Chapter 14
At an ungodly hour the next morning, two blackbirds were competing to see which would be the first victim of Christopher’s catapulted boot. If he thought he could find his boots, open the window, commit avian homicide, and still remain groggy enough to sleep again, feathers would fly. Unfortunately, he’d spent most of the night trying—and failing—to sleep, and the birds had put the final nail in that coffin.
The sensible parts of him had been meticulously dissecting his interactions with Oliver. His mind reached towards the peculiar details he had observed, anomalies that didn’t quite fit, but every time he felt he might grasp something solid, it melted away again like a snowflake in his hand. Sofia’s fear that her brother would cause trouble for the Ansons felt oddly specific, as did the seething hatred in Oliver’s eyes when they’d fixed on Gabriel. But memories of Sofia further addled his mind, wafting over him like dense fog, obscuring everything around him until all he could see and smell and taste was her.
“All right, you win. I’m up,” he groused in the direction of his window, where the three-act musical was still underway. It was just as well. Gabriel would be awake soon, and while the duke seldom required assistance in the evenings since he’d married, Christopher’s mornings remained busy.
An earlier riser than both Christopher and Gabriel, Violet was rarely still abed when Christopher arrived. As such, he seldom offered more than a cursory knock before cracking the door to the ducal suite.
“Shhh!” Just as Christopher stepped through the door, Gabriel’s tense warning emerged from his dressing room where he stood in his shirt sleeves, three-quarters of his face lathered and a razor blade in his hands.
“Give me that before you hurt yourself.” Christopher plucked the blade from between Gabriel’s fingers and nudged him into a chair.
“I was hoping to be dressed and out the door before you stomped through and woke Vi,” Gabriel hissed, his brow furrowing as he glanced at the door. “She fell asleep reading yesterday afternoon, actually napped. And now…” Gabriel’s expression contorted into one of abject pain.
“Perhaps she is coming down with a summer cold,” Christopher offered. Gabriel looked up, the terror of a man who had already lost a wife and baby to childbirth starkly visible on his face. His lips pressed together.
“Gabriel, you’ve scarcely been married six weeks… well, married in the way that leads to duchesses sleeping unusually late. And if she is?—”
“Stop. Do not say it.”
“Me saying it isn’t going to affect the state of her womb, Gabriel.”
“Speak the word and I will pack you off to work for the dowager.”
“That’s cruel.”
“Yes, well, I am feeling just that unhinged at the moment,” Gabriel mumbled.
“All right.” Christopher squeezed Gabriel’s shoulder, then began methodically swiping away what remained of his friend’s morning stubble. “Are you going to talk to her about… your suspicions?”
“No. Then I’d be certain to never sleep, think, or bloody breathe again for the next seven months. If I don’t know for certain, I am just a traumatised husband who spends an excessive amount of time worrying. And if I bury myself in work, I might manage to not think about the possibility of my wife dying for… oh, four or so consecutive seconds. So no, Christopher, I have no plans to speak to Violet.”
Christopher gave a stiff nod. “How can I help? Shall I distract you with the salacious details of my evening?”
Gabriel tripped over his breeches as he stepped into them, catching his arm on the back of the chair and pinning Christopher with a look of wide-eyed bemusement. “Sofia’s wounded, intoxicated, and likely sinister sibling was snoring in the opposite wing, and you managed to create ‘salacious details’ during the course of your evening? My God, I’m not sure if I’m meant to congratulate you or kick you in the bollocks.”
Christopher shrugged, knowing his face was doing a poor job of hiding his memories of the previous evening.
“Keene. That girl is under my protection and if you?—”
“Didn’t take you long to land solidly on the bollocks option.”
“She’s alone for all intents and purposes. That louse of a brother is not going to be safeguarding her interests.”
Christopher narrowed his eyes. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just imply that I might take advantage of Sofia.”
