Judith Ivory (24 page)

“What a gorgeous melon you have here, madam. I think I should like a dozen. Do you deliver?”

“Oh, you fiend! You’re doing it again. Oh! Ooo! Stop it! Answer me! Talk to me! You won’t tease your way out of the conversation!”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “You’re beyond me, Christina. I don’t
understand
this conversation. Not from the first word.”

He scooped her up into his arms and started for the bedroom. He molested her affectionately, resigning himself to her protests once again.

“This isn’t fair,” she whimpered. “You know it isn’t fair. Put me down.” She struggled clumsily.

He snorted at the request and her struggle, then kissed her, holding her head to him with his hand. She made small sounds of complaint, but he could sense her ambivalence. Her mouth tried to pull away. She held her lips together. But there was a moment of
doubt—which his mouth coaxed into something more relaxed. Then entrance. The kiss became full. She groaned, still trying to retreat. She tried to back her head away. He wouldn’t let her; it took little to contain her. In fact, it was nothing to block and stop this small woman on virtually any physical front she chose to do battle. If only that were the problem.

She was working herself up into a genuine state of anger.

Adrien nuzzled her neck. Her hair was slightly damp at the back. She must have just washed it; it smelled wonderful. Yet she kept trying to push away from him—like a cat trying to climb and scramble out of one’s arms. As he placed her on the bed, he was praying she wouldn’t get any more difficult than she had already become. The urge to lie with her had asserted itself strongly. From just carrying her to the bedroom, his pants had begun to pull.

He lay down beside her, then lost, for a second, his firm hold. A flurry of limbs and petticoats kicked up. He just managed to catch an ankle. Christina scooted backward and up, to a sitting position against the headboard.

Adrien sighed, stroked his hand down her leg—the only thing left to him. Then, with another sigh, he pulled himself up to sit beside her.

“Are you going to give me another miserable time with this tonight?” he asked.

“I don’t give you a miserable time. You bring it on yourself. Just leave me alone.”

“I can’t leave you alone. I see you: I want to touch you.” He tried to put his arm around her.

She shifted away, wrapping her arms about herself, over the top of her belly.

He pulled her backward into the crook of his arm. He lifted her hair, wanting to kiss her neck. Her hand
came up, between his mouth and her skin. He kissed the back of her hand. Then he took possession of the hand and turned it over. He rubbed his thumb along the smooth skin, the delicate veins of her wrist….

He felt the muscles in her arm flex, trying to make the arm hers again. She heaved a little breath when he wouldn’t let her. “I don’t want this, Adrien. Leave me alone.”

He grimaced. Then he pulled her, backward, until the none-too-easily-balanced young woman fell across his lap. He looked down into her face. Some of his tension went out of him in a laugh. The face was so pretty. And so cross. But flushed. Even in the dim light of the room—just the fireplace was glowing—he could see the rise of color in her cheeks. He could see the heave of her breasts. And it wasn’t all anger. Her eyes glowed. She watched him in a way he’d seen too often to mistake.

He touched one breast, let his fingers squeeze gently into the fullness of it. She put her hand up to stop him, but he caught her hand beneath his and pressed it to her own breast. She closed her eyes and turned away. He could feel her heart beating hard beneath their hands.

“Doesn’t it embarrass you,” he murmured, “to make such a fuss? When you end by doing some of the things you do in bed with me? Honestly, Christina, what is the point?”

His only answer was a glance; a tight-lipped, peeved expression.

He breathed out an exasperated laugh and shoved her onto a pile of pillows and covers. He swung around and threw the weight of his leg across her. They lay, diagonally, across the mussed-up bedclothes. Adrien drew his thumb between her breasts, slowly tracing the deep valley that lay there. Downward, over her belly.
With the heel of his hand, he put pressure on the soft pad of flesh over her pelvic bone—and she began her wriggling and scuffling again.

She was trying to heave herself up by her elbows, but the pillows and covers were too deep and soft. Her huge belly made it impossible to adjust her center of gravity. Adrien’s leg over her hips made it impossible to roll to her side.

After perhaps a minute of these futile efforts, she let herself drop back with an “oof.” Her hair spilled over Adrien’s fingers. A generous, jiggling breast bounced against his arm.

“I hate you,” Christina whispered. She was out of breath.

But he continued to battle with her affectionately, pushing for liberties he knew he wasn’t going to get—while brushing up against all the pleasant possibilities of those he hoped for later. It was his most effective tactic. By wrestling with her gently—always hoping for compliance—he could let her spend herself, both her energy and anger. Then he would swoop in on a tired, teased, half-titillated young woman….

