Beckman: Lord of Sins

Twelve

The weekend flew by, with Saturday spent in an exhausting marathon of shopping and Sunday spent largely recovering. Sara saw firsthand that Beck excelled at anything associated with commercial endeavor. Whatever they purchased, he had it sent to the inn and packed on their wagon so there would be no delay Monday morning loading and rearranging the wagon’s contents.

The way he spent money was to Sara nigh virtuosic. He didn’t waste it, though, he spent it, invested it. He bought the better quality product, assuring her more durable goods were the better bargain, even if they cost a little more.

She agreed and raised her sights accordingly.

For North, Beck dropped off measurements taken from the man’s boots at a little hole-in-the-corner establishment on a side street.

He purchased bolts of cloth for dresses, drapes, and everything in between, then moved on to sheets, towels, table linens, and other household goods. Sara noticed many of the merchants knew him, though a few made mention of not having seen him in some time.

“You are good company.” He passed her a tot of cognac at the end of their busy day and joined her with his own on the balcony. “It’s rare I can go shopping with a female and not end up wanting to run howling to the nearest taproom.”

“It’s rare I can go shopping with a man and not want to shoo him howling to the nearest taproom. With you, though, it isn’t shopping so much as provisioning, and in the quantities you were buying today, you had the attention of the merchants.”

“True, and with a pretty lady on my arm helping me make my choices.”

A pretty lady the clerks kept referring to as his wife. He’d let them—and so had Sara.

They sipped their drinks in silence, standing side by side on the moonlit balcony.

“When, exactly, do your menses next befall you?”

A day ago, Sara might have taken exception to such a question, but now, it struck her as a simple measure of their intimacy.

She thought a moment, then named a date. “Why?”

“We’re taking precautions to minimize the risk of conception.” Beck set his drink down without finishing it. “Timing is important.”

She trusted him to understand the details of that timing at least as well as she did. He was canny that way, and had she not known differently, she would have thought him married for far longer than the few months he alluded to.

“Will you tell me of your marriage, Beck?”

“What do you want to know?” His voice was even, but in his posture, Sara detected the slightest bracing.

“Who was she? How did she die, and do you still miss her?” Did you love her to distraction, and is she the reason you look so sad sometimes?

He was silent for a moment, as if arranging answers from least to most painful. “Her name was Devona Brockwood, and her grandfather was the Marquess of Whitfield, her papa in line for the title. When her papa died, she fell under the guardianship of her uncle, and he had several daughters close to Devona’s age. It was decided she would be married off posthaste, because she’d already had a Season.”

“Posthaste?” Sara didn’t like the sound of that.

“I was considered an adequate match. Her stock had fallen with her father’s death—her father had not seen to her settlements prior to his demise—and my sense was she was grateful for my attentions. Had her father lived, I’ve no doubt a duke’s son or the son of a marquess, at least, would have been required.”

And Sara had to ask. “Was she pretty?”

“Very.”

Damn him for his honesty, though she thanked him for it too. “But?”

Beck’s smile was sad. “But I was not yet one and twenty. All I knew was that by the rules of any society, once I married her, I could swive her regularly, sport about Town with her on my arm, and be the envy of my friends from university. She was eager enough for the match, and I was anxious to provide my father and brother an heir. We married on less than three months’ acquaintance.”

“Many marriages start out with less,” Sara said gently, because Beck’s disgust was evident in his voice.

“They do, but her death was a blessing in a way—to her, if no one else. She loved another, and there was no means by which we could have been happy.”

Ah, God. The oldest recipe for misery on the planet, and the one seeing the greatest circulation. “And you did not know this when you married her?”

“Of course not. I knew I was to become an instant adult, by virtue of having captured my bride. I’d come into an inheritance at twenty, finished university, and was hell-bent on proving to my father I was more worthy of his respect than Nicholas. A bride with a baby in her arms was to be my capstone achievement—provided, of course, the baby was a boy.”

“You were young.”

“I was an arrogant idiot,” Beck countered, “which is precisely why I never discuss my marriage, much less think of it if I can help it.”

Even though, years later, it still fueled his flight into the opium dens of Paris?

“I’m sorry your marriage wasn’t happy.” Sara curled her arm through his and rested her cheek against his bicep. “We’re so easily hurt when we’re young. We dress and talk and carry on like adults, but inside, we’re not very adult at all.”

