Chapter 9

Nine

Minnie had to admit that she was not the most accommodating guest for the rest of the day. She lost her patience for Lady Jessica’s drivel, and she found it impossible to smile and listen to Lord Otho’s thinly-veiled attempts to flirt with her at supper. If the weather had been anything other than grey and dreary, she would have suggested that she and Lawrence take a turn around Tidworth Hall’s gardens. But the rain was as relentless as Lady Jessica’s tour, so that was not possible.

In the end, Minnie begged the pardon of her company, especially Lawrence, so that she could take herself up to her and Lawrence’s room for a nap in the afternoon. She needed it after her mostly sleepless night. Sharing a bed with Lawrence had been more of a challenge than she’d thought it would be, mostly because all she wanted to do was flip over and snuggle up against Lawrence’s warm, solid form.

She could not manage to sleep during the afternoon either, but for entirely different reasons. Her mind would not stay still. She followed her thoughts down the west hallway Lady Jessica had showed them briefly in the morning, wondering where the doorway to the attic might be located. Further, she attempted to mentally map out a route from said attic to the mews, where Lawrence’s carriage was being kept during their stay, but seeing as she was not entirely certain where the mews were located, those thoughts were more frustrating than anything else.

“There must be a way to accomplish this feat quickly and without being caught,” she said hours later, after the strained supper, when she and Lawrence returned to their room, presumably to rest after a busy day of touring the house and showering Lady Jessica with false flattery so that she would not grow suspicious of them.

“I was able to speak to Silas earlier,” Lawrence told her as they paced the length of their room on opposing tracks to pass the time until it would be safe to set out on their mission, Clarence positioned on the bed to watch them. “He can only go as far as the servants’ hall without arousing suspicion, but he is certain that if we can bring the statue there once we’ve secured it, he can assist us in concealing it within the carriage.”

Minnie nodded, buzzing with urgency to begin the entire endeavor.

“And assuming we are successful and the statue is secreted in the carriage tonight, we will take our leave from this stifling place in the morning?” she asked.

Lawrence nodded. “And not a moment too soon, if you ask me.”

Their pacing brought them face to face in the center of the room at that point, and Minnie paused to blink at Lawrence.

“You do not wish to spend more time reliving old days with your former lover?” she asked, speaking as if the idea meant nothing to her, when, in fact, it made her skin prickle with jealousy to think Lawrence had ever loved or wanted anyone else, particularly the odious Lady Jessica who was no longer Lady Wimpole.

Lawrence huffed a humorless laugh. “I have learned a valuable lesson here at Tidworth Hall,” he said.

“Which is?” Minnie prompted him.

“That one should never revisit the past,” Lawrence said. “Some things should remain in memory so that the shine of what one once thought can remain and not be damaged by the harsh truth.”

Minnie tilted her head to the side, curious about what he meant. “What has led you to this conclusion?” she asked.

The side of Lawrence’s mouth twitched. “Merely the discovery that Jessica is not particularly kind, and the understanding that she never was.”

Minnie smiled despite that not being the appropriate reaction for the revelation at hand. “You are a good judge of character, Lawrence,” she said, stepping forward to rest a hand against his chest, over his heart.

She could feel the furious beating of Lawrence’s heart, smell the salt of his skin, and practically taste the way his cheek had felt against her lips. It was scintillating, but not, perhaps, useful in that moment.

With a short intake of breath, she pulled back and glanced toward the door.

“The household must have settled by now,” she said, then turned slowly back to Lawrence, raking him with a look that was hungrier than it should have been. “Perhaps you should don clothing of a darker color so that we might hide in the shadows more easily, should it come to that.”

“Another brilliant idea,” Lawrence said with a smile, then headed to the dressing room.

Minnie was sorely tempted to watch him change through the keyhole once he’d shut the door. As tense as the air between them had become, and as desperate as she was to do something about it, they could not be distracted by their own wants when there was an infamous statue in the house that could improve Lawrence’s reputation as a serious artist to be purloined.

Fifteen minutes later, Lawrence emerged from the dressing room clothed entirely in black. Minnie noted with a pleased smile that the two of them truly did make a macabre pair when dressed similarly. The silver in Lawrence’s hair seemed to stand out in particularly handsome detail when the rest of him was all inky black and distinguished.

“Do I look the part of a nefarious housebreaker?” Lawrence asked, holding his arms out for Minnie’s approval.

Minnie grinned. “You could not look more nefarious if you tried,” she said in an incongruously tender tone, taking his hand and drawing him toward the door. “Mostly because you simply cannot look nefarious, no matter how you are dressed.”

“What a damnable disappointment,” Lawrence said just as Minnie opened the door.

