Then Comes Seduction

22

SHE rolled away from him, scrambled to her feet, jumped down from the stone, and strode halfway across the clearing before stopping almost knee-deep among the grass and wildflowers.

She had never in her life hit anyone. She had slapped him across the face. Her hand was still stinging. Her heart was pounding up into her throat and her ears, almost choking and deafening her.

She whirled on him.

“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” she cried, her voice breathless and shaking. “Not ever. Do you hear me?”

He was sitting up, propped on one arm while two fingers of the other hand were poking gingerly at his reddened cheek.

“I do indeed,” he said. “Katherine-”

“You took me in,” she said, “you invited me in, and then you slammed the door shut in my face. If you do not want me to have any part in your life, then shut me out altogether, stay hidden behind the wit and the irony and the hooded eyes and the cocked eyebrow. Go away. Leave me here to live my life in peace. But if you choose to let me in, then let me all the way in. Don’t suddenly pretend this has all been about the winning of a stupid wager.”

She was panting for breath.

He gazed at her for a few moments, his lips pursed. Then he got to his feet and crossed the clearing to stand in front of her. She wished he were wearing his coat and hat. He was too disconcertingly… male in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat.

“They were just a few random comments about my family,” he said with a shrug. “Nothing to get excited about. I thought you might be amused by them. No, I thought you might be touched. I thought you might pity me. Is pity not halfway to love? I thought you might-”

Crack!

Oh, dear God, she had done it again-the same hand, the same cheek.

He closed his eyes.

“That does hurt, you know,” he said. “And you have me at a disadvantage, Katherine. As a gentleman, I cannot retaliate, can I?”

“You know nothing-nothing!-about love,” she cried. “You have been loved, and you are loved. You even love without knowing it. But you shut yourself away from it as soon as it threatens to break through the barriers you erected about your heart years and years ago lest you be hurt more and more until you could not bear even to live. Those days are over if you would just realize it.”

He half smiled at her.

“You are lovelier than ever when you are angry,” he said.

“I am not angry,” she cried. “I am furious! Love is not a game.”

Still that half-smile and the hooded eyes, which were hooded indeed now. There was not even a glimmering of mischief or humor in them.

“What is it, then, if not a game?” he asked softly.

“It is not even a feeling,” she said, “though feelings are involved in it. It is certainly not all happiness and light. It is not s-sex either, though I know you must be about to suggest that. Love is a connection with another person, either through birth or through something else that I cannot even explain. It is often just an attraction at first. But it goes far deeper than that. It is a determination to care for the other person no matter what and to allow oneself to be cared for in return. It is a commitment to make the other happy and to be happy oneself. It is not possessive, but neither is it a victim. And it does not always bring happiness. Often it brings a great deal of pain, especially when the beloved is suffering and one feels impotent to comfort. It is what life is all about. It is openness and trust and vulnerability. Oh, I know I have had life easy in the sense that there has always been unconditional love in my life. I know I cannot even begin to understand what it was like to grow up with very little love at all. But are you going to let that upbringing blight your whole life? Are you going to give your stepfather that power, even from the grave? And you were loved, Jasper, perhaps by everyone except him. All your servants and I daresay all your neighbors have always loved you. Your mother did. Charlotte adores you. I am going to stop talking now because really I do not know what I have been saying.”

His smile was twisted, lifting one corner of his mouth higher than the other, and she realized that there was a great tension in him, that his facial muscles were not perhaps quite within his control. The two slaps had probably not helped either.

“If I can persuade you to love me too, Katherine,” he said, “my life would be complete. Happily ever after. I will-”

“That wager!” She almost spat out the words. “I am mortally sick of that wager. I’ll have no more of it, do you understand? It is over with. Done. Love is not a game, and I will no longer have any part in pretending that it is. The wager is obliterated. Null and void. Gone. Go back to London with your stupid wagers if you must and to your equally stupid gentlemen friends who think it fun to bet money on whether or not you can persuade a woman who has done nothing to offend any one of you to… to debauch herself with you. Even to allow it to happen up against a tree in a public pleasure garden. Go, and never come back. I will never miss you.”

Oh, dear, God, where were the words coming from? Why had she had to bring that up again?

“I think,” he said softly, “my wagering days are probably over. I hurt you dreadfully.”

It was not a question.

“Yes, you did,” she said, and burst into tears.

“Katherine.” His hands cupped her shoulders.

But she would not collapse against him and cry her heart out. She beat her fists against his chest instead, sobbing and hiccuping and keeping her head down. Oh, how foolish she felt. Why this sudden hysteria? All that had happened a long time ago. It was ancient history.

“How could you?” she cried, gasping and sobbing as she spoke. “How could you do that? What had I ever done to you?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I have no excuse, Katherine, no defense. It was a dastardly thing to do.”

“All the gentlemen in that club must have known,” she said.

“A goodly number, yes,” he agreed.

“And now everyone knows,” she said. “And it is too convenient to blame Sir Clarence Forester.”

“Yes,” he said, “it is. The fault was entirely mine.”