“No. That’s not it at all. I simply understand how very much you like her. Things… get out of hand.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’m not sixteen years old and in search of any convenient location to shove my prick, Gabe. She matters to me and I wouldn’t do anything to put her in danger.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Gabriel said.
“Here I am, attempting to distract my dearest friend from staring mournfully at his wife’s abdomen while she sleeps, and this is the thanks I get? Well never mind. I’ll keep my details to myself.” He pretended to sulk while selecting a neckcloth.
“Good grief, Keene. I said I was sorry.”
“When did you become such a prude, anyway?” Christopher asked. Gabriel opened his mouth to respond, but Christopher cut him off. “No. Don’t answer that. You’ve always been a prude. I should really set this cravat to the side and find you a nice ostentatious bonnet so you can fully embrace the role of disapproving dowager.”
Gabriel sputtered with a laugh. “I come to you with the utmost contrition. I am earnestly, profoundly, wholeheartedly penitent. Now will you please stop pouting and tell me about your evening? Kissed your pretty hedgehog, did you?”
Christopher pinned Gabriel with a look.
“Thistle then. You compared my wife to a weed. It’s only fair.”
Christopher shrugged. “Quite the opposite, actually. She very nearly took advantage of me. I should’ve paid more attention to those lessons my sister was forced to endure about protecting her virtue. Although, in truth, I believe Sofia was more interested in shutting me up than getting beneath my petticoats. My metaphorical petticoats, you understand. And stop laughing at me. She was quite persuasive.”
The grey colouring had dissipated from Gabriel’s face and smile lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes. “In all the years I’ve wanted to shut you up, it hasn’t once crossed my mind to reach under your petticoats. I’m certain her mauling was multi-purpose.”
“She’d also sampled most of your alcohol, so for all I know, she won’t even remember our interlude this morning.” That concern had been rumbling through his thoughts all morning, and giving voice to his fear brought on a fresh wave of dread. He didn’t want to pretend that last night hadn’t happened. Her hands burning a path across his skin. Her weight in his arms. Nothing had ever felt quite so right.
Christopher held out a waistcoat for Gabriel, then retrieved his Hessians. “Did Sofia’s brother seem familiar to you? Have you ever met him?”
“I don’t believe so. There is something of Miss Lioni in her brother’s face, I think. Perhaps that?—”
Christopher cut him off with a shake of his head. “It was more the way he stared at you, familiar and downright malevolent. And Sofia seems as desperate for him to go away as she is to keep him near, even with his drinking. It’s odd. I offered him a position on the estate, by the way. Gardening. And I expect you to smooth that over with Bennett in retribution for the insult to my character. But at the moment, Oliver seems as likely to skewer me with a spade as to use it in the rose garden.”
Gabriel nodded. “How did he fare overnight?”
“No fever yet, and he hasn’t gobbled up any housemaids or shoved any silverware down his trousers. So, uneventful thus far, but it’s early.”
“Thank goodness. It would be more difficult to smooth things over with Bennett if Oliver already had silverware in his drawers.”
The longer Sofia was awake,the more she remembered of the prior evening, and the more she remembered, the more she wanted to take herself right back to bed… for several decades. Perhaps when the only remaining staff member from its current legions was the ancient gardener who would undoubtedly outlive them all, it would be safe for her to leave her bed.
People always said that things look better in the morning. But her situation looked every bit as bad. Worse even, since she had to live through another twelve hours before diving back under the covers again. Sofia tried to work on her lesson plans for the week but ended up scribbling words like “soft ears” and “unspeakable doom” in the margins.
Sofia didn’t have time to think of that now. She would use every spare minute of Oliver’s recovery appealing to whatever better nature remained of him. Perhaps there was still a chance she could convince him to take that position in Cornwall.And then she would have to walk away from Northam Hall. Away from duchesses who reassembled broken plates and dukes who worried over wounded chickens. Away from the first meaningful friendships she had cultivated in years. And away from Christopher, with his yellow waistcoats and ridiculous pear trees.
