Chapter Twenty-Five
Hattie did not awaken so much as she flew from slumber into a state of alarm.
“Elias?!” she cried, coming straight up in the bed with her hands clutched in the blankets on either side of her. “What time is it?!”
But Elias was not there.
And the sun appeared to be fully present in the sky.
She had not been downstairs, and therefore she had not been present for Libba’s customary ritual of rude awakening for showcase day. She had not heard the chimes or the drum or the shouting.
Oh, God, there was no clock in here!
This flavor of panic was not the cold paste of burnt toast and smashed, fire-roasted tomato. No, no. That was for things yet undone, not things currently in progress.
This tasted unbearably sweet, so sweet, it ached in the cheekbones and jaw. Like milk syrup and figs and yellow cake as well, all mushed together in an unbearable ball of saccharine assault.
“Elias!” she croaked again, confused at how she had come to be contained in a pocket of blankets, her feet trapped in a makeshift pouch as she flailed out of her cushioned and feathered prison. “Are we late?!”
She finally got herself free, flinging the blankets up and at the window so hard, the curtains trembled.
Out of the bed and into her slippers, Hattie moved frantically, rearranging her robe as she moved out into the salon, where she found her husband, asleep in an armchair, surrounded by books and …
and illustrations? Little sketches and doodles on stiff card stock, some with notes scribbled on them, each next to the envelope it had come in.
What the devil had he been about?!
“Elias!” she said, gripping his shoulder as he startled out of his own reverie. “The showcase!”
“What?” he barked, his palms slapping up over his eyes to rub the sleep away. “Who?”
“Oh, we need a clock!” she moaned. “I will go see how bad it is! Do not move!”
She got two steps from the door and made an impatient little sigh, flapping her hands as she turned back to him. “No, do move! Move!”
And he did, scrambling to his feet as she rushed out into the halls.
She caught herself on the banister, looking down at Errol and Ruby, fully dressed and in conversation below her, and shouted down to them, waving her arm. “What time is it?! I overslept!”
“Good,” said Ruby, raking her eyes over Hattie’s disheveled form.
“You’ve an hour yet,” Errol told her, much more kindly, which was all she needed to hear.
She spun and flung herself back into the rooms with the announcement, finding Elias bent over a basin, mouth full of tooth powder.
“Oh, my hair! There’s no time,” she muttered, hands in claws as she stalked to the wardrobe and flung it open. “The dress! Elias, do you know how to lace a corset? Goodness, but we need a staff!”
He mumbled something in reply, which she took as assent.
“They’ll go ahead of us, now that they know we’re running late,” she muttered, pulling his new suit free and tossing it on the bed next to her gown. “I can braid my hair. Braid it into a crown. That will do. Yes, that will do.”
“Hattie,” he said, trying to soothe her, his hand outstretched.
“No!” she squeaked, ducking under it to address the basin herself. “Get dressed!”
He sighed, looking suspiciously amused by it all, and nodded.
She scrubbed her mouth out, unable to fully rid herself of the flavor of sweet tardy panic, and splashed her face three times in an effort to erase any sign at all of extra sleep.
Close to the mirror, she made a point of blinking her eyes as wide as they’d go in a semblance of alertness, though she was not entirely convinced by the reflection.
And it was no fault of hers at all that the mirror caught the reflection of Elias Selwyn removing his dressing gown.
She froze, unable to move or even think for a moment as the mirror framed him from his hips to his throat, the full expanse of his broad, sculpted chest revealed to her as the velvet was peeled away.
There was more of that lovely, coiling black hair, so glossy and soft across his heart and trailing down to … to …
Hattie coughed, shaking her head, and reared back from the mirror.
She could hear him rustling about with fabric but could not turn. Could not look. Her face was ablaze with it.
She looked down at her own body in the red dressing gown and decided to move as well. To focus on the task at hand.
A clean chemise emerged from the chest of drawers and she shook it out hastily before sliding the satin belt free of its knot and letting it fall away from her shoulders.
She turned her head slightly to the side as she pulled the chemise on, aware that the rustling on his side of the room had stopped. Aware and curious.
Was he watching too?
She couldn’t taste the panic anymore, strangely.
