Page 17 of What the Lady Wants
‘You don’t have to,’ he ground out against her throat. ‘I don’t expect?—’
‘But I want to,’ she said. She slid off him and took his place on the floor; she all but tore at his breeches buttons to free him, and there was no finesse in her touch this time, no teasing and slow exploration. He was fully aroused, big and hot, the silky skin straining and begging for release, and she would give it to him, devouring him as he had devoured her. She closed her eyesand took him eagerly into her mouth, glorying in the way his whole body tensed as she claimed him and set to work, glorying in his moans, and in the escalating rhythm of his breathing that told her, if she had needed to be told, that he was about to spend himself in her in helpless surrender.
A while later, Lady Ashby, alone in her chamber, firmly crossed numbers six and seven from her list and then took up her pen again for a very different purpose.
Dear Mama, once again my fond love to Papa and to you. I received your last letter safely, and continue well, as I hope you both do, apart from his troublesome rheumatic pains. I hope the flannel is helping. But I have some news! I have, as I am sure I must have told you, become acquainted with Lady Irlam, Cassandra, who is married to Georgiana’s brother and so in some sense a family connection of mine too. Her maiden name was Hazeldon and she is from Skipton, imagine that, and later I will tell you all the Yorkshire people we can count as shared acquaintances, for I know it will interest you greatly. She is making up a house party, chiefly the Pendlebury family, at her home in Hampshire, Castle Irlam, and has asked me to join them for a few weeks. I have accepted; indeed, it would have been discourteous not to do so when she has been so kind and welcoming. I know that you expected me home before long, and are anxious for me to return, and I promise I will come well before Christmas, but I thought you could not possibly object to my accepting such an unexceptionable invitation…
It wasn’t the easiest of letters to write, as Isabella could well imagine her mother’s reaction when she read that her daughter was leaving Blanche’s home to spend time with a group of fashionable people quite unknown to Mrs Richmond, and of whose characters and motives, she could not doubt, knowing her mother as she did, she would be suspicious. She was at pains to reassure her anxious mama of their utter respectability, and she hoped their connections to Yorkshire would render them acceptable, which was why she stressed it. She wasn’t writing to ask for permission, which was just as well because she’d never have received it, and by the time her mother replied with all the reasons why she shouldn’t go, it would be too late and she’d be there. She wasn’t looking forward in the slightest to receiving that letter.
Writing left her unsettled, then, and on top of that it had been an extraordinary evening, full of extremes of emotion. She had told Leo one of her darkest secrets, something she hadn’t even confessed to her mother during the long months of her illness. It had been an entirely private thing till now. That encounter with the doctors had been one of the worst humiliations she’d ever suffered, and speaking of it ought to have drained her – instead, she’d felt liberated, and now she felt almost giddy in reaction.
She could not help but reflect that soon they would be at Castle Irlam, for good or ill, and soon, Leo would be inside her at last performing that basic, primal act which seemed to hold such significance. If anyone had known that they were lovers – for that was what people would say they were, and she supposed it was true despite the highly peculiar circumstances she had devised – they would assume that they’d been doingthatall along.
‘I have a lover,’ she said aloud. Odd that she’d never thought to say it or even to think it before. She, IsabellaRichmond Mauleverer, a barren, sad, previously mad widow from Harrogate whom everybody pitied, if they were kind, and shunned, if they weren’t, had a lover. They, she and her lover, had committed sodomy – because, she’d looked it up, what he’d done to her and what she’d done to him tonight, both of those things were defined as sodomy by whoever it was who spent their precious time defining such matters, and were illegal. Even when she’d done them with Ash, her lawfully wedded husband, they’d been illegal, and presumably, if things could bemoreillegal – could they? – they were even more illegal when done, when committed, thrillingly, with a naval captain you hardly knew in a dubious house of assignation in Mayfair. ‘Excellent!’ said Isabella aloud in the silent room, and when she fell asleep she was smiling.
17
Leo wasn’t easy in his mind. His body – that was a different matter. His body was happier than it had ever been in its, in his life. It was Christmas and birthday and carnival all rolled into one, as far as his body was concerned. But his mind, and for that matter his poor heart, they were an entirely different kettle of fish. He hadn’t in the least enjoyed the conversation with Isabella that had preceded the best hour or so of his existence so far. He was deceiving her, and he hated it. He hadn’t lied to her on that occasion, not in so many words, because it was perfectly true that he remained in ignorance of what Cassandra knew or didn’t know about what he’d confessed to Hal. He could say that if he wanted, but he had a pretty shrewd idea that Hal had told his wife everything he knew. Of course he had, because Leo would have wagered a large sum that he always did, and furthermore, why otherwise would Cassandra have suddenly taken it into her head to invite Lady Ashby to be her guest in Hampshire?
