Epilogue
“Ithought it was terribly dull. The hero was so… thin and transparent. Hardly heroic at all. He spent so much time bemoaning his fate and… it was just very unsatisfactory,” Maria said, holding the book in question on her lap.
“Hmmm, I suppose that you are now spoiled for literary heroes by having a real-life one of your own. But you mustn’t let that color your judgment, Maria,” Evelina said.
“She has a point. One cannot imagine the hero of this work carrying two men out of a burning house,” Anna said.
“He is more of an intellectual hero,” Theodora said. “He is perhaps overly introspective. I agree, Evelina, I think Maria’s expectations of men are now set impossibly high.”
Maria laughed at the accusation.
“I can assure you that I do not have high expectations of anyone except my husband.”
“Always before, you gravitated towards the thinking protagonists of the books we discussed. The intellectual hero. That was your preferred type of man, was it not?” Evelina said.
“Yes. I was not attracted by an overly physical male, it is true.”
“And since marrying the Duke of Winterleigh, a very physical man indeed, that has changed?” Evelina probed.
Maria blushed and threw the wretched book down and her hands up.
“I give up! Yes, Damien has jaundiced me against the ordinary sort of man. As far as I am concerned, he is…”
“Zeus?” Anna suggested.
“I was going to say Hercules,” Maria said.
“Ah, a mere demi-god. That makes all the difference,” Theodora said.
“Suffice to say that I think we are probably all in agreement. The hero of this particular book does not exactly live up to the expectations of events in the real world in the last three months,” Evelina said.
“An excellent first Corset Chronicles Club meeting here at Hollowmere Lodge. Well done, Maria, for being an excellent hostess.”
The others raised their glasses of wine or cups of tea.
Maria blushed, looking around the quaintly decorated room.
The house was one of Damien’s possessions in the countryside, London barely visible on the horizon when the sky was clear.
Since the destruction of Winterleigh it was home to Damien, his wife, their staff and…
“Mama! Mama! Look what Papa has given me!”
Gilbert bounded into the room, hurling himself through the door without knocking and running to Maria, holding a piece of wood. When he reached her, he flung himself into her embrace, hugging her tightly. Maria laughed.
It had not taken long before Gilbert had come to call her mother and Damien, father. The boy seemed to be desperate to use those terms with someone. He had tried out the names in the first month and then continued when no objection was raised.
The truth was, Maria remembered the very moment that Gilbert had called her ‘mama’.
She would remember that moment until the day she died, even if old age and rusted reason denied her any other memory.
She also remembered Damien’s face when he had first been named ‘papa’.
He had asked Gilbert to repeat it, pretending that he had not heard him. But his smile had told the true story.
“What has he given you this time?” Maria asked.
“A sword of my very own!” Gilbert crowed. “Made by his own hands. I’m a knight now that I have my sword and my horse!”
The horse would be somewhere in the house. Another of Damien’s creations, a hobby horse with a flowing mane of carved and painted wood. It was a skill he had discovered and become adept at very quickly.
“Are you going to greet your guests, future Duke of Winterleigh?” Evelina asked.
Gilbert seemed to become aware of the other women suddenly. He cleared his throat, bowed low.
“Welcome to Winterleigh. You are most welcome. I am at your service,” he said formally.
The ladies bowed their heads and thanked Gilbert for his courtesy. Maria glanced at the clock on the mantlepiece.
“Well, Sir Gilbert. It is time for you to go to bed. Come on, we will find your valiant steed along the way, shall we? Ladies, would you excuse us?”
Maria led Gilbert by the hand, through the brightly lit halls of Hollowmere, to Gilbert’s room. They found Damien waiting there, a book in hand.
“I remember reading this as a child,” he said, “I thought I would begin reading it to Gilbert tonight.”
Gilbert was very excited at the prospect as Damien explained the story to him, which seemed counterproductive.
Maria sat at one side of the bed while Damien sat at the other, reading in his deep, commanding, and articulate voice.
Despite his excitement, Gilbert’s eyes were soon drooping. In moments, he was asleep.
His parents rose quietly and left the room.
“How is the Corset Chronicles Club?” Damien asked. “Should I be sociable?”
Maria settled into her husband’s embrace, looking up at him and brushing her lips against his. The days of masks were long gone. Damien faced the world openly and her, honestly.
“No need. They are all retiring for the evening. Our discussion was curtailed when we realized that male heroes in literature pale in comparison to their real-world counterparts.”
Damien chuckled. “I am no hero.”
Maria laughed. “I did not say you were. What a big head you have for yourself.”
Damien grinned. “Of course. You are referring to Philby and Matthew for refusing to leave me.”
“Yes, if you like,” Maria said. “Theodora has been making a study of the London scandal sheets, compiling statistics about their content. She has noticed a distinct change in the last three months. The name Phantom is absent; the Hero of Winterleigh appears a great deal.”
Damien led her through the suite of rooms that formed their family quarters, towards the bedroom they shared.
“Piffle. It is irrelevant,” he said.
“It is very relevant for the rebuilding of Winterleigh. You are thought of as a hero. Whether you want to be or not. Of course, you will always be the only hero that either Gilbert or I will ever need.”
Damien flung open the doors to their bedchamber with an extravagant flourish, kicking them shut with his heels. He spun Maria in his arms, lifting her from her feet before tossing her to the bed. She lay with arms outstretched. Damien appeared above her, climbing her body until he lay atop her.
“I will not hear that word again,” he told her. “It is banned.”
Maria began to speak to tell her that she had no intention of allowing him to forget his heroism, but he silenced her with a kiss. As soon as his lips permitted, and as she squirmed and wriggled beneath him, Maria said.
