Hilde
His hands were hot upon her skin as he trailed them up her back and pushed them into her hair, tugging gently to bring her mouth more firmly to his own.
Then they burned back down her hips and along her thighs, moved up under her petticoats, and clutched at her bottom almost frantically, urging her on.
He kissed her mouth then shifted to her neck, gasping against her skin.
Or maybe it was her making that noise of abandon and need?
It didn’t matter. She raised herself up so that his mouth could more easily reach her breast, then, wild enough to make demands, pulled at his hair to make it clear where she wanted him.
He complied instantly, nipping at her gently.
“You are perfection,” he murmured against her, sounding almost plaintive. “You are so exquisitely…”
His words were cut off by a low growl as she sank back down on him, hard.
Then she did it again, and this time, she wasn’t certain which of them was making the feral noise that ensued.
Impulsively, she took his face in her hands, searching for the stormy gray-green of his eyes but finding that his pupils were so dilated that there was only a sliver of silver clouds around the black.
She dragged her body up again, and even that narrow ring of iris disappeared.
“Hilde,” he said, his voice ragged. “If you do that again, I don’t think I can…”
She sank back onto him, heedless of his warning, delighting in defying it.
He made a low, gasping sound and then convulsed into her, head thrown back, hands tangling in her hair.
She pressed even more firmly against him, and the feel of him losing control and abandoning his careful attentiveness pushed her over the edge of her own pleasure. They clung together, thoroughly and irrevocably entwined.
Elmwood naked by firelight was almost too much.
He lay sprawled on the bench, an artful array of angles and curves cast in gold.
He was drowsing, head in her lap, one hand dangling off the bench, the other clutching at her leg.
He was always falling asleep in such unlikely positions and at odd times.
She suspected his energy was sapped away by the pain he constantly endured, and she wished it were not so, even though she liked to look at him while he slept.
She could stare to her heart’s content, memorizing every line of him, and he would not catch her at it.
She was loath to move and wake him, even though she was getting a little chilled dressed in nothing but her petticoats.
His skin was still hot to the touch and a little tacky from drying sweat.
She trailed her fingers through the pale hair on his stomach and up into the slightly darker hair at the center of his chest, and he shivered in his sleep, then pressed his face closer to her.
Perhaps it was the trust implicit in the movement, or his beautiful vulnerability as he slept, or maybe it was how incandescent their bodies had seemed when joined together.
More likely, it was the way he saw her as something more than a wife or a maidservant or a lady of the manor.
His regard reached the true matter of her, beneath all the roles she played, which no one else had ever taken the time to see.
In that moment, something changed for her.
She had agreed to this week because she wanted it, but it was all too clear that had been a terrible mistake. She’d been at Merewyth for only half a day, and now she knew that a week would never be enough.
Eventually, he woke, endearingly chagrined that he had fallen asleep, and they ate a little food—though not the bread, which would have to be baked the following morning.
They removed what remained of their clothes, washed themselves with the water that was still warm on the kitchen stove, and then climbed the stairs to bed.
He reached out—a little shyly, she thought—and ran a hand down her arm.
She pulled away and lit a candle on the table beside the bed, letting it cast its glow over him.
“May I draw you?” she asked, embarrassed by how badly she wanted to.
“You’ve drawn me before,” he said with a little smile. “I peeked at your sketchbook in your study, when I was waiting for you.” He looked a bit abashed then. “Sorry. I should not have looked through it, I know. I fear I couldn’t resist.”
“I don’t mind,” she said. “Did you see all of them?”
His smile grew. “All of them?”
“I was trying to determine why you occupied my thoughts so vexingly. I thought that maybe if I could capture you properly, I might have some peace.”
Now he was grinning. “Was I really such a distraction?”
“I never drew you like this,” she said, admiring the naked length of him.
“Then let me be your muse.” He stretched dramatically to display himself.
“Be natural.” He repositioned himself so that one arm was behind his head and the other draped across his torso.
“Should I pretend I’m sleeping?” he asked.
“No.” She started drawing, trying to capture the shape of him. There was wiry muscle, but also softness, and the beauty of it seemed almost too perfect to be real once she committed it to paper. He also had a tension in his body, always, that she found challenging to capture.
After a while, she set the charcoal down on the table and held the sketch out to consider it. It was a bit sloppy and wild, but she thought she had caught some essence of him.
“Can I see?” he asked, sitting up.
Oddly nervous, she handed it to him.
He looked down at it.
“It’s only a quick sketch,” she began, “and the light isn’t—”
“Do I truly look like this to you?”
“It’s only a sketch,” she repeated quietly.
He continued to stare at it.
“I liked the other drawing of me that you did. It made me look happy and kind. It made me imagine that perhaps I could be happy and kind since you saw me that way and captured it on paper. This…I don’t know who this man is. He can’t possibly be me.”
She plucked the sketchbook out of his hands and tossed it away, then climbed on top of him, pressing him back into the pillows.
“You must be aware of how beautiful you are, Lord Elmwood.”
