Chapter 16 #2
Harley shut the door behind her and disappeared into the kitchen. She stood alone at the foot of the stairs in the darkened house. She guessed Harley had gone back to bed as no light appeared in the kitchen.
She removed her half boots and cloak and began to climb the stairs in her stocking feet. Giggles bubbled up at the oddity of it, and a nervous twitch bedeviled her belly. She ignored both.
Dim light shone under the door on the landing; a gentle touch opened it.
“What now Harley? I thought you went to bed.” Andrew’s deep voice sounded weary.
An oil lamp burned brightly on the worktable to Georgiana’s left.
She could see Andrew in the shadows to the right.
He slumped in a wingback chair, an unopened book in his lap.
He stared at the fire. A candle burned low on the table next to him; it illuminated a half-finished glass of brandy.
She hoped that that glass was his first. For a moment, doubt paralyzed her, but the sight of him half-dressed drove doubts from her mind.
His jacket, waistcoat, boots, and neck cloth were nowhere to be found.
He wore a bright white shirt open at the throat with its sleeves rolled above strong forearms. She turned the lock behind her with a firm click.
Andrew rose to his feet at the noise. Too late to back out now.
A growl brought her eyes higher to study his face, once gloriously handsome.
She found that face ravaged with scars, but no less beloved.
She knew him well now and could read emotions he could no longer mask.
She saw longing quickly replaced by fear and concern.
She assumed it was for her and thought him foolish for it.
She saw irritation, too, indecision, determination, and, again, longing.
The last gave her courage to walk across the room, to pass the chair, to stand in front of him.
“The door is locked.” She handed him the key. “It is locked this time, Andrew.”
* * *
Honor be damned, Andrew thought, staring at the vision that had invaded his sanctuary.
He wanted to take the foolish woman on the floor of his study.
He wanted it. She wanted it. He knew he couldn’t do it.
He had loved her too much eleven years before to offer her a shabby relationship; he couldn’t do it now.
One night would never be enough. Unless he could have her honorably, he wouldn’t do it.
“We can’t do this, Georgiana. You shouldn’t be here.”
She stood close enough for him to feel her heat. He could pull her to himself if he reached out. He wanted her with every part of his body and soul. He mustn’t reach out.
She looked adorable in her stockings. She obviously dressed in a hurry, her rumpled clothing testimony to haste. He wondered if she remembered her stays, and he rather hoped she hadn’t. If he reached over, one touch would tell him. He ruthlessly suppressed the thought. He would not reach out.
“We can’t do this,” he repeated.
“Are you saying I shouldn’t be here?” she asked.
Of course I am, you dratted woman. He didn’t answer her.
“Are you one more person who wants to keep me prisoner at Helsington, Andrew? Am I to be condemned to thirty more years of solitude?”
She was an idiot, an infinitely desirable idiot. She leaned inches closer to him. He need only raise a hand to touch her. Everything in him longed to do just that. He wouldn’t.
“Is that what you want, Andrew?” she continued, angrier when he didn’t respond. “For what crime should I be so punished?”
She moved abruptly but stopped a foot away. “What is it you want then? Shall I be the marble goddess, cold, hard, and artistically arranged for you and Richard to admire? Is that what you want? How will you label that tableau? ‘Propriety?’”
“Merciful heavens, Georgiana, is that how you see your life?” He should comfort her. If he touched her, he could comfort her. If he touched her, he would take her there on his study floor. He groaned in frustration; he held back.
“How else is there to see it, Andrew? I live surrounded by people trained to be invisible when I pass, not one of whom will talk to me. Even my ‘companion’ is invisible. Cambridge derides me. London despises me. My parents and sisters prefer to forget me. My brother, my most loved brother, the one person who cares for me at all, gives me no voice in what is good for me.”
Shame forced him to look toward the fire. Those words–her anger at Richard–were for him also. He didn’t want to see the anguish in her eyes. He and Richard had done what was right. He refused to believe otherwise.
“You arranged it between you, didn’t you? You condemned me to solitary confinement at Helsington Cottage. Don’t even try to deny it! You knew that no one wanted me. Once you left, I was completely alone.”