“You truly are my hero!”
From where he had been kissing her neck, Damien’s frowning face appeared.
He silenced her once more. This time, she allowed it to continue.
A weight that had rested upon her shoulders for years, all through her father’s drunken rages, had lifted for good.
And she knew well what his kisses might lead to and welcomed it, passion awakening within her with startling force.
The pressure that had driven her to seek aid for the orphanage, to accept the offer of marriage from the duke, was gone. For the first time that she could remember, there was no fear. And no doubt.
She cupped her husband’s beautiful face in her hand, stroking the lines of his high, angular cheeks, tracing the blade of his strong jaw even as she explored the soft planes of his lips. He nuzzled at her neck, making her writhe, eyes squeezed tightly shut.
“My beautiful wife,” he said. “I am so eager to be inside her.”
Maria let out a little laugh, for her husband had often been inside her since their first amorous congress. “Are you not tired of me yet?”
She ran her fingers through his mane of hair, he allowed it to grow even longer these days, usually tied neatly back. Now Damien shook it loose so that it cascaded around her.
“I will never tired of being sheathed inside of you,” he said, his eyes blazing. “You are so soft and warm, and you feel so very good with your walls pressed against me.”
She groaned, that familiar ache forming between her legs at hearing him describe their coupling in such a brazen manner.
“You are going to undo me,” she said.
“With pleasure.”
She looked into his barbarian face, a savage pagan warrior, a prince of the exotic east. Maria rested her hands upon his broad chest, feeling the tightly controlled power there.
More kisses pressed her down to the bed.
She gathered handfuls of his shirt, pulling it free from his breeches with more and more urgency in her tugs.
Then she could grab at his bare back, find purchase with her nails, claim him as hers. She pressed her thighs together to soothe the ache, noting with no small measure of satisfaction that she was already wet for him.
Damien shrugged off the shirt, tossing it aside and unveiling his muscular body to her. Maria’s pulse jumped, her eyes hungrily roaming over his strong shoulders and impressive chest all the way down to his narrow waist. Then he pulled Maria from the bed by her hands until she sat upright.
Then he began helping her to unbutton her gown. His movements were quick, but to Maria, it felt as though he was taking an eternity to undress her. She pushed the bodice down to her waist and then began to unlace her stays, her fingers made clumsy by her eagerness for his touch.
“You wear far too many garments!” Damien exclaimed as he tore at the ties that kept his wife’s naked breasts from him.
Maria laughed, warmth rushing to her face. “I could not agree more. I would be happy walking around naked were it not for Gilbert and the servants.”
Finally, she was released from it. She wore a chemise beneath which survived mere seconds.
Damien did not bother to strip it from her but, instead, ripped it asunder.
Maria clutched the ruined material to her bosom and looked back at him from beneath lowered lashes.
Seeing a show of his raw strength never ceased to make her heartbeat thunder in delight.
Damien commenced kissing her back, following a path that made her arch her back, lifting her hair up high to allow him to kiss her neck.
She turned to kiss him over her shoulder, but his lips danced teasingly out of her reach.
Each kiss was like a branding, and she squirmed against the bedlinens, letting friction build between the fine fabric and her aching, needing sex.
Instead, he kissed her shoulders and the back of her neck, his hands going around to remove the last vestiges of clothing from her upper body. Then his strong, broad hands cupped her breasts, his hands rough and persistent. Maria melted into him, biting her lip and closing her eyes.
She turned to him and kissed his chest, biting gently and licking, savoring him inch by inch.
The smell of Bay Rum filled her nostrils, the freshness of the scent mingling in the air with his sweat and masculine musk.
Her tongue lingered longest over those parts of him that she knew he was self-conscious about. Still.
The red birthmark that covered his left side. Maria always took care to show devotion to that part of him, kissing him with as much fervor as she possessed, even as her core ached for want of attention.
They helped each other with their remaining clothes, the act of undressing as important a part of their lovemaking as the act itself.
Fabric tore. Garments and stockings and shoes were flung carelessly to the floor and over furniture.
Then the moment that always felt as though it were happening for the first time, as if their passion was awakened anew every time that they made love.
The moment in which their bodies joined.
Suddenly, gloriously after increasingly frenetic play that led to it. That moment in which their bodies became one and Maria’s reasoning mind dissolved, leaving her in a world of instinct and sensuality.
She burned inside and ached, shoving herself against him, and when he plunged inside her at last, Maria tossed her head back with a scream of pleasure.
When she clutched at his muscular, powerful frame.
When she held him tightly as he thrust and moaned her name, the syllables emerged in desperate, worshipful breaths.
“Maria…” he groaned her name as if it was a prayer, as if he was dying man and only she could save him. “God, Maria!”
“Yes!” she exclaimed, riding him fiercely.
He met every rock of her hips with a thrust, a push and a pull that made her muscles tight. She gasped, her entire body quivering as that familiar sensation of release grew tighter and tighter inside her. At last, she came, white spots filling her vision as she rode the wave of glorious pleasure.
There was nothing hidden between them any longer. Their bodies were mapped and explored. Their minds were open to each other. There was nothing in the world for them to be afraid of. Not now they had truly found each other.
After sometimes languid, sometimes passionate and frenetic love-making, they lay entangled amid the scattered bedclothes. Damien drowsed, his head on her breast. Maria lay with one hand on her stomach. She wondered if this time, a little brother or sister for Gilbert had been made.
It did not matter if not. There would be tomorrow night. Or the next. So many nights that her body quivered just thinking of them.
“I love you,” she whispered.
He tilted his head, his soft hair brushing against her breasts. Their eyes met. “I love you, too.”
She smiled, closing her eyes, letting sleep take them both.
The End?