Regency Society
Worry engulfed him. Would her husband be mad with worry somewhere?
‘I c…can s…see that th…there are bl…blankets in the f…far corner, I th…think. Perhaps we c…could w…warm ourselves.’
Which corner? In the gloom of his vision Taris could detect nothing save the walls enclosing this space. Another thought heartened him. Perhaps if he let her down she might lead him to them.
When her feet touched the dirt floor Beatrice winced, the numbness now replaced by a pins-and-needles pain that made contact with anything unbearable. She could never in her whole life remember feeling this cold, the sheer pain of it seeping into her bones and making her heavy and sluggish. She almost crawled to the corner, glad to finally be off her feet; removing her boots, she burrowed into the warmth of a scratchy grey horse blanket.
But her clothes were wet and stiff and the cold that she thought might disappear suddenly increased with the change in circumstance.
Taris Wellingham at her side was peeling off his cloak, and the wet steamy shirt he had on followed it.
She looked away, her breath indrawn by the tone of muscle, the shaped contours attesting to the fact that he must spend much of his life out of doors.
‘Take your cloak off too,’ he said as he jumped under her blanket and heaped his cloak on top.
‘Wh…what are you d…doing?’ Panic lent a screeching sound to the query.
‘One can die of the cold in a matter of moments. Skin to skin we can warm each other.’
‘Sk…in to skin?’ Lord, that he should even suggest such a thing.
‘Feel this,’ he returned and placed her hand across her throat. A clammy coldness emanated from her, the beat of her heart beneath shallow and fast.
‘And then feel this.’
Now her fingers lay against his chest, the hair tickling her palm. But it was his heat that got to her, a blazing hotness that seemed to cover each and every part of him.
She could not pull away, could not make herself remember manners and propriety and comportment. All she wanted was to be closer and when he helped her take the cloak from her shoulders she did nothing to dissuade him.
‘How old are you?’ he said above the silence.
‘Tw…twenty-eight.’
‘And your husband?’
‘Is d…dead.’
‘Then I have no need to be concerned that an avenging swain will appear and challenge me to a duel.’
‘No, sir. It is only your w…warmth that I w…want.’
‘Good.’ His response was measured and brisk, her worries about anything more between them singularly ridiculous in the whole situation.
Of course he would not want more from her! She bent her head so that he might not see her blush. Lord, the thinness of her arms against his healthy shape was unattractive and her dress with the long sleeves was as wet as his shirt.
‘Take this off, too.’
‘I will n…not.’
In response he simply sat her up and unbuttoned the gown before slipping it from her. In the darkness she saw that the livid red scar near her elbow was difficult to make out. Still when his fingers touched the skin they lingered, his question of how this had happened almost a physical thing in the gloom.
‘I f…fell against a f…fence.’
‘And it was not tended?’
‘The doctor tried his hardest…’
A sharp bark of laughter confused her. Not humorous in any way. Just harsh. Critical.
Her stays and chemise and petticoat beneath were a little damp and she was pleased he did not insist she take them off too. She noticed after removing his boots he left his own trousers on, the wet fabric catching on the skin of her legs as they laid themselves down.
Together. Spooned. His back against her face. She could not help her hands wandering to the warmth.
‘Will the h…horses b…be s…safe?’
‘They will keep warm together if they have any sense.’
‘You h…have d…done this before? B…been caught in the s…snow, I mean?’ Lord, the clumsiness of her question made her stiffen. Of course he would have lain with a woman. Many women probably, with his fine face and his courage!
He did not seem to notice her faltering as he answered her question. ‘I fought in Europe in the Second Peninsular campaign and it often was colder there than in England. The men were not as soft as you are, though, when we lay down at night.’ A smile was audible in his voice.
A personal compliment! Bea left the edge of awkwardness alone and thought about other things: the sound of the horses nuzzling in, the snow outside, and a wind that howled through the rafters of the roof. All things to keep her mind off a growing realisation that the warmth was no longer concentrated solely in him.
