Chapter Ten
F inally! As Dunstan’s lips caressed hers and his arm pulled her flush against him, Carys felt as though she could see the shore after a sea journey that had taken up most of her life. His kiss came as an utter surprise as well, blasting any idea of resisting straight from her brain.
It was wrong. Dunstan was her friend. The grandest ball that the Godwin family had held in a generation was swirling on just down the hall, so close that Carys could hear the light, trilling notes of the dance and the low, excited hum of the guests conversing. A hundred things at least needed her attention immediately. The dust in the library tickled her nose, bringing her perilously close to sneezing and spoiling the moment entirely.
But all she could think about was how warm and solid Dunstan felt, especially when he moved his one hand from her cheek to embrace her completely. Her mind and senses were filled with the heat and ardor of his lips pressed against hers. When she parted her lips for him and brushed her tongue against his as she sought what she desired, her mind could comprehend nothing at all but the fire she was playing with.
“I want you, Carys,” Dunstan repeated, giving his words new meaning. “Right now, right here. I cannot live without you.”
Fantasy and sense warred within Carys. She should put a stop to things that very moment, before someone else wandered into the library and disturbed them. Before she came to her senses and remembered that she could not have this thing that she wanted so dearly and for so many reasons.
It was unforgivably foolish, but instead of placing her hands on Dunstan’s chest and pushing him back, she slipped her arms around him as well, threading the fingers of one hand through his hair.
“Dunstan,” she whispered his name, then kissed him again.
He responded with all the passion she could have hoped for and more. Why had they never bothered to take these new steps together and cross the forbidden bridge until now?
She knew all the answers to that question, but she rebuffed them as they tried to creep in and spoil the moment. Why should she deny these new realizations about her feelings for Dunstan a moment longer? They were closer than most married couples ever would be. Why should they not enjoy it?
A sudden bark of laughter from the hallway startled both of them out of the trance of passion they’d fallen into. Carys stepped back, catching her breath, and Dunstan dropped his arm from her back, taking her hand instead.
“Not here,” he said breathlessly. “I’m through with living my life for someone else’s entertainment.”
Carys could not deny that their connection had become entertainment for the family, even if the family all meant well. She threaded her fingers with Dunstan’s giving him her support as well as clinging tightly to him.
“There is a servants’ stairwell at the far end of the room,” she said, swaying into motion and leading Dunstan away from the noise in the hallway and on to one of the library’s dusty corners.
Carys and the rest of the servants had known about the small, winding stairway in the corner of the room, of course. They had used it frequently while going about household business or bringing things from the kitchen to some of the bedrooms on that side of the castle. The family had only recently discovered it, however, and they had marveled.
“I should have known that I would use this clever staircase for mischief,” Dunstan said, stepping ahead of Carys when they reached the hinged bookshelf that concealed the stairs and pulling it open. “As I’m certain generations of my family have before me. I would wager that even Aethelbore made use of the stairs in his assignations with Morgana.”
Carys laughed and stepped into the too-dark stairs. “This is the newer part of the castle,” she explained. “It was built hundreds of years after Aethelbore and Morgana’s time.”
“They would have used it all the same,” Dunstan said, taking Carys’s hand once he’d shut the bookshelf behind them and leading her up instead of down.
Carys’s heart fluttered for more reasons than one as they headed up, then crossed over into what truly was the original, ancient part of the castle. She’d thought perhaps they would venture belowstairs, where they could sit in her housekeeper’s office and discuss the affection they had for each other.
Instead, Dunstan stepped out into the portion of the castle that housed some of the family’s bedrooms and led her to the end of the hall, where his own bedroom stood.
She was not ignorant, neither was she completely innocent of the ways between men and women. She might never have married, but she had known men in the past. The security of her position with the family had once made her bold, and the surety that she would never lose her place at Godwin Castle and be cast out had caused some reckless moments in her youth.
Her heart was far more hesitant than her body when Dunstan shut his bedroom door behind them and turned the lock, then pulled her into his arms.
“I do not care what the rest of my family thinks or wants,” Dunstan said, kissing her passionately and pressing his fingertips into her back, as if he could draw her close enough to make them one. “Perhaps they are right after all and we should be together.”
“Dunstan,” Carys breathed out, knowing she should protest but absolutely not wanting to. Instead, she started in on the buttons of his jacket, longing to relieve him of his clothes as swiftly as possible.
He took a half-step back and sucked in a breath as she undid his jacket entirely and pushed the two sides apart.
“Only if you wish to,” he said, meeting her eyes with absolute seriousness. “I could not bear it if I felt as though I’d coerced you into a position you do not wish to be in.”
“I want you, Dunstan,” Carys said, sliding her hands over his waistcoat and feeling the pound of his heart as she did. “I most definitely want you.”
She proved her point by lowering a hand to the growing bulge in his breeches, cupping him and squeezing slightly. The move was meant both to tease him and to show that she had no reticence whatsoever when it came to intimacy.
