Chapter 2
Chapter
They left London the next afternoon, while the sun was shining brightly overhead.
It was warm, finally, and the inside of the carriage felt cozy.
The long, cold winter blast that had blanketed Dorset for far too long seemed to have finally eased.
Although the melting snow left plenty of mud and muck to contend with.
Fred watched Julianna lean her temple against the windowpane as the carriage rocked steadily southward, the landscape around them changing from crowded streets and chimney stacks to rolling hills and hedgerows.
Soon enough, the air would begin to smell like Dorset, that peculiar blend of earth and sea, and she would be home.
He felt as if he should be at ease, especially with the small smile tilting up her lips, but he wasn’t. He was filled with worry instead.
“Fred?” Julianna asked and he hadn’t realized she’d stopped looking out the window to stare at him.
“Yes, dearheart?”
“Are you alright?”
“Of course.”
She tilted her head. “Your knee has been bouncing for the last twenty minutes.”
He looked down at his offending limb. It was bouncing. He stopped it immediately.
“Thank you,” she said, “but I’m more concerned about what has you worried than a little fidgeting. If you’d like to share it with me.”
He let his gaze sweep over the wet, brown landscape.
He didn’t know exactly how to tell her the fears that had been circling in his mind.
What if they arrived back in Dorset and lost this precious, lovely thing they’d found in London?
What if she wasn’t free and easy any longer, laughing and smiling and eating roasted beef off his fork?
What if he was different too? Shriveled back into himself, becoming cold and hard and ugly again? He didn’t want to be the sneering, angry man anymore but he wasn’t certain he knew how to stop him, especially not here in Dorset.
She leaned forward and placed her hand on his thigh. “You can tell me, you know, whatever it is.”
“If I told you I was thinking how much I would like to go riding when we’re back in Dorset, would you believe me?”
Her dark eyes studied him for a moment and he thought she was going to refuse that patently obvious obfuscation. But instead she said, “If you asked me to, then yes I would.”
He reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. “Well—I did think that—but only in passing. I’m afraid that….well, once we are back in Dorset, what if we aren’t able to—”
He stuttered to a stop. This was why he had Chester, damn it. It was too difficult to get the words out otherwise. He took a deep breath. “What if it’s different? Than it was in London, I mean.” He was making a hash of this. “What if you decide—”
To leave. That you hate me. That’s I’m not enough and never have been.
He didn’t finish the sentence but he didn’t have to. She understood him well enough. “We won’t suddenly resume fighting when we cross the Dorsetshire county line.”
Relief swept through him and he found himself leaning forward, words he couldn’t utter a moment before gushing out of his mouth now.
“But will you be happy there? I couldn’t stand it, Jules, if we returned to Dorset and you weren’t happy. With me. If you decided to leave.”
He knew in some distant part of his mind he shouldn’t say things like that, that they were too much. That they made him too vulnerable but couldn’t stop himself now that he’d started. And what’s more, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
Because despite his heart thumping frantically in his chest and the faint film of sweat he could now feel beneath his superfine wool coat, he also felt something in the realm of relief to have said what was on his mind. To have been at least a little brave.
Her smile softened into something wistful before she said, “I cannot promise you to always be happy, Fred. No one can promise that. And that’s not—it’s not what life is. No one knows that better than you and I.”
She stood and repositioned herself beside him instead of on the squab opposite and leaned against him. “But Fred, sweetheart, I am happy that you are my husband. That you are the man I get to spend the rest of my life with. Keep being that man and we will be well. I won’t leave you.”
He gathered her into his arms then and pressed his face into her neck, just as he’d done when he was making love to her. As eager now to be enveloped in her scent, to have her hair brushing his cheeks, as he had been then.
“Thank you, Jules.”
He’d never, not once in his entire life, made anyone happy. The prospect of being able to do it with Jules was nearly more than he could bear. He had to blink away a sheen of tears in his eyes that was…frankly…unconscionable.
“Will you go riding with me when the roads are better?” he asked because he needed to say something, anything else. And because he did, quite desperately, want to be back on his horse and could think of no better companion for it than his wife. “Hunter will adore you.”
“Who is Hunter?”
