Chapter 22
Abe Murphy had brought cigars, perhaps assuming that a modest parish house had a drawing room tucked somewhere behind a closet or under the stairs.
In the absence of such features, Matthew had suggested that the gentlemen enjoy the garden with their cigars and leave the comfort of the sitting room to the ladies while they did so.
“I want one,” Heather had said, looking up from her doll. “Dessert?”
Matthew had not addressed that particular question, choosing instead to assist his wife in clearing the plates back to their kitchen instead.
“Oh, go on and join them,” Rosalind had chided when she saw him following her. “I’ve got this handled.”
“I’ll go in a moment,” he told her, taking the plates from her hands and nudging her forward. “I just wanted to check in with my wife without being overheard for two seconds.”
“Oh,” she said, and he thought he detected a smidgen of delight in her voice. “Can you believe Millie is with child? It seems everyone is these days. My sister too. Vix, and Hannah as well!”
“Hannah is pregnant?" he asked, his eyes widening.
“Mm, yes, and farther along than Vix, according to Sally at the clinic. Vix was displeased to hear that, given that Hannah is still not showing at all,” Rosalind said, spinning so her skirt flared out as he deposited the plates in the sink.
“Goodness, Matthew, do you think you’ve put a baby in me as well? Is it catching?”
He froze for a moment, his fingers still brushing the rims of the plates as all the blood in his body turned to ice and then immediately caught fire. He stood slowly and turned toward her, walking in her direction until she was backed against a wall, his hands going to her hips.
“Do not,” he said softly, “say things like that to me with your parents in the next room.”
“Oh,” she breathed, her lashes flickering as she turned those big hazel eyes up at him. “If I do, will you chase me about in punishment?”
He chuckled and groaned in equal measure, leaning down to kiss her firmly on the mouth. “Now I have to go outside,” he said sternly. “And it is your fault. Because it is cold outside.”
“Why does it matter if it is cold?” she called after him. “Matthew!”
He was grinning and shaking his head as he left her there, contemplating the mystery.
As he passed Heather, now placated with a small plate of custard, she looked up at him and said, “Slattern.”
He nodded. “I know,” he answered. “I am.”
Mercifully, it was very brisk outside, and in addition to the helpful temperature, there was the immediate distraction of poor, young Mr. Barnett hacking up his entire respiratory system onto the lawn after his first puff of cigar.
“There, now, lad, you’ll get through it,” Angus Murphy was booming as he slapped the journalist on the back. “The trick is that as soon as you recover, you go back in and try it again.”
Abe Murphy, who was smoking his own cigar while leaning on the wall next to the front door, snickered into the frosty night air. When Matthew turned around at the sound, Abe was already holding out another lit offering, gently coiling smoke into the light escaping through the parish house window.
“Oh, all right,” said Matthew, taking the thing and going to stand next to his brother-in-law. “Where’s Mr. Green?”
“He went to get something for poor wee Ezra to bend over, should his coughing come to the worst conclusion,” Abe said. “He said vomit makes a terrible fertilizer.”
“Ah,” said Matthew, chuckling. Then added, “Bless him.”
Abe turned his head, resting his sandy hair against the brickwork, and considered Matthew against the low shadows cast from the windows. “You did well tonight,” he told him. “You’ve won them over with that Jezebel scree.”
Matthew blinked, taking a puff of the cigar and casting a skeptical look over at the other man.
It made Abe grin, his teeth glowing in the dark. “I know,” he said. “If you’d done that in front of my in-laws, you’d have scandalized the collective arse off the entire Yardley brood, but the Murphys are built different. All they ever wanted for their daughters was a thinking man.”
“What did they want for their son?” Matthew asked without thinking.
Abe shrugged. “Millie, I reckon.”
Matthew nodded. It sounded right. “A thinking man,” he repeated, trying to keep his voice even. “But I’m not an academic. Not a professor.”
It made that glowing toothy smile widen. “Ah,” said Abe, “you know about that, do you?”
He sighed, flicking away some of the red, glowing ash. “I saw him yesterday. He rode up with your parents.”
“Aye, I know,” said Abe, that wolfish smile melting away. “I intend to have words with them about that particular decision, though perhaps Rosalind never told them the whole of it. I did offer to kill him, you know. She declined.”
Matthew gave a dry huff. “Of course she did.”
“You both went to fine universities for your vocation, far as I can figure,” Abe continued with a shrug, biting down on the cigar and drawing in another breath. “You both wear a dress from time to time in the name of higher thinking. What’s the difference, really?”
“It’s a coat,” Matthew replied, having had this exact conversation with Roland Reed countless times.
“Yes, fine,” said Abe with a shrug. “The black one is a coat, but the white one is a pretty little frock, and you’ll not convince me otherwise.”
“Yes, lad, now just hold it in your mouth for a moment before you draw it farther in!” Angus cried from farther down the lawn. “No, too soon!”
Poor Ezra sounded like a clogged water spout.
Mr. Green was already puffing back from the church with what looked like the collections plate in his arms rather than something more sensible, say a mop bucket or a hat.
“Wonderful,” Matthew observed.
“Well, it’s an offering of a sort,” Abe said, cocking his head to the side. “If he makes one, that is.”
“Maybe he won’t,” Matthew replied.
In the end, he managed not to, though his cigar was barely more than singed for all the pain it had caused.
“Maybe take that home with you and try again, eh, lad?” Angus had said, tucking it into Ezra’s waistcoat pocket as they all gathered their things to depart for the night.