Beck settled his arm across her shoulders. “And yet by the time you were twenty, you had a small child, had toured much of Europe, and were the support of your family.”

“I was impersonating an adult. There was no one else on hand for the role. Take me to bed, Beckman. We’re both weary, and this talk is not cheering.”

She hurt for him but knew not how to say so without offending his male pride. Or perhaps she wanted the confidences to cease flowing between them, lest she impart a few more of her own.

Devona had been so pretty, like a perfect caricature of English beauty. Blond, willowy, soft-spoken, and gracious. She’d been every young gentleman’s dream of the ideal wife. But never, in several months of marriage, had she said those words, “Take me to bed, Beckman.”

Such a realization might have engendered rage in years past, or guilt—barges and buckets of guilt—or resentment. Tonight, Beck felt only gratitude for Sara’s company, and sadness for a young couple whose union had been doomed by immaturity.

Beck undressed his lover with simple courtesy, and after he’d brushed out Sara’s hair, he rebraided it, but only after he’d indulged his pleasure in its unbound state. When they shed their nightclothes and climbed onto the bed, Sara tucked herself against Beck’s larger frame and hiked a leg across his thighs.

“Did you enjoy today?” she asked, flipping her braid over her shoulder. She settled against him as his arms went around her, then found a comfy spot for her head against his shoulder.

She fits me, Beck thought, resting his cheek against her hair. She not only fit him, she was easily affectionate with him, at least behind closed doors. Maybe this was a maternal quality, this simple affection, or maybe it was a Sara quality. In either case, it was one of the things he enjoyed about her most, the way she gave and accepted affection.

“I enjoyed being with you today,” Beck said. “But no, haring all over town, haggling, it reminded me too much of my past, and that in truth, Three Springs should not be my concern.”

“But your father is your concern, and this is how you can feel close to him as he slips away.”

“Plain speaking, but accurate. Nita writes that he sleeps a great deal.”

“So he’s not in pain.” She shifted up on the pillows and tugged on Beck’s broad shoulders. “Cuddle up, Haddonfield, as we’re great friends and all.”

A little tentatively, he did as she bid, resting his cheek on the slope of her breast. She linked her arms around him and hugged him to her.

“Tell me about your papa,” she said, threading her fingers through the hair at his nape.

Slowly at first, Beck did. He started out with expected propaganda, reporting all of the earl’s most impressive accomplishments, the bills he’d seen enacted in Parliament, the sound advice he’d given the king or the regent. From there, Beck drifted closer to more personal recollections, until, an hour later, he was wondering aloud why his father had waited until death was knocking at his door to hold Nick accountable for securing the succession and marrying.

“You will sort this out with your brothers.” Sara kissed him again. “You like them too much not to, and they like you as well.”

“And you know this how?” Even her breasts bore her luscious fragrance.

“You said when Nick retrieved you from Paris he saved your life, Beckman. He will be the head of the family, and he will need your support. You’re the one who has actually seen the family holdings overseas. You’re the one who has met this factor and that competitor. You’re the one with the better sense of your younger sisters and the men who could make them suitable mates. While Nick has been off tending to whatever, and Ethan has been banished, you’ve been minding the family concerns.”

She turned facts on their heads, sounding very brisk and practical while she did. “That’s one way to look at it.”

“Ask Nick sometime how he looks at it,” Sara said. “For now, I need to move you. My arm has gone to sleep.”

“My apologies.”

Sara pushed at his shoulder. “Roll over. I’m going to rub your back.”

“You are?” It occurred to Beck she might be sore, so he acquiesced. He could ask her, of course, but his mood was a little off for lovemaking, and the shops would be closed tomorrow. They’d have all day to indulge his selfish impulses—and hers.

“Go to sleep, Beckman.” Sara’s hand began to knead his shoulder. “It will all be here in the morning, as will I.”

Usually, the idea that his troubles would greet him upon rising was not cheering. The way Sara said it put things in a different light.

Beck woke up the next morning spooned around Sara, a pleasurable novelty made all the sweeter by the breeze coming through the balcony doors. His erection was seated along her sex, and before she was fully awake, Sara was subtly moving against him.

Trusting she would tell him if he was asking too much, Beck shifted minutely behind her, wrapped an arm around her waist, and began to ease his way inside.

“Good morning,” Sara murmured, bringing his hand up to settle over her breast.