Dunstan burst into a breathy laugh, his eyes filling with joy and desire. “Then I shall hold nothing back from you,” he said, diving in for another kiss.
It was glorious. The force of his ardor was everything Carys could have asked for in a lover. He was a better lover by far than any of the other trysts she’d engaged in because unlike them, her heart was filled with the deepest sort of love for Dunstan.
As always seemed to be the case, removing their clothing proved to be the most onerous task that had ever been devised. It was far too complicated and practical an endeavor. Carys was deathly afraid that sense would come to them as they split apart and carefully undid rows of buttons and tugged at innumerable ties and laces. They each retreated to a corner of the room to divest themselves of their garments, and for a moment, the chill of the winter air threatened to dampen everything else.
But when Carys finished with all but her stockings and turned to find Dunstan just straightening from having removed the last of his clothing, heat and visceral need flooded her soul all over again.
Dunstan was a magnificent specimen of masculinity, even at his age. Where other men had long since ceased caring about their appearance by the age of fifty, Dunstan had kept himself fit and strong. His chest was broad and covered with a pleasing amount of graying hair. His waist was narrowed and his stomach was firm.
But it was that uniquely masculine part of him, standing up with the energy of a man half his age, that had Carys quivering from head to toe.
“Where is the ancient relic I have become friends with?” she asked, walking toward him without disguising the hunger of her gaze. “And why has this virile young man taken his place?”
“This man is only as virile as the vision before him has caused him to be,” he said, moving forward and sweeping Carys into his arms.
Carys laughed as he lifted her and twisted so that he could deposit both of them on the bed, where he had pulled back the counterpane. “Now we’ve turned ridiculous on top of everything else,” she said, stroking one hand up his back and threading her fingers through his hair with the other.
“I do not care if we were the silliest people to ever walk the kingdoms of the New Heptarchy,” he said, then dipped down to rain a series of light kisses across her shoulders. “I think I’ve wanted this for far longer than I’d let myself believe.”
“I think I have, too,” Carys answered breathlessly.
He kissed her, his hands caressing her in all the intimate places that could not be seen when they were clothed. His hand brushed her breast as his mouth devoured hers, then swept lower to tease the warm skin of her belly and hip as he shifted to kiss a trail down her throat.
Carys reached for one of her stockings as he worshiped her body with his lips, but he paused to say, “No, leave them on. I love the idea of you in nothing but your stockings.”
Carys laughed and shifted so she could drape her arms over his shoulders as he kissed his way lower.
It was heaven. Dunstan was voraciously attentive to her body’s needs. He kissed her reverently, hungrily, softly, and fiercely in turn, all while teasing his hand along the tingling flesh of her inner thigh, just above where her stocking ended. He was so good at what he did that part of Carys wanted to tease him and ask where he had learned such carnal skills.
A larger part of her did not want to know. He was hers now. Whatever lovers he’d taken after Lady Charlotte’s death were his to know about, just as the few lovers she had had over the years were for her alone to remember.
The present moment was for the two of them together, and Carys intended to enjoy every moment of it. Her heavy breaths and sighs turned to deeper moans as Dunstan teased and suckled first one nipple, then the other. She reveled in the pleasure he gave her and did nothing to stop it from building like a fire inside of her.
And then she surprised him in a moment when his balance was off from shifting positions by pushing him to his back, then straddling him before he could stop her. It was her turn to lavish him with kisses then, humming as she explored every part of him with her mouth and her hands.
He was so desirable in so many ways. It astounded her that she’d never noticed before. She kissed and stroked her way down his body until she could slide his hardening length through her hand, helping him stand fully erect.
Whatever difficulties older men might have had, Dunstan had no such problems. His response to her touch was so alluring and the sounds he made so enticing, that she could not help but be as wicked as possible by taking him into her mouth.
“God!” Dunstan exclaimed as she bore down on him, though not very far, since it had been ages since she’d pleasured a man that way.
He made a few more strangled sounds of pleasure as she used her hand in tandem with her mouth to make him thrash and buck under her. He was free in his expression of the pleasure she gave him, which was wonderful. It was as if they had been together for years instead of finding their way through their first time together.
They had been together for years. They’d been together in ways that mattered for so much more than one sinful night in bed together. They were friends first and foremost, not lovers.
That thought seemed to snag on something in the back of Carys’s mind. They were friends. Their friendship had seen the two of them through good times and bad. Everything they were doing, every touch and swallow, could ruin that forever.
Fear struck her like lightning, but before she could do more than pull back to catch her breath, Dunstan scooped her into his arms and flipped them so that he was atop her once more.
He went straight for what he wanted, giving Carys no time to latch onto the worries that assailed her. With just enough force to have her panting and wet, he moved her legs apart, then dove between them.
It seemed she was not the only one with experience in the ways of giving pleasure. She cried out as Dunstan’s mouth and fingers found the parts of her sex that most ached for his touch. He stroked his tongue over her clitoris with increasing intensity while thrusting two fingers inside her until any fear she might have dared to have fled her mind.
