Silent Surrender (13 page)

But she was unlike any other woman, though it was hardly a matter of hearing or not hearing that made her so. She leaned up and kissed him, the sheet falling away from her as she straddled his lap and took his face in her hands. Her soft breasts brushed him, the pointed pink nipples teasing his chest, and at once he was hard and ready for her. He would never get enough of her, if they could stay in bed a thousand years.

Slowly she slid down his body, opening her mouth to suck on his throat, to bite his collarbones, seeking lower and lower all the while. When she ran her pointed tongue around one of his nipples, he took a ragged breath. Still she continued her downward journey, running her tongue over the ridges of his stomach, swirling around his navel. She followed the line of hair just beneath it, licking along and then stirring it with her breath, and he raised his hips purely on instinct.

Had Esau taught her this? He hated himself for the thought that came into his mind unbidden with each new exploration. He hated himself for not having the same experience, for not being able to guide her himself. In this, she would always be his teacher, and the switched roles did not sit well with him. Still, when her mouth closed over the tip of him and her tongue rolled around, he couldn’t dislike it too much. He would never have had the courage to ask her for such an act. It would have seemed far too undignified and disrespectful for a woman so fine as her.

That she did it of her own volition only added to the indescribable pleasure of her warm mouth around him. She looked up at him, her brown eyes wide and strangely innocent in comparison to her actions. He reached down and stroked her hair, unable to tear his gaze from hers as she slowly took him in as far as she could and then, with a wet sound, slid back up his length, her tongue flicking over him all the way.

Her mouth was as sweet a torture as the rest of her body. Without her mouth stopping for a moment, she threw one leg over his thigh, her wet petals parting over his skin, her core sucking greedily at him the way her mouth sucked at his cock. He rocked his hips, keenly aware of the potential to harm her with his movements, and so he kept himself in check with torturous restraint. She held him in her hand, moving up and down his shaft in time with her head bobbing up and down, spittle coating him and making the passage of her hand just as sleek.

He would die from this, he was sure of it. Their frequent loving had made him a bit tender, though he gladly endured it to lose himself in her body again and again. Now though, it made the pleasure sharper somehow. She whimpered as she ground her cunny on his thigh, and the sound vibrated through his cock as through a tuning fork. Sweat stood out on his forehead and he fisted a hand in her wild fall of dark hair as though he could tug on it like the reins of a horse. He released her, falling back to the pillows without realizing that his body had curled up toward her. He thought of spending in her mouth, and though he was certain the thought should disgust any proper gentleman, it sent chills racing along his spine.

There was nothing left to be done but to grip the sheets and pray that she would be merciful, and then she was, rising above him and sinking down on him, her slick channel clutching at him all the way. She braced her hands against his shoulders as she rode him, and he leaned up to kiss her, counting himself blessed that such a creature would have him. She looked like an angel, or perhaps the most seductive demon any man had encountered, a lock of her hair falling to curl around one breast, her head thrown back as her body tensed and she cried out with a sound of pure passion.

He lost himself then, searing hot spasms of pleasure vibrating from his pelvis to his toes and back to the crown of his head, holding him breathless for a moment before he could pull in a shuddering gasp.

She lay against his chest, all sweat-damp and loose-limbed, and he could barely lift his arm to fit it around her.

Perhaps it would have been fitting to whisper some endearment to her, if she could have heard one. But of all the times words seemed unnecessary, this one was poignantly so. He let the rhythm of their bodies, still joined and pulsing together in the aftermath of their pleasure, speak for them, and together they said more than any sign or spoken word possibly could.

Chapter Ten

The facade of her father’s building, once proud and clean and well-tended, looked as though it had aged a hundred years in just a few months. The gold letters had been sloppily painted over, and the new shingle looked as though it had been made by a child. More likely, the lettering had been done in Poole’s own shaking hand, for he wouldn’t have spent even a sweet or two on a child to do the painting.