To lie with a man in a snow-filled night, safe after adversity, a man who was neither sickly nor mean. A man with a man’s body, a man’s tastes, the smell of his skin woody and strong, his muscles even in the dimness defined and substantive.
So unlike Frankwell.
Years of celibacy suddenly weighed against opportunity; the widow Bassingstoke was presented with a fine handsome man and a night that would hold no questions.
The ghost of a smile played around her lips before sense reined it in. Of course she could not take advantage of the situation. She was a lady and a widow. Besides, already she thought his body had relaxed into sleep, the even cadence of his breath confirming it. To him she was nothing more than a warm skin to survive against. When the tip of her finger reached out to the ridge of his shoulder blade and traced the muscle in air, she wished that she might have been braver and truly touched him.
So unwise, another voice cautioned, the knowledge of her plainness leading only to a rejection that would be embarrassing to them both.
He came awake with a start. Where the hell was he? A leg lay across his stomach. A shapely leg by the feel of it, fully exposed almost up to the groin.
His groan took him by surprise, his manhood rising without any help from his mind.
Lord. Mrs Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke had a sensuality about her that was elemental. He had not felt it before with his tiredness and his worry, but here with the first slam of awareness he was knocked for six. It lay in her smell and the breath of trust against his chest. It lingered in the hair uncoiled from the tight knot he had felt before finding sleep and which now curtained across him, thick and curly. The line of her breasts too was surprising. The thinness of her waist and of her arms was not mirrored here, her fat abundance of soft womanhood moulded against him, her nipples through thin lawn grazing his own with a surprising result.
God. His erection had grown again, filling the space of his trousers with warmth and promise. God, he muttered once more as she moved in sleep, this time all but crawling on top of him in her quest for warmth. His sex nudged at her thighs and he did not stop it, the very sensation tightly bound up in the forbiddenness of the situation.
A quandary he had no former experience of. A stranger who seduced him even in her sleep, the smell of her wafting beneath his nose. Flowers and woman.
And trust. A powerful aphrodisiac in a man who had forgotten the emotion, forgotten the very promise of intimate closeness!
He opened his eyes as widely as he could, trying to catch in them a reflection of light. Any light. But the darkness was complete, the snow and wind blocking moonbeams with the time, by his reckoning, being not much past the hour of two.
The witching hour. The hour he usually prowled the confines of his house away from the stares of others, darkness overcoming disability and all of the lights turned down.
Here, however, he did not wish to rise. Here he wanted to stay still, and just feel. The incline of her chest, the tremor in her hands as if a dream might have crept into her slumber, the feel of her hair wound around his fingers, clamping him to her.
His!
This thin and sensible lass, with her twenty-eight years and her widowhood.
Was it recent? Had her husband just died, the ring she wore a reminder of all the happy years she now would never enjoy? Were there children? Did she rule a domain of offspring and servants with her sense and sensibility? A woman at the centre of her world and with no need for any other? Certainly not for a man with fading sight and the quickening promise of complete blindness!
His arousal flagged slightly, but regained ground when her fingers clamped on his own, anchoring her to him. A ship in a storm, and any port welcomed.
He could not care. The rush of desire and need was unlike any he had ever experienced. He needed to take her, to possess her, to feel the softness of her flesh as he pushed inside to be lost in warmth.
He rocked slightly, guilt buried beneath want. And then he rocked again.
Chapter Three
She felt the bud of excitement, the near promise of something she had never known. Breathing in, she whispered a name.
‘Taris.’
His name.
The answering curse pulled her fully awake, his face close, the darkness of it lightened by the line of his teeth as he spoke.
‘Beatrice-Maude? Is there a name that you are called other than that? It is long, after all, and I thought—’
‘Bea.’ She broke into his words with a whisper. ‘My mother always called me Bea.’
‘Bea,’ he repeated, turning the name over on his tongue and she felt his breath against her face as he said it. So close, so very close. He held his hand across her waist when she tried to pull back.
‘Bea as in Bea-witching?’