He kissed her again. This time his hips followed his leg partially over her. His body fit neatly into the little depression below her pelvis where her legs pressed together. He rubbed himself against her. Then he lost himself in imagination. Her skirts had come up. He was aware of the nakedness of her legs. His hand found her hips and bare thigh. Something deep inside him groaned in satisfaction. His chest pressed more deeply into the softness of her breast. He could feel himself disappearing into her, into the act…. He not only wanted to bury his body inside her, but his mind, his total consciousness….

Christina could apparently sense his more serious mood. Her hands flew at him. They attacked. Small,
desperate, useless; the way birds will make a mad-dash effort to defend a nest, against even the largest of encroaching predators. He captured her small, flyaway fists. She made sounds; protest, more anger, frustration. He pinned her down with his weight.

It was always a little delicate here. He wanted to hold her down, but he didn’t want to hurt her or the baby—it joined its mother in squirming. For a moment, Adrien let himself relish the feel of that. His child moving in her belly between them. Christina moving under him in a way that, if she only knew, would horrify her; the feel of her squirming body under him made him dizzy.

His fingers grazed her skin here and there as he began to open her clothes. He heard her catch her breath, make more muffled little sounds. Her breathing became irregular. She was struggling, but her struggles had taken on an erotic quality; a woman trying to stay afloat in the dark, sinking in a mire of pleasure. She groaned. He knew the sounds….

“Please,” she murmured. “Please—” But she had stopped shoving against him. The classically ambiguous plea. In the context of her hands dropping back into her hair, her chin lifting up, she was no longer asking him to stop….

Adrien’s mind spun. Wanting her became something frantic. All the blood in his body roiled up and shot to his groin. His pants were suddenly painful at the seam. He began to throb…. He was shaking when he rose up on his knees, unable to undo the buttons fast enough. He needed two hands….

Then the consummate, nerve-rattling experience: As he was peeling down his pants, Christina bolted.

It was such a comeuppance, he couldn’t compose himself for several seconds. He just sat there on his knees, breathing like a blacksmith’s bellows.

But, before the fertile young woman could lumber from the bed, he caught a handful of copper-yellow hair.

“You’re not exactly agile anymore, sweetheart.” He pulled her unceremoniously back into the bed. “Lie down!” He shoved her onto her back.

Her head hit the pillows, and her face snapped around to him. Her chest was heaving, but there was a peppery defiance in her eyes.

Adrien exhaled, a semi-laugh; he closed his eyes. “Sorry. But you play with me on this, and I know it. When is enough, Christina? When do I get off?” Again he exhaled, trying to get rid of the anger, the hostility, the pure unspent passion. “My dear, I don’t know what to do with you. Half the time you go to bed with me, I hear you coo in my ear. The rest of the time, you seem content to drive me mad. You anger me more with this than with any of the other nonsense I take from you.” He nudged her neck with his nose, then cheek, then mouth. He pulled himself over her once again. “For godssake, let me make love to you, Christina,” he whispered. “Let me do all the things we both enjoy so much without this stupid game—”

He had her pinned under him again. What could be more helpless, he thought, than a female spread under a man a foot taller, twice her weight; capable of doing whatever he would? The answer hit him forcefully: A man with his pants down and his ass in the air, desperately wanting that woman to accept him. Adrien wondered—not for the first time—who was really the weak and defenseless one here. For one moment, he almost gave up. My God, if she was really going to fight it this hard….

Then something, instinct, or perhaps the persistent presence in his groin—his body there, like a disinterested third party, was oblivious to the fact that he was having to push her through this an inch at a
time—made him lean down and taste her ear. It was the most beautiful ear. The most delicious neck. The smoothest, silkiest path to the fullest bosom…. Her breath went out in a burst from her mouth. The more she tried to catch it, the more she groaned in frustration.

“Adrien, you are impossible. Don’t you ever give up?” Again, her breath rushed out. “Oh, for the love of God, rape me. But don’t do this.”

He was beyond listening. He curved his hips to rub against her. Her clothes were undone. Her skirts were up. With his pants open, the contact demolished every bit of self-control. The wanting hit him so hard….

Christina gave him a shove. But a moment later, her arms came up around his neck. Her hands spread over the muscles of his shoulders and back. Perhaps the contact had undermined her purposes as neatly as it had his. Something had. Her pleas had ceased to make any sense. Her eyes closed and fluttered. Her lips parted slightly.