“Oh, and you all must come to my lecture next week,” Abigail added. “Mr. Green, I can introduce you to many locals who would enjoy your company on a more regular basis to discuss the heavens. Well, my heavens, anyway. Not the ones discussed here at the parish.”
By the time the house was empty again, Matthew was entirely certain he was as spent and disintegrated as so many cigar ends himself. He collapsed directly onto the sofa and stared at the ceiling for a time until Rosalind cleared her throat at him and pointed to the stairs.
“I carried you once,” he moaned. “Maybe you can carry me.”
“I’m still so very injured,” she lied, feigning her limp again as she dragged her leg toward the staircase and hobbled up toward their room. “But I would if I could, of course.”
“I could just sleep down here,” he threatened without any real feeling.
“I suppose you could,” she agreed, her voice echoing down the stairwell, “but then my womb will remain so very empty.”
He shot up from where he was sitting, suddenly very awake again. “What did you say?”
“Me?” she called. “I didn’t say anything. Where is that valise that Millie brought tonight? There is something in it that I have been looking for.”
He was already halfway up the stairs and grimaced, swinging around to scan the floor of their sitting room for the cursed valise, which was propped against the farthest wall possible.
He grumbled to himself, hopping back down to retrieve it and hoping that whatever was inside was very damned important.
He found her in one of her modified nightgowns, unbuttoned to the hip and tilted toward his mirror, trying to get a good look at what was left of her bruise.
It was really nothing more than a small yellow and purple lump at the very center of where the entire affair had been anymore.
Now that she could bend her leg farther, she could see it better, though he suspected she did not know how suggestive the pose she was in looked.
She glanced up at him and gave a little sigh and a shrug. “Sometimes I think it will never completely go away,” she said. “Oh, good, you found the valise. Bring it here, please.”
“How about I throw it out the window,” he suggested, “and you bring yourself to me instead?”
“If you throw it out the window, you’ll just have to go down and get it again,” she said reasonably, as though she were explaining cause and effect to a toddler. “Besides, you will like what is inside it.”
He groaned, dropping the thing on the floor and falling to his knees to flick the clasps open and throw the top off.
Inside were mostly clothing items, chemises and shifts and petticoats and stays, folded into a chaos of layers.
Almost all of it was white, except for a single item near the bottom in vibrant pink.
“That’s it!” she said, coming to her feet with a clap of her hands. “I bought it when I first got to London and I thought that one day, I’d be married, and someone special could finally see me wear it.”
“What is it?” he asked, equal parts wary and excited, his fingers tripping through layers of gauzy fabric toward the vibrant bolt of pink.
“A corset,” she said, crossing the room and coming to kneel beside him, “with thread-of-silver embroidery. It is very shocking, isn’t it?”
“It is …” He trailed off as she drew it out ahead of him and held it up against her body, pressing the bright satin against the muslin of her nightgown to demonstrate how it should fit.
He blinked, staring at the way her breasts bulged up over the neckline of the gown as she pulled the strings together in the back. “Um.”
She looked up, blinking innocently. “Do you like it?”
He tried once more to say something in response and failed, choosing instead to crawl over the valise, pull the corset away, and push her down onto the carpet, his legs straddling her hips as he leaned down to claim her mouth.
She giggled into the kiss, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck as his hand found that slit in her nightgown and pushed inside it, exploring the soft flesh of her thigh.
“Matthew,” she whispered against his lips. “The bed is right there.”
“Can’t,” he muttered back, using his free hand to loosen his belt. “Your fault.”
“Oh,” she relented as he freed himself, pushing his trousers down and pulling that separated fabric farther apart. “But I didn’t even put the corset on.”
He groaned, pushing her legs apart and ensuring that she was ready for him, kissing her again, harder this time as he flung away the last of the fabric between them. “If you wear it,” he told her, pushing his hips forward, claiming her with an urgent, warm thrust, “I might perish on the spot.”
She gasped, her back arching up into him as she clung to him, her legs snaking around his own.
“We’re still dressed,” she tutted through her little sharp pulls of breath as he trailed kisses down her jaw, nipping at her throat.
She might have been chiding him, but it didn’t stop her hips from rolling against his own, meeting him in his fervor.
She went quiet for several breaths, whimpering in pleasure at the feeling of his weight on her against the soft carpeting, clinging and receiving him in equal measure.
“Matthew,” she breathed into his ear as he wrapped his fingers around her hip, sliding deeper into her. “Do you want me to leave it on? If I wear it and it excites you, shall I leave it on while you have me?”
He thought he might weep, his hips snapping forward faster, his head swimming with what she was suggesting. “Yes,” he managed to say, ragged and raw.
“If I do,” she whispered, rocking against him, taking little breathy gasps of air, “will you chase and pin me?”
He almost collapsed then, his arms shaking and elbows going liquid. “Rosalind!” he managed, his mouth falling into the crook of her neck as his thrusts became erratic and desperate.
“Will you?” she pled. “I want you to pursue and catch me as I try to evade you. You can tell me I’m naughty for running in the first place. And then teach me how lovely it is to be caught.”
“Oh, Christ,” he moaned, heat flaring throughout him. “Dear God.”
“Yes, just like that,” she murmured as he lost himself, flooding her with his pleasure. She ran her fingers through the coils of his hair, smiling against the warm flesh of his jaw. “Perfect.”
After that, it took him a very, very long time to catch his breath.