“Good morning,” Beck politely rejoined, pushing more firmly into her body. “It’s a lovely day.”

“Beautiful,” Sara agreed sleepily. She contracted her sex around him and sighed—contentedly, he thought—as he gained a deeper penetration.

“Is this…?” Beck paused while he focused on easing his cock that much deeper into her heat.

“Beautiful,” Sara assured him, closing her fingers over his on her breast. “Just… lovely.”

He hadn’t made love to her before in daylight. He wanted to, of course. He wanted to make love to her so he could see the sunlight on her face and not just on the erotic curve of her spine. He wanted to put her on her knees and fill her so deeply she groaned with the pleasure of it. Wanted her atop him, her hair drifting over them both, and he wanted her…

He slipped his hand out from under hers and closed her fingers around her nipple, then let his palm glide down over her belly, to her sex. His fingers found the seat of her pleasure, and in slow, glancing caresses, he began to drive her toward completion.

Beckman almost regretted it when he felt Sara surrender to her orgasm, so greatly had he been enjoying the lovemaking. He let himself join her, though his own orgasm became more intense for the control he tried to maintain over his body.

“You all right?” He stroked a hand down her spine when he could speak again, knowing she was unused to this much sexual activity, regardless of how he tried to contain himself.

“Blissful,” Sara said, sounding well pleasured and smug. “How do married people behave in company, Beck, when there’s all this between them in private?”

It struck him as an odd question. Sara had been married far longer than he had. Odd—but flattering.

“They start off with a honeymoon,” he said, “and have a little privacy in which to gain their balance. But I believe a certain kind of misbehavior is the signal attraction of the married state for most people. Stay put and let me tend you.”

Lest he ravish her the livelong day.

“I want to devour you,” he said as he tidied her up. “Visually at least, if not otherwise.”

“You need your breakfast,” Sara informed him. And yet she parted her legs farther and didn’t push his hand away. “Why shouldn’t you look?” she asked, watching his face. “I like to look at you. Love to, in fact.”

His gaze shifted to assess the truth of her statement, only to find the demented woman was smiling radiantly.

“I love the look of you when you’re dressed for town,” she said while his gaze traveled from that smile back to the damp, pink glory of her sex. “You’re handsome when you’re all country-gentleman-about-his-business. I love the look of you at breakfast, teasing Allie, ready to storm off on your list of tasks. I love the affection and exasperation I see in your eyes when you argue with North, or harry him off to the hot springs for his medicinal dip…” She might have gone on with her list of “I loves,” except Beck closed her knees and wrapped his arms around her legs.

“You are going to need a medicinal dip,” he declared, thinking he himself could do with a cold swim. God in heaven… The sight of her… so fearless and… generous. “I’m going to order you a bath, see about our breakfast, then scare us up a conveyance suitable for a drive along the water. Will that suit?”

“It will suit wonderfully.”

He rose from the bed and caught her—true to her words—admiring the view shamelessly. When they’d finished breakfast and Beck was leaving her to her bath, he paused at the door.

“Sarabande Adagio?”

“Beckman Sylvanus?”

He wanted to give her something, something in return for holding him in the darkness and all of those “I loves” in the light.

Something she would not reject as beyond the bounds of a frolic. “I’m already regretting we must leave this place tomorrow, and when the summons comes from Belle Maison, I will regret that too, and not just for my father’s sake.” And then he slipped out the door, giving her privacy and taking some for himself as well.

The day was idyllic and sleepy, like a Sunday in late spring should be, but warm enough to make the shore breeze comfortable. Beck hired a horse and buggy to take Sara up on the headlands for a picnic, finding a depression surrounded by stubby trees near a hilltop to spread a blanket. The view from the nearby cliff top was at once private and spectacular, with the sun bouncing off a sea of white caps and the town spread out below them.

Sara brought her book, and Beck read to her, her head on his stomach as he lay back on the blanket. He hadn’t packed wine for some reason, but felt as lazy and relaxed as if they were on their second bottle. He set the book aside, thinking perhaps he’d read his audience to sleep, and let his hand stroke over Sara’s hair. Her eyes drifted open, and she turned so her cheek was on his stomach.

Her hand came up to shape him through his breeches, and Beck had to close his eyes. A gentleman wouldn’t ask anything of her today—hell, a gentleman would not have swived her silly before she even broke her fast. A gentleman…

She was undoing his falls, and he didn’t protest, but he did have his limits.

