Chapter 31
There was a carriage waiting for them when they emerged from the hospital, evidently ordered by Guy’s itself as a courtesy, with the little man who’d shepherded them to and from the office encouraging them to take it to their next destination: presumably, the Clerkenwell Clinic.
Mae paused, smiling at her grandfather, her cheeks still warm with disbelief. “You take it,” she said to him, handing over her folio filled with the precious fresh ink of signatures. “I need to walk. I’m full of nerves.”
“Hm,” said her grandfather, his eyes flicking to Roland Reed awaiting her at the foot of the approach. “And eager to speak to your beau, I think, too?”
“Grandy,” she tutted, her cheeks heating further.
“Don’t dally,” he told her. “They’re all waiting for you at that clinic. Not me.”
But he went. He went.
And as the carriage rumbled off around the corner, she found Roland at her side, taking her hand gently in his and tucking it into his elbow. “Where are we going?” he asked her. “The clinic?”
“Where else?” she said with a little smile as they began to walk.
“I could think of a few places,” he returned, giving her a meaningful up-and-down look. “Venice. Seville. New York. My flat.”
“Hm,” she said, leaning into him. “Tempting.”
For a time they just walked in silence, their footfalls matching in pace and breadth as the city inched past. She was looking for the words, she realized, when really she needed only to say one thing.
“We won,” she told him, turning her head. “But you knew that, I think.”
“Oh, yes,” he assured her, pulling her closer. “I know everything.”
She shook her head, chuckling. “Sometimes I think you actually do. How did you know I was wearing the gold underthings?”
“Mae,” he said, turquoise flitting to the corners of his eyes as he glanced at her. “Do not make me tell you that while we are in full view of the public.”
“Make you?” she replied, grinning.
“I told you before,” he said. “Wear that and I will confess to everything.”
“Remarkable,” she marveled. “And you can’t even see it properly. Yet.”
He gave a little groan at that final word and tugged her down an alley, a shortcut, that would get them to the clinic in better time.
He spun her, pinning her quickly against a narrow wooden door with one hand at her throat and the other at her waist, claiming her mouth with an abrupt and burning hunger that scattered all the nerves she had felt leaving that hospital directly into the London air.
Before she could so much as catch her breath to kiss him back, he had pulled away again and was tugging her back down their path.
“You are becoming a very wicked woman,” he told her, smiling to himself at the way she was gasping for breath. “I hope that is my fault.”
“Oh,” she managed, stumbling after him. “It is.”
The clinic seemed to rush to meet them, evidently determined to rob Mae of any further surprise alleyways that might have otherwise intercepted their journey. But, she supposed, she was happy to see it too.
And the cheer that erupted when she entered would live in her heart for all the rest of her days.
She spent the next several hours being volleyed person to person, telling the story over and over again, recounting moments in copious detail at request. There was a particular hunger for the slumping defeat of the younger Mr. Cecil, which she was, of course, happy to provide.
To her surprise, it wasn’t only her clinic family in attendance, nor simply the extended arms of the church and the gambling dens and so on.
Her parents came. Her grandmother too. Even her brother had closed up his precious gold shop to come and await her at the clinic and hear the news. Her brother had always been skeptical of her chosen profession, and yet here he was, just as proud as the rest of them.
She watched them all as they interacted with Roland, watched closely, curious about how they might interact in the years to come.
She glanced at her Granny Violet, leaning fondly against her husband, and a flutter of hope opened in her chest, wide and yearning.
“You are pining,” came Vix Aster’s voice, sharp and sudden, at her back, making her startle. She whipped around, directly into that grinning visage. “It is all right. We all pine now and then.”
“Did you give him the thimble?” Mae asked, unwilling to be bashful in front of Vix just now. “He hasn’t mentioned it.”
“Hasn’t he?” Vix asked, her grin curling up further. “How curious. Perhaps you’ll see it again very soon. Ah, look, Ambrose is here with the food.”
“The … food?” Mae repeated, turning in bafflement as a line of caterers marched into the clinic doors, carrying trays of things for the gathered well-wishers and patients alike.
It was, she thought, the most unusual party that London would see this Season, and the ton would never even know of it.
Roland approached her, carrying two glasses of bubbling liquid in one hand and a plate of assorted bites in the other, his grin wide. “Winston has just discovered pate,” he informed her. “We’re going to have to lock him upstairs.”
“He likes it?” Mae replied, laughing. “I was repulsed by the stuff until I was twenty. Let’s give him the caviar next.”
“Ravi had the same thought,” he said, pointing to the pair, Ravi with a thin wafer piled high with black roe kneeling in front of a skeptical-looking Winston. “A shilling says he hates it.”
“Game,” said Mae, and they waited.
Winston chewed with a strained expression on his face, his eyes crinkled shut, and coughed after, sticking his tongue out.
“Ha,” said Roland.
“Hold,” Mae said, touching his arm and nodding toward the scene.
Winston was frowning, smacking his lips. He tugged on Ravi’s sleeve and asked for the other half of the cracker, which he summarily crammed into his mouth, though his face crumpled all over again upon doing so.
“A draw,” Roland said. “We’ll call it a draw.”
“Fine,” Mae agreed, her shoulders shaking with laughter.
“We could leave, you know,” he said to her, brushing his fingers over her shoulder. “No one would notice.”
“Where would we go?” she asked, smirking up at him. “Venice? Seville? New York?”
