Chapter 7

Seven

T he coach lurched to a stop, and after a pause, the door swung open. Lucy stepped down, and behind her, Alex helped Mrs. Clefton to the ground. A short and easy trip; the moon still shone high above Hawthorne House, a gold button in a navy wool sky.

And need for Keats still pulsed between her legs. Such a clever man. He had entirely banished her fears with a sinful stroke of his tongue.

"Alex?" She sounded steady, not at all ruled by lascivious thoughts. Excellent.

"Yes?" Alex stood several steps closer to the door than Lucy, her arm around Mrs. Clefton's waist.

"Take our new guest to Mrs. Beckett. You know what happens next."

Alex nodded. She'd not an ounce of nervousness during the journey, and she'd been able to put Mrs. Clefton at ease despite Alex's Mayfair lilt and Mrs. Clefton's East End Cockney. Alex would be a perfect replacement for Lucy, able to connect with and comfort women from every walk of life.

Mrs. Beckett appeared in the doorway, and Lucy raised a hand in acknowledgment before turning toward the stables. She slipped in while the other hands were busy with the coach and horses. Keats was not among them. Perhaps he was at Mr. Sacks's cottage. Her feet turned in that direction before her mind had fully decided to do so. His faith in her earlier that evening… it had sung in her soul, kept her calm, made her want to reciprocate.

The cottage sat on the edge of the woods, its thatch roof blending with the spindly branches rising over the rooftops. She knocked on the door, her hood pulled low, hiding her face in shadows. It did not take long for the door to open.

Keats blinked at her in the dark, holding a candle between them to light up a sliver of the night. "Lucy?"

She pushed her hood back. "How did you know?"

"I'll always know." He stepped out of the cottage and so close to her she could smell the hay on his skin, feel the heat of his hard body.

"It was an easy trip. Everyone returned home quickly and safely. And I… I wanted to thank you." Her boots were dark shadows peeking out from the hem of her skirt. "For helping calm me earlier."

His hand against her jaw, a touch as light as air, brought her head up. He curved over her, around her, his fingertips tracing the arch of her ear now, smoothing a lock of hair behind it. "You didn't need me." He looked over her head and down the path at her back, toward the house and drive and stables where Mr. Sacks would be busy, but not for long. "I'm glad you came. There's something I need to tell you." He retreated into the shadows cast by the cottage. "Lucy, I'm leaving tomorrow."

She covered her heart with her hand, as if attempting to stop the bleeding from some mortal wound. But it could not be stopped, and life pumped out of her faster and faster with the horrid quick beating of her heart.

"Leaving?" she managed to say. "Why? Where?"

"Back to London. My father—" Something dark and painful twisted across his face. "He's dead."

And then she was hugging him, resting her head against his chest and clutching her arms around him, and he was curling into her, his hands fists in her cloak at her back and his face finding a home in the crook of her neck.

"I'm so sorry," she mumbled against his waistcoat. "I am so sorry."

He shook, a moment of tortured convulsions, and then he pushed away. "Thank you. But do not waste your sorrow on me. My father and I were not close. And I've come to realize the old man may have done more ill in the world than good. Me as well. I would have kept doing ill, too. But for you."

The moon above made the white of his shirt glow, made the unshed tears in his eyes glisten, made the world into something new, a space out of time, out of duty, out of propriety.

"I should feel… empty, I suppose," he said. "But I know what empty feels like. This is not it. Emptiness is having no purpose, is thinking yourself happy but not being able to put down a bottle because when you do… the nightmares seep in. Loneliness and dissatisfaction, fear and self-doubt."

"Keats—"

"I don't feel that now. I feel brimming over with purpose, determination. Damn the bottle, damn the man I used to be." Each word rose higher in the darkness, and his profile in the pale moonlight seemed sharp and noble and too beautiful for a mere mortal. When he turned his gaze to her, any shadow that she might have seen there once had disappeared. His eyes were clear and bright and eager. "I return to London a different man entirely."

When I return to London.

"Will I ever see you again?"

"That is another thing I wished to speak with you about." He wove their fingers together—his, hers, his, hers, palm to palm and pulse to pulse. "I know you have plans, but I would like to be part of them. Lucy." He pulled her closer and whispered the words against her hair. "I want to marry you."

A surge of bright, pure light, nothing dusty or dim about it.

A wave of crashing cold water, creeping with seaweed and choked with salt.

Joy and sorrow tangled together, breaking her apart.

She wanted him. She wanted to give her heart to him, her life.

Impossible. Duty demanded otherwise.

So, perhaps instead, she could give her body. For a single night only.

She cupped his cheeks, and his hands found the softest parts of her.

She went up on toe and brushed her lips against his. He kissed her back as if he meant to push his very soul into hers through breath and lips, through teeth and the clutching, seeking, demanding hold of his strong hands.

They kissed until her breath grew raw. They kissed until her legs gave out. They kissed until her breasts ached for more. He whirled her around and pressed her against the wall of the cottage next to a climbing vine of summer roses. Pink in the daylight but night red now. He released her only to press his palms firm against the wall on either side of her head as he parted her legs with his knee and pushed his muscled thigh against her very center.

