Miss Dramatic, page 16
He climbed onto the cushions first. Rose liked to be on the outside of any bed that abutted a wall, a preference doubtless based on all the times she’d left her husband snoring off his latest overindulgence.
Rose settled on the cushions and remained sitting while Gavin lay on his back. “The rain has stopped.”
“For now. We will have to make our own thunder and lightning.”
She eased down beside him, and Gavin rolled to his side, the better to behold his lover. They were good at making thunder and lightning, but as Rose scooted closer and hiked a leg over his hips, he realized a part of what was different about this time.
He’d wanted to impress her—before. He hadn’t been keeping score exactly, but he’d been keeping count, gloating a little every time she’d yielded to desire first, mentally strutting when she’d demanded a nap between rounds.
A fool, albeit a besotted fool.
Now, he wanted to make love with her, not provide her with a mutually enjoyable performance. Thunder and lightning, and love.
She anchored a hand in his hair and urged him within kissing range.
“You could simply ask,” he said, brushing his lips over her brow. “‘Gavin, might you indulge me in a few of your exceedingly delightful kisses?’ ‘Gavin, have you some caresses to spare?’”
“Gavin, use that mouth for a better purpose than twitting my shyness. We don’t all enjoy your penchant for dialogue. I haven’t… That is, not since… One doesn’t find much opportunity in Hampshire for…”
He gathered her close. “Nor in Crosspatch. Nor even when passing through London. No opportunity at all, not since I was with you.”
In the meager light of the lantern, they smiled at each other, and Gavin saw how he should go on. Slowly, carefully, joyfully, as if it were their first time, because in a sense, it was.
Kisses blended into caresses, until Rose straddled him and tossed her chemise in the direction of the door. That occasioned another shared smile, more tender and wicked than the previous version.
“Such bounty,” Gavin murmured, levering up to worship her breasts with his mouth and hands. “Such exquisite, beautiful, lovely…” Lines from the sonnets drifted through his mind. I in thy abundance am sufficed, And by a part of all thy glory live.
Then, even the Bard, with all his skill and insight, was insufficient to the moment.
Rose crouched over Gavin, her breasts brushing his chest in a manner doubtless intended to drive him mad.
“Another time, sir, we can tarry over the preliminaries,” she said, “but just at this moment…”
“Right. Another time, soon. For now, let us seize the night and seize each other.” He shifted his hips, and Rose went still.
“Seize away.” She braced her hands on his shoulders. “Though slowly, please.”
He tried to oblige her, but as soon as he’d gained the first inch, Rose shuddered.
“Damn you, Gavin DeWitt. That feels…” The shuddering went on, even as Gavin held still.
“Marvelous?” he whispered, his control threatening to unravel. “Astounding? Fabulous?”
“Hush, you beast.” She hung over him, panting, then began to move. “I’ve missed you.”
She had always known exactly how to ply him. “Missed the pleasure?”
“Not only the pleasure. The pleasure is part of it. I’ve… missed… you.”
One moment, he was a man in possession of some self-restraint, a generally capable lover intent on pleasing his lady before indulging his own needs. The next instant, his will was obliterated by welling delight. He thrashed and bucked like the beast she’d named him and endured an unbearable intensity of sensation, even as he lunged for more.
Withdrawing in the name of honor had never been such a near and difficult thing.
By the time he’d subsided onto his back—and Rose had stopped laughing—he was winded, ebullient, and wrung out.
“Need a nap?” she whispered. “I certainly might, because I am not finished with you, Gavin. I need at least the rest of the night to settle my humors.”
I need you. His first instinct was to keep the words to himself. So was his second and his third. And yet… He was an aspiring suitor, and if Rose was to send him packing, he wanted to know his fate now, rather than after another night of unfathomable bliss.
“What I need,” he said slowly, “is the truth, and your trust, and some courage.”
She levered up, brushed his hair back, and rummaged under the pillows for the handkerchief he always tucked in such a location.
