by Eloisa James
“Sofa?” Helene wandered over and discovered that the hideous sofa given to them by her Aunt Margaret was actually still in the room, although buried under high stacks of paper. “You must have most of the opera here, Rees. I don’t know why you can’t be ready on time.”
“Namby-pamby stuff,” he said, hunching his shoulder. “I haven’t written a decent line in the last year.” He played a few bars. “What do you think of this?” he said.
Even tipsy, Helene retained full musical capability. “I can’t say I like it over much,” she said, wandering over and putting her elbows inelegantly on the top of the piano.
“That’s because you’re hearing it out of context,” Rees said. “Actually, it’s one of the better pieces I have. Here, I’ll play from the beginning.”
He poised his hands over the keyboard and then let them fall. Helene allowed the music to pour through her and watched his hands. They were extraordinarily large and yet wondrously delicate in playing. Each finger tapered gracefully.
But when he stopped and looked up at her, Helene shook her head. “It sounds like a country ballad,” she said frankly, “but not very interesting as pastoral music goes. Is it to be sung by a young girl?” Rees always wrote operas about young girls.
He nodded. “She’s a princess who’s run away and disguised herself as a Quaker girl.”
Helene had long since learned to ignore the fragile plots that made up Rees’s operas. “What’s she supposed to be singing about at the moment?”
“She misses her lover, Captain Charteris. I’ll play it again with the words, shall I? Fen did a good job on the libretto.”
Rees had a dark, liquid singing voice as much at odds with his growling speaking voice as his elegant fingers were to his muscled body. “While I’m waiting here in eager expectation, Always waiting for my lover to appear,” he sang, “In my fond and fanciful imagination, Every moment seems a year.”
“Florid Fen,” Helene said with some amusement. “Move over, Rees.” She sat down, nudging him slightly with her hip. “What would happen if you used an ascending scale when she was always waiting, and then dropped when it seems a year?” She tried it out on the keyboard.
Rees was frowning. “That doesn’t sound very wistful.”
“She needs to sound as if she’s yearning, not as if she’s counting the linens. Try this,” and Helene started singing as she played.
Rees moved over enough to allow her plenty of room for her elbows, but not so much that he wasn’t touching her hip. He liked Helene’s hips, he had discovered. In fact, he rather liked her new style of dressing for that very reason. Who would have thought that Helene had such a delicate yet sensual curve to her? He remembered her as angular and almost bony. But she wasn’t, not at all. She made other women seem over-fleshy.
She had stopped singing. “Sorry,” Rees said. “Could you sing it again?” She turned and looked at him. That was another interesting thing about Helene. She was tall enough to look right into his eye when they sat together. And her eyes were a very curious color, a kind of gray that shaded into green. Like a cat’s.
“Pay attention, Rees,” she said, looking rather amused.
She sang again. “It’s better,” Rees said, his attention now back to the music. “But I don’t think the ascending scale works.”
“You need to give her a sense of longing,” Helene said again. “There has to be something to mark the fact she’s desperate to see her captain.”
“Perhaps she’s not desperate,” he growled, scribbling in the notes she had suggested.
“Then why bother writing about her?” Helene said with a shrug.
Rees’s hand slowed. Why indeed? That was the problem with the whole opera. The piece was set to open the opera season next year, and he didn’t have more than five measures of decent melody.
“Because she’s my heroine,” he said, crossing out his line so violently that the foolscap tore.
“I guessed that. You always write about princesses, young ones in love.”
“I have two heroines, and one is a Quaker girl, not a princess. But princesses are in fashion,” he said. “Damn it, Helene, do you always have to be so critical?”
She blinked at him. She did have lovely eyes. They were rather like the surface of a stream, deep with a gold-greeny quietness.
“I didn’t mean to be disparaging,” she said. “I’m sorry, Rees. You speak so lightly of your own work that I’m afraid I took license.”
