Silent Surrender (15 page)

Because damn her, he had fallen in love with her, and so quick he’d been unable to do a thing about it.

The human heart didn’t make much sense when he tried to figure it. Honoria was fine as a china doll, and her handsome tutor, he was just right for her. Why would she want a scarred, rough, dirty tradesman? And to want both of them, was that greed or fear or could she actually want them both, just for themselves?

Beside him, Jude walked in silence, his long strides a bit difficult to keep up with to a man used to setting his own pace. But it was no matter. Something in Esau leapt up like a puppy at the thought of seeing her again, even if he did fear what might happen when they got there.

All too soon, the door of the house loomed before them and Jude held up a finger to caution silence.

“What, she’s not going to hear us,” Esau pointed out.

Jude squinted at him in the darkness, with that expression he often got, the one that broadcast his disgust and disbelief plain as day.

“Sorry,” Esau whispered. He would be on his best behavior until he saw Honoria and got her answer. Otherwise she might never know he’d come back at all.

He followed Jude through the house, mostly boxed up in anticipation of the impending move. Cloth draped some of the furniture and the whole place felt vacant already. But when they reached Honoria’s room, oh…

The fire was crackling low in the hearth and the bed was made up all in gold-tinged white. And there in the middle, pale as a lily, Honoria lay asleep. She was like the sleeping princess in a fairy story, waiting for a handsome prince to come and kiss her awake.

He was no handsome prince, Esau knew, but he would have to do. He pulled his arms free of his suspenders and kicked off his shoes, walking barefoot across the carpet to the bedside. Jude closed the door behind him and waited there, and Esau didn’t give him a backward glance. Let him stay, he’d seen it all before. Pulling his shirt over his head, Esau climbed carefully onto the bed and settled beside her, leaned down to kiss her, and the moment their lips touched, her eyes came open. She startled, but her mouth yielded under his a heartbeat later, and her arms came up around his shoulders. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him. Holding her like that, it was like he’d never been away, and been away too long, all the same. She sighed and whimpered and hot tears fell on his face, and for a moment he wondered if he’d cried them himself. Then she leaned back, her palm coming up to cup his cheek, and her eyes shone in the dim light. “You came back.”

He kissed her again until her body rose in his arms and her legs tangled restlessly with his. There wasn’t any time to be wasted on any damned words and if there was, well, he didn’t know any of the right ones. He lost himself in her sweet, soft mouth, in the feel of her small body against his, and he cursed himself for a fool for walking away from her in the first place.

Jude came to stand at the other side of the bed, shirtless himself, and he met Esau’s eyes with a hard expression. Esau lifted his mouth from Honoria’s. “We better get used to it, the pair of us, with her. I don’t think she’d have it any other way.”

Jude nodded and climbed into the bed, fitting his arm carefully around Honoria’s waist. She turned her head with a little gasp of surprise, and with only a moment’s hesitation, Jude kissed her as well.

It was a strange thing, to be in a bed with another man. It wasn’t something Esau had ever thought he would make a habit of, but so long as Honoria was between them, it seemed somehow fitting. No one could reach her, with them on either side, no one could harm her. And she did feel so sweet in his arms.

Esau bent his head to her breast, licking and sucking at her tight pink nipples, flicking his tongue over the hard points. She moaned into Jude’s mouth and Esau’s cock stirred in response. He wanted to kick his trousers down and have her right then, but it would be worth it to go slowly.

Jude lifted his head and motioned to Honoria in that funny way only the two of them knew. Esau supposed he would learn it himself if he was to be of any use at all to her. He studied her expression as she turned to him. What had Jude told her?

Slowly she rose on her knees, gloriously naked in front of him. She lifted her hair and shook it out as it fell down her back. If ever any siren existed, she probably looked like Honoria, to lure poor sailors to their deaths.