She would give up this impossible place and all of its tantalising “might-have-beens” and she wouldn’t be any worse off than she had been before. In fact, she’d be better for her time with these people. Sofia had never once considered life as a governess, but with the appearance of one precocious girl in an apple orchard, that path, and the joy it brought her, could carry her well beyond her days at Northam Hall. She would take that perfectly attainable little dream and plant it in a garden far away from here, some place with conventional children and their dull aristocratic parents. She would fill her life with purpose and it would be enough.
Sofia dropped her quill onto the desk and gathered extra pins for her hair. With the precise placement of each one, she felt more capable.
But there were some realities she could not ignore. Managing Oliver during his stay would require asking for help, which felt precariously close to relying on the help of others. She shoved in a few extra hairpins for good measure. There. Now, if only everything messy in life could be managed and pinned in its place. She slipped on her half boots and went down to break her fast.
Sofia tooka muffin from the sideboard, then nibbled around its edges as she wove through the guest wing hallways. Finding her brother’s location was effortless given the volume of his great billowing snores. When Oliver had left home, the absence of that horrible noise had kept her awake and staring at the ceiling.Hearing it now didn’t bring her the comfort she’d longed for then.
Moving silently through the room, she placed her hand on his forehead, finding it blessedly cool. Oliver snuffled once under her gentle touch, his face scrunching as he mumbled something and covered his eyes with his bicep. His breath smelled of spirits. One quick sweep around the room revealed an empty bottle tucked behind a potted plant.
“You are a lot of trouble, Oliver,” she mumbled, unable to keep the affection from her voice despite her despair of ever finding the man he had been before.
Tucking his blankets up to his chin, Sofia turned and left the room in search of Zach and Nora. They were meant to be finishing projects for their study of medieval history this morning, but the schoolroom was empty and the nursery was too. After a fruitless search of the estate, Sofia gave up and returned to the kitchens, where many of the servants were still gathered. Christopher was exiting as she entered, but he quickly changed his direction to follow her into the room.
“Good morning.” He reached down, wrapped his fingers around her wrist, and brought the remnants of her muffin to his mouth, swiftly taking a bite. “Mmm.”
“Mr Keene, there is a mountain of muffins just there on the table.”
“Mr Keene, is it?”
“It is when you steal my breakfast.”
“I’ll remember that.” He didn’t sound the least bit chastened and wore an unrepentant grin as well.
“Have you seen the children?” She guarded the remainder of her muffin close to her chest.
“I have not, but Gabriel informed them you are to have the rest of the week to see to your brother’s health, so I imagine they are off making good use of the sunshine and their unexpected freedom.”
“That’s kind of His Grace, but entirely unnecessary. I am perfectly capable of doing both.”
“Yes, yes. You are undoubtedly capable of managing any number of complicated tasks at a time, running yourself into a state of exhaustion as you see to everyone’s needs but your own.” He leaned carelessly against the door jam, his insouciant pose in stark contrast to the quiet intensity of his words. “If you never let anyone see what you need, they will never disappoint. But they’ll also never know you, and you will never really know them. I would very much like to know you, Sofia, and not just the pretty parts you think I will like most.”
She hated the way this man made the most terrifying risks seem harmless and logical. Hated how his smiles made her question the necessity of her walls. Hated her heart’s eagerness to rewrite history and reevaluate everything she thought she knew. Hated the way he made her consider whether selfishness, so pervasive in her life before, might be uncommon in a life with him.
Sofia felt like a feral barn cat being gentled against her will, and she had the sudden urge to take a swipe at his hand just to remind him she still had claws. Her fingers tightened around the fragile muffin, muscles flexing as her spine snapped straight. He watched her. Took it all in. His eyes trailed from the crumbling muffin to the rapidly rising pulse at her throat, then settled squarely on her narrowed eyes. And then he relaxed under her glare. Bloodshed was an acceptable part of the process, his demeanour seemed to say, and he would not be made to flinch.