“If anyone’s going to criticize, it might as well be you,” he said gloomily. “I know this is paltry stuff.”
“Shall we look at it again tomorrow?”
“I expect. But it’s like trying to turn horse manure into gold.”
“It’s not that bad!” Helene exclaimed. “There’s a very sweet bit of melody here,” and she played the phrase.
“Don’t you recognize it?” Rees asked. “That’s from Mozart’s Apollo and Hyacinth. Stolen. There’s not a bit of music in here that’s worth the paper it’s written on,” he said savagely, pointing to the stack on top of the piano. “It’s all claptrap.”
Helene put a hand on his arm. He looked down. She had the delicate, pink-tipped fingers of a real musician, not a charlatan like himself.
“I doubt that very much,” she said.
“You might as well believe it, since it’s true,” he snapped, getting up. He walked one length of the room, but the papers swirling around his boots bothered him so much that he stopped. “I suppose we might as well get the tupping out of the way,” he growled. “I’m going to have to be up all night rewriting that score.”
Helene was biting her lip. She had a beautifully plump lower lip, he noticed, as if seeing it for the first time.
“Are you sure you want to?” she asked hesitantly. “We could wait a day.”
Suddenly he was quite certain that he did want to. “It’s best to start as we mean to go on,” he growled, striding to the door. “My room?”
“Absolutely not!” Helene said, running after him. She wasn’t going to engage in any such activities if there was even the slightest possibility that Lina could overhear. “We’ll go to my room.”
A moment later they were standing in her bedchamber staring at the bed. “It’s no narrower than the sofa at Lady Hamilton’s house,” Helene said, rather uncertainly. It was one thing to make plans with Esme to bed her husband once a day. It was quite another when his large body was standing next to one. It gave her an odd zinging feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“It’ll have to do,” Rees growled, pulling off his cravat. A moment later he was down to a shirt. Helene watched with some fascination. His legs were just as muscled as she remembered from Lady Hamilton’s music room. It was rather mesmerizing to see the powerful way his thighs flexed.
“How do you take exercise?” she asked.
“I walk between my pianos. Aren’t you going to undress?”
“Well, you still have on your shirt,” she retorted.
“I thought you’d prefer it.”
“Why?” Helene asked, wondering whether there was something about shirts that she should know. Perhaps gentlemen always wore their shirt in the presence of ladies.
“You dislike the hair on my chest,” Rees pointed out.
“Oh,” Helene said weakly, “I’d forgotten.” How extremely rude she had been, all those years ago. She was so hurt and desperate to injure him that she would have said anything. “I’m sorry if I made inappropriate comments,” she added. “I believe I was quite rude.”
He just stood in the middle of the room like some sort of big jungle cat, watching her intently. “It’s quite all right. I’m not wedded to my chest hair. Aren’t you going to undress, Helene?”
“I can’t undo this gown by myself,” she said, turning about and presenting him with an elegant row of pearl buttons.
Rees began unbuttoning. Helene’s hair curled into little wisps just at the nape of her neck. She wasn’t wearing a chemise. He
would never have thought that Helene—his Helene—would wear a gown without a chemise and, underneath it, a sturdy corset. Every newly opened button revealed skin the color of snowflowers in the mountains, skin as clear and delicate as a baby’s cheek.
His fingers, Rees noticed with a flash of objectivity, were trembling. It was absurd to be excited about the prospect of bedding one’s wife. One’s estranged wife, he corrected himself. And the bedding was merely for purposes of procreation. The gown parted far enough now so that he pushed it forward, making it fall forward off her shoulders.
“You have a beautiful back, Helene,” he said, startled to hear the little rasp in his voice. He had obviously gone too long without visiting Lina, if he was getting excited over one slender back, albeit with an elegant curve that made a man long to run his hands down…down.
Helene didn’t know what to think of Rees’s compliment. Last week he had said she had beautiful legs, and now she had a beautiful back as well? She clutched the gown to her bosom. But she could hardly cover up her breasts forever.
