Page 40 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
Somehow, through sheer dint of will, he let her have her moment. This one thing, just for her. And he suffered for it, suffered the delicate flutters of her release, the sweet sweep of bliss sliding across her face just before she finally went lax, limbs loose and boneless as she wilted. Peace, for however long she could hold onto it—hard won, but well-deserved.
Torture, for him. And he didn’t know how much longer he could hold out. “Felicity, if you don’t want a baby—”
She wrenched herself away from him with an alacrity that ought to have been offensive, landing in a splay of limbs on the bed beside him, still trembling. He didn’t make it a full stroke before he spent himself with a groan. Not quite the finale he would have preferred—but he’d done what she’d asked of him. What she’d thought she wanted.
Hell. Ian gave himself a minute to recover himself, to ensure his legs would support him when he rose. His heart still thundered in his chest, his pulse pounding in his ears. She would want a few minutes to collect herself, to put herself to rights. And so he rose at last, strode for the bathing room, undressed in silence, and took his time with his ablutions. She’d left marks on his shoulders. Tiny crescents carved into his flesh from the prick of her nails.
She had retreated within the shelter of the bed curtains when he emerged at last, silent and almost invisible in the shadows as he paused by the hearth to scatter another layer of coal. But he heard her turn as he slid beneath the covers at last and settled beside her. Not too close.
For long moments there was only the crackle of the fire as the quiet of the room stretched between them. And then she took a shuddering breath, tried to smother a tiny, soul-rending sound behind the cup of her hand.
As he’d thought, then. A temporary reprieve at best, and it hadn’t brought her any peace. Ian closed his eyes, swallowed back a sigh. There wasno pleasure in being proved correct; not when she ached with it.
“You don’tlove,” she accused in a shredded little voice. “Youleave.”
Never again. He’d been fighting his way back to her for ten years. His fingers twitched, daring to slide across the space that separated them. That neutral ground which she crossed every morning before sunrise to avail herself of his warmth, and which he had never once breached. “Please,” he said, in a raspy whisper. “Please let me hold you. Just for tonight.” When she needed it most, but wouldn’t ask. When her way hadn’t worked out the way she had wished.
Her breath came in staggered little puffs, hitching in her chest. But she hadn’t refused outright, and he waited—and waited, quiet and undemanding—until at long last she crawled across the mattress. Slowly, so damned slowly, like she might spook if he reached for her. Eons later she settled beside him, turned away from him. Let him slip his arm beneath her head, arrange himself around her, his chest to her back.
She gave a vicious tremor as he settled his other arm over her waist. “I still hate you,” she whispered.
Ian breathed a sigh of relief into the tangle of her hair. “I know,” he said. Despite the scornful words, she’d relaxed as she’d said them, had managed to inject no heat into them. They had sounded, just the tiniest bit, like a lie. Or at the very least, not quite as much a truth as she might have wanted them to be.
Chapter Fifteen
Felicity’s mind was at war with itself, and had been for the last few days. She had thought she’d built herself back stronger from who she had been in her childhood, and had been utterly dismayed to find it had taken only one terrifying incident to rattle that foundation to its core.
Bits of the Felicity she had once been—Felicity Nightingale—had begun to pop out indiscriminately, in bizarre ways, at inopportune times. Something so simple as a slammed door might set her heart to racing. The sound of footsteps that came just a touch too hard upon the floor might send a shiver of panic sliding up her spine. And worst of all, she’d begun experiencing night terrors. Not dreams so much as recollections of her past, ones she had thought long-buried. But they had crawled out again to torment her in sleep, and she could do nothing but experience the most frightening moments of her life all over again—at least until her helpless whimpering in her sleep woke Ian, who invariably soothed her awake and out of whatever nightmare she had been inhabiting.
Somehow, she had learned in these past few days that she could trust Ian Carlisle with her life. She simply couldn’t trust him with her heart.
Five thousand pounds. A cold sweat broke out upon the back of her neck as she sorted through the school’s mail. A demand finally made clear, and she had no idea what she was meant to do for it, what the consequences would be if she ignored it. She’d not broached the subject with Ian since that night, and he’d not asked—but just occasionally she had caught him staring at her. Not expectantly, per se…but rather morehopefully, she thought. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—force her to speak of it.
But he clearly hoped she would of her own accord.
Felicity bit back a sigh as she finished collecting the last of the most recent set of the school’s bills to be sent round to Ian’s solicitor to be paid. Money might no longer be a particular concern, but there was always a period of adjustment after a holiday, wherein orders that had been reduced due to the absence of most of the students would swell once again. There were yet afew straggling students not expected to return for a few days, but the household had been thrown into chaos once again just with those that had.
A week, perhaps, as the students and staff both adjusted to the changes, and then things would calm down a bit—
“Miss Cabot?”
Felicity startled to the sound. “Dorothea,” she said as she spotted the girl lingering in the hallway, peering through the half-cracked door of her little office. “Do come in.”
“Thank you.” Awkwardly, Dorothea shuffled inside, her shoulders sloped into a droop, her hands clasped before her. “I’m sorry,” she said swiftly, ducking her head, her blond curls bobbing with the sharp motion. “Mrs. Carlisle, I should have said.”
“It’s quite all right.” She’d been Miss Cabot ever so much longer than she had been Mrs. Carlisle. She’d been Miss Cabot even longer than she had been MissNightingale, in fact. But Dorothea had known her as Miss Cabot for so long; she could hardly blame the girl for it. “Has there been some sort of incident?”
Dorothea pulled a grimace. “No, I just—I wanted to apologize,” she said. “About the note. The one from Mr. Marchant.”
An apology. Well, Felicity could not say that she had expected one. Dorothea was rather more headstrong than most of the girls, and she had certainly chafed against her restriction to the house. “I see,” Felicity said. And then, because the girl truly did look rather contrite, she gestured to the chair wedged between the desk and the wall. “Please, sit with me for a few moments.”
Lightly, like a bird poised to take flight, Dorothea settled into the chair. “I really am sorry,” she said. “It’s just—”
“You don’t have to explain yourself,” Felicity said softly. “I know I must seem very old and stodgy to you, but I do remember what it was like to be your age. To feel so very grown and to feel also that nobody quite takes you seriously.” She stifled a sigh as the girl looked down at her lap. “But while you are in my care, it is my duty to watch over you and to guide you. To guard you against any potential threat to your safety and to do my very best to prepare you for the world you will enter when you leave this school.”
“I know, Miss—Mrs. Carlisle,” Dorothea said, and there was the smallest tremble of her lower lip. “I was just so angry with you,” she admitted. “For taking me to task.”
For a moment, Felicity only watched the girl before her. The hunchedshoulders, the fidgety tangle of her fingers in her lap. They’d had so many moments of conflict between them, had butted heads so many times over the years. Dorothea might have been a difficult student, but still she was just a girl. And beneath that contrary and truculent demeanor was vulnerability. Uncertainty. A girl unsure of her place in the world—just as Felicity had once been.
