Chapter 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

T he room Leo had made his study shared the décor of the other rooms on the ground floor, with the oak-beam ceiling and chalk walls crossed with dark timbers. The lamp sent light dancing across the windows and its cinquefoil curves. Lillian was a medieval lady coming to her warrior knight, a Plantagenet queen given as a prize to her Tudor lord.

Or the hidden mistress of the abbot, sneaking time alone with him while the rest of the household looked away.

Leo stood at the oak worktable, covered with scrolls of parchment and rag paper. Lillian made out the maps and diagrams, anchored with a rough and unpolished chunk of rock, dark blue veined with layers of buttercream yellow. He held his hands clasped behind him over the plain back of his waistcoat, his coat discarded on a nearby chair. His hair looked as if he’d run his fingers through it several times.

“Your drawings are extraordinary, Lillian. Do you know how much you’ve helped me? It’s as if, when I look, I can only see it in pieces, but your pictures help me see the whole.”

He stared at a diagram she had made of the entrance, the shelf of rough stone rearing up from the ground with its dark mouth open, the huge stones slumped to the side like fallen sentinels. She hadn’t gotten the shading right, or the proportions—the trees in the background appeared too close—but the sense came through of ancient warning, as if a long-forgotten world with all its fears and dangers lay alongside the visible one.

Lillian shuddered. The reverend’s story had hooked her as deeply as it had Hester, and she didn’t know whom to pity more: Wayland, his legs crippled and his wife stolen to subject him to the king’s will; the king’s sons, helpless dupes to a tortured man’s revenge; or the princess, the innocent maid tricked by her own longing heart and left in ruins. Such ravaged emptiness the smith must have felt, far from his native home, his wife and family lost to him, his prodigious talent turned to shoeing local farm horses. Such anger, such loss must be burned into the site where such a creature dwelled. How much of a taint would be carried by the things inside?

Without looking up, Leo reached his arm around her and pulled her to his body. He was warm and firm, and somehow his hard curves shaped around her softer ones, or she shaped herself to him.

“We’ll have to go inside,” Leo said. “I don’t see a better way. We can bore a dozen more holes above and still come to the same result.”

He smelled of nutmeg and citrus, like the pudding. She breathed him in. Wings in her belly opened and fluttered.

“What does Mr. Caesar think?”

“He agrees. If it’s truly a barrow and they laid a roof of stone, then all we’ll find coming from above is rock. We need to open the sealed entrance and see what lies beyond.”

“Will Wayland allow you to disturb his resting place?”

Leo turned his head and pressed his nose into her hair. She heard his inhaled breath. He was doing the same to her as she was to him: drinking him in with every sense. The flutter traveled outward, dancing along her limbs, up her spine.

“Did you believe the good reverend’s story?” he asked.

“He was very persuasive. It’s a memorable tale, if a sad one.”

“But Wayland had his revenge, and he escaped the king’s grasp to build a life on his own terms. I can’t help but think he won in the end.”

His body slowly angled toward hers, as if turned on a millstone. A mutter of satisfaction escaped him as her breasts came into contact with his chest.

The thought emerged in words before she could consider. “I found Temperance very lovely.”

He nibbled along the curve of her ear. His breath across her cheek smelled of sherry. “Is she?”

“I’ve never seen lovelier, not even among the beauties of London,” Lillian said honestly. Her eyelids lowered as he brushed his lips over the sensitive place beneath her ear. Her breath caught in the back of her throat.

“She smelled too sweet.” He nibbled his way down her neck.

“Valerian,” Lillian gasped. “I smelled it, too.”

“I like your scent better.” He put his mouth where her neck met her shoulder and bit, gently, at the soft flesh. Lillian dissolved. “Geraniums.”

“But she is so…delicate. So graceful. Wouldn’t any man want her?”

“All I could see was you, Lillian. Your enormous blue eyes.” He lifted his head to look at her. He traced the curve of her cheek with a finger. “How delicious your skin looks in this gown. I wanted to lap you up, like cream.” He bent his head again, dragging his tongue along her collarbone, and Lillian shivered. Her nipples tightened with delight. He moved over the crests of her breasts, nuzzling, nipping, licking where he’d nipped.