So she turned around and let the gown drop to the floor. He might as well see it all, although surely he could remember for himself.
For a moment he didn’t move at all, just drew in a breath. There was something about his eyes that made Helene feel a bit better. It was only Rees, after all. What was she so worried about? She walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed, crossing her legs. She felt rather wicked, sitting naked in the presence of a man. Back when they were first married, they had conducted all intimacies discreetly under the sheets, and here they were, estranged, and she naked in front of him.
“Do take off your shirt,” she suggested. It hung past his hips. She didn’t care about his chest either way, but she was very curious to see whether her memory of last week could possibly be accurate.
Her memory was absolutely accurate. Helene felt a stinging tingle between her legs; it was as if her body had its own memory.
He strode over and gestured at the bed. Helene lay back, trying to quell a heartbeat of anxiety. It hadn’t hurt last time. She simply had to believe that it wouldn’t hurt this time as well.
“I suppose,” he said rather tentatively, and then seemed to make up his mind. His hand went straight down between her legs. Helene nearly jumped out of her skin.
“What are you doing?” she gasped, and then realized she sounded critical. Esme had told her that no matter what, she couldn’t sound critical or she might cause him to be unable to perform. And since the only thing she wanted from Rees was performance, she was determined to be encouraging.
He seemed to be—well, whatever he was doing, Helene had to admit that it felt—well, it felt…He took his hand away.
“You’re not ready,” he said to her. His hand lay on her thigh. It felt as if it burned into her skin.
Helene bit her lip and her heart sunk. Trust her body to have got it wrong, somehow. “What do I need to do?” she asked.
“God,” Rees said, “you really don’t have any idea what happens between a man and a woman, do you?”
“Well, of course I do,” Helene said with some indignation. She pulled herself into a sitting position and drew up her knees so that she felt less vulnerable. “I was married to you, if you remember. I mean, I am married to you. And I have perfectly accurate memories of that year we lived together. Not to mention the fact that we reenacted the process last week.”
“Nine years ago,” he said slowly, running one hand down her shoulder. It felt good. She shivered a little. “That’s a very long time to be without bedding.” So she didn’t sleep with Fairfax-Lacy last spring, he thought to himself, with a distinct throb of pleasure.
Helene smiled at him ruefully. “Yes, but as you yourself said, Rees, I’m not made for this kind of activity. I can’t pretend that I missed it.”
“I said a lot of stupid things,” Rees said. He wrapped a finger and thumb around her wrist. “You’re much more delicate than I remember.”
Helene caught herself, about to say, and you’re much bigger. But perhaps he would construe that as a derogatory remark. It might remind him of how she used to complain of being flattened by his weight.
He was running his fingers up her arm now, almost as if she were a harp. “Do you mind if I touch your breasts?” he asked suddenly, not meeting her eyes.
“But—do you want to?” she asked in astonishment.
“Very much.”
“Then of course you may,” she said, feeling as if she were granting him permission to smoke a cigarillo in her presence, or something equally mundane. A moment later that thought flew from her head. He touched her with the same passion and strength with which he touched the piano keys. Helene felt herself begin to tremble. It felt—it felt—odd. His fingers were sun-dusted, dark against the cream of her skin, curling around her breast. A thumb wandered across her nipple and she almost jumped out of her skin.
A little smile crossed his lips. “Do you like that?”
She opened her mouth but didn’t say anything. What was she supposed to say?
He did it again, and again. “Do you like it, Helene?”
“Well,” she managed, “it’s acceptable.” There was a sense of tension between them that made her unable to meet his eyes. She was naked. Naked! And he was caressing her breasts, almost as if she had the same—
The thought of Lina brought a chilly moment of sanity. “Do you think we could progress now?” she asked. She certainly didn’t want Lina to think that she was taking up Rees’s time or even, horror of horrors, deliberately detaining him in her bedchamber in order to win him back.