He accepted the invitation with grateful relief. He took her. Sensation turned over on itself in such a spin, he always wondered if he didn’t hallucinate. And Christina was the drug. A powerful, unearthly drug. Worth every unpalatable moment of getting her down.

They made love for more than an hour, missed dinner entirely, and fell asleep intertwined.

It was their usual sort of reunion after he came off a run. Once she touched him, she embraced something more than pure physical sensation. She embraced his tensions, his needs. The anxiety of a run—the planning, the secret meetings, juggling “Cabrels,” the actual implementation of getting the poor frightened people out of Paris and onto a boat—dissolved in the close intimacy between them in the dark.

She loved him. Despite everything. He’d known it for some time. And Adrien was well aware that her
love was worth having. It was pulling him through a terrible time. He was dependent on it—a little bothered by how much. But he was elated, too. How perfect to have such a fine woman in such a beautifully ill-defined giving relationship.

Adrien pulled at the blanket to cover his thigh. Then he expelled a soft curse into the darkness.

The chill of the room and the pain in his stomach had wakened him. The fire had died down in the bedroom hearth. But what fire was missing in the fireplace was burning in his stomach. The small irritation that had been with him off and on for the last few months was on again, and worse than usual tonight.

Christina shifted in the bed. She’d gotten up and put on her nightgown in the last hours. She slept now, but he could see she was having trouble finding a comfortable position. Perhaps, she was cold, too.

He sniffled as he swung from the bed and began rummaging about the room. He found a sweater and climbed into it, shuffled into his pants. He looked about for some more warmth. No more blankets. No more wood. He went into the front room and broke off the legs and the back of one of the chairs. What did it matter? It was just for a few more days. Next week at
this time he would have roaring fires in every one of the dozen fireplaces in his London home.

Wistfully, he let the comforts of his London house steal up on him, then shooed them away with a shake of his head. It served no one’s best interests to remember he didn’t need to be here, that just a short distance away a comfortable house—a comfortable life—waited for him.

In the bedroom, he blew on the embers of the nearly dead fire. He sniffled again. The chair pieces caught, bringing some promise of heat to the room.

At the sight of the flames, he turned and went out to the front room again, then started rooting through things on the cluttered table. He found what he was looking for: a tiny bit of indulgence. He sniffed at the cigar. A bit stale, but tobacco.

He had returned to the bed and puffed on the cigar for no more than two or three minutes when the burning in his stomach gave him a violent twist—acid rose in his throat, his eyes watered.

The stale cigar went into the fireplace. “Goddamned bellyache.”

He’d seldom been able to enjoy even a decent cigar for several months. He’d all but given up trying.

He went out to the main room and scrounged a piece of cheese. Empty, his stomach was always more cantankerous. He walked back to the bedroom filling the irritable void with the cheese.

“Is something wrong, Adrien?”

“My stomach again. Or maybe just the damned weather. My nose is running off my face.”

“Your nightshirt is clean. In that pile of laundry over there.” Faint light from the street illuminated Christina’s hand pointing to a stack of folded clothes on the chest of drawers.

He found the heavy flannel and exchanged his trou
sers and sweater for the warmer, more comfortable item. Then he crawled back into bed.

“Why are you awake?” he asked. “You didn’t look too comfortable a while ago.” He gave her a pat on her belly. “It’s hard to sleep with that load, isn’t it? Just a bit longer, though.”

“A few weeks at most.”

“What?” He tried to look at her, but he could see only the vaguest outline in the dark. “I’d rather thought late March. That’s more than a few weeks.”

She laughed. “We will test your true authority, your lordship. You see if you can command him to stay in there ten months. Now, give me a shove. I need up.”

With help, she got up from the bed. Her silhouette disappeared behind the screen in the corner. A strong stream hit the chamber pot.

He called to her. “It’s just, counting from June—”

“Mid-May.” Christina came into view. He imagined she smiled as she sat on the bed. “My last flow was mid-May. “Three years with Richard, and not a whisper. With you, I’m so fertile, just moving into the same house and I never see blood again.”

He blinked at the crudeness. She had become a lot less prim in the last five months. A lot less worried about what anyone—including him—thought. Then he relaxed back into the pillows. Christina ran her hand over his chest. He loved her touch. And her attitude: He remembered other women, less accepting, trying to wring marriage from less-wronged circumstances, Christina never mentioned it; bless her. He felt safe. He closed his eyes.