“Don’t speak of yourself so, that isn’t—”
“True? Isn’t it? Please, Andrew, let there be honesty between us.”
Her eyes burned blue fire, a cauldron of fury and need. He couldn’t hold against it.
“You deserved better,” he began, voice thick. “Your father wouldn’t have permitted it. We could have run, bolted for Scotland or the Continent, but what then? Poetry in a hovel? That kind of romance dies in a day.”
“‘Poetry in a hovel,’” she repeated. “If that’s what I escaped, what did I get in return?
Glorious solitude? No one suitable, no one acceptable to the Duke of Sudbury wanted his eldest daughter, the daughter too tall, too lacking in grace, and too eccentric in her conversation to ornament an aristocrat’s home. ”
“There is nothing wrong with your conversation, Georgiana. Don’t deride yourself.”
“No? I never learned to find a man’s waistcoat more fascinating than his politics.
I never learned to pepper my words with on-dits rather than the books I read.
No man wanted me, not one. Even Lord Pfeil—old, bald, and smelling of horse—acted as if he had been asked to do a favor for my father, and a distasteful one at that. ”
Her eyes burned into him. “That is one fear you can lay to rest,” she said.
The workings of her mind were complex tonight; she had lost him. “What do you mean ‘fear?’ What are you talking about?”
“Isn’t that what your ‘honor’ is about? An honorable man, and Andrew Mallet is a very honorable man, does not ‘ruin’ a woman because no respectable man will want her for a wife. You needn’t fear it because it’s too late. No man wants me.” Her eyes defied him to deny it. “Not even you.”
He thought he must not have heard her correctly. He wanted her with an intensity that bordered on lunacy.
“Not true.” His voice thickened. “I want you as I want air to breathe, Georgie. I have wanted you since I was seventeen years old, a foolish lovesick boy unable to sleep with the pain of it. I want you so badly that just being with you, working with you, has been a physical ache. You have no idea how badly I want you right at this moment.” He watched hope flare in her eyes, and he had to step sideways when she moved toward him. He raised his hands to fend her off.
“It won’t do, Georgiana. It’s impossible. Your family will never tolerate it.”
“My family?! What do they have to say about it? My family doesn’t care about me.”
“They would care if you attempted to marry someone unsuitable.”
“Did I mention marriage? I don’t remember discussing marriage.”
It appalled him that she valued herself so cheaply. “It’s the least you deserve—not some shabby affair.”
“Ah, nobility again. The noble man decides what I deserve, what I need. Take a look, please, at how little I actually have. I have wealth, or use of my father’s wealth. Since I have none of my own, I have none of the power that makes wealth worth having. I have status...”
The items she ticked off seemed to make a very familiar list. How long has she brooded like this?
“But that status serves to isolate me from most of the human race and frighten away any ordinary man who might be interested in me. Shall I go on? I have an elegant home to enjoy in utter solitude.”
He couldn’t move, and didn’t speak, but she drew him like a moth to a flame.
“Touch me, Andrew. Hold me.”
He stood, head bowed, groping for strength to send her away. Show me how to love her as she deserves, he prayed.
“I can’t bear being alone any longer. Not after time with you. Please, Andrew. Hold me.” The pleading in her eyes clawed at him.
“I could cause you to be with child, Georgie. Have you considered that?”
He recognized the flicker of surprise before a brief flash of joy took its place. Just as quickly her face folded with a terrible grief. She pressed her lips tightly together and swallowed with difficulty. Her voice filled with tears.
“I have you there, Andrew. I’m afraid I have you there. I can’t, you see. There will never be children for me. Mr. Peabody was quite, quite certain about that.”
The accumulated losses in her life buried him in shared grief. The yearning to comfort her shredded the remains of his control. He took one step.
“So you see, there is nothing to ruin, nothing to protect, and no danger of fatherhood. Only me. Here. Now. I need you. Hold me. Please.”
He reached out a hand and pulled her into his arms.
In the end, it was simple. She was his beloved Georgie, and she needed him. He couldn’t disappoint her.
* * *
One moment, she stood alone in a vast universe of darkness. The next, she sank into the warmth of his embrace. Strong arms enfolded her while he buried his face in her hair. She breathed in the musky male scent of linen and brandy and felt his mouth move over her ear and down her neck.