Esau watched her, his breath held as she moved down his body. Her lithe fingertips danced across the front of his trousers, over the hard ridge of his cock beneath the canvas. She popped one hook, then another and another, until he sprang free, twitching up at her hand. He helped her push the trousers down, then kicked them aside. He’d hoped she would climb on and ride him, his cock ached for her, but instead she knelt between his legs, bent her head and…

Esau lifted from the bed, a shock going through him at the wet touch of her mouth. His hands fell to her head and he tried, god but he tried, not to push her down. She looked up at him from under that shimmering fall of dark hair, and looked him in the eye as she sucked him. He felt lightheaded from it and he collapsed against the pillows, sorely tempted to put one over his face to keep himself from shouting. Then she gripped him in her hand, sliding up and down as she worked her mouth over him, and he did shout, grinding his teeth against it. It felt divine, it felt amazing, better than he’d ever imagined it might. He’d never had the courage to ask a woman for this, hadn’t dared to ask Honoria before, when he’d been there for her pleasure and not the other way around. The arousal was almost painful and every accidental scrape of her teeth against him sent a sharp twinge that turned to pleasure by contrast.

Jude rose from the bed, returning from the washstand with the small dish that held her brandy-soaked sponge. He knelt beside her and Esau watched as Honoria’s eyes went wide at the first touch. She released his cock with a wet pop and turned her head, moaning as Jude pushed the sponge into her. It was a good precaution, Esau thought, for it would be difficult enough in America without having to worry about a child.

And if they got a child on her, whose would it be? He hated the thought, and the fact that it intruded when he should be concentrated entirely on her mouth enveloping his cock, but there it was. If she did ever catch, they wouldn’t know who caused it. Perhaps that would be better, neither of them knowing. He pushed the uncomfortable thoughts aside, for later.

For now, all he wanted was to feel her sweet mouth and tongue on him, though it was a keen torture trying not to thrust into her mouth. Cold prickles ran over his skin as she bobbed her head and sucked, and behind her Jude moved into position. She moaned around Esau’s cock as Jude entered her, and though Esau would never have thought it, he found the sight of her with the other man more exciting than it had been before. She looked so beautiful on her knees and elbows, little sounds coming out of her, and he knew that would be the end of him, just watching her like that.

When she came, it was her muffled cry and the way she whipped her body frantically between them, that was the thing that sent him off, and he shouted, bunching his fist in the bedclothes as he exploded in her mouth. With a shocked gasp, she lifted her head, pearly white dribbling down her lip as she watched the rest leak out of him. After a moment, she swallowed reluctantly and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.

That had been poorly done of him, he suspected. He would remember to apologize for that later. For now, he watched as her body trembled. Jude put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her up, trapping her body against his with one arm around her ribs. His other hand sought out where they were joined, found the fleshy pearl there, and before long Honoria sang out again, that sweet, strange song Esau was beginning to know by heart. Her body bucked and twisted and she sobbed, helpless, as behind her Jude sped his pace and finished with a groan.

She fell to the bed beside Esau, and Jude beside her, sweating and flushed. He would not meet Esau’s eye and Esau wondered if it was shyness or resentment that did that. They would get used to the arrangement in time, Esau was sure of it, or they would find a means for each man to have her a time or two on his own. Whatever Honoria wanted.

She cuddled up to his side, her head on his shoulder, but she reached behind herself to catch Jude’s hand in hers. He said something to her with his fingers in her cupped hand, and she smiled.

“I told her I’m too hot to lie beside her just now,” Jude explained without prompting. “You’ll get the way of the language eventually, Esau. But you’ll need to know how to read, to spell things out in the dark.”

“I don’t know that I can learn. It might be too late,” Esau warned. “I’m not a very smart man.”

“Anyone can learn, if they have a good teacher,” Jude countered.

“It’s a shame I don’t know any good teachers, then,” Esau said with a chuckle, and Honoria lifted her head, frowning. He kissed the tip of her nose. “Men talk. Nothing for you to worry your sweet head over.”

“I hate that,” Honoria said, her serene mood suddenly broken. “I hate when hearing people say that to me. If I asked, I want to know. Don’t treat me like a child.”

Esau leaned up on his elbows, moving her aside. “Here now, where did all this come from? I thought you were pleased to see me.”

“I am pleased to see you,” she protested. “But if anyone is going to take me seriously running a business, you two will have to treat me the same way you would treat a man. A hearing man.”