“You need to recover,” he managed. “I mean it, Sara.”

She paused, frowning, then extricated him from his clothing, which was a delicate challenge when he was more than half aroused.

“You need something else entirely,” she said. She got her mouth on him, but to Beck’s relief, she desisted abruptly. He watched with silent curiosity as she took his hand and wrapped it around his shaft, then shifted around so she was lying on her back at right angles to his chest.

Slowly, slowly, she eased her skirt up over her bent knees, and God in heaven, the woman wasn’t wearing drawers. She let her knees fall open, and let go a sigh.

“You wanted to look this morning,” she said. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t, Beckman. No reason you shouldn’t touch.”

She tossed all modesty aside and began opening the buttons down the front of her bodice, while Beck watched, speechless and increasingly aroused, as she pushed her clothing aside until she was lying in a pagan tangle of flesh and fabric, exposed to the sun and his hungry eyes.

He did not resist what she offered, but feasted on the sight of her. He looked, he touched, he tasted. He put his hands on every inch of her, took down her hair and draped it over every inch of him. He brought himself to orgasm more than once just looking at her, brushing his fingers over her sex, her breasts, her derriere, her mouth. She refused him nothing, obliged his every request, seeming to understand that in this situation, trust and arousal were bound together for him.

“You’re going to burn,” Beck cautioned when he lay naked, spent for the third time, his hand caressing the firm curve of Sara’s bare buttocks.

Sara smiled over at him and wiggled under his hand. “Not in the biblical sense.”

“I’m not usually so…”

“Lusty?” Sara’s smile broadened. “Amorous? Passionate?”

“Horny.” Beck’s smile was embarrassed. “Selfish, hedonistic.”

“For God’s sake, Beck.” Sara’s smile faded. “It’s a beautiful spring day, you’re a healthy young man, and a little friskiness doesn’t make you your half-crazy brother.”

His eyebrows shot up as he considered the possibilities she was raising. Had he checked his lustier impulses to avoid sharing Nick’s tendencies?

“You’re not like him,” Sara said, seeming to read his mind. “He discards women as easily as old boots, to hear you tell it. He goes for the jades and widows, almost as if he doesn’t deserve a good woman’s affections. You know better.”

Put like that, Beck… pitied his older brother, a novel and not entirely unwelcome perspective. It was easier than judging Nick, and felt closer to the truth. His hand closed on the firm curve of Sara’s derriere, and she undulated again like a cat seeking attention.

“I have discovered”—she closed her eyes—“I like it when you pinch me.”

“Here?” He pinched her, not hard.

“Yes.” Sara arched. “There. And my… breasts and other parts.”

Those parts. While he’d pleasured himself several times with her assistance in this protracted bout of friskiness, she’d yet to demand anything of him. And how odd was it that a woman married for eight or nine years wouldn’t know her own pleasures?

Beck smoothed his hand over her again. “Your husband was a selfish cretin, Sara. You deserved better.”

“I won’t argue that.” She rolled over, which left his hand resting right over her pubic curls, and Beck lectured himself not to start in with her. So far, he’d petted, caressed, looked, and looked some more; he’d kissed, tasted, and teased, but he hadn’t done anything that might irritate her tender parts.

Hadn’t needed to, not for his own pleasure anyway. It was a revelation, at least to a man who’d taken lovers on four continents.

“I haven’t played like this before,” he said, wondering when the brakes had been disconnected from his mouth.

“I haven’t either,” Sara said, fondling his flaccid cock. “It gives me ideas about those hot springs, Beckman. I hope you are prepared to be a sparkling-clean fellow in the near future.”

He hooked his arm around her neck and pulled her to him, in charity with Creation at her words. A feeling expanded out from his chest, of beatitude and humor and overwhelming affection for the woman half-naked on the blanket with him. It crested, and subsided before his fool mouth opened and embarrassed him trying to express it, but it didn’t fade entirely.

Not when they dressed each other, teasing and laughing; not when they drove back down to town, sitting too closely on the buggy’s seat. Not when they made slow, quiet love that evening; not when they fell asleep tangled in each other’s arms that night.

Only when Sara laughingly declined his proposal of marriage over breakfast did Beckman’s newfound joy in life abruptly diminish.