“Go on then. You were just about to tell me that you are none of my business and I am presumptuous and irritating.” He took a step closer, delicately teasing at the fingers still clamped around her breakfast. “But maybe don’t punish the muffin.”
One day, she would look back at these safe and comfortable weeks being courted by a nice man who wanted nothing more than to believe she was a nice woman as… as what? Something she was too afraid to enjoy? To squander the time she had left would be like closing her eyes to the vibrant colours of autumn because winter was looming just around the bend. Beauty in nature was made more spectacular by its brevity. Sunsets that faded to darkness, pristine blankets of snow transformed into grey puddle of slush, and uncommonly kissable men, there and gone from her life like a dream, sliding away with the break of dawn.
After leaving Northam Hall, she might spend every day staring at the sky, remembering the delicate pinks and golden light of dusk and wishing there was more, but she would not look away now. She would not blink until every glimmer of colour dissipated into vast, uninterrupted black. And she would kiss this man as much as possible in the days she had. More than kiss.
Sofia couldn’t picture a future in which she married, and she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life wondering what it would feel like to experience ecstasy from a lover’s touch. What it would feel like with a man who would be thorough and considerate and tender. This man. Dropping the remainer of her muffin into the rubbish bin, she took his hand and briskly led him out of the kitchen, down the hallway, and through the closest door, which happened to be the billiards room.
“I’m going to kiss you until I work up the nerve to ask for your help.”
She dropped his hand to push the door closed and then tangled her fingers into his cravat, pulling his mouth down to hers. Her eyes flicked open when, instead of his lips pressing against hers, his thumb brushed against her lower lip.
“Easy now.” Christopher’s thumb meandered back and forth, echoing the gravelly softness of his voice. A smile played within the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. “While I am not opposed to being on the receiving end of your enthusiastic manhandling—I quite like it, in fact—I thought we might try this.”
With predatory slowness, he eased her backwards until she felt the heavy wooden door at her back. Placing one hand flat against the door, he used the other to turn the lock with a quiet snick. His mouth drifted closer, lingering in the moment before contact, drawing out every heartbeat of anticipation as if her lips were the last ripe strawberries of spring before the scorching sun wilted their plants and left them barren for another year. And when his lips brushed hers, she felt that same desperation to sear the texture and flavour of him into her skin. Christopher coaxed her mouth with the same consummate determination, the same patience and ardour, with which he’d courted her friendship. She was quite unequal to the task of resisting any part of him.
Where their last kiss had been frantic and thrilling, this was more like worship than conquest. Every caress of his fingers and slide of his tongue felt purposeful. He pulled away from her mouth to kiss her cheek, the sensitive underside of her jaw, the slope of her neck… warm breath and maddening softness that drove her hands into his hair and her breath into sharp pants. The bristles of his jaw dragged across her throat and she arched into his mouth with a frustrated whimper. Still, he continued deliberate and unhurried.
Reaching up to where his arms still formed a cage around her body, she wrapped her fingers about his wrist and pulled, urging him to put his hands where she wanted them. His muscles flexed in resistance to her insistent tug and he growled against her neck, the masculine rumble provoking a surge of moisture between her thighs.
Despite his stubborn refusal to touch her body, she felt him everywhere, gradually inciting every nerve ending into a state of aching alertness until she throbbed almost painfully for the pressure of his hands kneading into her flesh. She bit back the demand, but a desperate mewl slipped from between her lips in its place.
Sliding her hands from his hair, she threaded her arms beneath his topcoat, urging him closer with the curl of her fingers into his shoulder blades. When he did not move, she canted into the space, a shiver flashing through her body at the press of her pebbled nipples against the lean muscles of his chest. A raspy groan tore from his throat and he took her face between his hands, descending on her mouth like a man half starved. Deep, hungry, unrelenting kisses, until she was breathless and boneless, without a thought in her head beyond this man and the catastrophic bliss simmering in her body.