“My horse. She’s my favorite girl, after you of course.”
She was quiet for a long time, the sunlight making her chestnut hair gleam and turning her skin a warm, golden brown that was so beautiful it nearly hurt.
“Fred—” she said slowly. “Your horse is an Irish Hunter, correct?”
“Yes.”
“So you are telling me that you named your Irish Hunter horse…Hunter?”
“Of course. It’s a perfectly fitting name.” He still had her wrapped in his arms and he could feel her shaking. It took him a moment to realize she was laughing at him. “What is so funny, Jules?”
The effort to hold back her laugh was causing tears to shine in her blinking eyes.
“Fred. FRED. You named your Irish Hunter, Hunter. It’s objectively funny. Although I suppose it is also fitting. That a person with as many ridiculous names as you have would give your horse the dullest one around.”
“It is not dull,” he protested, even though he found himself smiling. “And Starlight, I believe, had already been taken.”
“And Moonbeam? Or Destiny? Wellington has sadly already cornered the market on Copenhagen.”
And then she really did laugh and he couldn’t help but draw her closer. “Come here,” he growled and settled her on his lap. “I’ll show you destiny.”
“That doesn’t make any sense at all.” She was still laughing even as he brought his mouth down to hers to kiss her.
But when he began to slide his thumb down the column of her throat, he was gratified to hear she was making some other noise entirely.
“Jules,” he whispered, disengaging from her kiss-swollen lips for only a moment. “Can I touch you, dearheart?”
She held his gaze, her eyes luminously dark and round, as she took his hand and guided it up under her skirts.
“Please,” she said.
He turned them so she was lying flush against the squab and he was balanced atop her, able to pepper her face and neck and collarbones, every part of her he could reach, with light, feathery kisses. And then he dropped to his knees, his erection already impossibly long and hard against his thigh.
He sat back on his heels, his knees on the floor of the carriage, and slowly lifted up her skirts, pleased they had hours to go before they reached Dorset. He knew how he wanted to spend them.
“Here, Jules?” he asked, his voice already thick and hoarse.
“Yes.”
He leaned up to kiss her then, swallowing the rest of her reply.
And then he was back on his knees, moving his lips to her ankle, her calf, her thigh.
Her skirts came down over his head so he was enveloped in the scent and smell of her.
He licked the soft, smooth surface of her inner thigh and listened to her whimper.
And then he moved up and up, her skin becoming even more impossibly tender as he made his way to the soft, wet place between her legs.
And this—this—was what he’d been hungry for. He nuzzled his nose into her thigh.
“Open your knees for me, dearheart,” he growled and then he leaned in to taste her.
He made some noise deep in his throat as he traced the seam of her, beginning at her beautiful, round arse and licking his way up.
Her hips twitched in the air, bucking slightly from the squabs, and he growled again in approval.
She was stretched out and open for him, a feast ready to be devoured and he was going to devour it.
For as long as either of them could stand it.
He licked her again, traveling the same route but pausing this time in the places where she’d moaned the last time, her little nub of pleasure that had already come out of its sheath, ready to be caressed.
Or the slick, tender place beneath it, which made her squeal in pleasure.
Or here—he slipped his tongue inside her and she made some low, guttural noise that made him begin to leak against the inside of his thigh.
“Fred,” Jules moaned and he hummed back at her, the vibrations of his mouth making her buck her hips again. “Fred—”
He laved at her with his tongue—wet and delicious—while he undid his trouser flap with his hands. He was already so hard it was nearly painful and he pressed his hand against his cock for just a moment’s relief.
He gripped himself, taking a few lazy strokes that made him shudder. He kept his mouth where it was on Jules but added his fingers too in the way he knew she liked now. First one and then a second, pressed deeply inside her and curved to the front.
“Fred—Fred, there.” Her hands were in his hair now, clutching at him.
He liked that, the feel of her tugging at his scalp.
The way she moaned and grunted, losing herself entirely.
He couldn’t stop himself now, from reaching down, his hips rutting against his own hand.
He had to squeeze the base of his shaft for a long minute to calm himself.
He wanted this to last—the taste of her was too exquisite to cut short.