Chapter 26 #2
Godric reacted precisely as Lance did. His eyes widened, and his tongue entered my mouth. When described like that, kissing sounds like a dreadful experience, particularly for someone like me, who avoids being touched. I have often declined to waltz because the dance was so intimate.
But Godric’s mouth was the best thing that I had ever tasted: Better than chocolate, better than cake, better than shortbread. Better than butter.
He put one hand on the back of my neck, and whenever I drew away to take a breath, I found him drinking me in, his lips parted, desperate to kiss me again, a thirsty, surprised expression in his eyes.
I leaned closer, and this time I licked into his mouth, which made him groan low in his throat.
I don’t know how long we kissed. It felt like forever, hundreds of kisses piled on top of one another, but at the same time, one long kiss. I found myself moving closer until my breasts rubbed against his chest.
Our kisses grew more frantic. Ravenous. Feverish. Pretty soon one of my hands was clenched in his hair, and the fingers of the other were clutching his shoulder, as if he might try to get away.
“Evie,” he said minutes or hours later, voice deep and gravelly.
“We should stop, shouldn’t we?” I gasped. My legs felt warm and achy, rather than stiff as a clothes-peg.
If anyone saw us, they would judge me the slut my husband called me. That idea was like an earthworm emerging from the muck after rainfall. Trying to squish it made things worse.
I stopped feeling deliciously hot and brave and desirous and felt—
Ugh.
Still, when Godric drew away, my arms twitched as if to bring him back to me.
“Did I go too far?”
“I kissed you,” I told him, proud and miserable at the same time. “I wanted to kiss you. I still want to kiss you.”
I watched his eyes lighten. “You do?”
I nodded, because I refused to lie to him. I might humiliate myself—I was humiliating myself—but I refused to lie. I had lied too often.
“Are you hungry?” Godric asked. “Crumpsall set up the table in my room.”
“Not for food,” I whispered, the words wrenched from the deepest part of my soul.
Godric dragged his lips across mine, making me shiver. “What shall I do with you, darling Evie?”
“Nothing,” I said instinctively. I didn’t want a man to tell me what to do, whether it meant wearing a gown of his choice, or traveling to the Highlands on his say-so, or giving away my “vulgar” pet.
“I meant it metaphorically,” Godric amended. “Let’s turn the question around. What would you do with me, if you could?”
I was already blushing, but that question may have turned me purple. “If I weren’t Lady Burnsby? If I were unmarried, and sitting in your lap in my bedchamber, with a feast and a glass of wine next door?”
Laughter rumbled in his chest. “Yes.”
“I’m not sure,” I said, the truth spilling out. “I suppose your intentions would be the most important thing.”
“You know my intentions.” That was true.
Godric Everley was determined to marry me, just as soon as I was free of Burnsby.
“Do you trust me?” he asked. “I would understand if you didn’t, since your experience of men comes from Burnsby.”
My lips twitched into a smile, and I kissed his absurdly erotic neck. “I may have to throw wine over your cravats regularly,” I whispered. Finally: “Yes, I trust you.”
“Then let’s go to my room and eat Christmas dinner,” Godric said, rising with me in his arms. He strode over to the hanging covering the door between our rooms. I held it aside and he walked through, nearly tripping over a chaise longue positioned on the other side.
He muttered a curse and set me abruptly on my feet.
My first impression was that his chamber was larger than mine, presumably because it had been Burnsby’s before he took over the abbot’s chamber. The wardrobe was decorated with gilded doves (gaudy and in bad taste, just like Burnsby).
The bed was enormous and took up half of the room, as if a royal barge had floated through the window and lodged in the corner. Even draped in brocaded fabric depicting sheep and cattle, it had a stately air.
“Did you notice the canopy?” Godric asked.
My mouth fell open. The canopy came to a point topped with a gilded star.
“The star that led the wise men to Jerusalem,” Godric said, his voice resonant with enjoyment. How could I have imagined that he didn’t understand irony?
“I suspected Burnsby considered himself an offshoot of the divine family, but it seems he really considered himself another Christ child.” My eyes widened. “The drapes depict cattle and sheep! That bed is the stable!”