She tasted something else entirely. Smoke and salt, she thought, as the soft muslin tumbled down around her thighs.
She shook her hair out, pulling the few remaining pins from her night of sleep out and tossing them next to the basin. And she glanced in the mirror again.
This time, she could see his face. His chest was still bare, a loose pair of trousers pulled up over his hips, still open at the waist.
He was watching. With what appeared to be great interest.
She shivered, her body erupting in gooseflesh as her eyes slid down the exposed planes of his body again, rendered in reflection.
They were late. They couldn’t.
They shouldn’t.
She dragged her eyes up once more to his and felt herself falter at the heat she found there. And still, she might have maintained course, if he had not moved. Had not walked around the corner of the bed and very deliberately taken a seat on the edge.
She let out a distressed little sound, her hands sliding off the basin as she spun around to face him, without the barrier of quicksilver and fog.
She faced him directly, warm flesh rising and falling as he breathed, eyes glowing hot, legs wide on the edge of the mattress, and she could not be expected not to move, in the face of that.
He leaned back, his arms bare and extended, muscles moving under the skin in the shafts of early light that came in through the disturbed curtains, and braced himself against the mattress, watching her silently.
It was the final blow to her devotion to punctuality.
She crossed the room in four long strides, climbing onto him without preamble as his arm caught around her waist, dragging her tightly into his lap.
His free hand bunched in the hem of her chemise, his head tilting back in her own grasp so that she could claim that mouth of his, desperate and hungry, her tongue pushing in to taste what had been lingering on the edge of her senses since catching sight of him a moment ago.
“Off,” he rasped against her mouth, tugging at the chemise. “Off.”
She pushed herself onto her knees, her back arching as she let him slide the chemise up over her body and over her head, her hair tumbling down over her bare shoulders as he flung it away.
She clawed down the open waistband of his trousers, raking pink lines into his hips as he lifted them to assist her, kicking away his own fabric in the process before pulling her firmly back into the seat she had claimed with such urgency.
He pressed his mouth onto her throat, reaching down to guide himself into her, to connect them in the way they needed to be connected.
His teeth grazed the delicate flesh of her neck as she dug her fingers into his hair, moving her hips as soon as he had found her entrance and sliding down the length of him, filling herself completely.
“Elias,” she breathed, pushing her knees against his hips, gasping at the perfection of it, her hands slipping down over those bare, sculpted shoulders and grazing over the dusting of hair over his heart as she began to move.
He groaned, kissing her throat once more before leaning back against the bed again, his eyes roving over her like he was going to memorize every patch of skin on her body, his lip caught between his even, white teeth.
His hand was big and warm on her hip, following her movements as he struggled for breath, his hips bucking up against hers every now and then, though he appeared to be trying very hard to stay still.
He watched, those dark-blue eyes of his half-hooded, and he studied her, his gaze roaming over her face, her throat, her breasts, until he could not stand it anymore and reared back up to sink his hand into her hair and pull her mouth down onto his again.
He tightened his grip on her hip as he kissed her, pinning her down astride him as he rolled his hips up in slow, agonizing movements that stole her breath, her body trembling in his grip.
“Oh,” she managed, her eyes slipping shut as he continued to move this way, cresting under her like ocean waves breaking on the shingled beach outside.
It built in her like a storm. Like his storm.
His mouth was hot and traveling down her throat, over her breasts, tasting the peaks of her nipples, and still, he was anchoring her there, holding her hips tight against his own as he pulsed upward, their breath catching in matching volleys.
She came apart with very little warning, cracking like thunder had cracked during their wedding vows, bright and loud and spearing through her body with a rumble of release.
He met her there, he chose it, clinging to her and following her over the edge into oblivion, until those urgent, desperate thrusts slowed and evened, their grips on one another softening but persevering all the same.
And they breathed together, ragged and then slower, sharing the air between their mouths as they rested their foreheads together, still joined as the final tremors of their pleasure echoed through their bodies.
Dizzy and still somehow not quite sated, she ran her hand over his throat and along the back of his neck, twining in the ends of his hair.
“We will definitely be late now,” she murmured, warm in his ear.
She felt him grin, felt the shape of it against her shoulder as his fingers traced over the bare lines of her back.
“I know,” he said. “Mea culpa.”