Chapter 8

I sabel felt her heart soar, then sink.

He had no wife. She would not encroach upon any other woman’s rights by attempting to fascinate him.

But she would never be able to be that woman in the portrait.

She was a plump, plain pubkeeper’s daughter, and she had never been so angry with her parents than this moment, when she keenly felt that they had never prepared her to be anything more than one step up, housekeeper for a curate.

Though could schooling make her from what she was into a woman like that? Isabel thought not. She seemed a different kind of creature completely. She must have walked in a world of very highly-born people, educated and distinguished with titles and power, people who wore diamonds and played pianos. People like Victor Adell, Lord Hartwick.

People who would look at Isabel the way Mrs. Hopp had looked at Lord Hartwick.

Isabel looked up again at the lady with grand skirts and keen eyes. “She must have imagined you like this. Using your intelligence. Being a better man than your father.”

He straightened, clearly startled. Had no one ever paid this man a compliment? He studied the portrait too.

What did he see? The choices of all the earls who had gone before him? Or the mother he never knew?

Even the idea of being part of such a long family legacy exhausted Isabel. She had barely met her grandparents. They were farmers in the north, near Sheffield. Tenant farms, she now realized. Likely tenants of a man much like the one beside her now.

She had come here to be a mistress, but she was not grand enough even for that.

Isabel wanted to press him on the answers to all her questions. What he liked in a woman. Why he had stayed with her in the bookshop. Whether he intended to marry, and did he already know to whom.

But she was suddenly tired, so tired, all the hours and ups and downs of the day weighing on her along with disappointment.

“I am keeping you awake, Lord Hartwick. You must want sleep.”

He scowled and winced at once, and she knew he was berating himself for something. How easy it had become to know his inner movements in only a few hours.

“Unforgivable of me. Here I am keeping you awake into the small hours. You must bathe and sleep.”

“I can sleep in the library.” For there had been a comfortable settee there, and all Isabel wanted now was a little sleep so she could slip away unnoticed in the morning.

“Nonsense. I was the fool for dismissing the servants to their holiday when you still have needs. You shall sleep here.”

“I couldn’t!” She could not. The grand lady would haunt her all night, taunting her with a life she was unprepared to imagine, much less live.

“You must.” With that simplicity that brooked no disagreement, he was gone.

Isabel’s nerves still hummed, but she truly did feel exhausted, body and spirit. She perched on the edge of the great bed, marveling at its carved oak posters and the ranks of damask curtains ready to enclose whoever lay there.

Toppling over, she rested her head on the cushions.

A warm smell rose from the heavy fabric, a smell composed of paper and sealing wax and roast almonds and skin.

This was his bed.

She ought to spring upright, but she curled in closer. There was no doubt he slept here. She did not know when in this long, long day she had become familiar with his scent. Perhaps in the book shop when he had looked over her shoulder at pages. Perhaps over supper, when he had urged her to add more butter to her plate. Perhaps just now in the library.

It had wound around the core of her and would never let go.

It seemed like only moments before his lordship reappeared, two long chains slung over a yoke on his shoulders bearing sloshing, steaming full buckets. They splashed his trousers.

Isabel sprang up. “You shouldn’t have!”

He shrugged it away. “I do not like to go back on my word. I gave the servants their Christmas holiday, so I thought I would bring you this myself.”

He filled the washbasin by the fire and moved a stool to stand near, piled high with clean linens and an open box holding a bar of soap.

A faint wisp of almond scent from it reached her.

They had shared so many intimacies already. Some awkward, some cutting deep. Perhaps he was as exhausted as she.

Isabel could not bring herself to say aloud that she knew this room was his.

She tried not to feel awkward. The house was huge. He would find somewhere to rest. But it would be awkward nonetheless, sleeping in linens that smelled of him.

“Thank you.” She could barely get out the words.

Someday he would have a wife, a lady who would speak confidently. Wisely, perhaps even about the law. The lady would know important people and how to entertain them in every room of this profuse, abundant house.

“What else would you like?” He seemed as serious about that as about everything else. “Are you still hungry? Perhaps a glass of claret would help you sleep. You should—I’ll fetch one.”