She looked up into his face even though she knew her own must be red and swollen.

“How could you do that to yourself ?” she asked him. “How could you have so little respect for yourself? How could you have so little regard for human decency?”

He pursed his lips. His eyes-wide open now-looked steadily back into hers.

“I do not really know, Katherine,” he said. “I am not much given to introspection.”

“And that has been deliberate on your part,” she said. “Feelings must have been unbearable to you as a boy, and so you cut them off. But when there are no feelings, Jasper, there can be no compassion either-for other people or even for yourself. You end up treating other people as you have been treated.”

She swiped the back of her hand over her wet nose, and he turned abruptly and strode back to the flat stone. He leaned down to his coat, drew a handkerchief out of a pocket, and came back to her, his hand outstretched.

She dried her eyes and blew her nose and balled the handkerchief in one hand.

“I am not going away,” he said when she looked at him again. “This is my home and you are my wife. What I did to you three years ago was unpardonable, but unfortunately you are stuck with me. I am sorry about that. But I am not going away.”

“Oh, Jasper.” She looked at him, glad despite herself. He was not going to go away. “Nothing is ever unpardonable.”

He pursed his lips and gazed at her in silence for a few moments.

“If the wager is off,” he said, “is it all off? All the conditions too?”

“Yes,” she said, and it was an enormous relief to say so, for of course she knew to which condition he referred. He was not going to go away, but their marriage as it was now was no marriage at all-thanks to that condition she had imposed on the wager during their wedding night.

She had missed him so much, which was a ridiculous thing when there had been only that one night. Not even a full night. He had slept in their private sitting room for much of it.

“Come to me tonight,” she said, and felt her cheeks turn hot.

She dropped the handkerchief to the ground and lifted her hands to cup his cheeks. The marks of her fingers were still visible on the left one. And her face must look an absolute fright.

He took her hands in his and turned his head to kiss first one palm and then the other.

“Katherine,” he said, “you cannot seriously expect me to hear that yes at one moment and come to me tonight at the next and be content to wait that long. You could not expect it of any self-respecting red-blooded male. Least of all me.”

“But everyone would wonder where we had gone,” she said, “if we were to disappear to our rooms as soon as we returned to the house. Besides-”

“Katherine,” he said softly, and kissed her lips.

And of course she knew instantly what he meant, what he intended. She was aware just as instantly of sunlight and heat, of the chirping and whirring of unseen insects, of the call of a single bird, of the softness of grass and wildflowers about their knees. And of the smell of his cologne and his body heat and the feel of his lips against hers again. And of a welling of desire that engulfed her from head to toe.

She wrapped her arms about his neck and opened her mouth.

And somehow they were down on the ground, the grass waving above them, and all was hot, fierce embrace and labored breathing and urgent, exploring hands and mouths, and clothing discarded or pulled and pushed out of the way-until she lay on her back and his weight was on her and his face above hers, filled with a desire to match her own.

“Katherine,” he murmured.

His waistcoat and neckcloth were gone. His white shirt gaped open at the neck to show the muscles beneath and the dark hair that dusted his chest. His pantaloons were opened at the waist. Her bodice was down below her breasts, her skirt up about her hips. Her legs were spread on either side of his, her stockinged feet resting on the warm, supple leather of his Hessian boots.

She twined her fingers in his hair, which was warm from the sun.

“The ground makes a damnable mattress,” he said, “especially in the act of love.”

“I do not care,” she said, and lifted her head to kiss him, to draw him down onto and into her. She did not care that he must know he had won that stupid wager long before it had been abandoned. She did not care if he knew that she loved him. Love was vulnerable, she had just told him.

Ah, yes, it was.

But it was not to be avoided for that reason.

“Let me be noble.” There was a smile in his eyes. “For once in my life, let me be noble.”

And he rolled with her until he lay on his back. He had taken her legs in his hands and bent them so that she was kneeling on either side of his body. She set her hands on his shoulders and lifted her head so that she could look down at him. And he raised his hands and pulled out her hairpins until her hair fell down on either side of her face and onto his shoulders.

“Come,” he said then, and he grasped her hips, lifted her, and then guided her down onto him so that she felt his long hardness slide into her wet depth. She pressed down onto him, clenching her inner muscles as she did so, and closing her eyes.

There was no pain.

And surely-oh, surely!-there was no lovelier feeling in the world. And in the outdoors too. She opened her eyes and was aware of the pinks and mauves of the wildflowers that bloomed in the grass all around their heads.

She closed her eyes again, relaxed her inner muscles, and lifted herself half off him for the sheer pleasure of pressing downward again and clenching her muscles once more. She did it again. And again.

Perhaps a minute passed-or two or ten-before she realized that he lay still beneath her, that she rode him for her own pleasure. His hands were spread warm and firm over her outer thighs.

She opened her eyes once more and looked down at him. He was gazing back, and she knew that she was riding him to pleasure too, that there was a mutual delight in lovemaking no matter which of them it was who was making the primary moves. There was power in being a lover, man or woman. She smiled down at him as she rode on, and his lips lifted ever so slightly at the corners.