“Mmmm,” he said, and there was something in his voice that made her whole body thrum.
This time she relaxed her legs and let him feel there without protest.
“I don’t think this is going to work tonight,” he said, after a moment.
Helene felt a wash of disappointment. “Why not? Is there something wrong? Can’t you just go ahead?” she asked, hating the fact that she was almost pleading with him.
“Not without hurting you,” he said, shaking his head. “I believe that’s why bedding was so painful between us years ago, Helene. I didn’t know enough to wait for your body to be ready for me.”
She could feel tears pricking the back of her eyes. It was all her fault, her body’s fault. “I don’t mind if it’s painful,” she said earnestly. “Please, Rees. Please. It wasn’t painful the other night, I promise!”
“I’m sorry, Helene,” he said, standing up. “I just don’t know very much about bedding ladies.” He stared down at her. His hair had fallen over his eyes before. “You were my first, you know.”
“First lady?”
“That too,” he said, with a wry grin.
“I had no idea! You certainly didn’t act as if it was a new experience. I thought you had slept with hundreds of women.”
“I wanted you to think that, of course. Back then, I was trying to cover up every imaginable shortcoming by pretending they didn’t exist.”
“What shortcoming?” Helene said. She was trying to avoid looking at him. Even a glimpse of his muscled buttocks seemed to do odd things to her stomach.
“That I was a virgin, among other things,” he said. His smile was sardonic. “I bungled your first time, Helene, and I’m sorry about that.”
“I don’t see what you could have done differently,” she pointed out, liking the apology though. “From what I’ve heard, every woman dislikes the first time.”
“Whereas men are supposed to love it,” he said and there was a distinct tone of self-derision in his voice now.
“But you didn’t,” she said, saddened. “I’m sorry if I bungled my part in it.”
He stood up and pulled on his shirt. “I should get to work,” he said, obviously dismissing the whole memory from his mind. “We’ll try again tomorrow night, shall we?”
“What is going to be different tomorrow?” Helene insisted, watching him pull up his smalls.
He didn’t answer, so she persisted. “What’s going to be different tomorrow night, Rees? We have to do this every single day in order to ensure conception.”
“Every day, hmm?” A flash of amusement crossed his face.
“Unless you have some serious objection. Esme says there’s no way to know what particular day is the right one, so we can’t miss even one day this month or we might have to continue into next month. And if I disappear for two months people will think I’ve come down with consumption!”
He pulled on his boots and went to the door, then paused. “I’ll speak to Darby tomorrow and ask him about bedding ladies. I’ve never been the sort to engage in that sort of conversation at the club and my brother—” he shrugged. “Sometimes I feel as if Tom must have been born in that black frock of his. We certainly have never discussed women.”
“Thank you,” she said, watching him leave.
Twenty-one
Andante
Four hours later, Helene realized that she was not going to be able to sleep. She had been staring at the ceiling for hours, thinking. One sentence kept sticking in her mind: Rees said he was going to ask Darby about bedding ladies. So what was so special about bedding a lady? What was different between her and Lina, for example? Why did she need special treatment? She just wanted him to do it, and get it over with.
Far downstairs, in the depths of the house, she could occasionally hear pings from the piano. Apparently Rees meant it when he said he was going to work throughout the night on that lackluster score of his.
Finally Helene rose and pulled on her dressing gown. He could damn well do to her whatever it was he did to women who weren’t ladies. She marched down the stairs, her bare toes curling against the smooth wood. The house was so old that each stair dipped a bit in the middle, presumably from the tramping feet of Jacobean Hollands, making their way up to their wives’ chambers.
Outside the music room, she paused. He was still working on the same piece but it sounded a bit more adventurous now. Finally she pushed open the door. He threw up his head immediately and stared at her. The room was lit by two candelabra perched on top of the piano. His hair was standing on end, and there were black circles under his eyes. He looked desperately tired and, somehow, defeated.