Chapter 13 #2
The moment their gazes connected, the older lady’s eyes lit with joy. She half expected the lady to cross to them. She did not.
Instead, she gathered her skirts and strode towards the stage as soon as the actors finished the scene.
Under the lantern light, her beautiful hair coiled atop her head, adorned with beautiful flowers and jewels, glowed like a host of stars.
She applauded the actors grandly as they bowed.
Then, once the actors had departed the stage, the dowager called out loudly, “And now we shall have a performance to celebrate the bride and groom. Everyone knows how much I adore the theater and how I make my guests sing for their supper. Well, she is no longer a guest. She is my dear granddaughter-in-law. But I would like to see her perform for us.”
Muriel looked about, and she quickly realized that the dowager duchess meant herself.
“Up you go,” Perseus urged, giving her a gentle, affirming embrace. “It’s time for you to do what we have all done at one time or the other.”
She blinked.
Her heart began to pound. Sweat dewed her palms.
Her mother looked over to her and tilted her head to the side, checking to see if she was well.
Muriel drew in a steadying breath, closed her eyes, and centered herself.
This was not scandalous at all. It was quite common for young ladies or gentlemen to give recitations or to sing or play the piano before a large company. So this was not a chance of scandal. There was no way she could hurt her family by doing this.
And suddenly, she felt very, very excited to, at last, get to do what she loved so much before an audience. Any audience.
So, she pulled up the hem of her skirts, strode down the path towards the stage, smiled at the dowager duchess, walked up the stairs, and turned to face the crowd.
She supposed she should do a play, a monologue from Shakespeare.
But instead she chose something else. Instead, she chose a monologue about marriage, about joy, about how a man and a woman could unite and make the world its jewel, and how the world showed the balance of a man and a woman. A speech from The Beaux Stratagem.
It was from a comedy written over a hundred years before, and she’d read it and loved it because there were many antics in it, and many impossible routes to happiness. And for a moment in the play, it seemed that the end would not find its happily ever after.
But as in all good comedies, the ending always worked out and there was a wedding.
She met Perseus’s eyes, took a step forward, then tilted her head up and began to speak. Within moments, the entire crowd of guests was staring at her. More and more guests began to come forward. They listened in hushed awe, and she knew in that moment that she held them in the palm of her hand.
She spun them along, line after line, reveling in how they leaned in towards her.
But most of all, she reveled in the way that Perseus looked at her now. Worshipful, adoring, triumphant because the woman that he had always seen within was fully on display before everyone.
Not hiding but proud.
Proud and ready.
And when she reached the end of the monologue, a great cheer went up from everyone.
And then, of course, because only the Dowager Duchess of Westleigh and her whole family would do something like this, in the distance, fire masters began their work and the sky lit with firework after firework blooming into the heavens.
The colors burst overhead, showering above them, lighting the last of winter with the promise of much joy to come.
Muriel had not really thought she was going to get married, or at least when she thought she might get married one day, it was in some sort of distant way.
It was an imagined thing to an imagined man who wouldn’t inspire her in any particular way.
No, she was going to have to get married because that’s what young ladies did, and she would pick a perfectly suitable young man, and make perfectly suitable children with him, and live a perfectly suitable life.
Instead, she had found Perseus Briarwood.
And now, after the wedding party and the fireworks which were still bursting in the sky outside the house, for it seemed the Briarwoods knew nothing of a temperate celebration, she and Perseus stood in his chamber before the fireplace, staring deeply into each other’s eyes.
Amidst the celebrations, he had taken her hand and slipped away up the back stairs, through the halls, and led her here, where they could finally be alone at last.
It seemed as if the world had stopped in many ways. The only thing that existed was the two of them in this room.
No words needed to be spoken now. They had spoken enough words. Both of them were masters of words. Here, all they needed were their bodies.
She rose up on her slippered tiptoes, placed her hands on his linen-covered chest, and offered her mouth up to him.
He needed no further urging.
He took her mouth with his own. Softly, slowly. It wasn’t like the kiss in the coach that had been wild.
This one was more thought out, as if he did not wish to startle her, as if she might be afraid of this night.
But how could she ever be afraid of him?
She wound her hands into his thick hair, pulling him down to kiss her more fiercely.
This time, she teased her tongue to his.
He seemed to love it, and he wrapped his hands about her waist, then splayed them along her back, then lowered them to knead her bottom.
She arched into him, and she loved the feel of his hard sex pressing into her body. For that showed her how very much he wanted her, just as she wanted him.
He let his hands go to the ribbons of her gown and methodically, seductively, he pulled them inch by inch.
It was impossible the way that he made her wait! The way that he made every moment slow, as if he feared he might miss something.
Ribbon by ribbon, hook by hook, Perseus took his time, even as his hands started to tremble with his desire.
He slipped her clothing off, piece by piece.
She allowed him to, reveling in the way he freed her.
And when she stood entirely naked before him, she reached out, determined to seize this moment.
Perseus swept her into his arms, tilting her back as his mouth went to her breast. He took her nipple into mouth. He moaned with his desire for her as he teased and kissed that hard pebble.
Like a man lost, he worshipped her breasts. Then he stroked her ribs and turned to the spot between her thighs.
She parted her legs for him, eager for the pleasure he had shown her in the coach. Eager for even more.
Perseus followed her lead and slipped his hand to the vee at the juncture of her limbs. But before he could begin to tease her, he glanced to the bed.
She shook her head. She wanted him here. Now.
And without hesitation, he sensed this and lowered her to the ornately carpeted floor. He took a pillow from the nearby settee and placed it under her head to make sure she was comfortable.
Firelight, in its red-gold hue, stole over them, bathing them in warmth and languor.
He leaned back on his booted heels, gazing at her body as if she was a goddess.
Hunger transformed his face. Hunger for her and her alone.
He whipped his own linen shirt off and then began to work on his boots, which took a good few tugs, and then he whisked his breeches down his long legs.
Once he was naked before her, she took in his beautiful form. It was a sight that she never could’ve imagined and now he was hers, all hers.
He covered her body with his slowly.
Slowly, he pressed her legs open and positioned his hips between them. Oh so gently, he teased the head of his sex against her opening.
Perseus wound their hands together and locked gazes with her as he entered her body. He was gentle, careful, but for a single moment, she was afraid, for this was the unknown. And everyone surely feared the unknown, did they not?
But this was the man who loved her and she loved him, so how could she be afraid? Especially since her body had been made for this.
So, panting as she strained to take him, she arched her hips upward.
His eyes flared as the muscles of his chest worked to keep him in check, patient, slow.
The new angle of her hips allowed her to take more of him into her and, after that moment, there was no pain.
A breath of triumph passed her lips, and understanding washed over his face. He held her closely, intimately, making them one. Then there was nothing. There were no stars. No moon. No fireworks or world at all.
There was only their bodies moving together, and as he stroked her and rocked his hips against hers, they left everything behind and found bliss. In each other.