And with that he left her with a basin of steaming water beside the fire in the lady’s chamber.

Isabel had come with the intention of seducing him. How foolish that felt now. Not only could she not fill the role, she was almost too shy to unfasten her gown even without him in the room.

Everything here breathed of his presence, all the more palpable because he was not actually here. She could breathe in the scent of him as deep as she liked without his notice. It only intensified her longing for a glimpse of the base of his throat.

Sighing, Isabel unbuttoned her shoes and rolled down her wool stockings, laying them on the hearth where they would dry the quickest and she could brush away the mud.

Only then did she untie the ribbons that held up her gown in front and around the waist. It folded and fell down around her feet, a puddle of plain green wool amidst all this grandeur. Her stays and chemise followed.

The glow of the fire made the water look like molten gold. Isabel laid folded linen on the uncarpeted spot near the fire clearly left bare for this purpose and dipped a smaller cloth and the thick bar of soap into the water, making it ripple.

The soap lathered creamy white almost with a touch. With the washing cloth she smoothed it up her arms, around her neck, even over her face, then dipped another in the bucket beside her to rinse the suds away. The stain of mud along her leg disappeared.

It felt rather wicked and peculiar, yet luxurious, to wash herself here in this strange room, bare to her toes. She did not have the prize she came for; yet she bathed as if she belonged here, as if she was the mistress, if not of him, then at least of this tub.

The crisp linens, hot and soft with water, and the soapy trails they left behind lit a fire underneath her skin, reminding her that she was bare, and had come for his touch.

They forced her imagination onward when she would hold it back, making her swell in places she wanted to calm, making it even more awkward to wash her own golden curls and the crevices that never saw anyone’s attention but hers.

She had come for him to touch her there. The thought coalesced as she washed herself slowly, tender in places still lonely for his attention. She had come to be wanton, that was all.

Such a small thing, yet so huge in her imagination.

There was now an entire new dimension to the loneliness of the rest of her life. Not only would she never have a home of her own or children, she would never know what it would be like for his wide, blunt hands to stroke her here, and here.

She would never know what it would be like to please him, or him please her.

She had not dared to imagine it before, but it was impossible not to imagine now. Had she been someone different, dared something different, he would lean her back on that soft bed and touch her soft secret places and she would swell for him. She had no idea what it would be like, but she did not have to imagine wanting it desperately.

She already did.

If he were here, in this room, watching her now, she would not have to speak. If only he could see her now, her fantasies would come true.

Victor intended to dash away and bring her the promised glass of claret. It bothered him not to do as he said he would do. He didn’t consider it firmness of character, only the bare agreement of civilized life: for men to do as they promised.

Yet despite all that, he lingered.

He told himself it was in case she needed help. Perhaps to lift a heavy bucket.

But truth was, he did not wish to go.

Pressing his ear to the door was unforgivably intrusive, proving him just the ruffian he most hoped not to be.

But his bad behavior was rewarded with the soft sound of a sigh, and his good intentions were undone.

He wanted to hear more. He could faintly imagine the softness of her lips, her skin everywhere, the gold of her hair shining against the velvet of her skin.

If he had ever had doubts that he would want to hold a woman the way other men did, those doubts were gone now.

If ever he were to take that leap, it had to be now. It had to be the one woman he had ever met who seemed gentle enough to forgive him any shortcomings, yet curious enough to try.

Her lips would taste of butter. His eyes closed and he gave up any pretense of civility. He spread his fingers against the heavy wood of the door, wishing it thinner, listening hard.

It might have been his imagination, but he thought he could hear quiet sounds of sloshing water. Her hands in the basin, on the soap. His soap.

The swelling length that made his trousers uncomfortable turned hard as stone at the thought.

He wanted everything about him all over her. His lips. His hands. His skin leaving its scent on hers, and vice versa.

He had starved for food so much of his life, yet it was this hunger that would kill him.

His hand drifted up to the aching hardness before him and pressed it down. Far from making it subside, it swelled.

Another sloshing sound from inside, and imagining the wet peach-pink flush of her skin, he rubbed himself harder.

Of course she did not want a man like him. She had seen his faults first-hand, and his weaknesses. He would never even taste the food she ate, and he lacked charm.

