Chapter 5
Five
Her words sent a charge through Hugh like nothing he’d experienced.
Miss Stanbridge had feelings for him? Feelings of desire? Feelings like he’d had from the moment he’d met her?
Her lovely face, upturned, wearing a look of such hope and expectation, brandished him with shame.
How could he respond? If he did what she wanted, he’d be pleasing himself at the expense of her honour, at the risk of denying her a secure future that might be offered to her by a man in a position…
A position so much more secure and better re-numerated than Hugh’s.
He shuddered as he recalled Mr Ravensby. He’d heard rumours that this gentleman was on the verge of making her an offer of marriage.
In fact, there was no better way to dampen the rush of feeling Hugh felt for this lovely young woman than to think of how much better she could do than him. Starting with the somewhat staid and unexciting Mr Ravensby who lived a comfortable existence according to his station as minor gentry.
Hugh could not even offer her a modest existence in a humble cottage since the purpose of his own journey this afternoon would see him installed in a position that, while it might be prestigious and lead to great things in the future, precluded a wife.
Schoolmasters at Riverdale were not allowed to marry.
Even in the unlikely event that they could afford a wife.
Some day, the hallowed halls of Oxford University could well become home. He’d want for nothing—if his sole aim remained the attainment of knowledge, and passing that on to a new generation, thirsty for learning.
No, he’d want for nothing…
Except the love of a good woman. A young woman, like Miss Stanbridge, who clearly returned his own raging feelings of desire.
But it was not that simple.
With regret, Hugh dropped his gaze. He was not in a position to marry Miss Stanbridge. Not for many years.
If he did not grasp the opportunities afforded him by Sir Pennyworth, he would remain a lowly, underpaid tutor, living in the home of whoever paid his meagre wages, forever unable to afford a wife.
He stiffened as she ran her hands slowly up his shoulders, clasping them behind his neck.
She still wore her sodden chemise. He’d be able to hold himself in check.
Just.
But did he want to?
If she didn’t want him to?
He tried to remain impervious. She’d had too much to drink. She couldn’t be answerable for her actions, and Hugh was, in part, responsible for getting her into that state.
He couldn’t risk getting her into any more dangerous a situation. One that might result in lifelong consequences for this one moment of selfish passion.
She saw his indecision. “Perhaps you should have some more brandy, Mr Kernick.” She indicated the flagon that rested against the rock. A second flagon, he realised with shock as she added, “If it’ll help you… kiss me.”
He stared, unable to reconcile the alluring, determined young woman before him with the demure Miss Stanbridge that he knew.
She wanted him to kiss her?
Common sense warred with desire. Of course, he couldn’t kiss her. Not here, in a dark, dangerous cave, when she’d had too much to drink.
But if not now… when?
Before he knew what he was saying, the truth was tumbling from his lips. “I don’t need any help to want to kiss you, Miss Stanbridge. The truth is, I’ve wanted to kiss you for three years. In fact, ever since the first time I met you. And every time since.”
“You have?” Her eyes lit up. “Then why didn’t you?”
“We were never alone, Miss Stanbridge.”
“So, you would have if we’d been alone?”
He shook his head and said sadly, “No, because I can’t offer you anything. It would have been wrong of me to have encouraged you to—” he touched his heart — “match what I feel here when I have not a penny to my name and am entirely beholden to our good magistrate to keep a roof over my head.”
“You felt something for me here?” It came out in a rush, as if the idea were immensely exciting, and Hugh felt another wave of feeling that started with such hope but turned dark and dangerous.
The kind of emotion that made him want to whisk her into his arms, then make mad, passionate love to her, and be damned with the consequences.
He checked himself, truly horrified. What was he thinking? Only a wild and depraved creature would think like that.
She put her head on one side. “And now we are in a cave and the tide is rising. We may not live to see another day and you have just admitted you have feelings for me. So, are you going to kiss me or not, Mr Kernick?” She studied him as she rested her hand against his damp shirt, her head tilted up towards his.
“I’m asking nothing more than that of you.
I admit, I’ve had a little brandy, but no more than I needed to finally unburden myself as to how I feel about you.