She was deeply afraid that the loud peal of laughter she let out just as she stepped into the hall would wake Lady Jessica and Lord Otho, wherever their chamber was located. It was enough so that she slapped a hand over her mouth to stop the laughter. That gesture only made Lawrence giggle, though, and as that sound was so boyish and at odds with Lawrence’s age and appearance, it set Minnie off all over again.

At least if they were caught, they would seem more like mischievous children than serious housebreakers.

The western wing of Tidworth Hall seemed to be far less lived-in than the eastern wing, where Minnie and Lawrence had been given a room. The house was enormous, and after climbing to the topmost floor they could reach and pulling open a few doors with creaky hinges to see where they led, Minnie became convinced very little of the west wing was used for anything besides storage.

“I’m surprised Lady Jessica went through the trouble of remaking this part of the house at all,” Minnie said after the third door they opened led to another unused guestroom. “It has the feel of a place that has not been used in decades.”

Lawrence hummed in agreement. “It seems to me as though Lady Jessica threw her efforts into renovating the house so that she could avoid being trapped in conversation with her husband.”

Minnie laughed as she poked her head into a fourth room. “That will certainly never be our fate,” she said before stepping out into the hall. When she found Lawrence looking at her with a combination of curiosity and hope, she added, “We will never run out of things to speak about.”

Lawrence’s uncertainty turned into a smile. “No, I believe we never will.”

It shouldn’t have, but the short exchange pinched something within Minnie’s heart. She was certain Lawrence meant that they would never grow bored, but a part of her knew that the truth was they would never have a chance to know, one way or another. There would be no future for the two of them. They would travel on, she would carry out her plan to make it appear as though she fell from a cliff, she would be declared dead, and he would move on.

Somehow, as they continued down the hall in silence, her grand plan did not feel as exciting or perfect as it once had. She would have an entirely new life in Sweden, but Lawrence would mourn her passing so. And while once she would have thought that a broken-hearted man who had lost his love was one of the most romantic things imaginable, now a deeper part of her felt as though a long, cozy life of mischief and storytelling was by far the more romantic option.

“Good heavens, this looks promising.”

Minnie pushed those troubling thoughts far to the back of her mind as Lawrence opened a door at the end of the hall that revealed a narrow staircase going up. There would be time to agonize over the conflict in her heart later. For now, they had thievery to do.

“This must be it,” she whispered, holding her lantern high and peering up the cold, drafty stairs.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Lawrence said, taking the bold first step forward.

The stairs creaked horribly, and there were cobwebs and other signs of infrequent use all around, but Minnie followed Lawrence up into the attic regardless.

Once they reached the intimidatingly massive space, Minnie gasped in amazement, then coughed as she breathed in dust.

“It’s like something out of a novel,” she croaked as soon as she had the power of speech again.

The attic was everything she could ever have desired in creepy and disturbing spaces. The light of their two lamps was barely enough to illuminate masses of muslin-covered furnishings, old crates held together with rusted nails, and various piles of broken stair railings, bits of metal that might have been from destroyed chandeliers, and other items whose former use was a mystery.

Lawrence inched boldly forward and lifted the corner of one muslin covering to reveal a tattered couch of an antique design. Its cushions were clearly the home to some sort of undesirable creature that Minnie did not want to think about.

“As deliciously decrepit as this place is,” she whispered, “I should very much like to find your statue and be done with the place.”

“You do not like a spooky attic now and then?” Lawrence asked with all the casualness of someone asking if she liked an anise biscuit on occasion.

“I much prefer a rain-soaked landscape to a stuffy room filled with someone else’s detritus that threatens to inflict some disease of the lungs if I stay too long,” she said.

Lawrence laughed, but that caused him to breathe in some of the dust in question, which caused him to cough sharply. Once he recovered, he said, “Perhaps you are right. We should find the statue and get out.”

They spent the next half hour pulling back coverings and moving stacks of crates in an attempt to locate the statue. Logic told Minnie that if Prissy and the other servants sometimes sought it out for a bit of ogling and fun, it could not be stored deep in the vast space. Their initial efforts to locate it didn’t come to much, though.

“Part of me is certain that I will knock my lantern over and begin a blaze that will burn the entire estate down,” Minnie said as she helped Lawrence push an old chair aside. “And as romantic as the notion of being rescued from a conflagration is, it also seems as though it would be a terrible bother.”

“Not to mention a waste of all Lady Jessica’s decorating efforts,” Lawrence said.

Minnie snorted with laughter, which caused her to breathe in dust that made her sneeze.

That proved to be a stroke of luck, however. When she reached for a nearby bit of muslin with which to blow her nose, she revealed the very thing they’d been searching for.

