Provocative in Pearls (22 page)

He guided Verity away after some awkward good-byes. Mrs. Thompson did not appear happy that no invitations were extended first.

Verity remained thoughtful while they retraced their steps to the carriage. He handed her in and settled across from her.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” he asked. “If your goal was to inform them that there will be no sentiment on your part, and that they are now reduced to mere acquaintances, you succeeded.”

She barely appeared to be paying attention to what he was saying. “I thoroughly enjoyed myself, thank you.” She spoke absently and dully, while something else occupied her mind.

 

 

T
he sound was unmistakable. It penetrated the wall and door while he undressed. It broke through his contemplation of that meeting in the park, and of Verity’s curiosity about someone named Michael.

The sound came from the chambers next to his own, probably the bedchamber. Verity was weeping.

Drummund pretended he did not hear, until Hawkeswell paused and lifted a hand for silence so he could listen. Then the valet’s eyes sought his.

Hawkeswell dismissed him. Still dressed in shirt and trousers, he passed through Verity’s dressing room.

She was standing near the bed when he entered, and crying no longer. She had swallowed her sorrow on hearing his footsteps. He considered leaving again, so she could release her emotions without his interruption.

“I am not ready. I am sorry.” She slipped off her shoe and propped her foot on a chair. She began to roll down her hose, as if his appearance in her chamber meant only one thing.

Which it always had. Still, he did not care for the way she now felt compelled to become “ready” when she really wanted to cry. He wondered if this transpired often, and he had missed it on nights past because he was not in his dressing room yet when she wept.

Maybe she cried every night, then dried her tears, removed her clothes, and climbed into bed to wait for the performance of her duties. The idea angered him.

She set her other foot on the chair and began on the other hose.

“Stop that, Verity.”

He startled her. She set her foot on the ground and faced him.

“You were weeping just now, before I entered. Why?”

She just looked at him, her blue eyes blank and hiding her thoughts. That only angered him more.

He wanted to insist that she tell him. He almost said that as her husband he had a right to know everything he wanted to know. Except he did not, and she knew it. He could demand she give him her obedience, her future, and her body, but if she chose to keep her heart and soul to herself, he could not stop her.

To his amazement, her gaze became watery. She wiped her eyes, sniffed hard, and turned to her bed. She lifted a paper lying there.

“Nancy did not waste time in complying with my request. She sent the news from Oldbury by messenger tonight. Here it is. A list of the neighbors who died, young and old, while I was gone and unaware, and unable to mourn them. She also includes an explanation of those who left, and even a few notes on those who have arrived.”

He took the page from her and sat on the bed near the lamp. It bore columns of names, each with a title. Dead. Removed. Arrived. Missing. Rather prominently, Verity’s own name had been listed below that last heading, then crossed out. Nancy had found a way to express her pique in the end.

Katy and Michael Bowman were listed under Removed. “She does not write that Katy is missing or dead,” he said. “That is a good sign, is it not?”

“I suppose. I will not know until I see her, however. I wrote to the vicar, asking after her and requesting he read her a letter I included. Only he is on that list now, under “Removed.” If the letter is following him, it could be lost or traveling the length and breadth of the land.”

“Were you weeping at Nancy’s cruelty in listing these names with no thought to how you would receive them?”

She shook her head. “I was moved because I know many of them. Or did.” She stepped close and pointed to the list labeled “Dead.” “That is a little girl. She would be no more than ten now. A pretty little thing with red curls. My father helped her father build their house when she was born, as he was wont to do sometimes.”

She pointed out a few more names, of people from her girlhood, and described who they had been to her.

She smiled toward the end of her explanation, the memories warming her instead of bringing sorrow. He decided to wait another day to ask about the young man named Michael whom she had been careful to ask Nancy about.

She took the letter and folded it. He took her hand and kissed it.

“I will leave you to your memories, Verity.”

Her eyes misted again. She did not release his hand. “For a man who has known countless women, Hawkeswell, you really do not know women very well at all. I do not want to be left to mourn, and to spend the night with ghosts.”

“Then I will stay, if you want me here.”

She appeared grateful, which touched him. She turned away and began undressing. There was nothing seductive in her movements. Her distraction meant she barely noticed what she was doing.

He had to watch, of course, while he removed his own garments. The domesticity of her matter-of-fact disrobing charmed him.

They met under the sheets and he guessed that she had not asked him to stay for pleasure. She truly did not want to be alone. She required company, nothing more.

He pulled her close and tucked her against him so he faced her back and she curled against him. She sighed deeply and stilled, and her breathing calmed into a steady rhythm.

Soon he thought she slept. He weighed slipping away so that he might sleep as well. That would be unlikely if he remained here, with her bottom nestled against his loins.

To his surprise, her hand took his, the one on the arm embracing her. She moved it, until it cupped her breast. He caressed, and she sighed again in a little melody of contentment.

He needed no more encouragement than that. He fondled until her breath shortened and her bottom snuggled more closely against him. She tried to turn.

“No. Stay like that,” he said. He instead turned her slightly away from him and braced on his other arm so he could kiss her cheek and shoulder, her back and hair. He used his hand to arouse her, stroking down her body and circling her nipples until her little cries sounded impatient and her bottom rose higher, pressing his erection, seeking more.

He caressed her bottom. His fingers followed her crevice until they touched her softest, warmest flesh. He watched her face and the way pleasure transformed it, until she clutched at the bedclothes beneath her and cried out her need and her assents and finally her release into the night.

He took her just as she was then, half hugging the mattress, and watched her pleasure climb again while she arched erotically into his thrusts.

 

 

 

 

“
I
need to go home.”

“This is your home.”