“You also need some tidying up.” She dismounted, tended to him and to herself, and tossed the linen aside. “What are you going on about, Gavin? I am not at my best at the moment—some handsome bounder has stolen my wits—but neither have I any engagement more pressing than a restorative nap.”
She was back on her dignity, despite not wearing a stitch.
“Let me hold you,” Gavin said. “Please. I need to ask you a difficult question, and yet, I am loath to vex you.”
Rose lay on her side, facing him, and allowed him to draw her near, tucking her nose into the crook of his shoulder. “You do vex me, Gavin. I’m all at sixes and sevens. I thought I had put the past aside and could manage a fresh start, but I’ve missed you so, and you aren’t the dashing blade I’ve tried to paint you, or not merely that, and…”
“I know. We cannot build a new foundation without first clearing away some rubble. So tell me, Rose. When we became lovers up north, why did you leave me that money?”
She lifted her head and, as the lantern began to gutter, fixed him with a frown. “What money? I never left you any money. That was the problem, or so I thought.”
She wasn’t angry. Her words bore caution, hurt, and not a little bewilderment, almost as if…
“Tell me what happened,” he said, shifting over her. “Leave nothing out. Spare no one, least of all me, and take your time.”
She hugged him, and then she began her tale.
Chapter Twelve
“Lady Rutherford’s house party wasn’t the respite I’d hoped it would be,” Rose said, making herself concentrate rather than gloss over painful generalities. “I was free of mourning and free of London, but nothing could free me from the memories. Then I looked up from a dull bit of verse, and there you were.”
Gavin kissed her nose. “I went barreling into the music room, thinking to review the lines I was most in fear of bungling, hoping to find solitude. I found so much more than mere solitude.”
Rose put a hand on his chest and applied the slightest pressure, and he was gone. He listened to her with his body and his mind. How she adored him for that.
“We became enamored,” she said, sitting up and wedging a pillow at her back. “Or I became enamored and then… besotted. I had hopes, Gavin. I hadn’t gone so far as hoping for remarriage, but I’d thought myself lost to hope in all regards. My lot at Colforth Hall would be contentment, gratitude, hard work, and rural friendships. A good if stultifying and lonely life. You upended my expectations, and I tossed my common sense to the wind.”
He situated himself beside her and took her hand. “As did I.”
Rose was glad the lantern no longer burned, glad Gavin could not distract her with his smiles and knowing glances. She could be braver in the dark. More focused.
“You know most of the rest,” she said. “We became lovers, and that was magnificent, but I awoke alone. I knew we could not completely abandon propriety and dressed with particular care for breakfast.”
“You wore your hair half up, half down. I thought you were taunting me.” He took her hand and kissed her fingers. “What did you think?”
Rose cast her mind back to that awkward, difficult meal. “That you’d spurned me. You were perfectly, frigidly correct to me. When I invited you to begin the day with a stroll in the garden, you declared that pressing correspondence demanded your attention, then I saw you sitting on a bench among the daffodils, staring at nothing. Clearly, I had given offense, or I had seriously misjudged you.”
Gavin rubbed his thumb over her knuckles, a sweet little gesture that had once meant he was thinking through a knotty dilemma.
“Gavin?”
“You are correct that we could not become oblivious to propriety. I thought to join the other lucky fellows stealing about the corridors before the sun rose. To catch a nap and awaken to the joy of my lover’s countenance across the breakfast table.”
“What happened?”
“I rose from the bed, kissed your slumbering cheek, and found a considerable pile of coins among my effects in the dressing closet. Because I had undressed with some care, I knew for a fact the money hadn’t been there the previous night.”
Rose shook her hand free of his. “You thought I paid you?”
“The evidence of such insulting generosity was right before my eyes.”
“Gavin… I never left the bed. How could I…?” Darkness was no ally now. “Why would I pay you any more than you would pay me? That wasn’t… By all the biblical plagues, I did not leave you any money.”
