The Slightest Provocation

Chapter Seventeen

Her plan had been to get to the cottage before him. To have a calm, uninterrupted time while she made her indispensable preparations (indispensable, at least, to an “eddicated lady” who wasn’t about to risk a pregnancy).

But first she’d needed to run down to the kitchen-and on the way she’d overheard a conversation that she’d have to consider at her leisure. After which Jessica wanted her opinion on a few additional candidates for the cistern committee, and Lord Ayres needed a book from her father’s library. And, of course, neither of them would have found it very convincing that she must hurry off immediately on a ramble in the forest.

And so she made her preparations in her dressing room at home-sponge doused in the vinegar solution and pushed up inside her as Jessica had taught her so many years ago. She was always careful about this (though she couldn’t deny that she’d also been very lucky). Important, indispensable, she repeated to herself, as she hurried through the little ritual.

No surprise, then, that she got to the cottage ten minutes late, and a not a little out of breath.

“Kit?”

A nervous quiver started up in her belly. Couldn’t he have waited? Or hadn’t he come at all? Perhaps he’d simply decided to give the whole thing up. Well, he had every right… She should check to see if there was a note on the table…

No doubt it was her nervousness-if not the fact that she was still trying to catch her breath-that had prevented her from considering if he might be holding himself still behind the door she’d opened. Nor had she heard a squeak of hinges or an intake of breath as he tiptoed out to grasp her from behind.

Shouting OH-HOH.

Or what-ho or ahoy.

Or some ridiculous thing a child might imagine that sailors or pirates were wont to cry out-he sang it out into her ear as he caught hold of her arms and bent them behind her waist.

Binding her wrists together-quickly, deftly, taking advantage of her surprise.

She laughed out loud at the broad, crude silliness of it. Though in truth, he hadn’t tied her so crudely as all that, her hands were immobilized. He’d used his neckcloth. The linen chafed against her wrists. Her only feeble recourse was to kick her feet when he picked her up and carried her the few steps to the bed. Oh, and to bite at his neck where the shirt was open, before he dropped her onto the mattress and climbed onto the bed to straddle her.

Rubbing the spot where she’d bitten him, he grinned down at her. He still wore his pantaloons and boots-she felt herself squeezed tight by his thighs pressed hard into her sides. She contented herself with what wriggling, kicking, and thrashing about she was able to do, while he lifted her skirts and tossed them over her head. Leaving her sputtering in a sea of white ruffles, he moved downward to dive between her legs.

“A pirate treasure,” he declared while he rubbed his rough, unshaven cheeks against her belly. Kissing, nibbling, sniffing at her-practically drooling like a hunting dog. She bounced about from the hips, arching her back, shrieking in mock terror.

“Villain, monster! Unhand me, you vile knave!”

By now he would have known (having caught a faint whiff of vinegar) that it was all right to proceed as he might. “Never! I’ll have my treasure, and the very enlightened lady too,” enlightened lady pronounced with a wry twist of a London workingman’s accent-she’d become familiar with the intonations when he’d taken her out adventuring all those years ago.

She tried to close her legs against him and found that she couldn’t. He’d always been strong, but he was a lot stronger than she remembered. All that loading of muskets, she mused; she couldn’t have fought him off if she’d wanted to.

The light of midday shone gauzily through the white cotton of her petticoat. Nice to picture the muscles in his arms, held taut as he forced her legs open. Her thighs trembled. His face was scratchy against her skin. How long since he’d shaved? Had he scandalized his sister-in-law by appearing that way at breakfast? He kissed her thighs, slowly moving his head upward now.

“Rogue, swine, how dare you!” And whatever you do, don’t stop-but she knew he wouldn’t. On the contrary, he was using his tongue to bring her off quickly. She arched, crested, lay panting while he raised himself back up, brushing the skirts and petticoat away from her face to kiss her mouth, her neck, her breasts… Voraciously, with just a hint of her own smell on him.

There’d been a fichu about her neck and shoulders when she’d set out today. Gone. Lost in the sea of bedding. If there’d been pins, they’d long since been pulled out. At least he hadn’t torn her clothing. She was lucky that the tartan gown she wore had a wide neckline.

