CHAPTER 23 #2
Inside—she had only half noticed yesterday—there was a fireplace with a fire set in the hearth and logs piled beside it.
There was a table with a few books on it and a tinderbox and lamp.
There was a rocking chair with a blanket draped over it.
And against one wall there was the narrow bed upon which they had found Lizzie.
It all looked prettier, cozier tonight. Joseph set the lantern down on the table, took up the tinderbox, and knelt at the hearth to light the fire.
Claudia sat in the chair, rocking slowly, holding the corners of her shawl, watching him.
There was the pleasurable anticipation of what was to come.
All day her breasts had been tender and her inner thighs and inner passage slightly aching from last night’s lovemaking.
It was to happen again.
How absolutely lovely marriage must be…
She rested her head against the chair back.
The fire caught and he got to his feet and turned to her. His eyes looked very blue in the lantern light, his hair very dark, his features chiseled and handsome. He set one foot on a runner of the chair to stop it rocking, set his hands on the arms, and leaned over her to kiss her openmouthed.
“Claudia,” he said, lifting his head a few inches from hers, “I want you to know that you are beautiful. You think you must be unlovely because circumstances once forced an essentially weak man to leave you and because you are now in your middle thirties and unmarried and a schoolteacher. You think it impossible that any man could find you sexually appealing any longer. You probably even tell yourself that last evening happened only because I guessed I would not be free today to pursue our relationship further. You are wrong on every count. I want you to know that you are incredibly beautiful—because you are the product of who you have been and become in over thirty years of living. You would not be as beautiful to me if you were younger, you see. And I want you to know that you are endlessly appealing sexually.”
She gazed up at him.
“This appealing.” He took one of her hands in his and spread it, palm in, against the bulge of his erection.
“Oh,” she said.
“Endlessly appealing,” he said.
Her hand slid to her lap, and he reached up both hands to remove all the pins from her hair. She was going to have to repair it later, she thought, without benefit of a brush or a mirror. But she would think of that later.
“It is a crime,” he said as her hair fell in heavy waves over her shoulders, “to dress this hair as ruthlessly as you do, Claudia.” He took her hands in his and drew her to her feet.
“You are not my dream woman. You are right about that. I could never have dreamed you, Claudia. You are unique. I am in awe. I am humbled.”
She gazed into his eyes to detect irony, or at least humor, there, but she could see neither. And then she could see nothing very clearly at all. She blinked away tears. And then he leaned closer and licked them away with his tongue before drawing her closer and kissing her deeply.
She was beautiful, she told herself as they undressed each other slowly, pausing frequently to caress or embrace each other.
She was beautiful. She ran her palms over the muscles and light hairs of his chest after removing his evening coat and waistcoat, his elaborately tied neckcloth, and his shirt.
And he moved his hands all over her before cupping her breasts, rubbing her nipples with his thumbs, and then bending his head to take them, one at a time, into his mouth and suckling her so that raw desire stabbed downward into her womb and along her inner thighs.
She would not feel self-conscious or inadequate. She was beautiful.
And desirable.
There was no doubt of that once she had removed his silk evening breeches and his stockings.
She was desirable.
And she was not the only one who was beautiful.
She twined her arms about his neck, pressed her full naked length against his, and found his mouth with her own. When his tongue pressed into her mouth she sighed. He was right, there were perfect moments even though they were both pulsing with need.
“I think,” he said, drawing back his head to smile at her, “we had better make use of that bed. It will be more comfortable than the ground was last night.”
“But narrower,” she said.
“If we were planning to sleep, perhaps,” he agreed, smiling at her in such a way that she felt her bare toes curl on the hard floor. “But we are not, are we? It is quite wide enough for our purpose.”
He drew back the blankets, and she lay down on the sheet and lifted her arms to him.
“Come,” she said.
He came down on top of her and she spread her legs and twined them about his.
They were both ready. He kissed her and murmured low endearments against her ear.
She kissed him back and twined her fingers in his thick hair.
And then he slid his hands beneath her, she tilted herself to him, and he came inside her.
