The Slightest Provocation

Chapter Three

The pounding had ceased. She folded her shawl over a chair by the window while he prowled about the room, picking up stray items and laying them down again. The air seemed to hum. His nervous energy had a familiar resonance; they might have been back in her bedchamber in Curzon Street. He’d deposited the bottle on the dressing table and was fiddling with the books atop the bed stand.

“Diderot, eh? Lying supine beneath the witty lady who wrote Pride and Prejudice. An excellent arrangement, don’t you think, for the both of them?”

If she weren’t careful, she’d laugh along with him.

“Come here,” she said, “so I can look at you more closely.”

In truth, to do more than simply look: she’d have to employ all her senses, to encompass the fact of his presence. Her lips trembled, parting to take a deep, heady breath of him. As once she’d taken greedy, icy gulps of water from the brook at the border of Rowen and Beechwood Knolls.

He’d taken hold of both her hands. Holding them down at her sides, his own large, strong hands about her wrists. They exchanged a tiny, conspiratorial smile; she gazed serenely upward, to take his measure.

The curtains stirred in a sweet salt breeze. A serene, temperate night; one wouldn’t guess at the ferocious weather they’d been having just a few hours earlier. The fire burned low and even, its mellow warmth spreading upward around their legs.

Time was when the two of them would fall asleep like puppies on the floor, in front of just such a low, comfortable fire. Sated by some newly discovered pleasure, exhausted and beguiled by some elaborately contrived private diversion, congratulating themselves on one or another highly athletic position they could almost believe they’d invented. Housemaids and butler would have gone to bed long before, or might even be beginning their workday, if Lord and Lady Christopher had made a really late night of it.

Shaking her hands free of his, she lifted her fingertips to trace the lines of his face: curl of lip, bump at the bridge of a nose broken so many years ago, swoop of eyelid fringed with straight, thick black lashes.

Difficult to cease her explorations, even more difficult to turn away. “I meant it,” she said, “about my stays.”

“I’m quite at your service,” he replied, “but we’ll have to start with your dress, won’t we? Such a sweet pale green… it’s very pretty on you.”

She turned to allow him to get to the hooks at her back.

“Pistachio green, it’s called.” Uttered so softly that she doubted he’d heard her.

A ridiculous state of affairs in a civilized nation-how had it come to pass that a lady was unable to get out of her clothes without assistance? If assistance was what you’d call what he was offering.

Peggy would have had the buttons and hooks undone in a trice. But Kit wasn’t bad at it. (Of course he isn’t bad at it, she reminded herself. It’s not as though he hasn’t unhooked a lady’s dress during the past nine years.) He fumbled now and then, cursing good-humoredly at the dress’s formidable array of hooks, the buttons being more for show than function. Still, he had marvelously deft hands for a gentleman. When he’d been bored, he’d sometimes amused himself by carving little birds or animals out of wood.

She’d burned all the ones he’d left behind.

His breath-slow and warm on the back of her neck-came more quickly now, a low, cool whistle of triumph at getting through all those fastenings. She glanced sideways at the window, at their reflections against the black night sky. He was grinning, a slightly chipped right front tooth catching a ray of moonlight just an instant before he bent his lips to trace the curve of her nape. The tip of his tongue, rough as a cat’s, began its nimble descent down the bumps at the top of her spine.

Her dress would have slipped down around her if she weren’t holding it up, her hands on her breasts, the chambray falling in uneven folds-high around her shins in front, drooping down to the floor behind her, from the V it made, open to the middle of her back.

He’d lowered her shift around the tops of her arms, his lips continuing downward to her shoulder blades at the verge of her corset.

Her wings, he’d once said. If she’d had fairy wings, they’d have sprouted right there. Like water lilies, from those pads of bone and muscle.

You’re a poet, she’d exclaimed, like Ovid. Don’t tell my brothers, he’d responded-so quickly that they’d both laughed at how scandalized he’d sounded.

He must be surprised, she thought, at how primly she was holding the dress about herself. The two of them had been so careless back in Curzon Street. Returning home late at night, you could trace their path through the house by a trail of discarded garments-coat and waistcoat, cloak and lace mantilla… Neckcloth and petticoat like snowdrifts on the entryway’s black marble floor.

His hands had crept around her, to grasp hers, prise them open and cause her to loose her hold on the fabric. Oh, all right. She sighed, and so, it seemed, did her gown, expelling a puff of air as it fell to the floor about her feet. Impatient and untidy as she’d ever been, she kicked the heap of cloth out of their way.

He cupped her breasts through the stiff fabric of her stays… No, wait, there’d been a sudden loosening-he’d taken a lucky tug at the drawstring; his inquisitive, leisurely fingertips moved closer to her skin, taking the time, she thought, to remember the shape of her nipples, which were stiffening at an alarming rate. Caressing her through her shift-she was wearing an old one; damnable to be so short of clean undergarments; the silk had once been very fine but now it was almost threadbare-he could be touching her through a cobweb.