He wrenched away, chest heaving, and nuzzled his face into her neck. “Christ, you’re lovely, Sofia, so fierce and passionate. Fucking perfect. I could come just listening to those desperate little sounds you make. Every inch of my body is aching to please you.” He growled the words into her throat, some of his finely wrought control crumbling. His hand slid down to cup her breast, an exploring caress with far too much gentility and care. “Your pulse is throbbing under my tongue. I want to search your body for all the places I can feel it drum against my lips. To taste the way you want me.”
She whimpered as his thumb strummed across her nipple. Heat and desire crowded into her veins, tingling across her skin. This man had the mouth of a sailor and she never wanted him to stop talking.
Christopher’s hand left her breast, and she nearly stomped her foot with frustration. His fingers skimmed down her arm, the thumb of one hand running circles at the pulse in her wrist. “I’d find it here.” He travelled back to the soft inside of her elbow. “Then here.”
Crowding her back to a nearby chair, he dropped to a crouch then ran one finger back and forth along the curve of her ankle. “And in this poor neglected place.” He tipped his chin up, a wolfish grin spreading across his face. “Where else, Sofia?” His palm was sliding up and down her calf, rough calluses catching on the fabric of her stockings. Her quim fluttered in response, then clenched when he exchanged the soft stroke of his palm for the scrape of his nails.
“Oh Sofia, I believe you like that.” He did it again, his nails sliding across raised goosebumps. She sprawled deeper in the chair, her pelvis canting forward.
She couldn’t believe she ever thought Christopher wholesome and charming. He was unadulterated wickedness, gleefully driving her to frenzy.
“Where, Sofia? Show me where you want my mouth.” She splayed her thighs open, and he licked his lips, watching her like he had all the time in the world for her to consider his question.
“Tell me or I will retreat to the sweet curve of your ankle.”
Her eyes narrowed, and his shoulders shook with laughter in response.
“You do have lovely, delicate ankles.”
His eyes dropped to the very boring place in question and made to explore it in closer detail.
“The inside of my thighs,” she whispered hastily.
“Mmm.” He made a contented noise in the back of his throat and rucked up her skirts, his thumbs deliberately teasing along their path.
“The insides of your thighs, you say? Hold this.” He took her hand, wrapping her fingers around the fabric bunched above her knees as though she wasn’t up to the task of offering assistance on her own… which she very likely was not.
He toyed with her garter, then leaned forward and licked at the red imprint it had left on her skin. His eyes widened in this new vantage point, then his gaze flicked up to hers. “Sofia Lioni. No drawers?”
Christopher nipped her thigh, and she let out a groan. “I don’t like the way they feel. Too constricting.”
His hand strayed up the outside curve of her leg, kneading the swell of her hip. “It’s a good thing I didn’t look up your skirts in the hayloft. It would have killed me on the spot.”
“Uomo ridicolo.”
He chuckled low in his throat, then his mouth resumed an agonisingly slow path upwards. Raising her skirts obligingly, Sofia’s head lolled back when his lips brushed the curls at the apex of her thighs.
“Look at you. So wet and pink. Fucking perfect.” He ran a fingertip around her clitoris, sliding his finger away as she lifted into his touch. Once she had settled, he repeated the teasing caress and she ground her teeth to remain in place.
“Good girl. You won’t coerce me into rushing, you great bully.”
She made an impatient noise in her throat and felt him smile against the inside of her thigh as his too-light touch resumed. Despite Christopher’s unhurried exploration, she couldn’t doubt his eagerness matched her own. His chest rose and fell in quick ragged breaths, lips parted, and his eyes were glazed with arousal as he watched his finger circle closer to her swollen bud.
“Christopher,” she pleaded, hips writhing restlessly in search of more pleasure.
Lifting one of her legs to curve around his shoulder, he licked across her sex. All his teasing was gone in an instant, and she shuddered against the unbearable bliss of his warm, wet mouth. The pleased sounds he made in his throat and the erotic lapping of his tongue filled her ears. She had expected his fingers but this? Santa Madre di Dio.
