Chapter 5
Five
ARTEMISIA
“I think you need another leech treatment,” Artemisia said stupidly.
“I am not putting leeches in my breeches,” Henry said firmly. “On my face was bad enough. Besides, I cannot bring myself to consider how many of those foul things would be required to diminish my current state of—”
“Not for that!” Artemisia’s laughter bubbled over.
She tried to keep it in by clasping one hand over her mouth, covering the lips that he had just kissed, and apparently gotten himself into a state over.
Daring to dart a glance down, she choked at the sizable ridge tenting his slightly-too-tight and too-short trousers.
Wheezing, she thumped herself on the chest.
“You’re terrible,” she declared when she could speak again.
“You love it,” the rapscallion murmured.
“Unfortunately correct,” she conceded. “I do enjoy an occasional vulgarity. Customs and propriety are important, but a bit of naughtiness lends spice to the dreariness of life. Just don’t make such jokes within earshot of the children,” she said sternly.
“Do you see any?” he asked, glancing around the common room.
“No.” She tugged his sleeve. “That’s enough exercise for you, sir. Time to rest.”
In truth, she didn’t want to be amongst strangers anymore. The way they looked askance at her, but not Henry, after that kiss, made shame roll down her spine.
“Are you resting with me?” her companion asked with heavy innuendo.
“I shouldn’t,” Artemisia demurred.
“Have you considered that possibly, you should?”
She shook her head vehemently, staggering a little as they mounted the stairs. The wine and dancing had gone to her head. “Absolutely not. You are injured. You aren’t in your right mind. One of us has to make good decisions.”
“What is a good decision, Artie?”
Now he decided to use her embarrassing diminutive. The rogue. The cad. She was half in love with the man already and she didn’t even know his true name.
“A decision you won’t regret later.” She punctuated this statement with a hiccup and promptly tripped on her own skirt. “Drinking that second glass of wine was an example of a poor decision. I rue it already.”
“You’re not inebriated. You’re nervous.” Henry righted her again and helped her mount the few remaining stairs.
“I am not,” she protested indignantly. How dare he be right?
“There is no such thing as a life without regret,” he said.
“How very wise.”
“You might reproach yourself for taking me to bed, Mrs. Longwood. But I daresay you’d regret not tumbling me even more.
In twenty or thirty years, will you think back upon this moment and wish you had let me worship you for one night?
Or will you look back fondly upon the guilt-free, no-consequences night of pleasure you found in my arms? The choice is yours.”
She scoffed. “Either way, I’m bound to feel remorse.” Artemisia shoved the key into the lock and twisted it open with a metallic click.
“Why?”
“If I say yes, I’ll always feel wrong about taking advantage of you. If I say no, I may regret not availing myself of the opportunity, but I will have my self-respect intact.”
“I wouldn’t want to interfere with that,” he said solemnly. “Yet I must ask whether it is not I, taking advantage of you.” Henry flopped down on the bed, shoeless, in his shirt and braces with the creamy linen parted halfway down his chest.
“In what way?” she asked curiously, her hand pausing on the side laces of her day dress. She didn’t usually travel with a maid, preferring solitude during long coach rides.
“You are clearly inebriated.”
“We just agreed that I am no such thing.”
“That was before you tripped going up the stairs. You are fortunate I was there to catch you, Artie.”
She hung her dress over her stays and petticoat in a futile attempt to conceal her underthings—he had already seen them; what did it matter if they were in open view?—with a chuckle. “I am lucky indeed. Now toss me that pillow.”
Henry cracked his good eye open. Her breath caught. The slow, penetrating way he looked at her was sinfully delicious, as was his pose with both arms folded behind his head.
“No,” he said simply. “You aren’t sleeping on the floor tonight.”
“I was going to try the chair again,” she said, though her back had ached all day from last night’s attempt.
“If you want the pillow, you’ll have to come and get it, Artie.”
He was plotting something. She knew it. The bossy man simply unhooked his braces, unfastened his trousers, and shucked them down his legs. Still sitting up, he reached behind his head and tugged his shirt off, too.
Naked but for a pair of too-close-fitting smalls that clearly delineated the delight he was attempting to convince her to explore, in mouthwatering detail, he lay back down. Artemisia cocked an eyebrow and picked up his discarded clothing, folded it, and placed it inside the dresser.
“I trust you won’t make a habit of expecting others to tidy up after you,” she said tartly.
Then she marched over to the bed, reached across his naked body, and tried to snatch the bag of feathers on the far side.
Predictably, though somehow it still shocked her, Henry snatched her by the waist and used her own momentum to drag her in next to him.
Artemisia’s squeal of protest ended in a shriek.