He reached up to put his hands on her hips. They were very warm against her skin.
“People like me well enough for a night or two of fun, but once they truly know me, my appeal goes rather sour.”
“Do I not know you?” she asked.
“Better than some, but even so. You would most certainly tire of my nonsense if we had longer than a week.”
He thought so little of himself. How wrong he was.
“I am beginning to worry that one week of your nonsense will not be enough,” she said.
She stared down at him, watching as his eyes glistened, wet with unshed tears.
“I don’t think I can live up to what you put on that paper,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.
“It’s not aspirational. I only draw what’s there in front of me.”
Then she leaned down and kissed him, slowly, so that he would truly understand how beautiful and good she found him.
Eventually, they slept. In the morning, dappled spring sun filtered in through the moth-eaten draperies.
Hilde admired the bright spots of it dancing on the walls and tried to resist the urge to watch Elmwood sleep again like some sort of madwoman.
Then she decided to embrace madness and do it anyway.
There was no knowing how many opportunities she might have to observe the rise and fall of his chest and the way his arms contorted about his head and the spill of his gold curls, and she was greedy for all of it.
She felt like the giddy girl she had never had the opportunity to be, addled with infatuation and romantic longing.
Rollo scratched at the door, and Hilde, grateful for the distraction from her own wildly unmanageable feelings, rose and wrapped herself in a dressing gown that she found draped across a chair.
It smelled slightly of Elmwood and the sweet, woody perfume he wore, but given how swirling and voluminous it was, she suspected it had once belonged to some esteemed and well-endowed feminine visitor to Merewyth, abandoned long since.
Out in the gardens, dew sparkled on new growth, so welcome after all the months of morning frost. The nearby forest cast long shadows as the sun crept up the horizon, and an industrious symphony of birds were out searching for mates. She waited as Rollo pissed on several overgrown bushes.
When they returned to Elmwood’s chamber, he was awake. He stood near the window, wearing only his rumpled shirt, the bottom edge of it fluttering tantalizingly about his thighs. He was looking at her sketchbook but glanced up when they came in.
“Did he wake you?” he asked, pointing his chin at Rollo.
“No, I always wake early.” She crossed to him. He began offering her the sketchbook but then hesitated.
“Might I…would I be able to keep this?”
Her book was open to the sketch she’d done of him the previous night.
“Of course,” she said. She took the book and carefully tore out the page, handing it back to him. He studied it, then set it down and reached for her, pulling her into an embrace.
“I like you in my robe,” he said, then kissed her neck.
“I’m afraid that my stealing it has left you once again exposed and wandering about without trousers. You’d best be careful, or someone will jump on you from atop a ladder.”
He chuckled.
“I love you,” he said then, as if it were the easiest thing in the world to say and feel.
That ease unsettled her so deeply that she blurted, “I’m sure you say that to all your lovers.”
He drew back to look at her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He reached up to cup her jaw gently with his hand, running his thumb along her bottom lip.
“When I was young, I did love easily. Every time I fell for some new paramour, I convinced myself that this time, it would be eternal,” he said.
“That sounds rather sweet.”
“It wasn’t sweet. I now see that it was selfish. I think…I was always looking for someone to convince me I was worthy of being loved back. It never worked, and then I would fall out of love every bit as quickly as I had fallen in.”
“Oh,” she said. Was he trying to tell her that while he might love her now, it would soon pass?
“Going to Relance changed things for me. I had to stop feeling things. The terrible things, yes, but good things as well. I would eat, sleep, ride, fight—all of it without caring. I didn’t want anything real. Then later, after…nothing mattered anymore.”
She leaned into his touch. Some bad things were better left behind. It was so difficult to know which hardships to face and which to turn away from, and she certainly couldn’t tell him if this was one or the other. He would have to decide for himself.
“If Winthrop hadn’t forcibly shoved me into a carriage and sent me here,” he continued after a moment, “I don’t know that I ever would have felt anything again. But he did, and then I took Rollo for a disastrous walk in the woods, and you flirted with me.”
“I did not!” she said. “I was blackmailing you.”
He shook his head.
“I didn’t read you so very wrong at that first dinner, you know.
You hadn’t admitted to yourself that you wanted me yet, but you did.
I noticed, and couldn’t look away, and it woke up something inside me.
” It should have sounded unbearably smug, but for some reason that she could not have explained, it was the loveliest thing anyone had ever said to her.
“And that made you…love me?”
“Yes,” he said. “That and everything that has passed between us since.” Then he reached for the front of her dressing gown—his dressing gown—and undid the ties that held it shut.
It fluttered open, and he stepped close, pressing against the bare skin he had revealed.
Grasping the now loose edges of the robe, she wrapped them around his back, encompassing them both.
They kissed, and it was an ardent, pressing embrace.
“I should go and get the fire ready, so I can bake the bread for breakfast,” she murmured breathlessly when he finally relinquished her lips.
“Or,” he said, “you could come back to bed awhile.”