by Eloisa James
She let a little smile play on her lips, and then she dropped the dressing gown entirely, allowing it fall to her feet.
The next second he was there, one arm under her neck and another under her knees, scooping her up and taking her over to the sofa. With a terrific swirl of paper, all the drafts and parts and pieces of the opera swooshed to the floor.
“I don’t want to be treated like a lady,” Helene said, but he was kissing her.
Kissing her. His tongue plunged into her mouth as if she were terra incognita, new land, and he an explorer. And she, rather than feeling any kind of revulsion, gasped and said, “Oh,” and then said, “Rees,” and then said…nothing. One of his hands was holding her head tight against his. But the other was sending trails of fire down her spine, roaming her body with hungry violence.
Helene had her arms wound around his neck, but she wasn’t a lady. Not tonight. She tore her mouth away. “How did Lina make love to you?” she said, her voice oddly hoarse.
Rees pulled her back. “Who cares?” he said before crushing her against him again, capturing her mouth and pulling them both into a whirlpool of desire and trembling sensation.
“I do,” Helene gasped, when she got her breath back. “I do.”
Rees let her pull back slightly. “It was nothing compared to you. Nothing.” The rasp in his voice told her it was true.
“It’s not that,” Helene whispered back. “I want to know how to give you pleasure, Rees. Not—not like a lady. May I touch you?”
His eyes were pitch dark in the candlelight. “Lina never touched me,” he said, his mouth wandering hungrily over her skin.
“I want to,” Helene said, her voice quivering as his mouth closed over her nipple. “I—” but she lost the thought as her body arched toward his, her hands clenched in his hair, a moan flying from her lips.
“Do you want this?” he growled, sucking harder, so that she shuddered under him, gasping, unable to speak. One of his hands curved under her body, jerking her up against the leg wedged between hers, making her cry out with pure pleasure.
But she still retained some small crumb of sanity, enough to twist suddenly in his arms and end up lying on his body. “I want to be just as wicked as you,” she whispered, raw desire speaking in her voice like velvet. “I want to make love like one of those Russian dancers who performed on my dining room table.”
He smiled at that, that sardonic crooked smile that she loved, so she had to kiss him. It was different, bending her head to him rather than the other way around, having that powerful body under hers. It made her feel even more sensual, if outrageously strumpet-like. Part of her simply couldn’t believe that she was straddling him, naked, where anyone could see her.
“Do you see whether I turned the key in the door?” she asked shakily, when he let her mouth go.
He was lying back, his hands roaming over her breasts, a rough caress that made her compulsively shudder and bite her lip to stop a moan. He obviously didn’t give a damn about the door. I’m starting to think in swear words, Helene thought with some wonder.
She started to get up to check the door, but his hands captured her.
“Didn’t you say that you were going to touch me?” he asked, and the silky pleasure in his voice sent a wave of fire through her belly.
She bent down again, feeling an incantatory mix of possession and desire. It came out of her mouth like a vow, although she hadn’t been thinking of it that way. “You are mine, Rees. If anyone is going to touch you, it’s going to be me. From now on. So if you wish me to touch you the way Lina did, you’ll have to teach me.”
He stared at her and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but all he said was, “Lina was a lady, Helene.”
Helene could feel a smile of utter delight curl her lips. She shouldn’t be so shallow. But she was.
She slid off his body and kneeled beside the couch. He turned slightly, and there he was, all of him, muscled, golden skinned, dusted with hair that teased her skin into delirious heat. Just the sight of him made Helene want to pull him down to her so he would crush her with his weight, with his fierce, tender wildness.
Instead she licked his shoulder. His skin tasted like salt and faintly, like soap. Just as he had the night before, she whispered, “Do you like this?”
And as he had the night before, he said, rather hoarsely, “Yes. Yes, Helene, yes.”
Tentatively she reached out and touched his nipple. It was flat and round, and looked like a copper penny. His muscles rippled at her mere touch. She did it again, a little more firmly, and then rubbed her thumb over him, the way he did to her. He made a hoarse noise that sent a surge of triumphant joy through her, so she bent her head and licked him. His hands clutched her shoulders. Slowly Helene wandered farther afield, discovering that she could make him tremble by gently dragging her teeth across his chest, that a ragged sound came from that chest whenever she suckled his nipple, that his entire body grew rigid as she made her way south.
“I’m not sure that you—” he said, and it sounded as if he were speaking between clenched teeth. Helene grinned to herself. She felt as if she were the most practiced courtesan in all London, and besides, it was too late for him to stop her.
The merest touch of her lips made him shudder convulsively. So she teased him, just as he had teased her. “Do you like this?” she said, laughter spilling into her voice.
“Yes,” he gasped. “God, Helene!” He was clutching the sofa cushion beneath him. His body arched toward her.
“This?” she said. She had discovered that dragging her fingernails across his stomach seemed to drive him mad. She was really enjoying herself now. “And what about this?” she whispered, her voice a liquid thread of honey.