“My flat,” he said. “For now.”
She took the plate from his hands and set it on the nearest basin stand. “Game.”
Everyone noticed, of course.
And Mae knew that they would.
But she played the sneaking lover anyhow, pacing her exit against Roland’s and meeting him around the side of the building in a giggling flurry as they clasped hands and ran off into the evening light.
She suspected, bordering certainty, that they had an audience behind them, fondly watching them go.
And strangely, she did not mind it at all.
They circled the blocks at a trotting pace, their fingers linking, stopping to capture pecking kisses at the corners. He unlocked one door and then the other, tugging her along behind him with a grin on his face and heat rushing in the blood under his skin.
They tumbled into his little sanctuary already entangled, mouths and tongues and hands, caressing and tugging.
Her dress fell away first, and she left it behind her in the central room, stepping out of one slipper and then the other on her way to the bedroom. The gold glinted against her skin, shimmering silk fluttering with every move she made.
The corset blended into it, a mirage of singularity, waiting to be unlaced, hiding another layer of sumptuous beauty beneath, and all the while, Roland walked backward, unwilling to take his eyes off every revealed inch of Mae in gilded seduction.
He reached out, capturing her at the waist and dragging her against him, claiming her mouth as his hands slid over the silk, reaching for the ties that held the corset in place and tugging them gently, the little amber beads at the end of each string clacking together as he worked them loose.
He stood back, watching his handiwork, his gaze shadowed with want at the way her body changed with each pull and twist of his hands, until finally he could pull the structured boning away and look at her in nothing but the fine, liquid smoothness of gold fabric, clinging to every detail of her flesh in the twilight.
She grinned, running her hands over his shoulders and giving him a little shove so that he stumbled back and found himself seated on the edge of his bed, his hands coming up to trace the lines of her hips through the gold.
She climbed into his lap, just as she had that night at dinner, sinking her fingers into his hair and running them down to tug away the polite little tie he’d worn there to present himself respectably at the hospital this morning.
She tossed it away, shaking loose his glorious, beautiful mane, and rolled her tongue into his mouth as though she wanted to share the taste of victory with him.
He moaned into it, rucking up the golden hem of her chemise, baring the smooth, red-brown expanse of her thighs to the low light and the attentions of his freckled fingers.
She pushed her knees into his mattress and rose, reaching down to untie his trousers, alight with the way he gasped, at the way his hands faltered and his body shuddered with surprise as she stroked him through the fabric, reaching through the loosened waistband and running her hand along the length of his cock.
She pulled him free, unwilling to stop kissing him, and sank back down so that they could join this way, still clothed, still partially respectable, and entirely, completely belonging to one another.
His hands circled her waist, holding her steady as she began to move atop him, gasping between the indulgent tastes she took of his mouth.
She clawed at his shirt, managing to free him of his cravat and toss it to the floor, kissing her way down his jaw and to his throat as she filled herself with him, as she found wholeness in this way.
“Mae,” he whispered, his hands sliding along the length of her spine, bunching in the golden fabric as they traveled up and then down again, filling with the round shape of her backside as he guided her movement and pace. “God, Mae.”
“Roland,” she murmured, arching up as the sensation began to build, to cluster in the center of her stomach, to crackle and simmer the way it had before. “I love you.”
She hadn’t meant to say it, but the words themselves seemed to snap something in him. He bucked up against her, pulling her back down to crush his mouth under hers as he ground her hips into his own.
It pushed her fast and relentlessly over the cusp of her own pleasure, her gripping hands turning to claws and her gasping breaths turning to cries. She unraveled in his lap, explosive perfection bursting from within her, and it seemed that her own pleasure brought his as well.
They held one another, movement frantic and then slowing, gradual and grinding and desperate, until there was nothing but silence and clinging and the sound of ragged, raw breath punctuated with the occasional gasping sound of wonder.
She pulled very slowly back when she could and kissed him once more, gently. “I love you,” she said again, her eyes heavy with the knowledge that he was still inside her.
“I love you,” he returned, staring up at her with what appeared to be awe, his fingers still lost in the gold silk.
They shared one kiss. And then another. And then a last one before reluctantly untangling themselves from one another.
He supported her by the waist, stroking her shoulders and neck as he pulled her onto the bed, her back against his front, and nuzzled his nose against her hair, giving a deep, contented breath.
She thought, if he hadn’t spoken, she might have drifted off to sleep then and there, so content and spent was she.
“Mae,” he said softly. “There is something on the bedside table there. Will you hand it to me?”
“Hm?” she said, blinking sleepily. She pushed herself up an inch, leaning forward, and peered at the table, her blood flashing warm and then going still in her veins.
There, on the little wooden shelf, sat a silver thimble circled with two golden wedding bands crafted in Asante gold.
She reached out, hesitating because her hands were shaking again.
Again.
Because of Roland Reed.
“Mae,” he said from behind her, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “I’ve a dare to make.”
She turned back to him, her hand still extended over the thimble, trembling.
“There is a ship departing at the end of the week,” he said. “One of three, each with a captain happy to marry an eloping couple, once they reach international waters, of course.”
“International,” she repeated, a little dumbly. “Waters?”
“Indeed,” he said. “En route to Venice. Or Seville. Or New York. Your choice, doctress.”
“Oh, Roland,” she said, finally lowering her hand and accepting the thimble and the two rings with it. “I am not a doctor.”