At least I’ll have no regrets about keeping my silence and wondering what might have happened if I’d only confessed.
And you needn’t worry that I’ll have regrets afterwards.
I certainly won’t if the tide swamps us. ”
He didn’t know whether to laugh and gently push her away, or surrender to her argument that there was no better time to act on one’s feelings than in a life or death moment.
“I don’t think you really understand how dangerous the consequences could be if I did as you asked,” he muttered.
She dropped her hand. “No, I suppose I don’t.
I don’t have any idea about love other than that these feelings I have for you have built up so greatly inside me I don’t know what to do with them.
I strongly suspect that you know exactly what to do that would relieve me of them.
” She sent him a hopeful look. “So… would you mind kissing me? Just so I know what it feels like, in case…” She indicated the raging sea just beyond them.
Hugh knew when he was defeated.
Except that he would not take that final step of stealing her virtue.
Not even if she begged.
He’d had enough brandy to feel that he could be heroic under the circumstances.
But not enough that he didn’t know that only a cad would deflower an innocent girl when he had no means of providing for her afterwards.
He smiled. “I will kiss you with pleasure, Miss Stanbridge.”
Her satisfied sigh suggested he’d just agreed to the most onerous of demands.
“And you’ll remove my chemise?”
He startled. Her chemise was the last layer of clothing against her skin. Her bare skin.
“We’ll see about that afterwards. For you need to get yourself warm and dry and I’m sure you can do that without me,” he said, his loins on fire at just the anticipation of touching her rosebud, inviting lips.
One kiss. That would be enough to satisfy her, he thought as he lowered his head.
He told himself it was mercy. A kindness. A single, contained act to warm her and calm her.
But the cave had a way of swallowing lies.
The lantern light gilded the damp rock. The storm’s roar became a drumbeat beyond the tide’s hiss at the entrance. Everything about the place was too close—stone, air, darkness, fate. And Charlotte stood before him like the answer to every restrained thought he’d ever tried to outgrow.
However, the featherlight touch didn’t have the effect he’d expected. He’d thought to be enveloped by some overwhelmingly sweet, sensual sense of coming home. Of feeling a euphoric contentment to at last hold the woman he’d loved from afar for so long.
Of finding closure—as she herself had suggested.
But it was no featherlight touch. No sweet, gentle kiss.
As his lips touched hers and her arms twined behind his neck, she pressed her curvaceous body against his, and he felt himself harden.
His breath caught and a great fire in his loins sent a blast of need throughout his body, surging into his brain and dispelling rational thought, though he was vaguely conscious he was crushing her too tightly.
Not that she seemed to mind.
In fact, Miss Stanbridge only clasped her hands more tightly behind his neck and pressed her body more firmly against his as her lips parted in a sigh of clear exultation.
It was a siren call that activated something deep and hitherto unknown in Hugh. A hunger for connection with the only woman who’d ever triggered in him a desire for something other than learning, numbers, and advancement.
Whisking her properly into his arms, mouths still fused, he took three strides further into the cave and, still kissing her, managed to divest himself of his greatcoat, which, with a flourish, he lay upon the stone floor.
The lantern, which he’d hung high, nestled amongst the rocks, flooding the cavern with light. The fierce storm seemed irrelevant, at the same time as highlighting the fragility of their existence.
The brief thought only spurred him on.
If he had misjudged the cave and it did not connect with the tunnel which, he believed, ended beneath the cellar of one of the town’s busiest taverns, then these might indeed be their last hours on earth; their last opportunity to express what was in their hearts.
A rush of freezing air restored common sense.
“Miss Stanbridge—”
Disengaging himself, he looked at the coat, laid out upon the flat rock beside them, as regret and honour commingled with the baser elements which had nearly won the day.
“Did you not enjoy kissing me, Mr Kernick?”
“I enjoyed it too much.” He flexed his hands, his mouth tight with repressed longing as he tried to avert his eyes from her transparent chemise. The thinnest, most treacherous veil in the world.
