Page 37 of Loving Mister Stratford
As usual.
As she stared at the shadows on the ceiling, she couldn’t stop thinking about Simon continuing to labor below stairs. She knew his work was important and, with the impending deadline, he needed everything to be perfect, but that was no excuse to forget to take care of himself.
Odette heaved a sigh and tossed away the coverlet with a huff. She stomped over to the chair and threw on her dressing gown, punching her arms through the sleeves.
Of course it was the woman who had to be the sensible one…
She was careful to be quiet enough not to rouse their staff as she lit a candle and strode down the hallway to the stairs. Sure enough, the door to the study was closed, a faint strip of golden light creeping out from beneath the heavy wooden barrier. Odette pivoted and headed toward the back stairs which led to the kitchens.
She’d spent enough time down there lately to know where most things were kept. She easily located a plate and poked around the cool, dark larder until she found some bread, hard cheese, and a couple of apples. Carefully setting aside her candle on the table so it didn’t tip, she selected one of the clean knives and set about slicing the food and arranging it on the plate. She stood back with her hands on her hips and examined her handiwork. The spread would win no culinary prizes for either presentation or quality, but it would do in a pinch.
She took up the candle and balanced the plate in her other hand, stepping carefully through the darkness until she found herself outside the study once more. It took some juggling and several tries, but she was able to balance everything and open the door.
Simon sat hunched over his desk like some ancient warlock manifesting a mystical spell. So enthralled was he with his work that he didn’t so much as lift his head when she entered. The room was dim and the hearth had gone cold, but his desk was lit by candelabras ablaze with several candles each. His lean form and broad shoulders were aglow with all of the golden light illuminating the sheaves upon sheaves of parchment laid out before him. No less than three books were open on the desk as well, their pages revealing secrets only he could comprehend and separate and reform into something amazing.
“Simon,” Odette began softly as she walked into the room. He held up several ink-stained fingers to indicate he was mid-thought as he continued to scribble with his quill. Odette waited.
And waited.
“Simon,” she finally repeated herself. This time, she received no response. She was close enough she could see the dark shadows of fatigue beneath his eyes, the tracks his fingers had made through his dark gold hair, the slight hollowness beneath the stubble of his already-lean cheeks that made his remarkable cheekbones even more prominent.
She extinguished her candle and stuck it in an empty arm of one of the candelabras. She continued to hold the plate and spent several minutes contemplating her next move before her impatience and annoyance won out and she set it right in the middle of the desk.
“I told you, Mary, I am not hungry,” he grumbled in irritation and finally tore his eyes from the numbers before him.“Odette?” His tone changed as abruptly as his expression, telling her he had no idea to whom he’d held up his hand for silence. It was a bit comforting that she seemed to rank lower on his list of annoyances.
“I heard you hadn’t eaten today, and possibly yesterday as well,” she said, suddenly more meek now that she was confronted by those eyes and expressive brows. She gestured at the plate.“I couldn’t sleep knowing you had gone without food for so long.”
He tilted his head and stared up at her, unblinking, as if trying to translate her words—her concern—into something he could understand and accept.
*****
“You must eat, Simon,” Odette insisted, the passion in her voice evident even without her having to yell. It stopped Simon’s quill mid-word. He looked up to find her passion flashing with the candlelight in her sapphire eyes. Her lush lips were pulled in a taut line of seriousness and her arms were crossed over her bosom. At first glance, she was about as intimidating as a wet kitten, but Simon knew her better than that. His wife was fiercer than she was given credit for.
If she wasn’t, then she wouldn’t have survived in her mother’s world for long.
He dropped his quill back in the ink pot and rolled his wrist, noting his ink-stained cuticles and the smudges creeping up the skin of his forearm exposed beneath his rolled shirt sleeve. A fist-sized spot between his shoulder blades ached and his back screamed in protest. How many hours had he sat there without moving? He tested his neck with a roll and managed not to flinch too badly when it cracked. Somehow, these lengthy sessions had been easier on his body five years prior. He supposed sleeping at his desk or draped awkwardly across the too-short sofa did not help matters…
Odette nudged a plate closer to him—or as close as she could without disrupting his work.
“Eat. Please.” Her eyes pleaded with him to obey and, as was usually the case when confronted with his wife, he was relatively helpless to resist. It was part of the reason he’d stayed away. He couldn’t focus when she was this close. He couldn’t think when he caught her faint floral scent in the air. When they touched, he lost all sense of time and place. Nothing else mattered.
As wonderful as it was, he couldn’t live like that and still accomplish his goals. Until he figured out a way to balance his needs and desires for his wife with his passions and obligations, Simon knew he had to do what he could to separate these halves of himself. He reasoned that a hard line between these parts of him—a well-constructed delineation—was the best way for him to move on with his life.
What he now saw before him was one of the things that had concerned him about marrying. He had another person to take into account. No matter what worked for him, it was no longer about just him. He might be fine with his finite amount of sustenance and sleep as long as he had his numbers and equations to keep him fed, but that didn’t mean someone else wouldn’t worry. And it would appear that he’d caused his wife more than a little bit of concern. His stomach sank straight through the floor of the study. It had never been his intention to cause his wife any pain or anxiety, but, in simply trying to achieve his goals and live his life as he had these past several years, he’d done exactly that. To put it plainly, it wasn’t fair to her. Guilt began prodding away at his conscience, relentlessly poking at him and needling his resolve in the most uncomfortable, inconvenient of manners.
Simon gazed up at Odette from his seat at his desk. She leaned the delectable curve of her hip against the edge, her soft wrapper tucked around her body like a maddening shield, her arms crossed beneath her breasts in a way that was more inviting than it was a gesture of frustration, and warding off his attentions. The way she looked down at him, a mixture of gentle concern and admonishment, the tilt of her head, the long plait of her hair and its virginal satin ribbon…that last bit proved to be his final undoing.
He was suddenly ravenous…and not for the small plate of food Odette had so sweetly created and carried up from the kitchens.
He scooted the legs of his chair back several inches to create more space between himself and the desktop. His fingers trailed up the outside of Odette’s thigh to curl around the swell of her hip; as if with a mind of its own, his thumb caressed the tender flesh where her thigh met her pelvis.
His heartbeat became deafening when she released a little gasp of surprise as he slid her against the edge of the desk and pressed her to sit more fully on the surface. She allowed him to guide her bare feet to the leather-upholstered arms on either side of his hips. He caressed the gentle curves of her feet peeking from beneath the lace-trimmed edge of her nightrail, ran a finger along the ticklish arches, rubbed the slope of her ankles and languorously massaged the flesh of her calves, all the while inching her hemline higher and higher. His knuckles kneaded the tendons behind her knee and he couldn’t resist placing an open-mouthed kiss on the pale skin he’d exposed. Her lips parted on a silent gasp.
He inhaled deeply, reveling in the sweet, soft scent of her flesh, the heady aroma of her sudden arousal. His groin throbbed. His mouth began to water.
“Simon—what are you—”
“You are the only sustenance I require,” he murmured before ducking his head beneath the hem of her night dress, kissing herthere.