Lucky? Or had she given it a bit of offhand thought this morning when she’d pointed to it hanging in the wardrobe… A bit old, Peggy, but surely good enough for a ramble in the forest. And had she just imagined the wry, knowing stare Peggy had returned? Yes, my lady, good enough for that.

He had one of her nipples between his lips. She whimpered, writhed underneath him-tossing her head back, thrusting out her chin in a simulacrum of aggrieved hauteur. She hoped he was enjoying her playacting-she was doing her best to make it as broad, as ridiculous as his.

Ah, but she’d also let out a deep groan, at the feel of his large warm hands, so tight around the cheeks of her arse. Lovely to be held so firmly. To be spread, opened, handled…

He chuckled. “But what’s this?” he exclaimed. “Another way into the treasure chest?”

Rolling her over, one of his hands tracing the curve of her rump, slapping her now, murmuring that the enlightened lady was far too bold and needed a little pirate discipline.

She felt herself bouncing beneath his palm. Her skin must be growing quite pink, she thought, and she found herself suddenly, humiliatingly, wishing that there were a mirror close at hand so she could see it.

He must be reaching with his other hand to undo his buttons.

With her wrists bound as they were, she wouldn’t be able to balance on hands and knees. Shoulders and knees it would have to be, then-breathless, with her face buried in the bedding beneath her. No matter-he’d manage the angles; she wasn’t sure how, but the nice thing about his uncouth lady-and-the-pirate game was that she didn’t have to know quite how he’d… take her, the words inescapable, if crude and beneath her dignity.

He’d manage it. Yes, he was managing splendidly. For he’d entered her now and she heard herself calling out with surprised pleasure, to feel the parts of her quim that usually went quite untouched when one did it from other positions. She squeezed back against him-one wouldn’t want to be entirely passive (would one?) while being (but how might his enlightened lady prisoner put it?) ravished, taken?… And with such profound, cheerful, and energetic disrespect.

He’d reached a hand now under her belly, his finger touching her flesh where it became hard and knotted. “Pearl,” he whispered. Pearl in the oyster. His tongue traced the whorls of her ear; his finger continued to thrum against her while he made his last thrusts and even as he gushed into her. She screamed against the thrumming and then against the suddenness of his release and the intensity of her own. Until her scream became a gasp of astonishment, for her cries had frightened the doves in the eaves, who now took flight in a great cacophonous flapping of wings.

Difficult to pull himself off her, he thought. He’d like to stay just as he was-mouth against her nape, cock and belly against her arse. But he could feel her shoulders growing stiff; she needed to have her hands freed.

The knot he made was quite a bit tighter than necessary; the linen of his neckcloth would never be the same. It had been years since he’d had to make excuses to his valet for this sort of thing. Still, he wouldn’t have wanted to go to the village shop for drapery cord.

He used his teeth to loosen it.

“Ahhh, much, much better.” She rolled into his arms, laughing softly, kissing his throat, his ears, even his shoulder where the scar was.

“Your arms aren’t too terribly stiff?”

She laughed. “The left one has gone quite numb, but I don’t mind. All in all, you managed to get things quite… correct.”

He laughed too, and reached out to massage the poor arm. Agreeable to have succeeded so well, delightful to be appreciated. Interesting to remember her youthful fancies about a cruel governess. Even then she’d needed an occasional holiday from her willfulness, her intelligence, her everlasting fastidiousness of mind.

Too bad he hadn’t understood this better, back when it would have counted. Might have saved him some boring nights with paid companions who only pretended to enjoy it.

Her eyelids had grown heavy. He kissed them. He thought she’d sleep.

Certainly she wouldn’t remember what she’d proposed yesterday, about telling her his business in the district. He drew her closer to him.

She rolled over on her front, eyes wide and clear as though she’d slept ten hours, chin propped on her hands.

“Now,” she said, “tell me what you’ve been doing in the countryside.”

Oh, Lord.

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Tell me anyway.”

He was right. She didn’t like it at all.

By the end of their rather brief conversation, they’d moved to separate sides of the bed.

“I liked you a great deal better as a pretend pirate than I do as a pretend magistrate.”

Damn that everlasting fastidiousness of mind. She had an answer for everything.