“I want to go to Oldbury,” she said, rephrasing. “You said that I could.”

They had not moved. His body still curved along hers. His hand rested on her breast, much as she had invited, but in comfort and possession now, not to titillate. It had been a long, slow joining, and at the end, when her need had grown to the point of frenzy from his repeated thrusts, he had reached around her body and rubbed the nub below her mound.

The result had been her spectacular second release that had demanded his own. She had cried into the night with abandon, and pulled his head to her so she could kiss him aggressively, with a savagery that intensified the climax. Her violent ecstasy still echoed in his head.

All of which left him ill-prepared for her unexpected announcement.

“I said you could go when it was convenient for me to accompany you. It is not now. Parliamentary sessions begin soon, and we must be here a month hence in any case.”

“I will return long before a month passes.” She plumped her pillow, hugged it, and nestled in. “I am going to go.”

“And if I forbid it?”

She said nothing.

“Well, at least I will know where you are this time if you run away, Verity.”

She turned to her other side so she faced him. “I have things I must settle there, and people I must see. I warned you that I would not forsake my past life for you, but I think that you expect me to anyway. It will not happen, no matter what you forbid, or how much pleasure you give me.”

“It is far too dangerous for you to go alone. We will talk about it tomorrow.” He’d be damned if he were just going to capitulate. However, right now, with visions of her beautiful passion still haunting his mind, he did not want to argue, or think about how to end this rebellion.

She smiled contentedly. She assumed she had won. Well, she would learn the hard truth tomorrow.

“Why must I be here a month hence?” she asked.

“You will be invited to a dinner party hosted by the Duke of Castleford. It will be a month from this Tuesday. I think that royalty will attend.”

“Whoever thought that the daughter of an iron worker would sit with royalty? Such are the benefits of marrying an earl, I suppose. I will hide behind you and muddle through it.”

“You will not be riding my coattails into that milieu. Nor will you be able to hide. The party is in your honor, in a manner of speaking.”

She rose on one arm. She frowned thoughtfully while she watched her fingers walk over his chest in a pleasant tapping march. “Why would this duke bother with me?”

“He and I were good friends until a few years ago, and he has been moved by nostalgia to ease your way, it seems. He will be calling on you tomorrow. I will be here.”

He debated whether warnings were in order. Unfortunately, with Castleford they probably were, for all his talk of standards. Tristan would undoubtedly be fascinated with Verity, especially if she did not act in awe of him. He might consider that a challenge he could not allow to stand.

“He has a reputation for being dissolute and a libertine. It would be best if you only received him when I am present too.”

“I know about his reputation, from the scandal sheets. Celia seems to know a bit more, but then, she often does, and she has added glosses to those notices. If you were his good friend, you must have been dissolute once as well.” She cast him a critical glance. “Orgies and such.”

“I no longer find such diversions amusing.”

“Why not? I think they must be eternally amusing.”

She might be asking why he now preferred blue to brown, and calmly observing that while she had never worn brown herself, she assumed the habit of wearing it would not grow tiresome.

“When a man is nineteen years of age, getting roaring drunk is fun, audacious, and rebellious. One needs to be good and foxed to join an orgy without inhibition. About five years ago I decided that I would never get that foxed again. At which point orgies became peculiar, not amusing.”

“You mean that your tastes changed.”

“Yes. My tastes became much more boring.”

“Or simply more private. You did not become a monk. You just stopped swiving women in a room full of other men swiving other women.”

Never let it be said that Lady Hawkeswell minced words or worried overmuch about the appropriateness of the words themselves.

“Why did you decide to never get very foxed again?”

That was the trouble with women. No matter how carefully a man sidestepped and circled, no matter how cleverly he diverted and obscured, women possessed an uncanny ability for spotting that which was being avoided and honing in on it with relentless precision.

“You may have noticed that I have a bit of a temper.”

She giggled. “No? You do?”

“Being drunk makes controlling it difficult. In my efforts to learn restraint, I accepted my limitations.”

She appeared to find that a sensible explanation. She expected nothing more. She may not have wanted anything more even if she knew there was more.

She adjusted her position, yawned deeply, and closed her eyes.

“I almost killed a man. That is why I chose not to get foxed again.”

Her lids rose and her blue eyes sought his face. “But you did not kill him.”

He shook his head. “Summerhays was there, as drunk as I was but of better character to start. He saw how it would end and dragged me off the poor fellow. He thrashed me senseless, to be sure I stopped. When I came to, and sobered up, I knew how it would have to be henceforth.” The memories of that night remained vague, lost in a haze of false euphoria giving way to red rage. The only thing he remembered clearly was swinging his fist again and again while fury drowned his mind. “The man had insulted me somehow. I do not even remember what he said. If Summerhays had not been there . . .”

He had often wondered how it would have been, to live with knowing his lack of control had cost a man his life. That, more than anything, had taught him the restraint itself.

“Most men would not admit they had been wrong, or accept how it would have to be, especially if the resolution meant an estrangement from a good friend, as it seems to have caused with Castleford. It is understandable if sometimes you miss him, and envy his freedom from the necessity of good sense.”

“I do not miss him. I certainly do not envy him.” Except sometimes he did. How like Verity to realize the nostalgia went both ways with Castleford.

She did not argue. He liked that quality in her. She expressed her opinion but displayed no compulsion to convert anyone else. Nor did she sigh at his density or smirk at his denial. She merely closed her eyes, to go to sleep.

Drowsiness claimed him as well, and his body relaxed into the mattress and against her softness. The first was very comfortable and the latter oddly comforting, and a pleasant peace lured him. He struggled back to consciousness and began to cast back the sheet, to return to his own chambers.