Chapter 10 #2
Sorcha hadn’t seriously considered remarrying, and yet, she was increasingly unable to envision a future without Bernard in it.
Rather than admit as much—cautious habits died hard—she led him to the apartment she favored for herself.
The sitting room was small and sunny, the bedroom airy and ample, and a wide balcony spanned both.
The view looked out over the springtime verdure of the home wood to the silvery ribbon of the Thames half a mile away.
The tang of turned earth and early haying scented the air. A bouquet of purple irises on the sideboard added a note of sweetness and accented the lilac-and-cream appointments.
“The irises symbolize dignity,” Sorcha said, cuddling closer. “My dignity matters to me, Bernard.”
“Your dignity matters to me as well, and so does your pleasure.” With that, he commenced kissing her, sweetly at first, but with the sort of relentless patience Sorcha had seen him exhibit so often.
His hands explored her back, then her waist and hips and, finally, the contours of her derriere.
His kisses, tame initially, became increasingly carnal, until Sorcha was ready to drag him by the cravat into the bedroom.
His smile, a curving of lips she felt rather than saw, became a diabolically knowing expression he turned on her as she panted between amatory skirmishes and went on a few exploratory forays of her own.
A shaft of regret pierced Sorcha’s growing desire. Damn Barclay. He’d been a bungling, blundering oaf. A clueless, hopeless bumbler, and he’d probably known it. All his posturing and strutting and lording about… and he hadn’t been able to kiss worth a tinker’s curse. He was nearly to be pitied.
“I am not your late husband,” Bernard said, perhaps feeling the shift in her emotions, “but I would dearly like to be your next husband. Might we move the discussion to the next room?”
The words were polite. The invitation promised anything but fine manners and decorum.
Sorcha eased away from him, locked the door to the corridor, and led the way into the bedroom.
The whole house appealed to Bernard. Solid foundation, elegant neoclassical lines, spotless housekeeping.
To all appearances, a pleasant, unpretentious country retreat.
Closer examination revealed care and thought in every detail.
The alcoves were not directly across from one another, but rather, alternating, so an entire corridor was blessed with light.
Cushioned window seats, abundant wall sconces, burgundy carpet on the main staircase to protect the marble and quiet footsteps in the otherwise grand white marble foyer.
Flowers—irises in my lady’s sitting room, tulips in the library, salvia potted on the back terrace. Why did the offices of Huxley and Company boast not a single bloom on any occasion?
“What does that look portend?” Sorcha asked, drawing the bedroom drapes.
“Might we leave them open?” Bernard asked. “The view is magnificent. I was contemplating flowers for the front steps of my commercial establishment. An extravagance, I’m sure, but a thriving enterprise can afford the occasional small extravagances.”
Sorcha grinned at him with such mischief and tenderness that Bernard was felled by a wave of sheer affection for her. She was like this house—solid, unaffected, and, upon closer examination, utterly endearing. Full of delightful surprises and ingenious touches.
She ceased fussing with the drapes and prowled across the room, coming to a halt two feet away. “Are you nervous, Bernard?”
Her ladyship was also full of devilment. “I am suitably in awe of the opportunity before me.”
“I am an opportunity?” The word clearly did not sit well with her.
“The chance to make love with you is an opportunity to please you. Best foot forward and all that.” He’d be babbling in French next.
“No offense, Bernard, but your foot comes well down the list of anatomical items of interest.”
He stepped around behind her and returned fire by starting on the hooks at the back of her dress.
“Then caresses to your feet won’t be needed?” he asked, speaking close to her ear. “I confess I’m disappointed, but I will console myself with other explorations.”
He’d meant the comment flirtatiously, but Sorcha turned and wrapped her arms around his waist and then rested her forehead against his chest.
Not a moment for more kisses, Bernard understood that much.
“Bernard, there is much I don’t know. You were serious about my feet, weren’t you?”
Thus begins the loving. The true loving. Bernard delivered a short sermon to himself on the topic of male insecurity and gathered his lady close.
“You asked if I am nervous, Sorcha, and I evaded the truth.” Tried to evade it in the one context where few men could convincingly lie.
“I am so desperately worried that I will fail to meet your expectations that mere nerves would be a relief. I am out of practice, to take refuge in euphemisms. Like you, there is much I don’t know.
