Chapter 8
By the time the watch had finished hammering a board over her broken bolt and clumped off into the snowy dark, dawn had smeared a grey light across the sky. The lane outside lay muffled in white, every sound softened, as though the world had drawn a blanket over its head.
Gracie insisted on making tea—“to restore the nerves, though mine may never recover”—and bustled about until the shop smelled faintly of bergamot and scorched milk.
Hubert, meanwhile, remained planted by the counter like a sentry carved in oak.
His coat was still buttoned, his hair still rumpled from his hasty arrival, and his dark gaze never left the door.
When the watchmen left them at last, stamping through the snow, Vicky tried for dignity. “You may go home now, Mr. Stouts. The crisis is over.”
He turned slowly, as if she had just claimed the moon for her own. “Home? When your door is held by splinters and borrowed nails?”
“Precisely. The watch will patrol. We shall manage.”
One of his eyebrows lifted in silent commentary on the absurdity of “managing.” “You will not manage,” he said flatly. “I shall remain.”
Gracie, traitorous creature, set down the teapot with brisk approval. “He is right, Miss Abbott. Best to let him stay.”
Vicky glared at her. “Whose side are you on?”
“Safety’s,” Gracie said serenely, pouring three cups.
By evening, it was plain Hubert meant to keep his word. He fetched in a small bundle—blanket, a book, a loaf of brown bread—and arranged himself in the shop as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
Gracie, apparently determined to leave them to it, announced after supper that she would retire early. “My nerves, you know,” she said, stifling a yawn of theatrical proportions. “I daresay you two can keep the watch without me.”
“Gracie—” Vicky began, scandalized.
But her assistant only lifted her brows, gathered her candle, and disappeared upstairs, leaving the pair of them in the flickering lamplight, silence thick as the snow outside.
Vicky crossed her arms. “Well. You cannot very well sleep standing up, though you look entirely capable of it.”
His mouth tugged faintly. “I have done worse.”
She gestured toward the settee tucked behind the counter. “That will serve. Lumpy as it is, you deserve no better for being impossibly stubborn.”
He inclined his head, grave as any magistrate. “Then I shall be lumpy and safe, rather than comfortable and guilty.”
She rolled her eyes and fetched a blanket, dropping it onto the settee with a flourish. “There. Try not to wrinkle it. The furniture deserves some dignity.”
For a moment she thought he might actually smile.
She ought to have left him then—gone upstairs, drawn her curtains, pretended to sleep.
But curiosity, like a hook in her ribs, would not let her.
She lingered by the counter as he removed his coat and folded it neatly.
Without the bulk of it, he looked broader, more solid, and the settee looked absurdly inadequate beneath him.
“You do this often?” she asked.
He glanced up. “Do what?”
“Play the sentinel. Sacrifice comfort for others. Brood by candlelight while lesser mortals sleep.”
His brows drew together. “It is not sacrifice. It is duty.”
“And who assigned it?” she teased. “Did the Almighty descend to say, ‘Hubert Stouts, you must keep eternal vigil over doors and sisters alike’?”
His lips twitched, though his tone stayed dry. “My father. Though he did not descend—he thundered.”
Her gaze slid to the sign faintly visible through the frost-clouded window: Stout his breath tasted faintly of winter and restraint.
She might have resisted. Should have. But the warmth of him after such a cold, fractured night was too much temptation. Her fingers found the edge of his shirt, the coarse weave of linen warm against her palm.
“Vicky,” he murmured against her mouth, a rough confession rather than a name.
“Yes,” she whispered back, though she wasn’t sure to what—his question, his need, or her own.
When he drew her closer, the settee creaked beneath them. His coat slid to the floor, forgotten. Her pulse thrummed in her ears as he deepened the kiss, tasting her like a promise he’d waited too long to make.
She pulled back only enough to look at him—really look. His eyes were dark with want, but there was reverence there too. “You’ll ruin your reputation entirely,” she said, trying for levity.