But it was too much. With one lunge, Rees pulled her up on top of him so she fell forward and down, onto him, her mouth an almost comical “O” that turned to a cry as she sank, all wet, sweet, warm, onto him. But it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough, so he flipped her over, and the last of the sheets of paper scooted onto the floor.
Then he drove into her in a way that replaced the last bits of laughter in those beautiful eyes of hers with a blurred desire, changed all that teasing to a panting, wanton cry that made him drive into her harder and harder, gritting his teeth against the glory of it. She was so beautiful, his Helene, delicate and supple in his arms, twisting up against him with little gasping moans.
The pleasure of it curled through Helene’s body, streaks of heat pooling between her legs and then curling out toward her toes. Her hands sought purchase and found his muscled buttocks; she clutched him to her and he came to her harder in response, and it was building, she couldn’t stop it, the curling was turning to streaks of fire.
She opened her mouth and nothing came out but a whimper, a scream, an echo of his name…. He came to her hard and looked at her face, at the passion in her eyes, and the faint sheen of sweat on her forehead, at the way she was looking at him, and lost all control, plunging into her body as if he were a man possessed, until her cry was answered by his, his shudder answered by hers, finally…his caress met by hers, finally, his lips on her forehead.
And when his weight came to her, she didn’t feel suffocated. But he remembered and rolled sideways, off the low couch straight onto a snowbank of paper, bringing her with him.
“Rees!” Helene protested with a weak giggle.
But he kissed her silent, and then said, “Quiet, love,” and there was something aching in his voice that made her feel as if she might cry, so she had to bury her head in his shoulder and pretend to be sleepy instead.
He knew though. “I’ve been a fool, Helene,” he said into her hair.
She bit her lip but said nothing.
“I never ever really wanted her, you know. I think Tom is right. I made an ass of myself because my father told me years ago that I would. I didn’t even enjoy those Russian dancers.”
“You didn’t?” She pulled back her head and looked up at him.
>
He didn’t smile. “I must have drunk two bottles of brandy a day for a month after I made you leave the house. It didn’t help though. Nor did having a bunch of tarts cavorting on the table. I just couldn’t figure out why I felt so sick all the time.”
Helene held her breath.
“I was in love with you,” he said slowly, his hands cupping her face. “But I couldn’t admit it, not to you, not to myself. I just kept trying to get rid of you, and then feeling sick about it.”
“I love you,” Helene whispered. “I never stopped.”
“How could you?”
She smiled at that. “I’m a fool, I suppose.”
“You are,” he agreed bluntly. And then, “Even when—even when I brought Lina into your chamber?”
“Oh, I didn’t think I was. I kept telling myself that I was indifferent to you. But it hurt.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Were you—were you in love with her?”
He shook his head. “Never. She knew it too. I wanted her voice, you see. We stopped all sort of bedroom things a year ago, from pure lack of interest.”
“I wish I hadn’t said such cruel things to you,” Helene said, dismissing Lina and the Russian dancers forever. “I do love your chest and every hair on it.”
“I think I feel more than love for your chest,” he said rather dreamily. “It’s like an obsession. I shall have to compose a canzonette, To My Wife’s Breasts.”
“Silly,” she said. And then, “I shouldn’t have been cruel about your music, either.”
“Nor I so dismissive of yours,” he said.
She hesitated, and then, “I think…I think we may both write better with the other’s help.”
His arm tightened around her. “I know that is true for me, but I doubt there is anything I can add to your gift, Helene. Of the two of us, you are the brilliant musician.”
“Not so!” she protested.
His lips traced a quarter note on her cheek. “I write at the peak of my ability when you are near; what more could a man want?”
“We have gifts of different kinds,” Helene said slowly. “You are a genius at expressing emotion and creating a character, Rees. All I’m good for is doing a piece of music itself, with no story. You saw what my waltz was about, after all. I hadn’t even noticed, though I wrote it.”
Rees chuckled. “That was when I really started to wonder whether there was the faintest chance that I might be able to keep you in the house forever. When I saw that waltz.”
“Scandalous, isn’t it?” Helene actually felt proud of it.
“Worse than Russians on the table,” he said. Then he sang: Let me, dearest wife, embrace you, As would a lover his lovable bride…” But he stopped singing to kiss her.
“Face to face with burning cheeks,” Helene whispered sometime later.
But her husband was kissing his way down her body, and she couldn’t see his cheeks anyway, so she threw away the thought.
Much later, Helene lay against her husband’s heart and listened to the steady beat of her life and her future.
She felt sleepy. Rees was already asleep. So the earl and his countess fell asleep, in a bed of opera scores, of discarded musical notes and florid lyrics, while the candles guttered on the piano.
It was morning when Leke opened the door and surveyed the room. By then, its occupants had vanished. Anyone less accustomed to Earl Godwin’s organization methods might have noticed nothing amiss.
But Leke stood in thought for a moment or two, staring at the crushed papers piled high around the sofa, and then, even more intently, at a thick white dressing gown tossed to the floor next to the piano.
He left with his regular measured step, a garment neatly folded over his arm, and a smile curling the edges of his mouth.