She hadn’t set up the party for Isabella’s benefit – that had been happening anyway, and Leo had been just about to tell Hal and Cassandra that he wasn’t joining them as he’d previouslyagreed to but was staying in London and taking lodgings, for excellent reasons of his own. He just hadn’t thought of the reasons yet, and now he didn’t need to. And yes, all he’d said to Isabella about Cassandra and her possible matchmaking was true, in a way. Lady Irlam might very well be doing that, inspired by some sweet but misguided desire to help him, but if he and Isabella showed they weren’t receptive to being subtly pushed together he was sure, as he’d said, that she’d stop. He could get Hal to tell her to stop, he supposed, if it became necessary, though that was a conversation he’d rather not have.
What really made him uncomfortable, even in the aftermath of an incredible orgasm wrought by the mouth of the woman he adored, and with the prospect of so much more to come, was the knowledge that she believed him to be helplessly in love with Cassandra. Because he’d lied and told her he was. He had been able to tell from her expression – he chose to believe that other people couldn’t read her face as easily as he could – that she’d seen how agitated the whole conversation made him, but had ascribed all of it to the fact that he was in love with Cassandra and didn’t want to discuss her. Jesus. It was a kind of protection for him – in that sense, it was working better than he could ever have anticipated when he’d blurted out Cassandra’s namein extremisthat day – but it was a lie, and he could dimly envisage all kinds of hideous scenarios, all kind of monstrous complications, that might arise from it now that they were all going to be living cheek by jowl for several weeks. With, as if all that wasn’t bad enough, his dear mother.
And that was another thing. He’d told Isabella, in another of his patented not-quite-a-lie-but-not-quite-a-truth-either statements, that he didn’t mind in the least creeping around Castle Irlam in order to make passionate love to her while his mother stayed under the same roof. Well, roofs – it was a castle, after all. It wasn’t as though he feared bumping into hismama in the early morning as he crept back to his bed. He had his own room there, which he had occupied since he and Hal had graduated from the nursery to more adult quarters, and his mother had a suite of her own since she had spent so much time there when the boys and Georgie were growing up. They weren’t in close proximity. He knew that that wasn’t what Isabella had meant, though – she had meant, did he have a problem with deceiving his mother while engaging in a sordid sort of an intrigue? And he had said that perhaps he should, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure what she had made of that – they’d been rather delightfully diverted and perhaps she hadn’t had time to dwell on it – but he thought now that there would be an inevitable awkwardness to it, and of course he didn’t want his mother to know what he was doing, because she wouldn’t understand. But the reason he didn’t mind the whole situation as Isabella had thought he might was that, for him at least, this wasn’t some sordid intrigue. This was the woman he loved. And the pain would come, must come, not from the deception he was engaged in, but if he saw his mother beginning to like her, beginning to see her as exactly the sort of young woman her only son should marry. She might easily see that, he thought, because she was his mother, and knew and loved him. She might even speak to him of it, ask him if he had not thought to seek Lady Ashby’s hand in marriage, and then what would he say? That would hurt. Lying to his mother about his deepest feelings, if it came to a point where he was obliged to do that, would hurt.
What would hurt the most, of course, would be the end of it all. He didn’t know, and wouldn’t ask, how many more items there were on the list. He couldn’t know the extent of her experience with her husband. Perhaps they could explore new things together; he thought she might easily agree. It would still be her list, if she chose to make it so, he could say to her. He wanted to marry her and live with her, and make a life together,but if he couldn’t have that he was quite prepared to grow old in her service, to take the list into the hundreds and the thousands. Yet he knew she wouldn’t. He knew that once her purpose was achieved, once she had regained the sense of self that she had lost, she would call a halt, and he would bow his head and agree, raise not a word of protest though his heart would be shattering into a thousand pieces in his chest. She would leave, hugging her secret to her.
It might be that this would happen quite soon; when the house party ended, in three weeks, or four. Before winter set in, certainly. Before the first snows fell, she’d want to get back to Yorkshire.
It was with a deeply divided mind and heart, then, that Captain Winterton swung himself into the saddle as Hal did the same at his side, and set off, accompanying the coach that carried his love and his torment, his mistress in every possible sense of the word, along with Cassandra, whom he’d said he loved but didn’t, to Hampshire and his fate.