How did he make her melt there? Every time. And every time she wanted his touch more than she had the time before. An impossible accumulation of desire.

She flattened her palms against his chest and shoved gently. When he blinked down at her, brow furrowed, chest heaving with his heavy breaths, she said, "Take me inside. To your bed."

His mouth fell open. "I… It's… Hell." He wiped his hand down his face, then gave a soft bark of laughter. "It's not a bed, Lucy. A pile of rough blankets, hard and cold. I would give you silk and feather for our first time. I would give you wine and candlelight."

"I don't care. Take me to it. Take me ."

"You don't know what you're saying."

"I know there are ways to prevent a child. You must simply pull out of me before?—"

"Yes," he snapped, "I'm aware." The space between their bodies, previously humming with heat, had begun to thaw.

She could not have that. Grabbing his shirt, she dragged him closer, kissed him hard and quick. "Please. It is what I want. Once before you leave."

"Damn me to hell." He melted against her, catching her up in another kiss, this one slower, hungrier. Clutching her to him, he spun them toward the door, a moon-mad waltz that ended with the soft groan of the door closing behind them.

He offered her no opportunity to view the inside of the coachman's cottage but dragged her toward a small room to the side, their kiss never once faltering, skin on skin, lips on lips, fingernails dragging, and bodies hard. The moon peeked in through a small window. It had followed them, a midnight voyeur, and it showed her a narrow pallet in the corner of what appeared to be a closet or storage room.

"I told you," he growled against her lips. "This is not good enough for you. I am not good enough for you."

"I do not care where you lay me down, only that you do." Now that they were secreted away from all eyes but for the celestial, every inch of her burned for his touch. Her stays were too tight and her shift too clinging, her cloak entirely in the way.

He kissed her neck and backed her toward the blankets, eased them to their knees. He could not seem to decide where to touch her first—the slope of her hip, the mound of her breast, the line of her back, the round of her belly, the heated place between her legs. No matter where he touched, though, he stoked her pulsing need higher.

She could no longer remain upright, and she lay back, holding her arms up, offering an invitation she'd give no one else in this way ever again.

He came to her, eyes on fire and greedy as he bent her legs on either side of him and stroked her skirts up over her knees until they pooled across her belly and only her pantalets covered her from his sight.

Until he clawed his fingers beneath their waist and ripped them away. A lock of hair fell across his eyes, but it didn't hide his expression—wolfish, wanting. "Such a beauty. Not a damn thing in the world more beautiful than Lucy." He licked his lips and traced his knuckles up and down the sensitive skin on the inside of her thighs. She thought, for a moment, he planned to follow those knuckles with his lips, but he settled his body between her legs and kissed her mouth.

"Hell," he breathed against her lips, "I'd make you a marchioness right now. I would raise you up this very instant." He gave a bitter laugh. "You are already so high above me, I cannot touch you. So high up there. With the stars, outshining them. I do not deserve you, but I'm a selfish man, and I'll take what you give me." He kissed her again, then stopped just as quickly. "I shouldn't kiss you like this. There is more I should say first. Things I have done. Jeopardizing… but I won't let any harm come to you. Ever. I swear it."

"No more words. God, Keats, no more words. It feels like lightning is striking in my limbs. Or is about to. A storm is gathering inside me. Please, Keats. More."

He plunged his tongue between her lips, exploring her further, crushing her body to his and kneading the flesh of her hips with hungry, delighted hands.

Her want was a living thing inside her. In her blood and in her bones, in the electricity skating across her skin and in the rapid beating of her ecstatic heart. Ecstatic because she'd never felt like this before, never given in to pure impulse and joy before. Lucy the daughter of a disgraced viscount's daughter must be ever careful. But Lucy the moonlit maiden could live in utter abandon for once. Just once. With this man who said the most perfect things.

"I could love you," he breathed into the kiss. "I never once considered love, but with you, I cannot stop thinking of it, feeling it."

On such short acquaintance? Impossible. It was lust and admiration waltzing heady between them.

But also not impossible. Because she felt it, too; felt what could never be.

He ran his fingers up her spine, over the plump curve of her shoulder, and up her neck to tangle his hand in the hair at her nape, to deepen the kiss. She gave a little startled cry when his lips moved roughly over hers, but she did not fall apart. No. She kissed him harder and with greedy abandon.

He clasped her hand with his free one and moved it down his chest, past the waist of his trousers, and over the hard ridge of his shaft outlined by the loose and dirty wool. And he kept kissing her, halting only when she squeezed.

He growled. No idea what that primal sound meant. But he did not stop kissing her, and his hands sought out the edge of her bodice, pulled it down, freeing her breasts. He kissed them, too, kneading and nipping with gentle teeth. Gentle hands, too, while his hips rhythmically rocked against her.

She raked her fingernails down his back, wishing it were skin. "Now. I need you now."

His exhale a blast of fire across the skin between her breasts then over her belly and navel, his hands bracketed her hips as he dragged his lips lower. "You are… art." That last word a heady breath. "These dimples." He kissed her rounded hips, dragging his tongue over the softly textured skin there. "These elegant lines." His hot breath running the length of the marks left on her inner thighs as her body had stretched and grown during girlhood. "Strength and beauty across every blessed inch of you."