But there was pain too. Or, if not exactly a pain, then an ache that threatened to turn into pain. And a recklessness in continuing to lift herself off him only to impale herself on the pain again.

His hand came to the back of her head and drew it down, first to his opened mouth, and then to his shoulder. Then both hands went to her buttocks, grasping firmly and holding her half off him while he moved at last, driving hard and fast up into her until he pulled her down and stopped all movement so abruptly that she shattered without warning and cried out.

The insects chirped on. The single bird must now have alit on a branch somewhere close by and was singing its heart out. A piece of grass or the stem of a flower was tickling her ear. She could smell the vegetation, all mixed up with the fragrance of his cologne.

He had straightened her legs so that they lay flat and comfortably on either side of his. She could feel the leather of his boots again against her stockinged legs. She could easily, easily drop off to sleep.

He kissed the side of her face.

“I love you,” he said.

For a few moments she let the words wash about her like a caress. She smiled.

“There is no need,” she said then. “They are just words.”

“Three of them,” he said, “which I have never strung together before now. Shall we see if I can do it again? I love you.”

She crossed her arms over his chest and lifted her head to look down into his face.

“There is no need,” she said again. “They are just words, Jasper. You have said you will not leave me. We have resumed our marriage. Perhaps soon we will have a child and start our own family in earnest. And we will remain here for much of each year and make it home. We will work at our marriage to make it one that will bring us both contentment-and some pleasure too. It will be enough. It will be enough. You must not feel that you need to say-”

“I love you?” he said, interrupting her.

“Yes,” she said, “that. It is not necessary.”

“You cannot say the words to me, then?” he asked.

“Just to have you say that you had only pretended to agree to end our wager?” she said. “Just to hear you claim the victory? No, indeed. You will never hear those words on my lips, Jasper.”

She smiled dazzlingly at him, and he pulled his lips down into a mock pout.

She laughed.

“Katherine,” he said, suddenly serious again, “I am sorry about Vauxhall. An apology does not even begin to be adequate, but-”

She set two fingers across his lips.

“You are forgiven,” she said. “And there is an end of it.”

He kissed her fingers.

And then panic assaulted her as if from nowhere. How long had they been up here? How long ago was it since they had left the others down at the waterfall?

“Jasper,” she said, rolling away from him and trying to lift her bodice and push down her skirt at the same time, “what are we thinking of? Everyone must be back at the house and waiting for their tea and no host and hostess in sight.”

“Charlotte will be delighted to play hostess in our absence,” he said, “and everyone will be fed. And if they believe our absence is due to a pair of lovers’ unawareness of the passing of time, not only will they be quite right, they will also be charmed. Think of the stories they will be able to take back home with them to feed to the avid gossipmongers.”

“My hair!” she cried. “I have no brush or mirror with me. However am I to put it up into any respectable style? I will have to cover it all up with my bonnet.”

“No such thing,” he said, getting up and adjusting his clothing before crossing to the stone, putting on his hat at a slightly rakish tilt, and picking up his coat and her bonnet. He wrapped the ribbons of the bonnet around one wrist and then hooked his coat over one finger of the same hand and slung it over his shoulder. He offered her his free hand. “Your hair is beautiful as it is. You may dart up to your room as soon as we get home and have your maid do it up properly.”

She shrugged and took his hand. She was feeling too happy to argue, though she hoped no one would see her before she had had a chance to tidy herself in the privacy of her own room. She was feeling wonderfully lethargic after their lovemaking. She was feeling all tender inside, where he had been.

They walked home hand in hand, both of them looking sadly creased and rumpled, she saw when they came out of the trees and were walking past the beach. They had both better hope very fervently that no one saw them. In fact, they had better make for a side door rather than the main ones.

But as they climbed the slope of the lawn and drew level with the stables, Katherine could see that a carriage was approaching up the driveway-a traveling carriage, which surely did not belong to any of their neighbors.

She clasped Jasper’s hand more tightly. It was more imperative than ever that they sneak off to a side door.

But there were two other people on the upper terrace-Jasper’s Uncle Stanley and Mr. Dubois. And both gentlemen had seen them. Uncle Stanley had raised a hand to greet them. And the carriage was turning onto the terrace close by them. The occupants had doubtless seen them too.

It was too late to hide.

“Oh, dear,” she said in dismay, “whoever can this be? Are you expecting anyone?”

But the carriage door was already open and the coachman was reaching up a hand to help someone alight.

Mr. Dubois was looking upward with amiable politeness.

Uncle Stanley was frowning.

And out stepped Lady Forester.

Closely followed by Sir Clarence Forester.

“What in thunder?” Jasper said.

Katherine might have turned and fled ignominiously if he had not gripped her hand more tightly and stridden forward with her. But he stopped in his tracks when the coachman turned to help yet a third passenger out.

An elderly gentleman whom Katherine did not know.

“God damn it all to hell!” Jasper exclaimed. “What now?”