His fingers trailed down her cheek, warm and real.
‘Or Bea as in Bea-utiful?’
She tensed, waiting for his laugh, but it did not come.
‘Hardly that, sir.’ She felt the heavy thrump of her heartbeat in her throat. Was he jesting with her? Was he a man who lied in order to receive what he wanted, who thought such untruthful inanities the desperate fodder expected by very plain women? She tried to turn from him to find a distance, the sheer necessity of emotional survival paramount.
‘What is it? What is wrong?’ A thread of some uncertainty in his voice was the only thing that held her in place. If she had heard condescension or falsity she would have stood, denying his suggestion of more, even knowing that she might never in her whole life be offered anything as remotely tempting.
Again.
‘I should rather honesty, sir.’
‘Sir?’ The word ended in a laugh. ‘Surely “sir” is too formal for the position we now find ourselves in?’ He did not take back his compliments and another bark of laughter left her dazed.
‘Are you a celibate widow, Mrs Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke?’
She started to nod and then changed her mind, not sure of exactly what he alluded to.
‘Then I suppose there is another question I must ask of you. Are you a woman who would say nay to the chance of sharing more than just warmth together here in the midst of a storm?’
His voice was silken smooth, a tone in it that she could not quite fathom.
Her brows knitted together. ‘I don’t understand.’
He pushed inwards and the hardness of his sex made everything crystal clear.
A dalliance. A tryst. One stolen and forbidden night. For twelve years she had wondered what it would be like to lie with a man who was not greedy or selfish. A man who might consider her needs as well as his own. Always lovemaking had hurt her; he had hurt her when she had tried to take her pleasure in the act. Frankwell Bassingstoke and his angry punitive hands.
What would Taris Wellingham’s touch be like, his slender fingers finding places she had only ever dreamed about?
Lord, but to dare to take the chance of one offered providence and the end of it come morning.
No strings attached, no empty unfilled promises to lie awake and worry over come the weeks and months that followed. Only these hours, the darkness sheltering anything she did not wish him to see. And then an ending.
Twenty-eight and finally free. The heady promise of it was as exhilarating as it was unexpected.
‘You mean this for just one night only?’
She needed to understand the parameters of such a request, for if he said he wanted more she would know that he lied and know also that she should not want it.
‘Yes.’
Freedom. Impunity. Self-government and her own reign.
Words that had been the antithesis of all she had been for the past twelve years and words that she vowed would shape her life for all of those still to come.
Her husband’s face hovered above her, his heavy frown and sanctimonious nature everything that she had hated. At sixteen she had not been old enough to recognise the faults and flaws of a man who would become her husband, but at twenty-eight she certainly did.
He had been a bully, an oppressive domineering tyrant and with his bent for religious righteousness she had never quite been able to counter any of it.
She shook her head hard. Nay, all that was over. Now she would do only as she wanted so long as it did not harm any other.
‘Are you married?’
Her question was blurted out. If he said that he was, she would not touch him.
‘No.’
Permission granted. Placing her hand flat on his chest, her forefinger found his nipple. With deliberation she lent down and wet it with her tongue, blowing on the cold as she caressed it into rigidity.
When he stretched out and groaned she felt the control of a woman with power. Feminine power, the feeling unlike any she had ever experienced.
She did not feel guilty as Frankwell had said that she must, she did not feel sullied or soiled or befouled. Nay, she felt the sheer and utter wonder of it, the bewildering rarity of rightness.
Here. With Taris Wellingham. For this one storm-snowed freezing night.
‘Thank you.’ The words slipped out without recognition as to what she had said. A beholden contentment that broke through all that she had believed of herself or all that a husband steeped in damning religion had believed. In just one touch Frankwell’s hold on the tenure of her moral pureness was gone, replaced simply by comprehension and relief.
She smiled as his fingers began to unlace her bodice and the thin lawn fell away.
‘Thank you?’