But all the words had fled from his head. He could not even remember all the days, years, a lifetime spent on words.

The months spent on a treaty that would likely collapse no longer stung.

There was more to life than dry accomplishments that would never please a father who was already dead.

“Miss Snow?”

He knocked upon the door. He didn’t even know what he expected to happen.

Listening as hard as he was, he heard her little cry.

Imagining the worst—she had fallen into the fire, the water had been hot enough to scald her—he pulled open the door.

He’d startled her into throwing some of the linens over her shoulder, around her body.

They clung like the drapery on marble goddesses. Yet there she stood, living, breathing. Only this memory of her would be eternal.

She stepped towards him.

He was terrified of bruising her, or losing her.

Still he couldn’t help his long strides to her side, couldn’t help brushing the precious curls back from her face, couldn’t help cradling her face in two hands so he would believe in her as he kissed her.

Their lips meeting was a taste better than he remembered. Just like the first taste, he knew instantly he wanted more. Her arms wrapped around his neck pulling him down to her, in to her. His arms, his hands splayed around her body, her back, held her till he forgot to treat her like crystal and instead she was his delight, his pleasure, his playmate all in one and he crushed her to him, his mouth opening with hers as they explored each other’s touches.

Slowly they became two people again, looking into each other’s eyes from so small a distance that her face, even her eyes disappeared to him and he felt like he was looking straight at her soul.

“I should go.” The part of him that wanted to be honorable.

“Please don’t.” The living goddess in his arms broke from something eternal into a woman shivering, shuddering, panting as heavily as he. “I’ve been along so long.”

Her shivering awoke in him an even more basic need. He had to keep her warm. He wrapped his arms around her, curved his body around hers. Please was the only word he could remember.

“I’m not cold.” He looked down; her slender fingers plucked at his neckcloth. It was true. Heat already flushed through her skin, across her shoulders, down her back, and, as she stepped away and unwrapped the wet linen, across both breasts, their rich curves glowing with fiery color even as her back was to the hearth.

One fold of drapery caught on the pointed tip of a breast, then fell away.

In an instant Victor understood centuries of art that had never interested him before.

Everything about her was so shockingly bare, so alive, so welcoming. He understood the desire to capture an instant like this forever.

But he didn’t need it carved in marble. He would never forget.

The moment he thought would never come was here, and nothing was difficult. It was easy, natural, right to catch her against him again, to drop kiss after kiss on her hair, her eyelids, her soft lips, her earlobe, the sweet skin of her neck.

He feasted there, nibbling, sucking, finally biting her flesh until she made one of those gasping noises and her head fell to the side, giving him the entire feast.

And sighed as he bit her there again, gently, reverently.

Her shivers continued and he wanted more of them. They resulted from the way his tongue traveled upward to the soft behind her ear, the way he nuzzled the edge of her curls, the way his mouth fell again to hers and tasted her there.

He’d worried for so long that this would repel him, yet now with Isabel it drew him. Compelled him. Required him.

His mouth traveled lower, playing with ways of leaving gentle marks on the slope of her shoulder, the swelling skin beneath.

He might have forced himself to stop and see her face, if she welcomed his touch or felt overwhelmed, but her hands closed around his face and pulled him lower.

The red-gold puckered peak of her breast was a sweet he had never known he craved. Now he wanted it against his tongue forever. It pebbled tighter from his touch, and though he tasted it first most gently, the more he sucked it into his mouth, testing all the textures of it, the flavor, the more she made those sighs till they became a nearly continuous flood of pleasure sounds in which he was drowning.

Inner gates he hadn’t known were locked burst open as turned to nip the delicate skin in the crook of her elbow, knelt to kiss the swell of her belly where it began and over its pillowy curve to the cluster of golden curls below.

“Please,” he said back to her; it was all he could say.

She curved over him, protectively, greedily, and whispered into his hair, “I came here for you.”

She wanted him.

Her words lit fires in him he had never expected to burn.

Isabel had never imagined anything could be like this.

She felt powerful; she felt weak. His touch melted her into softness; she would never let him go.