Jude sat up and reached for her hand, to kiss her palm. He looked her in the eye and held his fist to his chest, moving it in a slow circle. Esau cocked his head, imitated the motion.

“There, you’ve got at least one sign now,” Jude said with a smile, and when Honoria turned to Esau, her expression softened.

“You’re saying you’re sorry,” she explained.

Over the top of her head, Jude mouthed, “Get used to it. You’ll say it a lot.”

And although Honoria couldn’t have seen him, she turned and punched him in the shoulder.

* * * * *

The morning came and went before the three of them roused. The little maid, Annie, who braided Honoria’s hair and helped her dress, had given her resignation in the night. Jude had found the note himself and tossed it into the fire before Honoria could notice it.

“Where Annie?” she asked, seated before her vanity in her nightgown.

“Gone. Quit.” Jude shrugged. “You can dress you?”

“I try,” Honoria signed back, but she looked doubtful, and reached up to touch her hair.

“Now there, I’m your man.” Esau rose from the bed, still shamelessly naked, and strolled over to the vanity. “My mother used to need her hair put up. I can’t do it as fancy as you’re used to, but I can braid it and pin it up.”

“You had a mother?” Jude tried to imagine such a fearsome creature who could birth the bull of the man standing there, with a delicate hairbrush in one hand and pins already pressed between his lips.

“Well, of course I had a mother. I didn’t hatch out of an egg, if that’s what you were wondering.” Esau lifted a handful of Honoria’s hair in his palm and gently held it as he brought the brush through, starting at the end and working up. Jude found the sight shockingly tender, the big, muscular man, bare as the day he was born, doing something so feminine as brushing a lady’s hair.

“You could be a maid,” Honoria said, smiling at Esau in the looking glass.

“You might not be saying that, when you see the result,” Esau replied, but he smiled at her compliment.

At once, Jude felt as though his presence were an intrusion. He wondered if it would often be so, that he would be caught watching a moment between the two of them that should have been private. If it happened to him, it would happen to Esau as well, and Jude took heart in that thought as he quietly left the room.

Parker waited in the dining room, one of the only rooms in the entire house that wasn’t cluttered up with boxes and trunks. The old man had a sour face on. No doubt all the servants knew now what their mistress was at, and couldn’t wait to see the backs of all three of them. The butler drew himself up stiffly and held out an envelope. “This came for the young Miss this morning.”

Jude’s heart stopped at the cramped script on the envelope. He’d seen it enough on correspondence coming into the house to know it belonged to Poole. He took it and sat down. “Thank you, Parker, I’ll open it.”

“It’s a shame on this house,” Parker said in cold reply, and not about the letter.

“Then you’ll be glad to see us leave,” Jude said, waving the man off. “You’re still a servant here and you’ll still rely on our good references, so I suggest you keep your mouth shut.”

With a noise of indignation, the butler left.

That was another thing Jude would need to get used to. Defending Honoria from the slights of ignorant persons who deduced what was going on between the three of them. Jude had come up with a solution to that, but he would wait until the time was right to suggest it. Now, the envelope in his hands was the most pressing matter. His fingers trembled as he slid his nail under the sealed edge and loosened it. Once it was open, he didn’t want to see what the letter held, but he pulled it free and looked in amazement as a flat bundle of notes held together with twine fell to the table.

“To Miss Honoria Wallis, With warmest regards, Uncle Poole,” was all the letter said, and with held breath, Jude counted out the notes. The inheritance. Large bills, all accounted for. It would be enough to secure passage for all three of them, and establish the business when they arrived. With a whoop of triumph, Jude shot to his feet and ran for the doors.

Inside Honoria’s room, he found Esau helping her into her petticoats, her hair hanging over her shoulder in a long, clumsy braid that reached her waist.

“What that?” she signed, her eyes going wide at the sight of the money in Jude’s hand. Esau looked up over her shoulder.

“It’s your inheritance.” Jude swallowed. What he held in his hand was their future, and he didn’t know that he wanted to be in such a responsible position. “It’s from Poole. He sent all of it.”