“All I wanted to taste were these .” He squeezed her breasts through her gown, and the ache intensified. “May I taste you, Lillian?”

“I—I suppose you might,” she gasped, clinging to his shoulders as her knees turned to jelly.

Deftly, as if he’d planned his attack, he unhooked her gown at the back, loosening the bodice. In a moment he lifted one globe from the nest of her stays. He steadied her with an arm across her back as he sucked along the heavy curves, then clamped his mouth over her clenched nipple. She arched into him, shaken by the pleasure that arrowed straight between her legs, by her body’s instant, needy response.

“Oh, please , Leo.”

“Please what, my darling? Kiss you here?” He kneaded the free breast with his hand while muttering with the other breast in his mouth. The arrows kept firing, building the sudden blaze at her core.

“Touch you here?” Suddenly his hand was beneath her skirt, sliding up her thigh, cupping and squeezing her bare bottom. She moaned with delight.

“Or here?” He slid his hand between her legs, his cool, callused hand against her sensitive flesh. She moaned and pressed against him, shameless as the flames lifted her. She’d craved him, longed for him, and now he was touching her at last, and she wanted him never to stop.

He slid a finger along her slit, parted the tender folds. With unerring precision he put his finger on the tight bud where all her need centered. “Perhaps here.”

She bit back a moan. How did he know ?

“Do you like that, my darling girl?” he purred.

She thrashed and clung to him, as if she could climb his body, find her way to release from this storm that swirled around and within her. He chuckled and slid both hands beneath her bottom, lifting her toward the table.

“Your maps,” she gasped. “The papers—I won’t be Empyrea.” She swept a hand around her, trying to push the parchment aside so she didn’t crush a precious diagram.

“Empyr—Ponsonby?” Leo raked his piles away as if they meant nothing to him in this moment. “You are far superior to Ponsonby, my dear.”

“I notice I’m throwing myself across your desk in much the same way,” Lillian observed as he perched her bottom on the edge of the table, skirts rucked about her hips, bodice gaping open. In the lamplight his face looked feral, fierce, the light in his eyes predatory. Yet his lips wore a wicked smile as he kissed her deeply, tangling his tongue with hers. She pulled his shoulders and wiggled, trying to press against him, and he chuckled against her lips.

“Thank God for that. Lillian. ” He kissed his way down her neck again, his hands drawn to her breasts, fingers kneading, cupping. “Why haven’t you come to my room?”

“I—I didn’t know you wanted me to.” She let her head fall back as he bent his mouth to her breasts, curling his tongue around a nipple. The pleasure was exquisite, the torment an ache close to pain.

“Oh, I want you. Every night, I hope I’ll find you sliding into my bed. I dream of what I’ll do to you.”

“What will you do?” she gasped, trying to tug him closer to her.

“Kiss you everywhere. Here,” he said, nuzzling her breasts. “Here quite especially. But also here —” He tossed up her skirts and his head was beneath them, his lips on the trembling flesh of her belly. “Here.” Another kiss beneath her navel, above the thatch of hair. “And here.” Gently he pushed her knees apart to blow on the sensitive, begging flesh, fanning the fire he’d lit within her. She gasped and nearly rose off the table.

“Spread your legs if I might kiss you, my darling Lillian,” he said, on his knees before her. He slipped his arms beneath her thighs, supporting her legs, while he brought his hands to her tenderest place and opened her secret folds with gentle fingers. “If I’m doing it wrong, tell me.”

“There?” Lillian squeaked, caught between need and agony. “I wouldn’t know if— oh .”

He kissed her there, then swept his tongue as if he were indeed a cat lapping cream, and it was fortunate he held her legs because Lillian was falling, falling. She knew now the delirium she was falling toward and marveled as it built, a tall wave of pleasure that came from her toes and grew enormous, towering, all-encompassing, before it crashed down over her, cascading through every part of her body, sending liquid to every joint.

He rose with a smile of deep satisfaction and kissed each breast. “Apparently I did it right.”

“You…that…what happened to me?” she panted. She curled her fingers into his hair and pulled his head toward hers, wanting to kiss him and never stop. “I want to please you,” she muttered against his lips.