18
Isabella faced the idea of many, many hours alone in a closed carriage with Lady Irlam with a certain amount of trepidation. She had been informed that the Earl kept teams of fine horses stabled on the road to his principal seat, and would face no delay at any of the changes, being well known at each and every superior inn, but it was still a long journey. Their maids were travelling separately with the luggage, and the gentlemen were riding. Thank heaven for that, at least. But what would they talk about, she and Cassandra? She could think of several topics of conversation that really would be best avoided, for everybody’s sake.
It had been decided that they would make better time if they left together early in the morning, rather than stopping to pick Lady Ashby up on the way, so Isabella bade farewell to Blanche and Eleanor, and Billy too, late one afternoon, before going to spend the night at Lord Irlam’s mansion in St James’s Square. She found herself surprisingly emotional at the parting, and Blanche shed tears when she tried to express her thanks for what had been so much more than a casual, brief visit. ‘I’m so glad you came to us,’ said her hostess, embracing her. Shehad sent her daughter from the room on an errand to fetch something that had been forgotten, which all three women were quite aware was the merest pretext. The kitten was present, but he showed no interest in the conversation, being quite absorbed in his meticulous ablutions. ‘I’m not imagining how much being here has helped you, am I? I don’t mean to say that you weren’t well when you arrived – you were – but you seem so much better now. Back to your old self, almost.’
If only you knew, thought Isabella. But she must be grateful to her sister-in-law for her kindness, and said so again. Blanche brushed aside her thanks. ‘You will always be my sister,’ she said. ‘I hope you know that. You will for ever be a member of this family, no matter what happens. Gabriel is of the same mind, I know. And I shall miss you.’
‘No doubt we will see each other next year,’ Isabella murmured, touched. ‘You will pass through Harrogate on the way to Northriding Castle, surely, or I will be with you in York as we were this year, for the assemblies and the races. I will miss you too, both of you, but it is not so long until the spring, after all.’
‘Hmm,’ said Blanche, mopping her eyes. ‘Do not take me up wrongly, my dear, if I say that I hope not to see you in either of those places, unless of course you are accompanied by a new husband. Then I shall greet you – both – with a great deal of pleasure.’
Isabella was astonished, and could only gaze at her hostess in incredulity. ‘I don’t…’ she spluttered at last. Tears were starting in her eyes too.
‘It’s absolutely none of my business, which is why I have not spoken till now, but now that you are going, I find I must say something or be out of reason cross with myself. My dear…’ Blanche took Isabella’s hands in hers and leaned forward urgently. ‘My dear sister, Ash would have hated the idea of youliving as a widow for the rest of your life. Hated it with a passion. You must know that I am right.’
Ash’s widow was crying in earnest now, strong ugly sobs racking her despite all her attempts to control them. ‘I can’t betray him!’ she managed.
‘It wouldn’t be a betrayal. It would not! I didn’t mean to distress you, and I am sorry for it. We all loved Ash; his death hit us all hard. I was as worried about Gabriel as I was about you, for a long time – you let your feelings out, which perhaps was healthier, rather than bottling it all up inside as he did and pretending to be unaffected. But he is healing now, with Georgiana, and making a new life for himself, and you deserve no less.’
‘I don’t want to forget him!’ she almost wailed. ‘I don’t want to, I won’t!’
‘No one is asking you to. We will all remember him, and love him, as long as we live. I hope Gabriel will name a son for him one day soon. But you might easily have another fifty or sixty years to live, and you are owed some happiness after so much misery. I’m sure your parents would agree, and I am entirely confident Ash would have said so himself if he had been able.’
‘Youhaven’t remarried,’ said Isabella, sniffing, aware that it was a foolish thing to say as soon as the words left her lips. She knew that Blanche had been widowed a few months before her own wedding; she did not know, because Blanche rarely spoke of her husband, whether her marriage had been a happy one, but she had sometimes suspected it had been not always been easy.
‘Oh, me!’ replied Blanche with a slightly twisted smile. ‘Who would I marry? Some old gentleman who wants a nurse in his declining years, or thinks to live on my son’s estate at my son’s expense? I thank you, no. I am too set in my ways by now to want to see another nightcap on my pillow and accustom myself to another man’s snoring. But it’s different for you.’ Isabella madeno reply but shook her head in stubborn, mute refusal. ‘Very well! I have said my piece. You will do as you think best, and so you should, but I want you to know one thing. If some gentleman should aspire to your hand – don’t worry, I shall not be indiscreet enough to name him! – then when you are assembling frivolous reasons for refusing him, assuming of course he should be a worthy candidate for your affections, do not think to use the disapproval of the Mauleverer family as one of them. I simply won’t have it. I would very happily dance at your wedding, and so would Gabriel. I should tell you that I speak for him in this.’
