Chapter 5
Chapter Five
In the moment, she did not know how to ask him. How to say, simply and forthrightly, what she wanted to feel.
Which was more of this. This raw desire that swept her in waves.
The desire that made men visit pleasure houses, that made women lie with lovers outside the bonds of marriage and be cursed for it.
The reason that emperors had entire seraglios of concubines and women across time had won the favor of kings.
She wanted desire, and she wanted its completion. The promised end.
With him.
She tangled her fingers in his and tugged gently. He followed without demurral, without question. What a heady thing that was, leading this man, all the muscle and heft of him at her command.
She led him to the music room, where the crimson wallpaper and dark wood trim created a sensuous retreat.
Oil lamps flickered from low occasional tables, and candles sat in tall, branched holders, spilling the scent of honeysuckle and ambergris.
A player with a smooth, feminine face but the dark evening coat and trousers of a gentleman sat at the pianoforte, charming listeners with a Kuhlau sonatina.
The lid of the instrument, propped open, revealed a detailed painting of what Effie knew to be the Cathedral of San Marco in Venice as viewed from the sea.
A pang wove through her chest. Venice would be another dream she would lose at marriage, for what husband would set aside his obligations to Parliament or his favorite hunting haunts to take a wife on travels in Italy?
At best she could make visits to Heddy and play tableaux of being a Venetian courtesan.
Until her husband found out and stopped her, of course.
“What is the matter?” Jay asked softly.
“Hmm?” With his voice close to her ear, every thought fled. At least she had tonight. One dream left to her.
“You seemed sad all of a sudden.”
He lifted a strand of hair away from her neck. She’d pinned her hair up in braids, like a coronet, but her curls never liked to stay. He pressed a fingertip to the sensitive place below her ear, she guessed touching the small birthmark there, and Effie shivered.
Chairs and chaises sat scattered about the room, interspersed with small tables holding statuary, most of it some version of an unclad human figure.
She led him toward the bay of one window, draped with heavy damask.
She pulled a second curtain to create a private alcove, screening them from the rest of the room, though they could still hear the music and the low conversations of the others. Private, but not secluded.
She drew in a deep breath. “I am going to be married,” she said.
He sat beside her, his thigh lying along hers. The thin muslin of her costume was no shield against the firm heat of him. He turned his head in her direction, though dark surrounded them.
“Soon?”
“At the end of summer, if my parents have their way.”
“But that is not what you wish,” he guessed.
She shrugged, rustling the silk of the Paisley shawl Iris had instructed she wear, the pattern apparently being Persian in origin.
“What I wish is to marry to please myself, or marry not at all and devote my life to study and writing. But my family decided the match, and I have an obligation to please them in return for all they have given me.”
“What of his family?”
“Mine also. He is my cousin.”
“And what does he think?”
Her mouth pulled up in a half smile, a gesture he likewise could not see. “He says he might do worse, and left to his own devices, he so far has not done better.”
“Lady Erato.” Jay lifted his hand to her face, as if finding her in the dark, and cradled her chin in his hand. Such large hands he had, the palms slightly roughened, the muscles strong with work.
“You should be cherished,” he said softly.
She wanted, suddenly, to cry. “I will be provided for. A home, several of them, actually. Pin money. My own carriage and footman, I don’t doubt. He will never quarrel with how I order the household or raise the children or spend my time, as long as his needs are met and I do nothing to shame him.”
“What would he think,” Jay asked softly, “of this?” He traced a finger along the collar she wore, designed to look like opulent jewels.
“He must never know of my play here, of course. But who will tell him?”
In fact, her cousin had come to the club once, had been in the audience of one of Effie’s first tableaux. Her heart had stopped beating at the time, but apparently her mask was effective. She thought about removing it now. She wanted Jay to see her, all of her.
“Do you mean to keep many secrets from your husband?” he asked.
“One,” she said. She still clasped his other hand, and she drew it towards her to hold both his hands to her breast. She hoped he could feel the wild beat of her heart and know what it meant.
She loved how his mind seemed to work in train with hers.
She’d experienced that with her women friends, but never a man.
Never had there been anyone like him.