She wiped her palms on her skirt and looked to Jude. They had both dressed in the mourning black Poole would expect of a dutiful daughter and a family employee, so he would have no call to dismiss them on that account. They would observe all the protocols, for that was the only way to win at this game.

Still, even with Jude at her side, she did not like the thought of facing the old lech. He still leered at her whenever he saw her, as if to say, “We both know what I did to you.” As if he intimated at a private liaison they had willingly shared.

“Not nervous,” Jude signed with a confident smile. It should have eased Honoria to know that Jude had such high hopes for the meeting, but it did not. She wanted to scream at him that he had no idea what the man was like, but to cause a scene would not help them now.

Jude pushed open the door and held it for Honoria to step through. At once she was struck by the stench of the place. Her father had never allowed Poole to smoke his noxious pipe inside the office, for the smell had driven him mad, but now that the old man had freedom of the building, he seemed to have made up for twenty years of smoke in a few months.

He stood beside his desk, a bit more slumped over than he had been years ago, looking even more like a goblin out of a frightening fairy tale. His sour expression did not change when he mumbled to them, and Honoria waited for Jude to translate for her. She did not want Poole to know that she could read his lips. She did not want to give Poole the satisfaction of knowing that she thought about his lips at all.

She could still feel his hot breath on her neck all those years ago and she forcibly stopped herself from shuddering.

“Poole he say good day,” Jude signed, and she signed back a thoughtless pleasantry.

“Your note said you’d be coming at three, and it is four past,” Poole snapped, and when Jude translated for her, Honoria put on her best apologizing face and signed to Jude, “To hell with him.”

Jude relayed a more acceptable apology to the man.

“Fine, fine. I don’t have any more appointments today,” Poole groused. “Why isn’t she on a ship across the channel?”

“She isn’t going to France,” Jude said, a polite smile on his face. “She’s going to America, with me. I’m going to marry her.”

“Marry her?” Poole’s face distorted in disgust. “You know she’s an idiot, boy. Are you in it for the money? Because she hasn’t got any.”

This was the bit that Jude himself had thought up, and though it had seemed brilliant as they discussed it in the cab on the way over, it still hurt to see him say, “Oh, I beg to differ. This idiot, as you call her, has the potential to be very lucrative to the both of us, if you’d let her.”

One of Poole’s wiry white eyebrows rose. “Oh, you think so, do you? Pray, how do you figure?”

“She is the Wallis shipping heir. That doesn’t mean much here, but in America they won’t know any better, and we can make it sound as prestigious as we like. Let her go there with me. Give her the inheritance that should have gone to her keeping in France, and let me start up an identical business there. With her name, she should have no trouble establishing a clientele, perhaps some who have already given you their custom here. Think of the prices you could charge them if you could entrust their goods would not only leave on a Wallis ship, but be handled by Wallis employees when they arrived?” Jude paused, letting the old man mull it over.

“You sound just like her father,” Poole said after a time. “But he had a point. Where would you be putting this business?”

Honoria became aware that she was chewing her lip, and quickly stopped herself. She didn’t want to appear too eager or Poole would refuse them outright. Still, he gave her leave to hope, the way his shrewd eyes fixed on Jude. Surreptitiously, she watched Jude’s lips as he answered.

“Martha’s Vineyard. There are many folk there with the same affliction as Honoria has. We can hire them, and pay them less than a whole worker.”

She bristled. That had not been a part of their earlier discussion. She knew Jude well enough that she was nearly certain he didn’t mean those words, and yet they cut her.

Such cruelty clearly appealed to Poole and his beady black eyes lit up with a terrible joy. “You’ve given this a lot of thought, boy.”

“I’ve had years to work it out,” Jude said, and he laughed for good measure. Honoria did not know if she should be pleased with his performance, or horrified, for it was so believable.

Then Poole shook his head, a scowl forming that was deeper than the one he’d greeted them with. “But I’m afraid that money is clearly bound for her allowance in France. As a solicitor, I cannot undo what the deceased has willed.”

“As his business partner, surely you can see where the company’s best interests lie,” Jude tried, but Honoria knew then that Poole would sense his desperation and exploit it. The argument was lost.