His size still shocked her. She inhaled slowly as she adjusted her position to allow him full access, and closed her inner muscles about him. There could surely be no lovelier feeling in the world.
Though perhaps there could. He withdrew from her and pressed deep again and repeated the action until she could feel his rhythm and match her own to it and revel in the sheer carnality of their coupling.
There could be no lovelier feeling than this—both during the first few minutes of controlled pleasure and during the final minute of deeper, more urgent lovemaking as the climax neared.
And then it came—for both of them at exactly the same moment, and she opened to the outpouring of love and gave back in equal measure, and that was the loveliest feeling of all, though it was almost beyond feeling and well beyond rational thought or words.
She was beautiful.
She was desirable.
And finally…
Ah.
Finally she was simply woman.
Simply perfect.
No, she thought as she gradually began to return to herself, she would not go back and change a single detail of her life even if she could.
There were all sorts of complexities, complications, impossibilities to face when she had been restored entirely to herself and sanity, but that time was not yet. There was this moment to live.
He inhaled deeply and audibly, and then let the breath go on a sigh.
“Ah, Claudia,” he murmured. “My love.”
Two words that she would treasure for a lifetime. Even the costliest jewel could not tempt her if it were offered in exchange for them.
My love.
Spoken to her, Claudia Martin. She was one man’s love. Just a few weeks ago all this would have been quite beyond the bounds of credibility. But no longer. She was beautiful, she was desirable, and…She smiled.
He had lifted his head and was looking down at her with heavy-lidded eyes, one hand smoothing back her hair from her face.
“Share the thought,” he said.
She opened her eyes.
“I am woman,” she said.
“Hard as this may be to believe,” he said with laughter in his eyes, “I had noticed.”
She laughed. His kissed her eyelids one at a time before kissing her lips again.
“It only astonishes me,” he said, “that it seems like a novel idea to you.”
She laughed again.
“You have no idea,” she said, “how a woman’s femininity becomes identified with an early marriage and the production of a number of children and the running of an orderly home.”
“You surely might have had those things if you had wished,” he said. “McLeith cannot have been the only man who showed an interest in you when you were a girl.”
“I had other chances,” she admitted.
“Why did you not take any of them?” he asked her. “Because you loved him so dearly?”
“Partly that,” she said, “and partly an unwillingness to settle for comfort over…over integrity. I wanted to be a person as well as a woman. I know that may seem strange. I know it is hard for almost anyone else to comprehend. It is what I wanted, though—to be a person. But it seemed that I could not be both—a person and a woman. I had to sacrifice my femininity.”
“Are you sorry?” he asked her. “Though you did not do it with any great success, I might add.”
She shook her head. “I would do it all again if I could go back,” she said. “But it was a sacrifice.”
“I am glad you did it,” he said, feathering light kisses along her jaw line to her chin and then lifting his head again.
She raised her eyebrows.
“If you had not,” he said, “you would not have been there to call upon when I was in Bath. And if I had met you elsewhere, you would not have been free. And I might not have recognized you anyway.”
“Recognized me?”
“As the very beat of my heart,” he said.
Her eyes filled with tears again, and she bit her upper lip. She heard the echo of what he had said in the carriage on the way to London when Flora and Edna had asked him to share his dream.
I dream of love, of a family—wife and children—which is as close and as dear to me as the beating of my own heart.
She had judged him quite insincere at that time.
“Don’t say things like that,” she said.
“What has this been about, then?” he asked, somehow turning them so that he lay on the inside of the bed, pressed against the wall, and she lay facing him, held firmly by his arms lest she fall off the bed. “Sex?”
She thought for a moment.
“Good sex,” she said.
“Granted,” he agreed. “I did not bring you here for good sex, though, Claudia. Or not just or even primarily for that.”
She would not ask him why, then. But he answered the unspoken question anyway.
“I brought you out here,” he said, “because I love you and because I believe you love me. Because I am free and you are. Because—”
She set her fingertips over his lips. He kissed them and smiled.
“I am not free,” she said. “I have a school to run. I have children and teachers dependent on me.”
“And are you dependent upon them?” he asked.
She frowned.