Every new touch lit fireworks of shock and, yes, embarrassment, touching places she had never expected anyone to touch. Not just touching; kissing, devouring, licking, even to the very core of her where she had never expected to be explored.

His wide hand pulled one of her thighs close while his other hand teased apart her curl-covered lips. The cool air in such a delicate place shocked and shivered her, and she had little time to wonder what he would do next.

He licked her there with the eagerness of man who was seldom indulged and never satisfied.

The pleasure of it pulled her down to him, closer, till she bent over his head, clinging to him to stay upright.

Nothing he did made sense. The slick strength of his tongue in places she had never expected anyone to share, the dip even closer— inside? —there was no logic to any of it. Words required logic, order; therefore she could not use them.

Every stroke of his tongue took her higher, pulled her down around him more, shaking under the onslaught of him until everything about her shattered—her last vestiges of reserve, her skin, her pleasure, her heart.

Shaking uncontrollably, she fell into his arms, and it was he who gently laid her down.

The possibility of shyness had vanished. He stared at her greedily, more satisfied than she had yet seen him. When she tried to fold her knees together, he stopped her with a hand on each, slowly urging them apart again, laying her out in the glow of the firelight in a way that let him see every shivering inch.

“Did you reach the peak?” His voice was rough, urgent. She would have thought him angry had she not already known his emotion was too honest to break through in any other way.

“Yes.” She had never imagined pleasure like he’d given her. She held out her hand.

He groaned and took it, wrapping his fingers through hers.

Then, “Please?” he said again, as if she would deny him anything, and released her to unfasten his trousers.

Didn’t he realize how completely he had captured her? Nothing about her would ever be the same from this night forward, because she knew now the value of dreaming dreams. “Anything,” she told him, and meant it.

Groaning again as if her offer only made him hungrier, he undid the buttons at the front of him and then below those, until he freed a new part of him she had yet to see. It too looked angry, which Isabel understood to mean it too was flooded with hunger and emotions he was struggling to set free.

She expected him to fall upon her; the basic positioning was something she grasped, from somewhere, perhaps a knowledge that floated on the air like clouds.

But he didn’t. Instead he took himself in hand and just looked at her.

His eyes and the fierceness in them transformed the last of her feelings from embarrassment to satisfaction. He looked at her. He saw her.

And it was apparently enough to overwhelm him, as with a few strokes of the hardest part of him, four, five, he shot the evidence of his pleasure across her belly, falling upon one hand beside her up-bent knee.

He stared at that, too, with a look of fiercely animal satisfaction.

Breathing hard, harder than when he had carried her water, he bent to press a kiss upon that knee. “Thank you.”

He said more with please and thank you than many a man who talked all through supper.

“I did nothing.” Truly, she felt more captured than capturing.

“You did everything.” He wiped the evidence of his pleasure away with one of the crumpled linens that had been wrapped around her, and Isabel both was grateful for the comfort and sad the evidence was gone.

As if he had something to prove, he staggered to his feet, clearly as weak in the knees from what they had just done as she was.

And then, belying the shakiness he’d just displayed, he took her hands in his, drawing her upright and into his arms again till she floated there, clutched to the hard heat of his chest for too short a moment before he laid her gently down on the velvet-draped bed.

Whatever Isabel expected, it wasn’t what happened next.

Victor Adell, Earl of Hartwick for about seventy-two hours, stripped his clothes like a madman, coat flying, waistcoat buttons ripped away, shirt and neckcloth fluttering to the ground until he stood bare before her, matching her openness and vulnerability.

How did his shoulders look even wider when they were bare? Was it the muscle bunching in them as he leaned over her, a hand on either side of her hips, to indulge again his taste for her most sensitive places?

She wanted to wiggle higher to see more of him, but his hand splayed across the softness of her belly held her still. She didn’t want to disappoint him. She didn’t want him to stop.

The idea of reaching such pleasure once had never occurred to Isabel. Twice was like burning down the world.

The number of things she didn’t know seemed infinite as he opened the door to many more. Swollen and sensitive as she was, every touch of his tongue was startling, every inch of her skin had become ten, all of it wrapping around him and longing for more of him.

If he kept going, the pleasure could kill her.

She would simply have to find out.