“So sweet. Open more for me. I want all of you.” She immediately complied.
His lips and breath wafted across her skin as he praised her between increasingly ravenous kisses to her core. He slid his palms beneath her rear, his strong grip pulling her toward his mouth.
“Christ, yes,” he murmured, then he sucked at something that tore a moan from her chest. “Just like that, sweetheart. Don’t be shy.” Another delicious lick of his clever tongue. “Don’t be polite with me, lovely. Take what you want. You’re perfect.”
He eased the tip of his finger inside, and she could feel her walls pulling for more of him. “Oh yes. God, that’s good. You feel so good clenched around my finger, greedy for me.” He slid deeper, lapping at her quim as his finger moved inside her. She moaned and sank her fingers into his hair, nearly frantic as she chased her fast-approaching orgasm. She was lost to the sensations he was coaxing from her body, thrusting in earnest against his open mouth, legs trembling as he held her. He supported her hips, eagerly meeting and following her, as hungry for her climax as she was. He sought her pleasure as if it were his own.
“Don’t come yet. God, I want it too, but just a moment longer. I need more of you. Just a moment more, Sofia.” But he did not slow his pace and she could not possibly delay the ecstasy that swept over her.
His mouth and fingers gentled her through the last quivering sensations, and then he kissed the inside of each thigh, murmuring something into her skin before lowering her skirts.
Christopher’s hand was on the very visible bulge in his trousers when he stood, gently squeezing and sliding up and down. She watched from where she was splayed in her chair, fixated on the course movement, the wanton way he pressed into his palm, and the muscles that bunched and flexed in his forearm while he worked himself. Noticing the direction of her gaze, Christopher flushed scarlet to the tips of his ears and stopped, almost like his mind hadn’t been aware of what his hand was about.
“No.” She leaned forwards and placed her fingertips against his stomach. ”I want to see. Show me what you like.”
His cheeks bloomed brighter, but he capitulated without a word, flicking open his falls in an instant, his cock heavy in his hand. For a long moment, he watched her watching him before his eyes fluttered closed and his head lolled forward, one arm coming to grip the back of her chair. His muscles were tight as a bowstring as he worked himself with strong, rough strokes. He came quickly into a hastily drawn handkerchief, melting into the pleasure. Sofia remembered his comment about reaching orgasm based only on her pleading noises, and the idea felt deliciously possible.
Tucking himself away and pressing the handkerchief into his pocket, he let out a ragged sigh, then reached for Sofia. He pulled her to her feet and guided her into the circle of his arms, his cheek falling to the top of her head.
“It’s taking all my effort not to terrify you with my romantic ramblings. I swear to Christ I’m about to burst into poetry like an overly enthusiastic songbird greets the dawn.” He nuzzled her curls and kissed the top of her head. “Was that…? Are you…?” He sighed. “I’m afraid I require a great deal of reassurance when it comes to you, Sofia. I’m bungling this, but I just want—No, I need to know that you are pleased. Not to the ridiculous extent to which I am pleased, but pleased.”
She gave him an incredulous look, and he gave it right back to her.
“Not that part. I rather know you enjoyed that. I mean this. Us. Everything.”
“Sono del tutto troppo contento, Christopher.”
“I suppose English would be asking too much.” His hand sketched slow circles around the small of her back.
“I’m sorry. I seem to have forgotten the English words.” She grinned into his shoulder and snuggled closer, enjoying the feeling of safety, however precarious and short-lived.
“What a convenient lapse in knowledge. I’ll refrain from reporting your inferior education to your employer.”
Arching her back, she tipped on her toes and pressed her lips to his, imparting all the emotions she shouldn’t feel into her kiss. Every fragile hope and foolish desire passed through the places where her body was connected to his.
“That translated just fine,” he whispered.
And then she looked away because she couldn’t bear the emotion he had placed there for her to see.