Chapter Ten #2
‘By whisking you away to the very ends of the land and having my way with you. Like this.’ His mouth covered one nipple and he played with the hardening bud against his tongue.
‘And like this.’ Further down he went, the cold trail of his mouth making her shiver with delight.
‘And then like this.’ He opened her legs and found her centre, his forefinger on the place where all feelings came from as she squirmed, wanting more.
Which he gave her, with his fingers at first and then with his mouth and then with the hardness of his sex filling her, riding her, on and on as the wispy gauze curtains blew in the breeze and the stars inside her exploded into light and life and loveliness, taking away all the darkness.
He was hers and she was his and there was no space between them. No words either to question the wisdom of what they were doing.
In the morning she saw him by the window looking out at the dawn. He always wore his shirt, she thought next, and wondered why he did not disrobe and lie naked as she did. The cotton was wrinkled from their night together and the buttons at the front were undone.
She remembered undoing them one by one as he had watched but when she had tried to slip the fabric further down from his shoulders he had stopped her with a kiss and then with more.
‘Good morning.’
He turned to look at her, his hair tousled and the dark shadow of a twelve-hour beard on his face. He looked as if she had caught him out and was slightly surprised, and when she glanced down his manhood was fully aroused and waiting for her.
She smiled and he came to her then, fitting himself around her before driving in, without preamble, without softness, pushing further and further, and keeping her there.
Still. Waiting. The drum of blood. A growing answer deep within her and his returning one.
With only a little movement he brought her to a place she could barely contemplate, a spiralling hot want that struck her, unbidden, twisting her insides, making her shout out his name, her nails against his back under the shirt clamping him still.
On and on until there was nothing left of sense or place but only feeling, only this. Only them.
And then she slept.
When she woke he was fully dressed and sitting on a chair by the bed, watching her. In his hands he held a small framed drawing which he passed to her.
The woman in it was the most beautiful female Willa had ever seen, with her blue eyes, blonde hair, pointed chin and her head at a slight angle as if the world amused her but she did not know why.
Willa knew who she was immediately because she had briefly glimpsed her once and heard all the many and varied descriptions of the incomparable Miss Gretel Carmichael.
‘I wanted you to see what my wife looked like.’
She sat up, pulling the sheets around her. The Golden Girl. The debutante who had set the Ton alight with her beauty.
‘When was this done?’
‘Two years after we married. It was her Christmas present to me.’
‘No wonder you miss her. All that beauty and promise…’
‘You asked me once if I had tried to kill my brother and I said I had meant to miss. The reason for it all was Gretel.’ He took in a breath.
‘She was sick, much more sick than any of us realised, and she was desperate to conceive a child. I told you we had tried but had had no luck, and perhaps she thought it was my fault, which it may well have been. But she went to see my brother and asked him to give her the baby that I could not, the heir to Elmsworth. I swear that I knew none of this until she confessed what she had done a month or so before her death.’
Willa saw in Phillip the sadness that was so much of who he was, the aching chasm of guilt that showed in his eyes and on his face as he told the story.
‘Oliver refused, of course, and Gretel retaliated by telling me that he had then tried to take advantage of her. There was a bruise on her arm and her hand was cut, so I had no reason to believe that he had not, such was her power over most men. I went to see my brother to give him a stern warning never to come near us again and to protect the name of our forebears, but as I pointed the pistol away my hand started shaking and it went off…’ He frowned.
‘My mother’s hands shook the same way mine do and perhaps I have inherited the condition, though of late with you here I have not noticed it so much. ’
Willa got out of bed and stood beside him. ‘You did not kill him, Phillip. Oliver is alive.’
‘By luck only. And after that Gretel deteriorated markedly, for I could see the difference in her day by day.’
‘She was sick. That was not your fault, either.’
‘I think I harm people, Wilhelmina. Everyone who comes close to me gets hurt and I want you to be safe. I should never have had that gun in my hand and I still cannot be sure why I did. I have not touched a firearm since.’
Willa took in a breath, understanding what this was about. The Arrogant Earl had been his nickname here in Society before he had gone to America. The Distant Earl was another name she had heard and they both made sense. It was protection he was trying to offer, protection from himself.
‘Everyone has their skeletons and secrets. I know that I have mine. I told you once that Lionel had died by falling off the balcony onto the paving below. But what I did not say is that I had pushed him to stop him ripping out the pages of my diary, which he had grabbed. He went over the edge shouting to the world around him that it was my fault. And it was in a way, in the same way of you shooting your brother. Not by design but by chance.’
When he did not reply she kept going. Better for him to know the truth than to learn a lesser version of it from someone else.
‘Lionel’s shoe caught on the jutting edge of the stones and that was all it took.
And when he fell I rushed to the edge and looked down and I did not feel guilty or sad.
I felt relief. I felt freedom. I felt the weight of all my life lifted off my shoulders even as the servants came rushing to help and his blood was spreading dark beneath him on the grey of the pavers. ’
She began to shake with the coldness of the room on her naked body and he lifted a blanket from the bed and tucked it around her, bringing her into him.
‘I think it wasn’t your fault.’ His words were whispered into her hair.
‘And I think that it was not yours, either.’
Sanctuary coupled with absolution was a potent thing as she wrapped herself further around him and held on until her tears stopped and there was nothing left save for relief.
‘We were both married to people who could never be happy and suffered because of it.’ He held her tight before speaking again. ‘But here with you in my arms, all I can think of is how right it is and how I never want it to end.’
For the next few weeks they met every night, either at her place or his, quietly and in secret, two people who needed the other to make them whole, clinging to delight with every fibre of themselves.
Willa could not remember a time when she had been so happy, and the nights turned into daylight assignations as well.
Phillip had sent most of his staff to Elmsworth Manor in Hampshire to help out there for a month, so the town house on St James Square was theirs, except for an elderly cook and her husband whose living quarters were off the kitchen, and whom they seldom saw.
It was a perfect arrangement.
This afternoon they lay on a bed in the bedroom upstairs in the front of the house, the sun from the large windows slanting in across them.
‘In America I thought I might never be happy again. I could never have imagined this.’ Phillip’s finger trailed up the curve of one breast and then to her throat. ‘You have the softest skin, Willa, and in the sun here it glows golden.’
She laughed.
‘My mother had the same skin because her ancestors hailed from northern France.’
‘Did you have other family with you in Hampshire when you were growing up?’
‘No, there was none. Both my parents were only children whose parents had died a long time before I was born. I think that was why they clung to each other so desperately and why they could never understand what my needs as a child were. You were lucky to have a brother.’
‘I didn’t feel that way for a long time but now, with Esther and the children, we are growing closer and it feels right.’
‘This feels right, too,’ she returned as his fingers trailed down her stomach and rested in the space between her legs.
And then they spoke to each other in different ways, the body having a language all of its own.