There, under the dusty muslin, was a shocking, white marble statue of a couple entwined in a passionate embrace. There was no mistaking what activity the two were engaged in, particularly in regard to the woman’s position. The man’s carved body was firm and muscular, but his face was mostly buried in the woman’s neck and hidden by her hair. The woman had her neck extended and her face contorted in a look of ecstasy…and she was unmistakably a young Lady Jessica.

“Good Lord!” Minnie exclaimed, reaching for her lantern and holding it up so she could get a better look at the sculpture. “Are you really that adept?”

Lawrence made a sound that was half laughter, half choking as he joined her by the lascivious carving.

“I, er, I do not wish to give myself airs,” he said, face downturned and clearly red, even in the light of the lanterns, “but my familiarity with the female form through intensive artistic study means that I know where all the important things are located.”

Minnie snorted particularly loudly, then clapped a dusty hand to her face. “I am afraid I know all too well what you mean by that,” she said, sending him a sideways look.

“You do?” Lawrence asked, almost forlorn, as Minnie stepped around the statue to see if there was any way to recognize the man in the carving as Lawrence.

Minnie glanced at him from the other side of the statue. “Did you assume I was a virgin, my lord?” she asked with teasing formality. “At my age?”

“I, er, that is, I did not want to presume….”

Minnie laughed and shook her head, but made no further comment on the topic.

“It’s larger than I thought it would be,” she said, nearly laughing again at the potential double entendre of her words. Although when it came to the statue, she did not know about that particular appendage, as it was not visible, given the intimate position of the figures.

“Were you expecting it to be a desktop ornament?” Lawrence asked, setting his lamp on a nearby crate and reaching for the statue.

“Well, yes,” Minnie said.

In fact, the statue was easily as long as her arm and nearly a foot tall. It seemed to be the sort of thing one set on a pedestal in the hallway…of a brothel.

“I would imagine it is heavy,” she said with a frown, studying the carving as an object.

Lawrence sighed. “No doubt it is. I believe we could manage it together, but if we cannot, you must go and fetch Silas.”

Minnie shook her head. “No, I should be able to do my part in carrying it. I am more worried about how we might transport the lanterns and the statue at the same time.”

That proved to be the real challenge of their task. Between the two of them, they could manage the weight of the statue. Barely. Carrying lanterns while they moved it was out of the question, however.

In the end, they had to resort to a piecemeal process of Minnie carrying the lanterns to the attic door, then the two of them hauling the statue to the door and down the stairs. Then, when they reached the hall, Lawrence was forced to balance the statue against a small windowsill while Minnie ran back to fetch the lanterns and close the attic door, then take the lanterns to the end of the hall and place them on the floor. Once that was done, she returned to Lawrence to help him with the immense weight of the marble.

They carried it down the hall and as far past the lanterns as they dared before Lawrence was forced to rest again while Minnie fetched the lanterns and relocated them to a spot farther along.

They proceeded in that manner until they descended to the ground floor and down the hall to the entrance to the servants’ hall. It was a minor miracle that no one was stirring in the house and that they were not discovered.

Once they reached the top of the servants’ stairs, Minnie descended into the hall to find Silas. Blessedly, Lawrence’s driver was waiting there for them and rushed to take Minnie’s place carrying the statue.

They made much better time carting the heavy thing through the servants’ hall and past the few servants who were still up at that late hour—whom Silas had apprised of their plot earlier, and who were more than happy to keep silent about it at the expense of their master and mistress—and out to the courtyard behind the kitchens.

From there, Silas took over the task of securing the wicked thing within a trunk still strapped to the back of the carriage while Minnie and Lawrence returned to their room.

“I am in utter awe of the fact that we’ve succeeded at our mission,” Minnie said from the dressing room as she peeled out of her dusty clothing and quickly washed away the grime that had managed to cover her. “I wish I had known the statue was as large and heavy as that. I would have devised some sort of carrying mechanism.”

“No doubt you would have,” Lawrence said from the main part of the room.

Minnie finished with her ablutions and stepped into the bedroom in just her nightgown.

She gasped a moment later at the sight of Lawrence slipping his nightshirt over his head. He was faced the other way, and she stepped into the room before he had completely covered himself. The sight of his firm round backside and strong back sent a thrill through Minnie.

“I wouldn’t have been surprised if you’d’ve invented a way to lower the statue out the attic window and straight into the carriage,” Lawrence said, his voice loud enough to indicate he still believed her to be in the dressing room.

When he turned around a moment later and caught Minnie staring at him, he jumped slightly and sucked in a breath.