I was marked for the Church, as you are aware, and thus the usual university entertainments were available to me in only the most discreet manner. ”
She peeked up at him. “University was years ago, Bernard. You’ve been celibate ever since?”
“Not quite. Once a quarter, the bishop would hail me into York for a polite chat about trivialities. I lodged on those occasions at a boardinghouse frequented by half the unmarried clergy on the Dales—one recommended by the bishop himself, oddly enough. The proprietress was friendly.”
Sorcha’s fingers kneaded the nape of Bernard’s neck. “She must miss you.”
“She married two years ago. I was honestly relieved. The encounters were pleasant, but also pointless.”
“The pointlessness has stopped me,” Sorcha said, “on the few occasions I’ve been tempted. The usual rogues and roues have offered, but…”
“They were the usual and doubtless adept at the mechanics, but you deserve better than the usual anything, and you have sense enough to know it.” Since when had the nape of a man’s neck held the key to his dignity? “If I were a dog, my back leg would be twitching with bliss.”
The next few minutes were spent exploring exactly how pleasurable a caress to the human nape and surrounds could be. Bernard bore up as best he could, though the experience inspired a few soft groans and more than one sigh.
“Barclay was the usual,” Sorcha said, stepping away and giving Bernard her back.
“He was the usual lordling past his prime. He’d never had to exert himself to please anybody else, and when he might have wished to be a little impressive, a little special, he’d no idea how to go on.
It’s a relief to pity him, Bernard. An enormous relief. ”
“Like when the boardinghouse widow married. A door that wanted closing could finally be shut for good.” Bernard suspected this was not how self-confident lovers talked, but it might well be how prospective spouses grew closer.
He finished with Sorcha’s hooks and soldiered on to deal with tapes, laces, and the rest of the whatnot that trussed women up like songbirds in whalebone cages.
She stepped out of the froth of skirts and petticoats in only her shift and black silk stockings.
Those she slipped off, revealing slender, muscular legs, the sight of which sent Bernard into a reverie of appreciative gawping.
Her ankles were perfection, and she was right to pity the husband who’d failed to caress those elegant feet.
“They are legs, Bernard. I’ve had them all my life. I suspect you claim a pair of your own, though I’ve yet to see the direct evidence.”
“An oversight to be remedied immediately.” Bernard shrugged out of his coat and passed it to Sorcha.
She dealt with the clothing, hanging hers in the enormous carved wardrobe in the corner, folding Bernard’s over the back of the chair at the escritoire.
He sat to pull off his boots and rose with a sense of having passed the point where any sermon ever composed in the entire history of human endeavor could aid him.
Instead, words passed along by his father—by the man who’d selflessly and lovingly raised him—came to mind.
The lady risks her life every time she admits a man to her bed. Be worthy of the trust and honor she reposes in you, young man. Nothing less than best efforts, every time, or you’ll eventually regret your selfish slacking to the bottom of your soul.
Peculiar words for a vicar to pass along to his son, but then, Papa had been a truly kind man and neither a paragon nor a hypocrite.
Sorcha paused in her folding and draping with Bernard’s shirt in her hands. “I have pictured you up in the bleak wilds of Yorkshire, translating away the winter evenings, reading learned tomes first thing in the morning. You have a studious quality that I like, but without your shirt…”
Without anything save his breeches. “Yes?”
“I believe the phrase is: He leads an active life.”
And once again, Bernard had occasion to pity Lord Barclay.
“The wood does not chop itself. The horse does not take himself for a hack. I generally left the coach for my mother’s use up north and still prefer to travel on foot here in London.
Some of my best sermons were composed while out rambling the countryside. ”
He undid his falls, though why thirteen fiendishly complicated buttons were necessary to hold up a flap of cloth, he no longer knew. Bernard knew very little, in fact, except that he desired Sorcha madly and loved her more madly even than that.
He stepped from his breeches and draped them across the vanity stool. “Shall we to bed, my lady?”
She finished with his shirt, did a proper job of folding his breeches, and frankly stared at the evidence of Bernard’s inchoate desire.
“Bed soon. First, might I have a look?”
The moment verged on hilarity, but was also too tender, too trusting, for humor. “Look all you like.” What need had any man of sanity when Sorcha wanted a look?
She looked. She touched, tentatively and then more boldly. By the time she had Bernard sprawled on the bed and praying for fortitude, she was also smiling like the cat who’d been given the keys to every dairy in the shire.
And Bernard was smiling too.