Godric nodded. “I assume that Burnsby was conceived in the abbey.”
I turned in a circle. “Why is the chaise longue positioned next to the door to my room? It belongs by the fire.”
“I’ve been sleeping there.”
The chaise was narrow and far too short for a man of Godric’s height. “You’ve been avoiding the star-topped stable? Why?”
He grimaced. “What if I couldn’t get to you in time, or if the hangings muffled your call for help?”
“Oh, Godric,” I said, reaching up and winding my fingers through his tousled hair. “I’m so grateful.”
“I will always protect you, Evie.” The words shimmered through my body like port wine. The best port wine. He wasn’t boasting or trying to finagle my approval. He was just vowing.
“Were you able to sleep on that uncomfortable couch?”
He shrugged, his eyes shadowed and exhausted. “There will be plenty of time to sleep after we have left the abbey.”
“I’ll push a chair before my door and be perfectly safe. You are not spending another night on that absurd piece of furniture.”
“Actually, it did occur to me that you could sleep here, in the stable, and I could retire to your bed.”
“If that would allow you to sleep, I agree.” I grinned. “Tess will be surprised when she wakes me with tea!”
I seated myself at a small table below a crystal chandelier studded with wax candles, from which dangled a ball of greenery dotted with oranges and apples.
“Is that a kissing bough?” I asked, taken aback. Who did the household think Godric would be kissing—in his bedchamber?
The answer was obvious.
“This morning Miss Wellington inquired about my intentions,” he said, amused. “She proclaimed that your father would wish her to inquire, ‘in light of my courtship of his daughter.’”
My mouth fell open. “She what?”
“The household adores you,” Godric said, pouring wine. “Surely you’ve noticed the footman trailing us around the abbey?”
I nodded.
“Not only are they guarding your pig from the stewpot, but since they suspect Burnsby of homicidal tendencies, they have been guarding you as well.”
“Goodness.” I frowned, hearing myself. “That’s such an innocuous, boring interjection considering we’re talking of homicide.”
“It’s very Evie. You save words like bastard for the right moment. Learning that your staff adores you is not a reason to curse.” He raised his glass. “Merry Christmas.”
I resisted the temptation to toast to “us.” There was no us yet, despite the kissing bough and Godric’s best intentions.
Given that the cook must have abruptly divided Christmas dinner into three or four parts and delivered them to separate rooms, she had done the household proud.
Covered bowls revealed everything from goose to roasted chestnuts and Brussels sprouts.
The fireplace had been set up with little saucepans of hissing gravy, and rum sauce to pour over our portion of plum pudding.
When the time came, Godric set it alight, and the flames flickered around the room like a benediction, creating a warm space just for the two of us.
And as we ate, we talked, Godric’s eyes gleaming. Every time I disagreed with him—his understanding of currency would be scorned by any self-respecting mathematician—the desire in his expression deepened, seasoned by a dash of irritation.
Candlelight made his thick lashes trace shadows on his cheekbones, especially when he scowled, admitting a fair point. No man had ever respected my opinions—although, to be fair, I’d never shared them.
I had been married to Burnsby for approximately twenty-four hours before I recognized that my opinion, especially if based on fact, was unwelcome.
Now I explained the flaw in the formula that governs currency exchanges—a conclusion published in a radical newspaper disregarded by the government.
Burnsby would have found it paralyzingly boring, but Godric’s eyes remained bright and engaged.
What’s more, he promised to share the article in question with Benjamin Winthrop, the governor of the Bank of England.
After we had both eaten too much figgy pudding, Godric moved to an upholstered chair and held out his arms. I walked across the room, my heart pounding, a smile that I could not banish curving my lips.
When I reached him, I braced my hands on his armchair and bent until our eyes were at equal height. “Was there something I could do for you, Sir Godric?”
“Yes,” he said, one word, deep with longing as he drew me into his lap.
My skirts were generous enough that I sank down with my knees on either side of his hips. I glanced down at our bodies and turned crimson, but Godric distracted me by kissing my collarbone. Licking it.
(Is that normal? I know nothing of bed play.)
“Your collarbone is so delicate that I’m amazed it hasn’t snapped as you walk about,” he murmured.