“I’m sorry, but my late partner was quite explicit in his wishes for his daughter. Far be it from me to disrespect those wishes.” Poole smiled, the sickly yellow pegs of his teeth shining wetly behind his thin purple lips. “If you still wish to take the girl, the money will fold into the company’s accounts at the end of the year, and the Wallis name will carry on, in spirit if not in viable lineage.”

Poole was losing interest in their meeting, and fast. Steeling herself against a result she could not imagine, she blurted, “If you don’t give me my money, I will tell your wife and the wives of all your clients what you did to me when I was a little girl!”

Poole’s face blanched, and for a delicious moment she though perhaps she had shocked him into a mortal apoplexy, but he did not clutch at himself or shake and foam. He narrowed his mean eyes at her, and she forced herself to continue. “I’ll tell them about the garden, about how you put your hand under my skirt because you thought no one would believe an idiot. I’ll tell them how you cornered me at every opportunity, how you licked your lips and leered at me over the dinner table. I’ll tell them everything and warn them about you.”

“And does she think anyone will believe her?” Poole asked, drawing himself up as straight as he could with a spine as bent as it was. “Does she think they won’t know her for a liar and an incoherent feeble?”

Jude lunged for the man. Paralyzed by her shock, Honoria could only watch as he thrust Poole backward into the spindly writing desk, which fell to the floor in a flurry of papers and splintered wood. Jude still held Poole by the shirtfront, his arm drawn back, and Honoria’s hand shot out to stay his strike.

“No!” She clung to Jude’s elbow, feeling the tension beneath the sleeve of his jacket. “Not this way!”

Reluctantly, Jude pulled Poole to his feet and stepped back, his jaw still tight, his expression so still that it frightened Honoria.

Still, the moment must be saved, lest Poole forget her threat. “They may think me feeble-minded and a cripple.” The word tasted sour in her mouth. “But once the seed of doubt has been planted, the truth will take root. A wife’s mistrust and dislike will often stay a man’s hand in business, no matter how successful the speculation at first appears. You know that, else you would not have trod so carefully around my mother.”

Poole was practically sniveling now, playing the part of the bewildered old man for her sympathy. “Please, my dear, you are confused, or I am. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Anything I might have done that you deem misconduct is probably a figment of your imagination or a misunderstanding. I’m sure this all can be worked out between us.”

“It can,” she agreed. “All will be made well when my inheritance is delivered to me in full. I sail for America in three days. Ample time to write the letters I’ve planned.”

She turned then, and did not breathe all the way to the door. When she stepped outside, she filled her lungs with the fetid dockside air and nothing had ever smelled sweeter. It was as if an anchor had been cut from her ribs, and now she could breathe and expand and feel true freedom for the first time in her life.

Jude came out behind her and stepped into her line of vision. “Why you never tell?”

Her hands shook when she tried to reply and she clasped them together a moment to calm them. She did not tremble out of fear and she did not want to worry Jude with such a misconception. “You think anyone listen?”

There was such sadness in Jude’s eyes, and that was exactly the reason she hadn’t told him, nor her mother, nor her father. “If I tell,” she began patiently, “I give you my sad, my pain.”

“How long this happen? How many times?” Jude’s eyes filled with wetness, tears of anger and grief that she knew she could never understand.

“Not after you come here, live with family.” She reached up and cupped his cheek, heedless of the stares of the people passing them. She was used to being stared at, as it was. “You save me.”

He crushed her against him and she felt his hot breath against the top of her head as her bonnet slipped back. She squirmed in his embrace; she had been caged long enough. Stepping back, she scolded, “Not sad. Not now.”

“We not know if Poole give your money,” he reminded her, as though he were determined to be gloomy. He couldn’t see, she realized, what had just happened in that shop. Perhaps in a few hours, or a few days, he might know the truth of it. While she had been liberated by her revelation, he had been wounded by it. Knowing the truth of it all those years had tempered her to the horror of Poole’s past actions.