“Andrew,” she sighed.
He pulled back for a moment as if to search her eyes. She reached a tentative hand to touch his cheek.
“I won’t deny you now, you foolish man,” she said.
When he smiled, she did what she had longed to do for weeks—she ran her finger over his brow, down the long puckered scar, to rest at the corner of his mouth.
Andrew stood, still as stone, breathing heavily, but he didn’t object. Georgiana closed the distance between them and kissed the place her finger touched, the place his scars joined at the edge of his mouth. She felt the rough edges of it with her tongue.
A hoarse moan vibrated in his throat. He took control of the kiss from her, leaned her head back for better access, and covered her lips with exquisite care. His mouth slanted over hers, moved slowly back and forth, and sent ripples of pleasure through her.
When he began to press at the closed line of her lips, she anticipated him.
She knew now that he urged her to open for him, and she savored it.
His tongue slid slowly into her—exploring, tasting, caressing—and she rejoiced when heat spread up her thighs and into her belly.
The weakness of desire no longer frightened her; she sought it.
She slid her hands up his chest and into his thick black hair, savoring the changes in texture of the softness of his linen, the rough skin of his mangled face, and the coarseness of his hair.
She needed to touch him, to feel him. She felt him gasp when her hand slid down his neck to explore the front of his shirt.
When he pushed her slightly away, she groaned in protest. One arm held her securely, however, and his face hovered inches from hers. “Open it. Untie it.”
She had never unfastened a man’s clothes before.
She tugged at the shirt with trembling hands and pulled it loose from his waist. She yanked the ties open and ran her hands under the linen and over his chest. Another glorious mix of textures—hard muscles, harder scars, soft hair, tight nipples, and silky skin met her eager hands.
Each one fascinated her in its way. She tried to push his shirt up to see what her exploring hands felt, but he was too impatient.
He yanked the shirt over his head and tossed it aside to give her better access.
She stood fixated, one hand on each side of his ribs, and traced the path of first one scar and then another with her eyes as though taking stock of the damage.
Jamie said shrapnel had hit him. Was shrapnel the reason for these small uneven gouges?
She found one long ridge. This must be a saber cut, she thought, and not shrapnel.
His body was damaged but beautiful, the lines of muscle and bone even and strong beneath the scars.
A sudden instinct startled her. He might fear her reaction to his body.
She looked up at him directly and willed him to see how beautiful he was to her, to know that his scars were precious.
The black eyes were unreadable. She struggled for words to express what she meant but found none.
She could only bend her head and kiss the damaged places one by one, allowing her mouth to linger on each.
His head dropped to hers, forehead resting on the top of her head. “Georgie. Oh my darling, Georgie, how you humble me.”
His hand cupped her chin to raise her face to his. He kissed her deeply again and again, moaning her name against her mouth. His hands restlessly massaged her back before sliding upward to undo the laces of her dress.
She marveled at his concentration, centered on his own hands, while he unlaced her dress and slid it off her shoulders.
The fire in his black eyes engulfed her when he finally allowed the dress to drop to the floor.
She wore neither petticoats nor corset, just a cotton shift and pantalets trimmed with simple lace put on in haste an hour ago.
Sudden shyness overwhelmed her. Her body had never been tiny, and it was no longer young.
Her long frame had begun to thicken with age.
A profound longing to be beautiful for him struck her and, yet, with her newly found wisdom, she knew she couldn’t shrink from his eyes any more than she allowed him to hide his damaged body from hers.
She took a step into the circle of light next to the chair, stood before him, and forced her eyes to his face.
Andrew wasn’t looking at her face. The ravenous look of a starving man devoured her from her feet, still clothed in stockings, up her calves and thighs, to her belly.
She thought she could feel the hunger in his eyes as they roamed to her breasts.
She felt it there, across her shoulders to her neck.
She flushed hotly when at last his eyes met hers.
He must have seen her uncertainty then because he smiled his crooked smile and said, “You are the most beautiful sight I’ve ever beheld.
” Just then, in that moment, she believed him.
He put out his hand. “Come,” he said. She did.