The restraint that Taris was trying to hold in check broke, the swollen want between them demanding nothing hidden or reserved. Running his fingers down the curve of her arm, he gathered the ties on her lacy chemise and unravelled them, her face tipping up to his own.
He imagined her eyes, surprise and lust in equal measure; he imagined her mouth, the feel of her lips full and tender. When his hands cupped her breasts and held the flesh in his palms, he took a shaky breath out, for this woman did not wait for him to do all the work. No, already her fingers skimmed the waistband of his trousers, slipping into the skin that lay underneath and feeling his erection with as much care and vigilance as he was giving to her.
A balanced taking.
No missish virgin or paid whore. No money between them or commitment sought. Only feelings.
‘Ahhh, Beatrice-Maude,’ he whispered as she pushed the material covering him downwards and her fingers came to other places, more hidden. No green or frightened girl either.
Equal measure!
Touch for touch! Stopping only as his mouth fastened upon her nipple and tasted, the sweet sound of bliss in her voice as she expelled her breath and enjoyed.
The dampness of her skin, and her stark utter heat. The way her hips rocked against his own, asking, wanting, needing more.
His head rose to her mouth, and his fingers felt the way, her chin, her nose, the lay of her eyes and her forehead. No colour but shape, and crowned with a pile of darkened curls. That much at least he could see!
‘Let me take you, sweetheart. Let me take you further.’ His voice did not seem like his own.
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Much further…’
Her heavy breasts swayed as he brought her up with him, the fall of her legs opening beneath her chemise. His hand crept under it to her stockings, which he removed, and then to her drawers, lacy pieces of nothing, the unsewn seam leaving easy access.
‘Now,’ she cried and not quietly either. ‘Right now.’ The sweat between them built, the cold of this barn a far-off thought, no time for careful restraint or the foreplay that he was more used to. No time for any of it as he lifted her on to him and drove home, again and again and again, a life-filled, raw loving that was all that was left to seek release.
Which they did!
She had died and gone to heaven! She swore she had. She swore that if her life were to end now, this very, very minute she would leave a happy woman. A fulfilled woman. A woman who finally knew what it was novels spoke of in their flurry of adjectives and superlatives.
This. Feeling.
Spent and replete and waves of ecstasy still sweeping across her. And tears when she began to cry.
Not quietly either. But loudly. Loud tears of wonderment and relief. She just could not stop them.
‘Did I hurt you? Are you hurt?’
She waved away his worry and tried to smile.
‘No. It was wonderful. So wonderful.’ Bruised with happiness and finality. Understanding what it was she had not experienced before.
He lay back against the scratchy grey blanket in the year’s new hay and began to laugh.
‘You are crying…because it was wonderful?’
She nodded, the sniffs now lessened as she sought for her chemise balled beside them in order to blow her nose.
‘I didn’t know…’ no, she could tell him none of her past for she did not want him feeling sorry for her ‘…that a hay barn could be such a sensual place.’
Before her he lay like a prince devoid of clothes and inhibitions. A Greek god fallen into her lap by the will of a Lord who had finally answered her daily prayers.
A whole twelve years of them to be precise, and not more than a month after the death of Frankwell Bassingstoke!
Perhaps that was all the time needed for a powerful deity to recognise the sacrifice she had made to care for her given husband, to obey him, to yield to the orders he had been so fond of giving.
Perhaps Taris Wellingham had been sent in recompense, the gift of this night easily making up for the hardship of her past decade.
His finger traced the upward turn of her lips.
‘You are a puzzle, Mrs Bassingstoke,’ he said, his voice rich with the rounded vowels of a well-to-do upbringing. ‘And one that I cannot, for the life of me, quite fathom.’
She stayed silent, enjoying his touch as he splayed open her palm and drew a spiral inside before tracing upwards to the sensitive folds of her neck and the outline of her lips.
When his hand cupped the back of her nape and he pulled her down across him she went willingly, his mouth taking what she offered in a hard twist of desire. Seeking. Finding. The taste of him masculine and fierce, though for the first time she was frightened, frightened of the need that welled in her, wanting, wishing this was real and binding her to eternity.