“What makes me sad,” she said softly, “is to know I will never feel this for him.”
“You might.” His voice was rough, the scrape of a cast iron pan in the oven, brimming with heat. “Given time.”
“I already know I will not. And I can accept that. Only I do not wish to go my whole life having never known—” Her throat closed like a sea anemone seizing its prey. She swallowed the sudden despair.
“And I will not be unfaithful to my husband, of course. So it must be now. Before.”
“My lady. What are you asking of me?” His thumb moved, stroking the skin of her breastbone beneath her folded hands. Her breasts grew full and heavy.
“One night,” she whispered. “To know what it is like.”
“To know what?” His voice was a thick purr, like the grate of a feline.
He was going to make her say it. To be perfectly clear. Effie swallowed hard.
“Pleasure.”
His thumb moved in slow circles, and waves of sensation cascaded over her skin. Her legs tingled. Her breath came shallow. “Why choose me?”
Because it was him. Because she had come to the sea to find solace and she found him instead, standing with his feet in the water and his eyes on the mud, the wind tossing his hair, and his face in its line of focus the most entrancing thing she had ever seen.
Because he was like her, curious, thoughtful, and he didn’t have a careless or unkind bone in his body.
She knew that as surely as she knew her own face in the glass.
And because, when she was with him, the world came alive in a way it never had before. She came alive, her whole body a teeming rivulet, and she wanted to pour herself around and over him.
“Because of this,” she said simply. “Because of how I feel when you touch me.”
“Darling.” His voice made the ache grow inside of her. “You are so beautiful. You are— I do not have the words. Perhaps poets do.” His palm was warm against her, like an anchor in the storm of emotion, making her wild and yet calm at the same time. “But if you are to belong to another man—”
“I belong to myself,” she said, her own voice ragged. “I am mine to bestow on whom I wish. And I—”
She could not say the rest. This was humiliating. She should not have done it. She should just go home now and press her face into her pillow and never emerge. Heddy would understand.
“Have there—” He hesitated. “Have there been others, and they—?”
“No!” She caught her voice as it rose wildly.
She would be heard over the music if she could not restrain herself.
“There have been no others. There never will be.” She pushed down a sob.
“I am sorry. It is overreaching of me. I should not presume that you would—that you might— Of course you would prefer not to. I am—”
Her words disappeared in the hot swoop of his mouth as it came down on hers.
He moved as if a leash had snapped and all the power he held at bay was now released.
He slung his arms around her and pulled her against his body, one hand on her bottom to hold her to him, one hand sliding into the coils of her hair to hold her head in place for his ravishing kiss.
He kissed as if he were hungry for her, starved.
He kissed her as if he felt everything she did, this uprush of air and fire, and he, too, wanted more of this now, tonight, before the world intruded and their enchanted moment disappeared.
She tried to catch her breath, murmured the question against his mouth. “Is this— Are you—?”
“Most gorgeous Erato. My Muse.” He pressed kisses along her jaw, beneath her ear, along the delicate skin of her neck, moving swiftly, as if he wanted to kiss her everywhere at once. “May I bring you pleasure? In whatever ways you could wish?”
“Oh, yes,” Effie breathed. “Yes.”
The music in the room changed to a Beethoven sonata, one of Effie’s favorites, melodic, haunting.
She fell into Jay’s kiss as if she were leaping from a cliff to the sea.
She pressed herself against him, unable to be close enough, and he leaned on the wall to haul her onto his body and hold her.
She was drowning. He was so warm, somehow hard and soft at the same time, and their tongues tangled in a dance of give and receive that she wanted to last for all time.
This was the pinnacle of her life, being in Jay’s embrace. If only she could stay here, always.
He lifted his head, catching his breath. His eyes gleamed in the darkness, bright as flint. “Is there a danger your husband might find out about us, and shame you? I would not wish you to have any regrets, after.”
“Will you stop speaking of him?” Effie growled. She wanted only the two of them in this darkness, heat and kisses and this fiery melt, holding the world at bay for one another.
He kissed her and made time disappear. She sank into the rapture, this universe here in his arms, and the rising urgency to have more of him, all of him, if she could.