He groaned and she felt the hard outline through his pantaloons, pressing into her thigh. “Will you let me inside you, my beautiful Lillian? I promise I will pull away—before.”

“Yes, please.” She grappled with the buttons on his pantaloons, and he laughed and moved her hands away, releasing his falls. She palmed his cock as it sprang free and his eyelids went heavy, his breath a hiss.

“You want me,” she said smugly. Her, plain, plump Lillian Gower. If only passing lust, and only now, this beautiful man wanted to be joined in the most intimate of ways to her .

“Hell’s teeth, but I do.”

He fit himself to her and hissed again as he sank inside in one long, smooth glide. “Lillian .” He screwed his eyes shut, face tense, jaw working as if he were holding something back. When he had himself mastered, he opened his eyes and looked at her, that wicked glow in his gaze. “You want me ,” he said smugly.

“Yes,” she whispered, drawing him close. “Yes, Leo, I do.”

He felt wonderful, filling her, and his pleasure fired her own. He shifted and pumped against her, gripping his lip between his teeth, his expression nearly pained, all his focus on the place where their bodies joined, and as she rode him she didn’t know if it were a new pleasure or echoes of the old, but the cascade came again, surrounding and lifting her, and she gave herself over to it, to him. When she opened her eyes she found his gaze locked on her face, studying her like one of his diagrams, soaking up every ounce of her pleasure.

“I want to join you,” he muttered. “Press your legs together for me. Darling, beautiful—” He lost his words then as he pulled out of her and instead drove himself between her legs, one stroke, two, and then he was shuddering the way she had, pressing a hand beneath her, soft fabric brushing her bottom as he spent into it instead of her skirts.

She clasped her arms about him as he lay against her, cradling his weight, holding him while he slowly knit back together, just as she was doing. Words pushed to her lips that she caught just in time.

I love you .

Did she? Did she love a man she’d known only a few weeks? She could not say he was not toying with her. She could not vow this was more than a dalliance to him. He had not said a word of what she meant to him, or what he wanted from her, yet she was ready to cast her whole heart away on him, placing her future and her hopes in his hands like an offering left in the shadowed mouth of a cave, unsure what her sacrifice would achieve.

She swallowed the words. “That seems more of a mess than last time,” she said instead.

He gave her a lazy, satisfied grin and threw the crumpled neckcloth to the floor. “I’ve been saving myself for you. Waiting in my room, night after night. Dreaming I could hold you like this.”

He lifted her as if she didn’t weigh as much as she did and settled them both in the chair. Likely he was crushing his expensive coat, and clearly he didn’t care. He nestled her bottom onto his lap, draping her knees over the armrest, idly stroking the skin of her calf.

She rested against him, knowing what she risked to surrender. But his arms were so safe, so warm. His heart beat so steady and solid against her side. She went to tug her bodice over her breasts, and he tugged it down again so he could study the whole of her bosom.

“Too beautiful to disguise,” he said.

“I can’t walk about with my bosoms showing, Leo. Not even to satisfy you.”

“Only show them to me, then.” He kissed her temple, sweeping her hair aside with his lips.

“Paulina will know if I come to your room,” she said after a moment. “Even though they have the steward’s rooms on the other side of the passage. I suspect she knows we are up to something already.”

“I expect she’s caught me watching you like a besotted fool.”

Had he been? She wanted to press, yet she couldn’t bear if he returned a light-hearted answer. Not when her heart was so heavy with this new awareness.

“You are only besotted with your cave,” she grumbled.

He looked over his worktable as if his mind were there already, plotting how to break through the heavy stones blocking the back of the cave. But his hand wandered up her leg beneath her skirts, warm and possessive.

She wanted to be possessed. By him.

“You’ve fulfilled one dream of mine. Of lying you down upon my maps and taking you on the table.”

One more prize to claim? Land to be conquered and won, or a monument to be explored and owned? Was that all she was to him?

She swatted his fingers away as he slid his hand between her thighs. She was replete, her body sensitized from the pleasure, yet in agony. This couldn’t be all she meant to him, the way she held and won him. She had to be more.

“Better than taking me atop the barrow, I suppose, with everybody watching. Like some pagan ritual of olden times.”