She must have leaned back against him. Her naked shoulders chafed against his coat; she could feel his hips, his belly-no use denying it, she could feel his cock-hard against her, through her petticoat.

“My stays,” she repeated, in a more temperate voice than she’d have thought she could manage. “Please, they’re awfully tight about my waist. The… supper I ate, you know.”

Forcing herself to take a step forward, she put an inch of space between their bodies to stop him, in any case, from continuing to press himself, in that disreputable, near-irresistible way, against her arse. Arms akimbo, she pushed her hands hard against the sides of her waist to relieve the tension of her flesh against the laces up her back.

“Ah,” he murmured. His fingers had crept upward from her breasts to the shoulder straps, held fast with ribbon. No, not held fast, not now. She wiggled her shoulder blades, but he wouldn’t be distracted from unknotting the strings at her waist.

“Ah yes, the supper you ate. I’d forgotten-no, in truth I’ve never forgotten-what a picture you make while you’re enjoying your food. Press a bit harder for a moment, will you, so I can get a little slack on this loop… Much better, thanks… do you know, Mary, that watching you eat, I found myself envying the capon?”

She smiled despite herself. “I expect there’s rather a smutty witticism to be made from that.”

“I should have thought you’d have made it by now.”

“But you see,” she told him, “what a staid, well-governed, and circumspect lady I’ve become.”

Or at least a less vulnerable one.

He snorted with laughter and then took a breath-“Ah, got it. No more need of your help, thank you, Lady Chris…”

But she could already tell that he’d gotten it, by the sudden easing of pressure about her torso, not to speak of the impatient breaths he was drawing while he waited for her-to? Well, that was rather the problem, wasn’t it? She’d hoped that this step of her hastily conceived strategy would have become clear to her when the need arose. Though in truth she remained unsure…

But she wasn’t really obliged to do anything, was she? Even with the laces undone, she could keep her hands at her waistline and hold the garment’s stiff canvas in front of her, as a sort of shield.

Hands firmly planted, she turned to face him. Her voice (she hoped) would issue light and abstracted, as if attentive to other concerns.

“Yes, well, my thanks for your assistance, Lord Christopher. Couldn’t have managed without it, but as I’m sure must be shockingly evident, I’ve had a most tiring day…”

His face darkening, jaw tensing, eyes slowly comprehending.

“… And so,” she continued, patiently now, as though to Mr. Frayne at his most irritatingly voluble, “as I won’t be needing you for anything else tonight…”

He snarled. “That was…”

You’ve got the advantage, she told herself. Have the courage to use it.

She dropped her hands and let the length of boned canvas tumble to her feet.

“… low!”

“No, they’re not,” she informed him (and rather coolly too, she thought). “They-and I as well-have weathered the years quite admirably, thank you.”

The hell of it, he thought, was that she was right. Her breasts bobbled high as ever on her torso. Admirably (yes, he rather thought so) and insolently too, the nipples still dark and erect, the firm roundness of her flesh entirely discernable through that utterly disreputable shift.

Less girlish, a bit fuller than when he’d seen them last (hell, have I remembered her body so precisely, over the span of nine years, a large number of battles, and a larger number of women? Distressingly, it seemed that he had). But a little additional fullness was certainly nothing he’d take exception to.

“That was mean, rotten, and unworthy of us both,” he said.

At least, he thought, she had the decency to look a bit shamefaced. Still, “You were entirely too self-confident,” she said. “Cocky, one might even say.”

“Yes,” he replied, “I expect I was. Whereas you weren’t quite so confident of yourself as you pretended to be.”

For if she had been, she wouldn’t have been so quick with those last comments. Nor would she have hesitated-even for an almost indiscernible instant-to show herself.

Elegantly proved, Kit. As well it might be, for he suspected (or hoped, at least) that he was still the British nation’s leading authority on Lady Christopher Stansell, née Mary Artemis Elizabeth Penley, at her willful, furious best.

“You shouldn’t have doubted yourself,” he added. Because it was true. And because it seemed rather to confuse her to hear him say it. Well, then, he’d take his pleasure from her discomfiture-and simply from gazing at her.

The years had added an inch or so of flesh to her waist. The corset had left some angry marks for him to kiss away… Or so he’d imagined himself doing, perhaps just about now, after reaching around her to get the petticoat off and lifting the shift above her head directly afterward. Finally able to bury his face in her belly, the additional inch of flesh entirely welcome under his mouth… unless, of course…

“What are you smiling at?” she asked.

“I wasn’t aware of smiling-a grimace, more like, produced by the ragin’ discomfort, don’t you know, that you’ve effected upon me. But I was wondering whether you wear those indecent, mannish new undergarments some ladies have taken up nowadays.”

“Drawers?”

“Please tell me you don’t.”