In so short a time it was nearly embarrassing, the tight coil of her pleasure burst, sending throbbing waves of orgasm through her. It was so overpoweringly good that she cried out, then tilted her head back and arched her body to feel it as much as possible. Nothing had felt so wonderful in years.
Before her body had completely finished shuddering in completion, Dunstan adjusted above her and pushed himself into her. Carys thanked every god that existed that she was not a virgin and that she could enjoy the full force of Dunstan’s need for her without so much as a pinch of pain. His need was so great that he thrust into her with abandon, groaning and sighing her name in a higher and higher pitch until he could not form words anymore.
She gripped tightly to him as he spilled himself in her, then tighter still as he sagged, then collapsed to the bed beside her.
“My darling,” he panted, pulling her into his embrace as the afterglow of passion settled over them. “My Carys.”
First came the bliss of physical satisfaction as Carys and Dunstan settled in with each other, pulling the covers over their bodies once the initial flush of heat began to subside.
Then came the questions as Dunstan drifted off and began to snore lightly.
Was the timing of their lovemaking too dangerous? Carys was not a young maiden, but as Lady Muriel and Lady Bernadette had shown, a woman could still conceive in her late thirties.
Then the earlier fear that pleasure had chased away returned.
What if one night of abandon ruined years of friendship? What if she and Dunstan could not look each other in the eyes, or if one or both of them changed their mind about their feelings for each other? What if one single night made it so that they could not bear each other’s company going forward?
As Dunstan slumbered on, Carys grew more and more awake. She inched away from Dunstan’s relaxed body, clutching the covers to her chest so that their bodies did not touch.
“What have we done?” she whispered.
Part of her wished that Dunstan would awake and tell her everything would be alright.
Another part of her feared that he would open his eyes and gasp in horror at what they’d done.
Either way, she couldn’t bear it.
As carefully and silently as she could, Carys slipped out of bed and scampered to the side of the ancient room where she’d left her clothing. As she dressed, the light from the fire flickered across the stone walls of Dunstan’s rooms, making shadows that seemed to be accusing her of wrongdoing.
“ He was your closest friend and you endangered things by giving yourself to him ,” a voice seemed to whisper to her from the walls. “ He loves you, but will he abandon you when someone of noble birth is handed to him? ”
A chill shot down Carys’s spine. Those thoughts most certainly did not come from her. If she hadn’t known better, she would have said it was Morgana herself chastising her for putting the most important relationship in her life in jeopardy.
Worst still, the fire suddenly flickered wildly, even though there wasn’t much of a draft in the room.
It had to be her imagination. All of it had to be guilt causing her to see and hear things that were not there.
“ Remember the curse ,” that eerie voice within her whispered as she rushed to don the remainder of her clothing.
Carys most certainly remembered the curse. She remembered every unfortunate thing that had happened to the Godwin family in the last week alone, from missing tax records to toppled decorations to the family meddling where they shouldn’t.
With her heart pounding furiously in her chest, Carys ran for the door and fled into the hallway as quietly as she could. She should not have given in to temptation. She should not have put herself or Dunstan at risk. At best, they would be awkward with each other in the morning. At worst, their friendship was over and Dunstan would flee Godwin Castle in shame. It was not impossible for him to abandon her and leave her with a child either.
Like Aethelbore had done to Morgana.
By the time Carys reached the servants’ hall, she was near tears. Worse still, while the hour was late enough that the ball had ended and the guests had all departed, every servant in the house was still awake, rushing about, the process of cleaning up after the ball had already begun.
“Are you quite alright?” Cook asked Carys as she hurried anxiously through the kitchen, wanting nothing more than to reach her own room and lock herself in.
“Yes, yes, I am well,” Carys lied.
Cook eyed her like she didn’t believe that.
Worse still, two steps into the hallway she nearly ran headlong into Edgar.
“Where have you been?” Edgar snapped at her. “The family has been searching for you.” He narrowed his eyes. “They have been searching for you and for Lord Dunstan. You would not know anything about his whereabouts, would you?”
“I….”
Carys’s brain seemed to freeze. The only thing that pushed her on was the absolute determination that she would not implicate Dunstan or put him in a position of embarrassment with the servants, or anyone else.
“We both took ill,” she said, thinking as fast as she could. “There was something noxious in the trees that we had to right after Napoleon knocked them over. It seeped into my skin because of the pricks of the pine needles, and before I or Lord Dunstan could wash it off, we became ill.”
Edgar narrowed his eyes and hummed. The fact that he did not entirely question that something might have made either her or Dunstan ill was deeply suspicious, but at the moment, it stood a chance of preventing a larger truth from coming to light.
“Have a care, cousin,” Edgar said, stepping out of her way so that she could continue on to her bedroom at the end of the hall. “Those who play with fire are frequently burned.”
Carys moved forward, unable to answer him. His mention of fire reminded her of the odd feelings she’d had in Dunstan’s room. She ran from them, ran from all the things she felt, but they would not leave her alone.
Despite the beauty of the moment and the love for Dunstan that still consumed her, Carys feared that she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life.