“And yet, the money was there. Not on the bedside table, not on your vanity. Tucked discreetly into the folds of my cravat. I returned the coins to your jewelry box, dressed as best I could, and concluded that you’d given me my congé.”
“I had not.”
“But I became distant and correct, Rose. You thus concluded that I had given you your congé. Somebody saw what was blooming between us and sundered a growing attachment on purpose.”
“It’s worse than that,” Rose said, straddling his lap and cuddling close. “I asked Mrs. Drysdale what could have put you in such a standoffish mood. She told me that actors are proud and mercurial, and they expect to be paid for all of their performances. The house party was proving less remunerative than you’d been led to believe and she implied that you were pouting. I concluded that you expected me to compensate you for the attention you’d shown me.”
Gavin held Rose loosely, his hands trailing patterns on her back. “Oddly enough, she spoke the truth. Drysdale promised we’d each earn generous vails. Instead, we were to content ourselves with a few weeks of room and board plus free rehearsal space.”
“Was she misleading me, or was I reading too much into ambiguous words?” Rose thought back to a hasty, quiet exchange and couldn’t decide, but Gemma Drysdale had had no reason to bear her ill will.
“Who left me that money?” Gavin murmured. “The dressing closet could be accessed from the corridor, but somebody had to have known I was finally, at long last, sharing your bed.”
“We didn’t make a secret of our attraction.”
Rose lapsed into silence, and despite Gavin’s gentle caresses to her back, she could feel him mentally parsing the same questions that bothered her.
Who benefited from wrecking a budding romance?
Who would be so bold as to intrude on a tryst?
Was the whole sorry business some sort of joke? A misunderstanding? A combination of the two?
“I don’t like it,” Gavin said. “You were hurt and insulted, and I was furious.”
“You were hurt too.”
He hugged her. “Devastated, but allow me the fig leaf of outrage.”
“Then I was outraged too.”
His hands went to her shoulders. “The other guests were busy with their own intrigues. That leaves staff and the theater company, but the staff hadn’t a small fortune to waste on a nasty whim.”
“So somebody among Drysdale’s Players didn’t want you forming an attachment to me.”
“Or somebody among the other guests—who were more likely to have spare coin—didn’t want you forming an attachment to me.”
The idea that she and Gavin had been manipulated made Rose bilious. “What did it matter to Drysdale if you developed a fondness for me? Actors are not exactly rarities. He hired you; he has probably hired a handsome young fellow every few years. The better talent moves on to London, Dublin, or Edinburgh and must be replaced.”
Even as a part of her mind began reviewing the guest list—as best she recalled it—Rose’s body was very aware that she was wrapped around a naked Gavin DeWitt, whom she’d missed very much and who had never played her false.
“The situation wants thought,” Gavin said, kissing her on the mouth. “Calm, logical thought. A systematic—Rose, what are you about?”
She brushed her thumb over his nipple. “We can think later, and we will. For now, I am too happy to untangle plots and point fingers at villains.”
“That is not my finger pointing at you.”
“I know. I left you no money, you never sought payment. We are entitled to make up for lost time, Gavin.”
She could hear him smiling in the dark. “A lot of lost time. Kiss me.”
She kissed him, and more than kissed him, and got in two good naps before an insistent robin woke her. Gavin was already dressed and munching a biscuit, and a hint of gray light framed the gazebo’s window on the Twid.
“Do not,” he said sternly, “look at me like that.” He held out the biscuit. “We’ll have to make a dash for the side door as it is.”
Rose sat up and scooted to the edge of the cot. “Will you skip your ride this morning?” The biscuit was good—buttery and cinnamon-y.
“Not a chance. Roland needs the gallop, and I think best on horseback. We have a deal of thinking to do, Rose. Another biscuit?”
“Are there more?”
“And cider. I put the canteen in the river about an hour ago. It should be coolish.” He passed over a flask. “I left the sandwiches for the beasts.”
He would. “You are different this morning.”
“Happier, more at peace, and exceedingly determined. Your biscuits.” He passed over two.