The idea of having to worry about an additional cumbersome item of intimate linen struck her as surprisingly funny, while his relative good humor over her bad behavior struck her as simply surprising. Perhaps not so flattering as she would have liked. But likeable for all that, and a reminder that beneath all the anger and pride he’d once been a rather genial, and quite amusing, young man. She’d forgotten those aspects of his temperament. By the end of their time together his geniality hadn’t been much in evidence, his jokes long gone. The good humor and silly, outré quizzing he’d loved to do (drawers? for it seemed he could still catch her unawares)-all that, she’d believed, were gone forever.

Drawers? She shook her head and gave him a level stare. “No, I don’t.”

She supposed (later, upon reflection) that she’d put out a hand then, as a gesture of conciliation or even apology. From which it reasonably followed that he’d taken it in his own, their fingers interlacing.

But as for how she had found herself so tightly and precipitously clasped against his front-in truth, she wouldn’t be able to render a complete account of it. Though she was pretty sure it wasn’t entirely his doing, now that his coat, waistcoat, shirt, and cravat were all pressed so importunately against her flesh, not to speak of his doeskin pantaloons, with all their buttons below.

Disagreeable, him being so covered up: she should do something about it.

In a moment. After she managed to gain control of the trembling that had started up somewhere between her belly and her knees, causing her to grasp and cling, not merely from the violence of her desire but from a commonsensical fear that her legs would give way. That she’d lose her balance if his mouth continued so warm, so eager and inquisitive, so apple-and-raisin sweet and so… well, so all over her lips and jaw and chin, leaving her no choice but to trust to the impressive new musculature in his limbs and shoulders.

So be it. Let him hold her upright, even while he continued to kiss her so roughly and juicily and altogether adorably. His lips had slid down her neck. Leaning back into his arms, she arched her spine, loosed her hands from around his shoulders, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and unknotted his cravat. The happy result being that only his linen shirt and her threadbare shift lay between them now.

A bit of a chafing sensation, actually. But she rather liked it. And more than liked the effect of his fingers touching and molding her nipples through it.

He pinched her. She squeaked rather gracelessly, and he laughed and gave her a great, smacking kiss-and a smack on the rump for good measure.

There’d been a time, years ago, when his hands had been too big for the rest of him. Tonight they were exactly the right size, and the one that wasn’t playing with her breast had curved itself around her bottom now, pressing her so firmly against his belly and thighs that she could have no doubt (even if she hadn’t caught a delicious glimpse) of how extravagantly eager he was for her. And even if their intertwined bodies’ lurching progress toward the bed was proceeding far, far too slowly.

Not that she had any right to criticize, since the fact that they were moving at all was mostly his doing.

Yes, darling, she told him silently, yes, I’ll help. In just a moment. As soon as I pull your shirt from where it’s tucked into the waistband-ah yes, lovely…

Wait, she’d found a button, which by dint of much tugging, she’d succeeded in getting open… Oh, dear, actually she’d ripped it from the fabric and sent it skittering across the floor… At exactly the instant her calves collided smartly with the bed frame (which should have been painful but wasn’t), and just a second before she felt herself lifted up and bounced onto her back and bum and…

How long had it been since she’d seen that particular smile of his? Amused and aroused, egotistical and overbearing…

Delightful, the simple pleasures of a good firm bed beneath her and his warm breathing weight on top.

And the satisfying certainty that all she really needed to do was lie still and smile back at him.

“Oh yes, much better,” he told her. “Much better indeed.”

He raised his weight onto his arms and dipped his head, licking her neck and throat and then nibbling her breast through the thin silk. Nettle cloth, the fabric was called-odd how certain words came unbidden at the most inopportune of moments. Was it actually made of nettle? It didn’t feel like it-it felt smooth and sweet. Everything was sweet; he was feasting on her as though she were apples and cream.

She shouldn’t have been so surprised by the quick updraft of sensation that had grabbed hold of her…

… swept her into a vortex…

… and caused her to scream like that.

Though she might have expected that, before she’d quite recovered her senses, he’d have contrived to lift her petticoat (all the while keeping his eyes upon her face) to enable her to rub her quim (no, no drawers, absolutely not!) against the bottom of his belly, to open herself and receive the quick entry of his cock, to moan and gasp, grasp and tighten her very wet and slippery self around him, and then (for he’d pushed her a few inches backward on the bed) to dig her heels into the mattress, so she could move in rapid, rough arcs, in rhythm with his thrusts.

His thrusts or (one might say) his pummeling. If one were able to say anything at all, if one could stop howling and mewling, groaning and giggling-and acting so utterly delighted with this abrupt and utterly undignified…

She hadn’t expected to lose herself again so soon.

Expectations be damned. Pleasure was what mattered, losing and then finding herself once more, just in time for him to give way to his own excitement. He spilled himself outside of her (which was generous-not to say skillful) before collapsing so heavily that for a moment she thought he’d gone right to sleep.

She rather wished he had.

For now they finally would have to attempt a conversation.