He brushed a thumb over her lower lip, voice low. “For you, I find I do not care.”
A tiny moan escaped her lips as she felt the tug go straight to her core.
His arms came around her, loosening her robe and nightdress. His fingers brushing her bare back, had Vicky hissing with need. Then he touched her aching breasts, teasing the tips with his fingers.
“Hubert!” Her cry was involuntary but it was enough for him to take each of the mounds and mold them to his satisfaction.
“Hush now, Vicky, I will take care of you,” he breathed against her lips.
And then he was kissing her fiercely. The power and the intensity of the situation creating a maelstrom within Vicky. He kissed with his whole heart and she was swept away with him. The insistent twisting and tugging on her nipples only increasing the frenzy he was creating inside of her.
She was a little surprised when she felt air on the backs of her legs. But he kept on kissing her as he raised the nightgown. Vicky could hardly imagine what pleasures might accompany such an action. But she could hardly wait to find out.
Then his fingers glided across her wetness, and her legs shook. With tenderness and patience, Hubert coaxed and rubbed her sensitive flesh until Vicky couldn’t have remembered her own name. Playing with her passion, he stroked her back and forth and then he sunk two fingers into her.
She whined with need, not knowing what she was pleading for only knowing that he had the power within him to give it to her. Her body was teetering on the edge of something wonderful when Hubert abruptly broke off the kiss and spun her around to face away from him.
She heard him unfasten his breeches and ask her to brace her arms on the table next to the settee. Her eyes widened in astonishment, but she was too excited to question anything.
Her night dress was lifted and my backside and dearest flesh was bared to him.
“Do you trust me?” he murmured before rubbed his thick cock along her backside.
Vicky pushed back against him, feverish to know what would happen next.
‘“I do trust you!” She begged. “Please, I need, I need you.”
Vicky hardly knew what she needed, but she was dripping wet and her body was throbbing for completion.
He pushed her legs apart and began to stroke her once again with his cock. This time along her most sensitive of areas. Vicky keened with need and pushed back causing his head to slip within her folds.
The perfectly unscathable gentleman cursed with a grunt and then he pushed further inside of her.
There was a fire between her legs that Vicky wasn’t certain she wanted. But when Hubert reached around and stroked her again, Vicky began to climb that hill once again.
Finally seated within her he stroked her to the thrusts of his cock until they were one, panting, climbing, and clutching each other until her passion finally erupted.
His harsh grunts filled the air and the sound of their skin slapping together filling her ears.
“Hubert,” she cried out as he hit the right spot, “God, yes!”
“Not God,” he panted. “Just Hubert.”
Her laugh trembled, half-breath, half-surrender. “That is a very dangerous thing to say, Mr. Stouts.”
“Then perhaps,” he said, kissing the corner of her mouth, “you should stop tempting me.”
Her protest—whatever clever retort she might have found—was lost when he gently turned her back around and kissed her again. Slower this time. Certain.
The world seemed to shrink to the small, flickering circle of lamplight, the soft rasp of fabric, the thud of her pulse in her ears. His hand slid into her hair, the roughness of his palm gentled by the care with which he touched her—as though afraid she might vanish if he pressed too hard.
She leaned into him, surrendering to the warmth that had been waiting between them for weeks, maybe longer. The air smelled faintly of snow and bergamot, of safety and danger twined together.
When at last they parted, her breath trembled out in a soft laugh. “I was right,” she murmured. “You do brood by candlelight.”
He rested his forehead against hers. “Only when the view is worth it.”
For a long, perfect heartbeat, neither moved. Then, slowly, she rose, her fingers trailing along his jaw in a touch that promised and warned all at once.
“Good night, Mr. Stouts,” she said softly, retreating toward the stairs.
His voice followed her, roughened with something new. “Good night, Miss Abbott. Sleep safely.”
But as she climbed the narrow steps, she knew sleep would be a long time coming. Down below, the lamplight still burned, and somewhere in the hush of falling snow, the world shifted—quietly, irrevocably—toward something that neither of them could undo.