Then he forced himself to go on. “You don’t understand how dangerous it is to unleash desire in a man. If I kissed you any longer, I would be unable to stop myself from going further—”
“Going further, Mr Kernick?” She stared at him a long moment, her expression one of devastation. Then, seizing the flagon of brandy, she thrust it into his hands. “Drink up, Mr Kernick. For Dutch courage, I think they say, if that’s all that’s needed for you to… go further.”
He set the flagon aside, out of reach, without breaking eye contact. Not as punishment—never that—but as proof. Proof that this was not spirits driving him. Nor her. Only the truth they had both swallowed for years.
“Miss Stanbridge,” he said, shaking his head, “if I was able to marry you, I’d be on bended knee right this minute, asking you the question.
And I certainly wouldn’t need any more brandy for encouragement to do what I could only, honourably, do with the woman I love and would marry if circumstances only permitted it. ”
“The woman you love?”
He nodded.
“You’re telling me you love me?” Her eyes shone.
Oh, Lord, why had he put it into words? It was impossible, and he had to make that quite clear. Miserably, he added, “But, Miss Stanbridge, I can’t marry you—”
He had to tell her why. “I can give you truth,” he said, voice low, fierce with restraint. “I can give you tenderness. I can give you honour, even here—especially here.” His gaze held hers. “But I will not give you regret.”
She pressed her lips together. “I know. You’re a poor tutor…
” Raising her head, she added with sudden enthusiasm, “But if I reassured you that all that matters to me is the here and now and that I’m willing to take any risk, then you’d be free to act as you would like.
I promise I won’t hold you to anything beyond tonight, Mr Kernick.
It’s just… I don’t want to die without knowing what it would be like to take all these feelings to their natural conclusion. ”
She put her hands to her lower belly as if to illustrate the point. Then, without warning, she cast herself into Hugh’s arms.
Charlotte had no doubt this was what she wanted.
So, he had no private income? She’d suspected it was the reason such a handsome, desirable man had not taken a wife.
And, yes, he was on his way to take up a teaching post that would not allow dependents.
But those were long-term considerations.
Brandy and befuddlement had helped her cast aside her inhibitions, and now she was concerned only with the next few minutes.
Of the feel of his lips opening up to her. Of the roughness of his cheek and the fierceness of his response.
Her entreaty that he show her something of what he felt had fallen on fertile ground, at least, for now his arms were tight about her and he was trailing feverish kisses along her jawline, down her throat; finally grazing the sensitive flesh near her nipples.
It was too exquisite, and she wanted him to go further.
No, she needed it, though the ardour with which he was kissing her suggested he was well on the way to doing exactly what she wanted: show her how desire translated beyond the feelings she was bottling up.
Thank the lord for the storm that continued to rage.
Thank the brandy for its free-ing effects.
And thank Mr Kernick for finally realising the need to fight for what was under his nose since it was clearly what he wanted, too.
When it seemed as if he might draw back and insist on playing the gentleman, Charlotte was unwavering, pulling him down onto the greatcoat that protected them from the chill.
She’d thought she’d not know what to do. But, when following the dictates of her heart, she quickly discovered that mind, body, and heart acted in wonderful synchronicity.
And now all three were singing in tune, excitement fizzing in her veins as he stroked and kissed her.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered, holding him tightly as she squirmed beneath him, the feeling at the juncture of her legs causing her to arch her back. She wasn’t entirely sure what was supposed to happen; she just knew that release was by making him want her, need her.
And she succeeded. His response made that very clear.
As his kisses stoked the fires within her, her mind inhabited a place far from the cold, dark cave, which was their reality.
Finally, she was where she’d always wanted to be…
In Mr Kernick’s arms, feeling his body cleaving to hers while he explored her, his gentle fingers travelling the length of her leg, stroking her inner thighs, whipping up a storm of desire within her before a short burst of pain was the surprising precursor to a wash of pleasure that flowed throughout her body.
And then they were both moving in unison, a mind-altering ecstasy flooding Charlotte’s whole being before ebbing away to leave her with the rapturous, confident certainty that if she died tonight, she’d have no regrets.