“Ladies are coddled,” I told him, finding it hard to come up with words because I was caught by the idea that I wouldn’t mind licking Godric’s neck.
“How can such a slender neck support all that hair and a tiara?” he murmured. He tossed the headpiece on the table, all the while his tongue kept painting polka dots on my neck. My skin scalded everywhere his tongue and fingers brushed.
“Your skin tastes like honey, almond blossom honey.”
“Almond oil,” I said.
“I love your chin,” he said conversationally. “Many women’s chins are sharp, like the points of a compass—have you noticed?”
As I shook my head, more ringlets fell down my back. Without the tiara, Tess’s magnificent construction was unraveling.
Godric drew me closer, until my thighs were snug against his body. “Your chin is delightfully square. When you press your lips together and stare at me while making a mathematical point, I have trouble concentrating because I want to kiss your chin. Or bite it.”
I gasped—or perhaps giggled. I tried to disguise my trembling legs by clenching my thighs; his eyes darkened when my legs clamped along his sides.
“The curve of your bottom lip is like the bottom half of the moon. Sometimes I marvel over your mouth until I lose track of the dining room conversation.”
“Your lips are beautiful as well,” I whispered, tracing his mouth with a finger.
“Yours plump after kissing me. You never pout, but they pout because—” My tongue curled against his and stole his words.
We kissed until my body felt molten and liquid between my legs. He licked a bead of sweat off my forehead, and instead of being embarrassed, I told him about feeling like the Christmas pudding steaming in its pot.
“When you lifted me from the snowbank. When you said . . .” I faltered.
“When I said that I wanted to make a snow angel with you,” Godric said, his eyes as greedy as his voice. “I want to embrace you on a mattress of snow, lying on your body while you spread your legs.”
I’d stopped trying to disguise my trembling legs and fingers.
“Perhaps we can do that someday,” I whispered, shocked by the hunger in my own voice.
“What about a field of flowers, Evie? May I lie on top of you in a field, even though I’m bigger and heavier than you?”
Outdoors? Did people lie together outdoors?
“Yes, yes, they do,” he said, because apparently I had asked that aloud. “They do. We will, once we’re married, Evie.”
His voice yearned, as if he was talking about more than making love in a bed of flowers.
“You’ll be mine, and I’ll be yours. Sometimes we’ll go for a walk in the country—did I tell you I have an estate in Buckinghamshire?
—but we won’t be able to wait to return home.
We’ll lie down in a bed of wildflowers, and you’ll ask me to kiss your breasts.
I see your nipples brushing your gown sometimes, as if they were longing for my tongue. ”
I was so tangled up with embarrassment and agonizing desire that I couldn’t reply. His voice was desperate, but I was still married to someone else.
And he was Godric. A barrister who would be a judge. A warrior in the courtroom. A man who often dressed all in black, which was inexplicably more attractive than any other color, at least when he wore it.
His eyes were narrowed to slits, and his hair was tumbled by my hands. His voice had changed, too—thick and hot, tender but strained. He didn’t sound sensible or judgmental.
I knew instinctively that no other woman had seen his face like this. “I adore you,” I whispered.
More than anything, I wanted him to touch me below my neck. I kept squeezing my thighs and pushing down against his legs, but he kept his hands away, not even caressing my back.
“I’ve adored you since an hour after we met,” he told me.
“So untrue!” I crowed—but he managed to convince me.
“We should go to bed,” I whispered, sometime later. The candles were guttering and nearly out. “Someone must take this food away and wash the floor because of the rats, and they’ll want to be in bed themselves.”
Godric tugged the bell cord that rang in the servants’ quarters. “Crumpsall will send a footman.”
Before anyone could arrive, I returned to my bedroom and rang for Tess. After the sounds of Godric’s room being cleaned faded away, we exchanged rooms. Without speaking about it, we agreed not to kiss or touch while wearing night clothing. We whispered good night and retired.
I was deeply asleep, my arms wound around a pillow that smelled comfortingly like Godric. I scarcely registered it when my bedchamber door (next door, you remember) slammed open, and Tess squealed, “Evie, wake up!”