“Perhaps we should let sleeping dogs lie, Gavin. Maybe the money was a prank gone awry, a bet between the bachelors I was ignoring.” How could he look so damnably delectable with his hair tousled, his shirt unbuttoned, and his eyes shadowed with fatigue?
He collected his stockings and boots. “Do you believe that?”
Rose ate her biscuits and took a mental inventory. “Gemma Drysdale might have been speaking in the general case about remuneration for services rendered. Another guest might have been pranking you. Somebody in the theater company could have been making a nasty statement about our liaison, but you say you were paid a goodly sum. That speaks to malice and an agenda.”
“You didn’t notice the money in your jewelry box?” He rose and shrugged into his waistcoat, doing up a few buttons.
“I rarely open my jewelry box. Timmens selects what I’m to wear, and she likely thought I’d had a good night at whist.”
Gavin held out a hand. “That good?”
Rose stood with his assistance and allowed herself to hug him. “Timmens believes the Quality are all prone to vice and venery. She has no frame of reference for polite gaming stakes. I had some money with me for travel expenses and vails. One pile of coins looks very like another.”
“God, you feel good.” He’d muttered that against her hair. “You look good. Luscious, rosy, rumpled, tumbled. Please heave me into the Twid, lest I become incoherent with desire.”
“I love it when you finally lose all that self-possession, but the sun will rise on us cavorting like otters, and then the whole village will be scandalized, along with all the guests.”
He gave her a squeeze. “Very well. We appease the jealous gods of decorum for now.”
Rose had to count to three—twice—to marshal the resolve to leave his embrace. She was soon dressed and trundling along the towpath, hand in hand with her lover, heart light, mind for once at peace.
“I need a nap,” she said. “Another nap, thanks to you, but when I awaken, and when you have ridden your demon colt all over the shire, we must talk.”
“Right. Talk, think, ponder, and plan. I thought it a sorry coincidence that Drysdale should pop up here in Crosspatch, but perhaps it’s an opportunity.”
Rose dragged him back when he would have marched across the gray mists of the park. “A kiss for luck.”
The kiss became very lucky, and then Gavin was escorting her—properly, of all the inanities—up the garden walkway. He parted from her only after ensuring the terrace door was unlocked.
“Until luncheon,” he whispered very near her ear. “Dream of me. And, Rose?”
“Hmm?”
“Keep an eye on Lady Iris. Something about her bothers me. When we were playing pall-mall…”
“She pretended to not watch us until you caught her at it. Then she did that silly little wave when she’s not a silly woman.”
“I have the sense I’ve seen her before, but I can’t place her.”
“As do I. You’ll be careful on your gallop?”
“For you, yes. I will be careful.” He kissed her again, and Rose lingered in the shadowed doorway, watching his retreat until he disappeared into the soft mists of the new dawn.
“Your colt’s stride is more relaxed,” Phillip said, nudging his gelding to fall in step beside a sweating Roland. The hour was still misty early, though the birds along the towpath had long since been awake. “He’s gained enough muscle and wind to enjoy the gallops.”
Gavin thumped his mount on the shoulder. “Roland has always delighted in a hard run, and he’s growing up. My boy will be ready for some competitive outings when the weather cools. I’m loath to turn him over to a real jockey.”
DeWitt was more relaxed, too, less… bleak. An evening frolic by the Twid was ever useful for restoring the spirits.
“Phillip, may I ask you a question?”
“You excelled at asking questions when you were a lad. Now you’re all manly silences and churchyard platitudes.”
“I bored the village witless for years with my recitations, and they were all too kind to tell me to shut my gob. I’m repaying their consideration with some self-restraint. If somebody were intent on parting you and Hecate, how would you respond?”
Phillip adjusted reins that needed no adjusting. Herne was to be trusted under saddle in all particulars, unless an inviting mudpuddle tempted him from proper deportment. Mudpuddles turned an otherwise sane equine into a frolicking foal.