Whether it was the excitement of the night, the unguarded expression Lawrence wore, or the glimpse of his magnificent body Minnie had been treated to, something ignited inside her. She did not hesitate for a moment. She propelled herself forward, crossing the room to Lawrence in a few, swift, sure strides, and threw her arms around him.

“Minerva,” Lawrence whispered, catching her awkwardly at first, but moving smoothly into an embrace.

There was no hesitation at all in Minnie’s heart, mind, or in her actions. She lifted to her toes, pressing herself into Lawrence’s warm body, and slanted her mouth over his, demanding a kiss.

It was everything she’d dreamed it would be. Lawrence felt so strong and powerful as he tightened his arms around her, and his kiss quickly turned demanding and encompassing. He did not treat her like a sweet, fainting violet, but like a woman who demanded to be kissed well and pleasured fully.

“I told you I was not a virgin,” she gasped, reaching for the hem of his nightshirt and pulling it up so that she could take her fill of his bare skin with her hands and her eyes. “I want you, Lawrence. You are my prize.”

“Darling.” It was all Lawrence said, but it was all he needed to say.

He pulled at her nightgown and bunched the thin fabric in his fists as he sought to uncover her the way she’d uncovered him. He stole another kiss as well, if it could even be considered stealing when Minnie wanted it so badly. She pushed her fingers into his hair and gripped tight handfuls so that she could pull him closer, thrusting her tongue unforgivingly into his mouth to taste him fully, and to show him that she was just as powerful as he was when it came to matters of the flesh.

Their kissing and touching turned desperate, and soon Minnie wanted more. She broke away long enough to tug Lawrence toward the bed, then swept Clarence to the bedside table and threw back the covers so that they could tumble there together. There wasn’t even time to pull her nightgown or his nightshirt off. They wanted each other so passionately that the fabric was merely pushed and bunched aside so that they could feel and stroke and entwine.

Lawrence proved everything he’d said in the attic about knowing a woman’s body when he shifted from kissing Minnie’s lips to using those lips to worship her breasts and more. The way he licked and suckled her had her moaning and squirming and arching into his touch. She’d had talented lovers before, but none who’d ever combined pleasure with affection in quite the same way Lawrence could.

She wanted to give everything back to him, to learn every inch of his body with her hands and her mouth and to lavish attention on his cock, which pressed hotly against her thigh, making her breathless with its size, as she actually liked to do, but Lawrence was too determined to be the one to give pleasure.

And he most certainly knew how to give it. Minnie cried out with far too much strength when he shifted lower, parting her legs and burying his face against her sex. She bit her lip in an attempt to keep quiet and whimpered as he pleasured her with his tongue and his fingers. It was exquisite, and by far more potent than any other lover she’d known. He was so adept at licking and stroking and penetrating in exactly the right way that it nearly brought her to tears.

Better still, he knew how to tease and prolong her pleasure, stopping just when she was close to kiss and nuzzle her thighs with the rough growth of his facial hair before diving back in to suckle her to towering heights of pleasure all over again. Minnie didn’t even care that she ended up sprawled and open to him, mouth open with pleasure that she tried to keep silent and eyes rolled back as the coil inside her pulled tight, ready to release.

“Come for me, love,” Lawrence murmured, like some dark, demanding prince in a fairy tale.

And, God help her, she did. Exactly as he commanded. Her body unfurled with the most powerful orgasm she’d ever experienced, as if he’d ignited it with the power of his will alone. It throbbed through her, filling her with thundering pleasure that threatened to send her heart and mind scattering in all directions.

As if that alone were not enough, with deft precision and timing, he stretched over her and drove his thick cock home within her, commandingly and without apology. He worked himself deeper and deeper as Minnie’s body tremored around her, pulling him in, even as he stretched her to the brink of it all being too much. His girth and movements prolonged her orgasm, making her feel as if she might lose her mind entirely to the pleasure of it.

Hard on the heels of that, Lawrence’s own sounds of pleasure turned pitched and needy, and his body tensed in her embrace as he emptied himself within her. The significance of the act was as beautiful as the pleasure she felt. Her heart sang with the knowledge that they were one. She absolutely understood the ecstasy of the woman in the statue. Mere marble could not convey feelings like the ones she felt.

They were slow to come back down from their pleasure, moving together even after their orgasms subsided just so they could be together. Even when Lawrence pulled out and fell to the side, Minnie still felt enveloped in pleasure. She also felt thoroughly wrung out and more exhausted than she’d ever known herself to be.

It did not matter, though. All that mattered was snuggling against Lawrence’s hot, damp body and closing her eyes as she reveled in him. Sleep pressed down on her, and she didn’t try to fight it. She didn’t want to fight it. She wanted this moment with Lawrence to last forever…knowing that it couldn’t.