The letters from Traynor? (“But of course an informant would lie and exaggerate,” she said. “Keeps him in business, after all.”)

Secret meetings? (“Well yes. If the government insists upon making it illegal to meet in public. Not to speak of disseminating and discussing certain literature.”)

Caches of weapons? (“Has anyone ever really seen them? For Lord knows, men always like to talk and boast and exaggerate about weapons.” And in truth, he’d never gotten Traynor to point to any proof here.)

The way Traynor’s reports seemed to match up with the Nottingham magistrate’s informer’s communications, not to speak of the Parliamentary Committee’s report. (What a pity how many poor men needed to sell themselves, to tattle on their fellows.)

“And if their lives were better, Kit? If their petitions hadn’t been refused and they themselves had been treated with some respect when they’d delivered the petition last winter?”

He’d found himself occasionally wondering the same thing.

“But it’s too late now. They’re going to march to London, Mary. I think there will be violent disorder on a scale we’re not accustomed to in Britain. The London delegate told them the time for parliamentary redress was past, and it seems they believe that. I wrote to Lord Sidmouth, recommending that they be arrested. Perhaps that’ll be our only chance to stop this thing.”

“London delegate?”

“Ah yes, the man who was bothering Peggy was one of them. Name of Oliver. Sent from the London Committees, to spread their poison. You can see why I was so exercised, thinking I might get to see him. Traynor sent me a report of the meeting. Williams the shoemaker, his son Merton the stockinger, and his grandson-three generations of revolutionists, all there. Oliver gave a stirring speech-called it ‘The Mother’s Last Admonition to Her Children.’ Said the London Committee could rally seventy thousand men and that the men of the countryside must stand up in support. Very successful, according to Traynor.”

She knit her brow, but didn’t say anything.

“Well?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Kit.”

“At least you didn’t throw anything.”

“I didn’t tell you everything I think either.”

“Would you read the correspondence if I brought it tomorrow? Then you’ll know everything I know.”

“Why would you show it to me?”

“Because you, of all people, know I like to get things… correct. I have a reputation to uphold with you. Because I think I can convince you of my position. Because I know you can be fair-minded when you want to be. Because you’re my wife and I… trust you.”

He was silent for a while. And when he did speak, it was only to ask if she might help him tie his hopelessly spoiled neckcloth.

She’d keep his secret, then. At least for a while. After all, she was keeping her own secret, wasn’t she, about what she’d overheard Nicholas Merton saying this morning, in a pantry just off the kitchen? He’d slipped away soon after, but she’d recognized him even in the dark corridor.

There’ll be guns. You can be sure of it. They know what they’re about in London.

She should tell someone. Perhaps she would have already if the boy’s father hadn’t been forced to run off in fear of the same stupid laws she’d just been arguing about. And then there was the ridiculous fact that he still reminded her of how Kit had once looked.

The boy’s family had had enough troubles. And anyway, he’d probably simply been boasting to impress his mate. Just as Traynor was probably making up the business of the weapons to impress his employer-and to keep him paying for information. If she were a paid informer, she’d certainly exaggerate the evidence in order to keep her employer interested. And men were so unfailingly fascinated-dazzled, really-by talk of weapons, weren’t they?

Which didn’t, however, mean that there wasn’t some plot afoot. Much as she hated to own it, Nicholas had been talking about something; after all, he had been to the meeting-it said so in the damned informer’s letter.

Difficult, painful to think of it happening in her village. Other reform clubs might be plotting violence, but not here, where her mother had done so much charity. Where she and Jessica had recently gone about distributing food and blankets. Where the women were so grateful for a little packet of tea…

Would she be grateful for a little packet of tea?

The truth was that she’d be ruddy furious if a pair of well-intentioned gentlewomen were to descend upon her home with food, smiles, and a blanket-and then disappear back into their pretty, comfortable lives until next time her children took ill or hungry. She’d be proud, prickly, disrespectful, a veritable Nick Merton. Maybe it wasn’t only Kit the boy reminded her of.

She wasn’t sure where any of this led-except to mortal confusion, a possible megrim, and a strong desire to forget all about it. Even as she needed to become Aunt Mary again at dinner, and to try not to drift off into delicious memories of the moment when the doves had taken flight.