Forty-two
In Strictest Confidence…
18 January 1816
The Countess Pandross to Lady Patricia Hamilton
…I assure you, my dearest, that I am as startled as anyone. But it is quite true. Earl Godwin is positively lavish in his attentions, and you know that for a man like that to show any courtesy at all, particularly to his wife, is quite out of the way. The opera singer is definitely a thing of the past, and it’s rumored that Countess Godwin is carrying a child, so perhaps all this attention he pays her has to do with the question of an heir. Men are so absurdly attached to the idea of reproducing themselves. Of course, it may also have to do with her part in that opera he’s just put up, The Quaker Girl. The newspapers have all called it a triumph, although shamefully I haven’t found time to see it yet. I told Pandross that if we don’t attend this week I shan’t be able to go anywhere in public, because darling, it is all that anyone is talking about. Almost, I envy you for your snug country life. You’ll have to see it the moment you return for the season. The waltz scene is apparently scandalous, and yet I was told in the strictest confidence that Countess Godwin wrote the waltz herself, if you can believe it.
I do agree with you regarding your disappointment with Patricia’s debut year. But have you noticed that this sort of thing happens more and more? I find that girls are not shot off until their second or even third year, so I would counsel you…
19 January 1816
The London Times: Music on the Town
The Quaker Girl’s popularity continues. On Wednesday last it was necessary to throw open disengaged boxes to the public, in order to accommodate the crowds demanding admission. This opera is widely regarded as the finest work of Earl Godwin, and the most exquisite example of opera buffo yet produced on the English stage. There are those who compare it more than favorably with works of Mozart. Lord Godwin’s vocal music appears to us not only of a high rank, but of a different order from that of almost every other composer. We venture with some diffidence to characterize it, in order to record the impressions we receive from it, by saying that he expresses passion, and excites sympathy in his viewers, in a manner not seen by us for many years. The waltz scene, of course, continues to be a popular favorite; evidence of which can be seen in the fact that in recent weeks Lady Sally Jersey has allowed this waltz, and this waltz only, to be danced at Almack’s.
22 January 1816
Rees Holland, Earl Godwin, to his brother St. Mary’s Church, Beverley, in the North Country
Dear Tom,
Things are all right here. Yes, the opera appears to have been a success. Helene’s waltz has created an enormous sensation and is being danced all over London. I’m glad to hear you both are well. I miss you, old sobersides that you are. Rees.
25 January 1816
Miss Patricia Hamilton to Lady Prunella Scottish, née Forbes-Shacklett
Dear Prunes,
I’m so glad to hear that you are back from your wedding trip, and believe me, I want to hear about every moment. My mama is convinced that I shall end up an old maid, so I must needs hear of your exploits before I wither on the vine. On that front (although I tell you this, obviously, in the strictest confidence), I have received several billet-doux from Lord Guilpin! We danced several times during the season, but I didn’t think he was in the least interested in me. But then we met quite by accident while riding in the Park and since then…I know I should not be accepting correspondence, but it is too, too delicious…At any rate, Prunes, I am not quite so distraught as my mama over the possibility of my withering on the vine, as you can imagine.
We just came up to London to see a performance of Earl Godwin’s new opera, The Quaker Girl. My mother was positively galvanized with curiosity; everyone is talking of the piece. There is a waltz in Act Two that is the most romantic piece of music I’ve ever heard. I thought I might faint, and my mother turned quite pink! You must go to the opera the very first chance that you…
28 January 1816
Rees Holland, Earl Godwin, to Helene Holland, Countess Godwin, delivered by her maid
If you come to the music room, I have something I want to show you.
Rees
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nbsp; 28 January 1816
Helene Holland, Countess Godwin, to Rees Holland, Earl Godwin, delivered by a footman
I’ve had a visit from Doctor Ortolon. Do you think that Star of Bethlehem blooms in September?
Your wife
28 January 1816
The Butler’s Daybook, as kept by Mr. Leke
That hamhanded footman James, the one I hired last week, was knocked over by Lord Godwin when his lordship exited rather rapidly from the music room and dashed up the stairs. James insists that his wrist is sprained.
Epilogue
Five Years Later…
A Small Hunting Lodge
Belonging to Earl Godwin
Rees was tired. He and Helene had stayed up half the night, playing around with a bagatelle for four hands, and now he was trying to compose a letter to Snuffle at the Royal Italian Opera House that would explain why he didn’t plan to write an opera for next year’s season. He and Helene were—he paused and cocked an ear. Far off down the sunny stretches of lawn, he heard a faint shriek of laughter. And then a call from his wife. “Rees! The river!”
Without a second’s pause, Rees shoved back his chair and started running. Laughter that bright and that mischievous meant only one thing: little Viscount Beckford had managed to escape his nanny and his mama again, and was heading for the stream at the bottom of the garden. The river barely topped Rees’s ankles; it was more of a rivulet than a river. But the danger was there.
Rees’s long legs had him at the bottom of the garden in precisely three seconds, followed at some interval by his wife, waving a towel.
Sure enough, Wolfgang Amadeus Holland was standing fully dressed in the middle of the stream. Small blue butterflies were fluttering around his legs, startled from the grass and buttercups that lined the riverbank.