She arched her back, his words igniting her more than his touch. Until he set his lips against the apex of her body and kissed her. Pleasure, pure and spiraling. She tangled her hands in his hair, arching harder, higher as he parted her with his tongue, tasted her, rolled her body into a ball of nerve endings, sparking and crying for more. She moaned his name and clenched her hands in his hair as the world became sensation gathering force until it crashed over her, overwhelmed her, shattered a climax through her. She floated like a feather to the rough blankets on the hard floor, realized his soft, firm lips were roaming up her belly, tasting the valley between her breasts and finding her lips once more.

A heavenly kiss, gentle. Good. Because she could barely move. Hadn't the energy or strength. But somehow, she found it as she grasped for the buttons at his fall, because no matter how glorious that had been, she needed more. Knew there was more. Had determined to take it. He helped her unloop the buttons, and she felt his shaft, hard and hot between their bodies as her hesitant hand crept toward it, wrapped around it.

His gaze caught her, flared to life. "I'm going to marry you." He kissed her. "I'm going to marry you and give you everything you desire. Marry me, Lucy. Will you?"

She opened her mouth to deny him. Such a foolish dream. But she could not shape the words. What if she let herself marry for love and found some other way to give herself to Hawthorne? Yes , her heart cried out. Marry a simple man with nothing to give but himself. Marry this man who makes you feel alive and loved. She smiled, and instead of setting one hard, cold syllable between them, she nodded.

Victory shot like lightning across his face, and he kissed her hard, settling himself between her legs as she clenched his shoulders. He teased her opening with the head of his shaft, dragging it up and down before thrusting into her. She greeted the thrust with a cry.

"Have I hurt you?" He tensed above her.

Tight and full. She'd never felt so full before. It felt different, new, perhaps the smallest bit uncomfortable, but heat tempered the pain, soothed it with a yearning ache both bright and beautiful. "More."

Lowering to his elbows, he moved with a slow, determined rhythm. She wrapped her arms around his neck and met each of his thrusts with a roll of her hips, letting her body tell her what to do and when. Each of his thrusts brushed against her curls and the pulsing point hidden there, and she moaned his name when she could not quite catch the promise of falling stars. He rolled his weight to one arm and slipped the other between their bodies, finding exactly what she wanted, thrumming his thumb over it once, twice?—

She screamed, a cry of pleasure that rocked him into a quicker rhythm. Faster and faster, their bodies like their pulses—hot and impossible to calm—and then he rolled her nipple between his finger and thumb, and she shattered. His name on her lips, loud and long until he swallowed it in a hard, giving kiss. This time, her body shivered longer than before, tighter and higher.

He gave a final thrust before pulling out of her, his body taut, every muscle hard as he spent on the blankets beside them. For several heavy seconds, he panted above her, then he wrapped his hand around her nape and rolled them both to the side, gathering her up in his arms and kissing her forehead.

Perfect peace.

She stirred first, resting her palm against his hard chest to count the rapid beats of his heart. "I want to make you something."

"Oh? What shall you make me?"

"A greatcoat perhaps. Something to keep you warm in London. But I do not know where to send it." She didn't need to know. The temptation to seek him out would ruin her, break her plans into a million tiny pieces.

"You are a tailor too? My, is there anything my Lucy can't do?" His fingertips trailed down her shoulder.

Resist him, shut up her passions and impulses. She should.

But perhaps this weakness would be a gem she could always hold close to her heart and not a coal to burn her. "I enjoy modifying clothing more than making it. I would find you a blue greatcoat, as deep navy as the sky before sunrise. I'd put in a blue silk lining the color of your eyes. And opals for buttons."

"You'll make a dandy of me?" He threaded her hands with his and squeezed.

"You're already a dandy of the soul, I can tell."

He chuckled and pulled her so close the line between him and her blurred a bit, just enough for hearts to beat together and souls to leap in greeting. He whispered in her ear. "My beautiful Lucy, strong and brave. I'll wear whatever you give me. I'll be your stable hand and your footman, and better than all those your?—"

The cottage door crashed open.

Wide eyes, fumbling hands. Bodices righted, skirts lowered. Fall buttons closed and manly shafts shoved back to where they'd come from.

Fear coursed through her, embarrassment too.

"Keats, where the hell are you?" Mr. Sacks rummaged unseen in the main room, and then a light flared on. "There's trouble at the house."

"Trouble," Lucy whispered, the word like ice on her tongue.

Keats slammed to his feet, helping her up as well and tucking his shirt in. He found a waistcoat slung across a chair in the corner and slipped it on. As he stepped through the door, he hissed, "Stay here."

"This is all your fault," Mr. Sacks said from the other room.

"Shh," Keats hissed. Then the cottage door opened and crashed closed once more, and she was alone.

She waited only long enough to straighten her cloak and hear the heavy stomp of boots lead away from the cottage. Then she left, following them toward the house and whatever trouble had come to call.