She groaned as she lay back in the bed.

“What’s wrong?”

“My back. It’s been killing me all night. If I could only get some relief for—ah! Oh, that’s lovely. Oh, thank you.”

He pushed at the muscles of her back through her shift. He moved and kneaded the areas he remembered could get the stiffest. It had been a long time. Elizabeth in London, five, no, six years ago. And much longer ago, Celeste.

“Oh, you do that just right,” Christina groaned. “Ah, yes, right there. Oh, that feels wonderful, Adrien.” She gave a low giggle. “You have such a flair for this.” A sigh. “How did it go yesterday?”

“Dreadfully.”

“You had trouble?”

“No, I just wrung myself into a limp rag worrying that we would. God, I’m so glad to be getting out of here.”

“When?”

“Next week. The 27th. We’re leaving by boat in broad daylight with a group of English dignitaries hightailing it out of here while they still can do so agreeably. We sign on as part of the house staff of a Mr. and Mrs. Wimberly in a day or two. This time next week we will be tucked into a large canopied bed in high comfort in the best district in London.”

No comment.

It was purposeful silence, he suspected. It made him uneasy. He very much wanted her to stay with him, just as things were, once they reached London. But he was virtually certain that the lawyer’s daughter would want to renegotiate the terms.

As if to have something to say, she sighed and remarked again at how marvelous he was at doing her back. “Experience, no doubt,” she added.

He winced.

She continued. “You’re probably more of an expert on pregnancy than I am. Do you stay with all the mothers of your bastards when they get this fat? I don’t know how you can stand it.”

He planted a smacking kiss on her cheek. “I admit,
pregnant women have an erotic appeal all their own.”

“And pregnancy results in screaming, squalling brats. How does that appeal to you?”

“Fine.” He laughed.

“I don’t believe it.”

“It’s fine. Really. I like children. My own, anyway.”

“How many did you say you had?”

He snuggled to nest his body against hers. He smoothed his hands around to the wondrous growth of her waist. “This will make six.”

There was a long pause before she spoke again. “Your others? How old are they?”

“Let’s see. There’s a set of twins in Cornwall. They would be almost four. I have a daughter, born in Paris, transplanted to Scotland last spring, who is sixteen.” He laughed. “I have a cocky little stinker of a son in London. He’s eight, no, nine now; precocious, swaggering. He imitates me down to every detestable detail. I love it. He has a sister, five, very quiet—probably overly shy from living with the beast. She’s also mine.”

Silence. Then, weakly: “I had envisioned them all by different women, for some reason. And all about two years old. Crying. Messing in their pants. And if you ever did see them—which I thought was unlikely—I envisioned them snotting on your breeches and chocolating your lace. I certainly never saw them bouncing on your knee. You do that, don’t you? You visit them. And love them.”

“Well, of course, I love them.” He turned and pushed himself up on one arm. To his surprise, she was crying.

“What a lovely big family we all are,” her small voice said. She tried to brusquely turn her back to him. But his baby conspired with its father to keep her from it. Adrien had reached out and settled his hand over her midsection to hold her. Dutifully, the baby kicked his hand.

“Did you feel that?” he asked with sudden pleasure.

“He’s a strong little devil. And he sides with his father. Caring for one’s children is better than not.” He added most seriously, “You should cry if I didn’t care, Christina. But to love them, that should be cause to rejoice. I’ll love yours. Especially well. I’m sure.”

All she said was “Oh, Adrien.” As if he were an idiot of the worst sort.

“Christina”—he frowned, trying to see her expression in the dim light—” what have I done now?”

“You have two!” she accused softly. “Two by one woman, three years apart.”

“Elizabeth. She’s a lovely woman. An actress in London. She’d been—”

“Oh, stop it!” She finally succeeded in hoisting herself to her side. “Don’t tell me any more. I’m sorry I asked.” A sob. “Dreadfully sorry.”

“Christina,” he whispered in her ear, “if numbers matter, I’d love to foist a dozen off on you.” He reached around and caressed her belly tenderly. “You’re so lovely fat. You’re so lovely any way, slender or fat. I should like the opportunity to keep you fluctuating back and forth indefinitely.” He was startled by how much his last sentence sounded like marriage. He grimaced and hoped it sounded more like living together for an indeterminate period under ill-defined rules. It apparently did.

“You are amoral, Adrien Hunt.” She sniffled. “You could live with a harem and a hodgepodge of children and never see anything wrong with it! Like it, in fact. Love it. You love them! You love them all, don’t you? Every one of those little bastards. And all the mothers, too!”