‘No.’ She pulled back and he did not stop her, did not hurt her in his insistence or his demand. Actions so unlike Frankwell that her fear subsided.
‘I should not exact anything you do not wish to offer.’
Quiet words from an honourable man, his need felt easily against her stomach, yet still he gave her the choice.
Her head dipped down and she ran her tongue across his lips, her fingers splayed against his chest as she held him still.
As if sensing her need for control, he remained motionless even as her touch cupped the full hardness of him.
‘My turn now,’ she whispered and stroked his warmth, teasing as he writhed. ‘Not yet,’ she added as he moved up against her. ‘Or yet,’ she repeated as she sat astride him and guided the fullness to a place that was only hers to offer. Home. Replete. Abundant. ‘But now.’
The feel of him made her tip back her head and cry out his name, no longer quiet as her voice broke against the wind and the rain and the wild sound of trees. The storm of sex was now inside her too, reaching, reaching and breaking languid sweet in her belly, her fingers and toes stretched tight against the ripples, urging them on for longer, unfastened by any ties of right or wrong.
Only feeling.
Only them.
When the last of the contractions had ceased she lay against him, joined by flesh and the slick wetness of their lovemaking. His hand claimed her, lying over her bottom, skin to skin, the cold air diminishing their heat. The length of her tresses was bound in his other fist, fettered in nakedness, lost in the glory.
‘Bea?’ Whispered.
‘Yes.’ Whispered back.
‘Bea-yond anything.’
Her laughter took his body from her own.
This was what she had missed all of her life. Just this. No meanness in it or bad temper. No righteous lecture on the innate evil of all women’s nature.
Beyond. Anything.
When his fingers crept into the space his body had just left, she opened her legs wide and all that was wonderful before began again.
She was asleep. Catching dreams from the early dawn. He did not wish to wake her, but he had to, for the winds had fallen and the sky was lightening. At least that much he could see and feel. They would be here soon. Everybody. The world. Reality.
The sun and the light and the damming affliction of his soul.
He would not be able to see her. He did not know the lay of this barn, the traps and the pitfalls. And she would know all of what he wasn’t, so carefully hidden in the dark.
His breathing shallowed and the fear that he had lived with for three years thickened. This time it did matter. Mrs Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke and her generous soft body even now in sleep turned towards him and wanting. Again.
He could not take her. He could not risk it with the new day dawning over a weakening storm. The blood that ran to the place between his legs did not listen to his head, however.
Once more, please the Lord, time for just once more.
She was wet and willing and pliable and, seeking entry with his hands, he knew the second she awakened, bearing down upon him as she guided him in.
The dawn was now well and truly broken and Taris dressed with haste before walking carefully around the shelter and marking its shape. Thirty yards long and twenty across, the haystack in the corner reaching out a considerable distance. The rough-sawn timber the barn was built with left a splinter in his palm and, sucking it hard, he saw the movements of Beatrice-Maude dressing. He hoped that she had tidied her hair and removed the traces of straw from her clothes that he had felt when he had brushed against them. He did not move back towards her, however, but turned to the open end of the building, tilting his head so that he could hear the sounds from further off.
They were coming.
People were coming.
Binding his hair into a tight queue, he stood with his face against the sky and waited, the hat that he had borrowed from the younger man in the carriage pulled down across his forehead, shading his eyes from other prying ones.
‘A rescue party will be here in five minutes,’ he warned, his voice distant. He could not help it. This was a place he had no knowledge of and the daylight was upon them. If he walked towards her, he might trip on a misplaced object and his brother had described to him in detail the opaque clouds in his left eye.
He did not wish for Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke to see that. He did not want her to know that he was a man who functioned best only in the darkness, a man who depended on his trusted servants and the familiar shorelines of his home. Risk free and easy.
‘You can hear them?’ she asked and he merely nodded. ‘Well, I can make out nothing at all and I always thought myself rather accomplished on hearing things that others could not.’