and save her, take her away.” He paused. “Begging was one of Consuelo’s favorite tactics. She begged me for a divorce. I refused.”

Emma nodded with understanding. “Because of your sisters.”

“Even now, ten years after I first petitioned the courts, they still suffer society’s disparagement. My sisters, my mother, even my grandmother, are snubbed by many in society to this day, and it hurts them.” He looked at her with a flash of defiance. “Is it any wonder I have no patience with society’s rules? That I think them silly and pointless?”

She shook her head. “It’s perfectly understandable.”

He shrugged, his flash of anger dying as quickly as it had come. “The rest, as they say, is history. She ran off with Mills to America, and did it as publicly as possible, to give me ample
grounds to divorce Consuelo for adultery and name him as correspondent. Estravados disowned her, she and Mills went off together. Last I heard, they were in the Argentine.”

“Why on earth didn’t she just tell you the truth before you married?” Emma asked, baffled. “Surely there must have been some opportunity. Why did she lie and say she loved you if she didn’t?”

“It’s clear you never met her parents. Estravados was a formidable man, and his wife equally so. Consuelo was no match for them. She just caved in under the pressure and did what was expected of her so she wouldn’t disappoint her family.”

Harry met her gaze, and there was something in his eyes that hurt her, bruised her deep down. “She was trying to be a good girl, to win her family’s approval. So she lied to me, and she lied to herself.”

Emma sucked in her breath. That hurt, to be compared to his former wife, especially in light of all the times in her life when she’d been dishonest with herself. She got up, walked over to him, and put her arms around his waist. “I have never lied to you, Harry, and I never will,” she told him. “And I’ll never lie to myself again, not even to be a good girl.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“I’m hopeless at this,” Harry warned her and picked up the carving knife and fork. “I told
you I always saw at the chicken,” he added, eying the bird before him with doubt.

Emma moved to his side of the worktable. She pointed to the place where he should cut away the leg. “If you angle the knife this way,” she added, gesturing with her hand, “you sever the joint cleanly and avoid sawing at the bone.”

Harry followed her instructions. “You see,” Emma said as the knife went straight between the bones with ease. “Carving’s easy. You just need to know where to place the knife when you cut.”

“Perhaps I have mastered this part, but what about the wings? I have to learn how to carve those.” He grinned at her. “After all, that’s the only part you’re allowed to eat.”

“I have come around to your way of thinking about chicken.”

“Have you?”

“Yes. Just eating the wing for the sake of delicacy
is
silly. Besides, I like the dark meat best.”

“It’s a thigh, Emma,” he said, laughing. “You still can’t say it, can you?”

“Thigh,” she said, laughing with him. “I like thighs.”

“Really?” He returned his attention to his task. “I’m partial to breasts myself.”

Even a month after beginning this affair, she didn’t always know when he was teasing, but she did know when he was making a wicked innuendo. A different inflection came into his voice, something sultry and provocative. She leaned closer, deliberately brushing her breast against
his arm. “You think breasts are the sweetest meat, do you?” she murmured, becoming aroused.

“Why, Emma Dove,” he murmured and set aside the knife and fork, “are you trying to seduce me?” When he glanced at her, that special look was in his eyes, and her body began to burn in response.

“Yes.” She reached for him, fingers toying with the buttons of his shirt. “Let’s make love.”

“Excellent notion.” He kissed her. “We’ll eat afterward.”

She glanced at the food on the worktable, then back at him, struck by a sudden idea. “Why not do both at the same time?”

He gave a low, throaty chuckle. “Emma, Emma, how terribly dissolute you’ve become.”

“I blame it on your influence.” She reached for a grape from the fruit bowl and pressed it to his mouth. “You’re the one who said food was carnal.”

“So I did.” He took the grape into his mouth and ate it.

She began to unbutton his shirt, but to her surprise, he stopped her. “Go up and get the packet.”

She glanced around the kitchen. “You don’t want to take the food upstairs?”

“Too messy. And I don’t want to have to run upstairs and fetch the packet later. It would spoil the mood. Besides, once we get started, I might lose my head and forget.”

A vague uneasiness rippled through her at those words, and she couldn’t define why. The
precautions they took were wise, the consequences dire if they forgot to exercise them. She went upstairs and retrieved the red velvet envelope from the bedroom, shoving the odd, uneasy feeling out of her mind.