“Damn it, Lillian.” He bent his lips to her neck. “Now I’ll be dreaming of spreading you out on the barrow. And me between your legs, worshipping. I won’t be able to get any work done.” His hand came to her breast, and she pushed him away and rose.

It was all about the work for him, and the physical gratification she could offer. Her artistic knowledge, her archaeological expertise, her body: she’d offered freely, and he’d accepted freely, making no promises in return. And that made her a fool. She went to the table and started straightening his maps and papers.

An instant later a hard, hot wall pressed behind her, his arm snaking around her ribs to cup a breast. She felt his member pressing against her bottom, barely disguised by the thickness of her skirts.

“You’re angry with me. Did I hurt you?”

Not in the way he might think. She closed her eyes and braced her hands on the table, wondering if she dared surrender. Every moment of pleasure was a golden cord binding her to him. Hamstringing her, like the tortured smith, so she couldn’t leave.

He slid his flesh against hers, gently rocking, a question, asking if she was ready again. If she wanted him.

What more could she give him that would make him want her utterly? Her, and not simply what she offered?

“Once is enough, for now.” The strangeness of it tunneled through her, the sensations of new discovery. She drew away, pulling up her bodice, pulling down her skirts. The wick in the lamp flared, sizzling, and she glimpsed some sober, quiet depths in his eyes when she looked up at him. He looked—regretful? Resigned?

“Are you sorry?” His voice was deep, rough, as if emerging from a cave.

“For this? No.” She touched his chest. “I love—love being with you. Not just this, but all of it. When we talk about your dig. When you talk to me about anything.” She picked up the heavy rock that anchored his larger map. “Like why you would carry a heavy rock in your luggage.”

His face remained shadowed, his brow furrowed as he stroked the rough surface. He rested his other hand on her hip, as if he couldn’t bear to let go.

“One time when my father was about, and sober, and had some money, he took my mother and brother and I to Derbyshire, to the Peak District. There’s a cavern where they mine blue john—that’s what stone this is.”

“I’ve not heard of it,” Lillian murmured.

“It’s valuable, I believe. Makes lovely ornaments and jewelry. My father brought this rock away, swearing he’d have something fashioned for my mother. A piece she could show off. Something to make her proud of him.”

Leo’s face was terse and beautiful in the dancing shadows. “When he left again, who knows where, I hid the rock in my chamber. I was fascinated with it, and angry at him because he hadn’t kept his promise. And I wanted…I think I wanted a solid memory of that time when we’d all been together, and happy. He came looking for it to pay a debt, but I wouldn’t tell him where it was, though he roared and nearly tore the house apart.”

Lillian’s eyes smarted with tears. She smoothed the lines of his brow with her fingers. “And you keep it still?”

He shrugged. “As a reminder, I suppose. Not to be again the foolish boy I was, trusting anyone, believing— hoping —my father would reform.” He tapped a sharp edge of the mottled blue-gray stone. “But as a reminder also that what is rough on the outside may be valuable within. There can be treasures found in the unlikeliest places, if you know where to look.”

“That is a valuable lesson.” She swallowed the thick ache in her throat.

His gaze met hers, and she was caught. Good sense told her to move away, go to her room, climb into bed with Hester, not dream of Leo Westrop. Her heart was not at all in agreement with the agenda of her good sense. His face drew close to hers, his arms near enough to step into, and what would he do if she told him she was his completely?

“Lillian, I…”

“What?” she whispered, waiting. Aching to hear what she wanted to hear, dreading she’d hear something else.

The clock in the parlor chimed enough bells to tell them it was late. Leo blinked and stepped away. The spell was broken.

“I suppose you ought to go to bed.”

“Yes, I suppose I ought.”

He caught her hand and kissed it, and she leaned toward him like the dancing candle.

“Good night, my beautiful Lillian.”

She nodded and withdrew, climbing the stairs to the chambers on the first floor. Hester lay in the bed, quietly breathing, while moonlight cast a glow through the window. Lillian laid aside her dress and crawled into bed in her shift, her body still charged, aglow.

It was too late for her to leave with her heart intact. Too late for this arrangement to end with anything but hurt. A hurt she was afraid would cleave her to the bone when they parted.