Chapter 51 #3
“Everyone has an Adam’s apple!” Joseph protested, lifting on one elbow.
“It’s nothing but cartilage protecting your larynx—your vocal cords.
Yours is harder to find than mine, but it’s there.
My father taught us about it years ago.” His sisters had been delighted by the secret, but Joseph had never imagined he would need to know such a thing.
Tessa pouted, still unwilling to believe him.
“I’ll show you.” He slipped his hand to the place where her neck became her shoulder and rested his thumb at the center of her throat. “Tilt back your head?”
Tessa obeyed, though it might have been a gesture of affront. Gently but firmly, Joseph pressed down his thumb near the base of her throat, seeking the hidden ridge beneath the surface. Her eyes narrowed.
“Am I hurting you?”
“I trust you, Joseph.”
He’d almost found the place; he’d felt it move just then. “Sing something for me.”
Tessa smiled wickedly and obliged: “O-O-O-O ve-re be-a-ta nox…” She pulled out the “O” just as he’d done that morning, so it took up nearly as many notes as “vere beata nox.” Her tiny perfect apple leapt and vibrated beneath his finger with every transcendent syllable: O truly blessed night…
“Did you feel that?” Joseph asked excitedly.
Tessa only grinned at him.
“It’s right here.” He tapped her hidden apple with his thumb. “Right…” The next instant, he’d leaned closer, and his lips had replaced his finger.
He didn’t know what possessed him to do it. Without the participation of his mind, his body chose for him.
Every time he celebrated a Sacrament, he kissed the cross on his vestments.
In the course of every Mass, he kissed the altar that held the bone of a saint and the Body of Christ. For three decades, he’d kissed the rings of Bishops, the hands of Priests, and the feet of Popes.
He honored them with his kisses; he acknowledged his unworthiness and their right to his veneration; he told them they were precious to him.
But nothing and no one he’d ever felt beneath his lips had responded like this. Tessa moaned his name, and the well of her beautiful voice trembled against his mouth. She grasped the front of his shirt and the key with it, but she did not ask him to stop.
One kiss was not nearly enough, so he did it again and then again.
He wanted to praise every inch of her. He wanted to trail kisses down her throat, lick the perspiration from her collarbones, and discover her glorious breasts.
But she was nursing; he would embarrass her.
So with a sigh of his own, he skimmed his mouth upward instead, deepening his kisses, lingering, tasting the sweet salt of her skin and the musk of gardenias.
He must be leaving a sheen on her flesh, but he didn’t care.
Four months before, hadn’t he blessed her daughter with wetness from his mouth?
He reached the underside of her jaw, let his teeth brush her skin, felt her quivering against him as her pulse grew quicker and quicker, and still he did not stop.
One hand gripping that bare shoulder, the other lost in her hair, he kissed toward her ear, up to the edge of her cheek, hesitated.
Her mouth was so near now, but the way he wanted to kiss her there might appall her, and he’d no real notion how to do it.
Perhaps he should continue upward instead, kiss the lids of her luminous eyes…
But Tessa was turning, deciding for him, panting warm at the corner of his lips, at their center, her open mouth—
Then all at once she was jerking away from him, sitting up.
Startled, bereft, Joseph’s eyes blinked open, but he saw only the white pillow and the ends of her hair.
He’d asked too much of her, too soon. He never should have grasped her shoulder; she must have felt trapped.
Her moans had been discomfort, not pleasure.
In the next moment, he understood. Tessa called out her daughter’s name, and Clare’s wail reached them from the other side of the hall.
“I’m coming, a chuisle!” Tessa cried. But before she dashed from the room, for one brief second she caressed Joseph’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
Joseph hesitated. He wanted to go after her, but Hannah would be there too.
Hannah knew everything already.
In her haste, Tessa left the doors open. Across the hall, he heard Hannah telling her mistress: “I’m sorry; I tried to calm her. But she wanted you.”
Joseph wondered if Clare’s wailing had woken David.
He supposed his nephew was used to such sounds by now.
Still, Joseph must be careful not to make any loud noises himself; he did not wish to alert the boy to his presence, especially not in his current state of undress.
Even when Tessa had sung for him, they’d been careful to keep their voices low.
Joseph rose from the bed and gently pushed the door closed.
He supposed David would become aware of his visits eventually, but Joseph was not eager to face the boy.
“I think he’s old enough to understand,” Hélène had said.
That much was probably true: David had left his childhood beside Independence Rock.
Joseph’s sister had also implied that their nephew disliked Edward as much as they did.
But neither was David reconciled to God.
The knowledge that his spiritual advisor was fondling his foster-mother would hardly restore the boy’s faith.
Joseph had done a great deal more fondling than he’d intended for their first night together—less than he’d wanted, but more than he’d intended.
Tessa’s willingness to fondle him was simultaneously exhilarating and unsettling.
It frightened him, how easily he surrendered to it, how quickly and completely his body snatched control from his mind.
If he waited for Tessa to return to this bedchamber, they were sure to do more.
One of their guardian angels must have woken Clare as a warning. Joseph should not have needed such divine intervention. He should have been more careful. He would be more careful. He would prove to himself that he could stop. Right now.
Right now.
He closed his eyes and steeled himself.
He returned to the méridienne and pulled his boots back on. He retrieved his waistcoat and rebuttoned it, then his coat. His choker had slithered to the floor under the prie-Dieu, and he nearly forgot it.
He crossed the hall as quietly as he could. In the nursery, Tessa’s maid stood with her back to the door, but she turned at Joseph’s approach and smiled a greeting. “Hannah…” he began. He stared down at his hat, uncertain how to proceed. Finally, he said simply: “Thank you.”
She understood. Hannah looked to the easy chair, where Tessa was singing softly in Irish to her daughter. “I know what it’s like to be separated from someone you love. Tessa does all she can for me—I’ll do all I can for her.”
Joseph remained at the threshold. Clare was content now that Tessa had pulled open the neck of her chemise.
The baby’s eager mouth concealed Tessa’s nipple, but not the white swell of her breast. No: not truly white, any more than he was truly black.
Tessa sat in shadow, but he could still see it: her skin was closer to peach flushed with pink, like the Jaune Desprez.
Barely three years ago, Tessa had longed for death to end her grief. Now, she was pulsing with life, blooming with love before his very eyes, as fresh and new as her daughter—and a thousand times more beautiful than the Virgin in his father’s painting.
In the portrait, Joseph the saint averted his eyes to his prayer book. Joseph the boy had fled to the confessional. Now, Joseph the man lingered and smiled.
When Tessa looked up at him, she saw he was dressed. Her rose mouth turned downward. “Won’t you stay?”
Reluctantly, Joseph shook his head. “Not tonight.” Tomorrow was a rather important Mass.
“But you’ll come back to me, another night?”
“I will.”
They were the words of the Marriage vow. I, Joseph Lazare, take thee, Teresa Conley, for my unlawful wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or worse…