“No.” He frowned in surprise. “No, I don’t. I don’t love the little snip with the twins. I don’t love the French governess, the mother of my sixteen-year-old. And Elizabeth, well, we have an understanding that could only be called respect; it’s certainly not—”

“Oh, I think I’m going to be sick.” She started clambering from the bed.

He yanked her back, rolled her, and kissed her; deep and hard, in flagrant contradiction to the fact that he was not supposed to—this was undoubtedly where he was supposed to let her be moral and angry.

“You silly gamine.” He lay half on top of her. “You haven’t asked me what’s on your mind even once. But I will tell you,
mon petit chagrin:
In all due modesty, you love me. You have, for I don’t know how long. Before France, I think. And you want to know how you stand with all the other women in my life. I will tell you. At the top. Above them all. Above and beyond the reach of any dozen, with or without brats to snot on my breeches.”

“I notice how you phrase the love relationship,” she said. “Do you love me, Adrien? What am I dealing with?”

He sighed, mentally debating for a few moments. “You’re dealing with a man who’s quite confused,” he admitted.

“Who would go through any contortion to avoid declaring his feelings one way or another.”

He stroked down the side of her hair. “Who is scared, Christina. Who is scared that besides having to cope with the French authorities in a double blind, with large batches of people who wish to God they weren’t French, and with a crazy old English minister—not to mention a runny nose and a plaguing stomachache—he’s going to have to start coping with love again.”

She didn’t say anything for a time. Then: “Did you just tell me you loved me?”

“I believe I did.”

“What a romantic way to put it. Classed with a runny nose and a stomachache.” She laughed suddenly and kissed him. “Tell me again.”

His stomach churned. He wondered if his admission
was for the best. He pushed her away as he rose from the bed again. “Don’t make a fuss over it, Christina. It doesn’t make a terrible lot of difference if I love you or not.”

“Doesn’t make a difference? Why, it—where are you going?”

“To find something else to eat. My stomach feels like it’s going to burn a hole right through my bowels.”

“There’s milk in the window box. And your loving me, Adrien, it makes all the difference in the world.”

At the pronouncement of that sentence, he heard his narrow platform of safety collapse with a bang in his ears. He knew what was coming next as instinctively as the fox knows what follows the bark of the hounds. His stomach rolled over on the cheese. If she still had the urge, they could be sick together.

She was still sniffling in a wave of tears as he walked into the front room. But she sounded so happy. So bloody happy.

He lifted the lid to the cold box of food in the window, wondering how he was going to get out of this gracefully. He could hear her in the bedroom saying precisely what he didn’t want to hear.

“…we should be married before we leave, really. The baby’s not due for another four or five weeks, but I’d feel more secure not waiting too long. Why did you let it go so long?” He heard her laugh as he poured the milk into a glass. She went on with a giggle. “We may well have to rush from the church straight to get the midwife. What glorious gossip…”

She droned on. He could have shot himself. What had ever possessed him to admit such a thing to her?

He padded back into the bedroom, aware, in the twenty-degree weather, that he had begun to sweat; a twitchy feeling, cold, clammy. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and started rummaging around for a handkerchief for his nose.

“You haven’t said a thing, Adrien.”

“No. Are there clean handkerchiefs in this pile of laundry?”

“Somewhere. Here, let me help you.”

It took her a good minute to navigate out of bed. She was hunting through the pile when he blurted it out.

“I don’t want to marry you.”

She stopped her search, straightened and stepped back. “Why, for godssake? Do you like having bastards?”

“No. I don’t like having wives.”

“You stupid—” She dumped the pile of clean clothes on top of him and shuffled off to sit on the edge of the bed. “That doesn’t make any sense. You support three sets of wives, in essence. You said you don’t love the others, and you love
me.
Besides, you and I are already married in every sense but the legal one. If you love me, then—”

“Don’t drag that into it. As I said, it doesn’t matter. I’m quite content to love an unmarried woman.” She let out an angry sound. He tried to soften his statement. “It’s not rational, Christina. It’s just—it’s so hard to explain.”

“You’re damn right it’s hard to explain. Your other marriage was ten years ago.”

He was stopped. How miserable of her to have hit it on the mark, just like that. “I won’t talk about it,” he said at length.

“I know.” All the fight had gone out of her. She wasn’t going to push it. “You hinted once,” she said, “that the divorce was bad. Was it that awful?”