“Forget putting away the clothes,” he said, pinning her to the mattress.
“I can’t sleep here,” she mumbled, but he was already kissing her into submission. All the fight went out of her. Not that she was fighting very hard.
“Are you going to make me call for leeches to get rid of this?” he taunted, rolling his hips suggestively.
“I can think of a better method.” His mouth inched down, pressing soft lips surrounded by rough stubble to her throat.
The contrast of damp heat and prickly coarseness did wonderful things to her body.
Her nipples tightened into aching beads.
A liquid pulse in her core had her mindlessly opening her thighs to better accommodate his weight.
Daringly, she wriggled one hand free from his grasp and snaked it down between their bodies to stroke him.
“At last, the lady capitulates to the inevitable,” he quipped with a sigh of contentment.
“How do I know you’re not married?” She froze.
“I assure you I am not.”
“How can you possibly know, Henry?”
“I just do.” Frustration edged into his tone. “I have an aversion to the entire concept of marriage.”
“A libertine,” she teased, resuming her exploration of his hard length. The rest of him wasn’t half bad, either.
“Perhaps,” he mumbled. “I don’t think so, though. I have a feeling it’s been quite some time for me.”
“Then let us not waste a moment. After all, you do need your rest.”
They did not hurry, however. Henry divested her of her chemise slowly, groaning at the sight of her breasts. He cupped them, testing their fullness, teasing her nipples with a light squeeze before bending to suck them. She clutched his hair, her back arching into his touch.
“You are magnificent, Artemisia,” he told her. “But tell me something. You were married, were you not?”
“I was. My late husband suffered a carriage accident several years ago. I have no desire to remarry.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Don’t be too relieved,” she chided. He chuckled and stroked her between her legs, finding her wet and ready for him.
“No children?”
Sadness pinched her, sharp and hard. “No. I’m glad for that,” she lied. “Our marriage was not particularly amicable. I wouldn’t have wanted to bring a child into it. That was the source of many of our arguments, unfortunately. He blamed me.”
Two blue eyes, one rimmed with dark violet and green bruises, the other clear, met hers. “How did he know he wasn’t the problem? It takes two parties to make a baby.”
“He had a daughter out of wedlock,” Artemisia told him. “Another cause of many a fight. I can be utterly impossible to live with. You can rest assured I will not fall pregnant and trap you into an unwanted marriage, Henry, for I cannot bear children.”
“Perhaps,” he said, sounding unconvinced as he fitted himself to her.
“For tonight, I want to make believe. Since the stakes are low. Sooner or later, you will go off to help your cousin, and I will either regain my memories or find a way to start fresh here in Cavalier Cove. Neither future is conducive to starting a family.” He inched inside her, stretching, filling her.
Artemisia gasped. “Let’s pretend I’m going to fill your beautiful belly with our child. ”
He kissed her so sweetly that tears sprang to her eyes.
“I’d like that,” she whispered. “I adore children. I always wanted them. They see the world with such curiosity and innocence.”
“You’re protective,” Henry said fondly. “You would make a wonderful mother.”
He pressed forward again, his hips rolling, withdrawing and returning in a timeless, unhurried rhythm. Enjoying the act as much as she was. Not rushing through it. Her pleasure caught her quickly. Artemisia came with a gasp.
“That’s it, sweetheart. Come for me again.” He shifted her around, entering her from behind, propping her leg up with one forearm and stroking the tight button at the apex of her sex with the other.
His movements stuttered, hips pistoning into her as the climax took them. Artemisia clung to him for dear life. Their lips clashed and missed, finding one another again and again as they crested the peak together.
When it was over, she lay in his arms, breathless and sated. Henry kissed her temple and tugged her close against his chest.
“No need for leeches in breeches after all,” he mumbled. “I knew you were capable of curing me. No worms needed.”
“Such a romantic sentiment.” His low chuckle rumbled through her.
Artemisia pulled his arm tighter around her waist. She did not want to think of Mr. Longwood and his constant criticisms. How even in the tender silence after lovemaking he would find ways to criticize her.
Instead, she felt content. Right. She loved the feeling of being held by a man.
The crisp hairs on his chest and legs a contrast to her softer skin.
The thick hardness of his bones and the planes of his muscles where she had only generous curves.
She imagined Henry taking root in her womb.
She lay there awake for a long time imagining the child she had failed to conceive with her husband, marinating in the depths of her own inability, and worried for her cousin Margaret.
Artemisia was a terrible person for abandoning her relative at such a delicate moment, to take pleasure with a complete stranger in a roadside inn.
As Artemesia had predicted, no matter what choice she made, guilt was inevitable.