“Have Oslow write down what he knows.”
“Good idea. Do you like the compote of gooseberries?”
“It’s fine. Badger, though, he made it once and everyone tasted it and swooned.”
James just grinned. “I’m glad you didn’t die, Jessie. You’ve been a good friend and an irritation for too long to croak just yet.”
“You knew I wouldn’t. You let me make a fool of myself.”
“Yes, forgive me, but you were so completely convinced it was the end. I swear to you, I didn’t laugh once.”
“You slept with me, James.”
“Well, yes. It’s my bed.”
“The earl’s cat, Esmee, slept with me once. I rolled over on her by accident. She yowled, hissed in my face, and left me, never to return.”
“She likes to sleep on Marcus’s chest and knead his hair. He wakes up yelling.”
She pushed some garden peas around her plate, then went back to her compote. “What will we do now?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You can help Sigmund and me with the horses this afternoon.”
“Of course I’ll do that, but it isn’t what I meant. I mean, what will we do about, well, the other?”
“What other?”
“James, I won’t allow you to make sport of me again. You know very well what I’m talking about. I have no memory of having been mounted. When I woke up this morning, I wasn’t at all sore. I didn’t teeter on my legs the way I’ve seen some mares do who have been mounted. I didn’t look at all different when I stared into the mirror.”
“Oh, that.” He studied his thumbnail. He had a thick callus on the pad. Finally he looked over at her. At the moment she looked very much like the new Jessie, and he felt a surge of nice heavy lust. However, when she’d returned from her ride this morning, she’d looked just like the old Jessie, her hair in wild tangles around her face, her riding hat tied to the saddle by its ribbons, sitting astride Esmerelda, not in a decorous sidesaddle, laughing and talking all at once, telling him everything she’d seen, telling him every clever thing Esmerelda had done, and he’d thought blankly as he’d tried to listen to that mishmash of sounds coming from her mouth that it would be impossible to make love to the girl he’d considered a little sister for more years than he cared to count. But now she was as silent as the Duchess. She looked elegant. She’d never in his memory looked elegant until she’d come to England. He wanted to take that gown off her.
“It’s all right, James,” she said very quietly. “I understand, truly I do. You’re too kind to tell me that you would just as soon I kept away from you.” She very carefully folded her napkin and pressed it into the tablecloth beside her plate. She rose. “I am going over the household and the accounts with Mrs. Catsdoor. Please tell Sigmund that I will come and help with the horses later.”
She was nearly to the door when he said from right behind her, “Don’t leave, Jessie.”
She felt his hands on her shoulders, the warmth of him, the strength of him. She opened her mouth only to close it again when she realized that something had changed. He was no longer simply resting his hands on her shoulders. His fingers were lightly digging into her flesh, kneading her, making her feel very nice indeed.
“Turn around.”
She did, wondering what he would do now.
“Look at me.”
She looked at him, all the curiosity she felt written plainly on her face. Her lips parted a bit. He leaned down and kissed her—a full, deep kiss since this was the new Jessie standing in front of him and he had no memories of her at all as a sister or a brat or an irritating constant in his life. Actually, he thought as he licked her bottom lip, she was his wife. And that had to be the strangest thing of all. And she believed he’d already consummated their marriage. While she’d been in a drunken stupor. He nearly laughed aloud, but he didn’t.
She raised her hands to flatten them on his chest. She felt his heart pounding deep and fast beneath her palms. She felt the pressure of his lips, fascinating, that mouth of his, and she tasted the gooseberry compote they’d shared. She’d never imagined anything like this. She’d dreamed about it, wondered what it would be like if James pressed his mouth against hers, but to feel his tongue, to feel all of him pressing against her, it undid her completely.
She stood on her tiptoes, grabbed him, and pulled him hard against her. He laughed in her mouth. “Easy, easy, we’ve all the time in the world.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Perhaps you’re right.” He stuck out his hand and pulled the breakfast-room door shut behind her. He managed to turn the key in the lock. He wrapped his arms around her back and pivoted until he could see the table.
A lovely white linen cloth. All the dishes he could shove aside. He lifted her, never releasing her, never stopping his kissing, and carried her to the table. He eased her up onto her back, her legs hanging over the side, her feet to rest on the seat of her chair. He gently pushed her back, quickly shoving a plate of red mullet out of the way.
She was staring up at him, looking bemused and interested, that curiosity still lively in her eyes. “James, what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to be people, not horses.”
Now she looked a bit alarmed. “I’m lying on the table, James. There’s a bowl of Julienne soup beside my right elbow.”
He moved the soup bowl and the too-close plate of rolls. “That’s better. Now let me move this chair. Just let your legs hang down for the moment. Yes, that’s it.”
He moved between her legs, bent down, and kissed her some more. Immediately she brought her arms around his neck to pull him closer. “Let’s bring you down just a bit,” he said between wet, sharp kisses, grasped her hips in his hands, and brought her halfway off the table.
“Goodness, this is passing strange, James. I feel like—”
She didn’t finish. He pressed himself against her, and she flopped her hands to the table beside her as if he’d just shot and killed her.
“It’s just me, Jessie. No, don’t try to wriggle away from me. Just get used to the feel of me. Stay still.” He pressed in more closely. He closed his eyes, his fingers digging into her hips, raising her slightly. He could feel the heat of her. His fingers trembled and twitched. He wanted to touch her, to stroke her.
“Did you do that yesterday?”
“No, I didn’t do this yesterday. We were lunching on a rock, not a table. I don’t even remember yesterday.” He moaned when she arched a bit. “Wrap your legs around my waist, Jessie. No, don’t look at me as if I’ve lost my wits. Just trust me. That’s right, lock your ankles behind my back. Ah, that’s good.” Now he leaned over her and began kissing her again. Her wonderful gown buttoned up the front, the heavens be praised. He kept kissing her as he pulled each of those rotten little buttons out of its loop. Damnation, there had to be two hundred of them. He ran out of patience and ripped the last few free. He came up a bit over her and opened her gown. Maggie had struck again, he thought, both shocked and inordinately aroused by the sight of a peach satin chemise bordered with the most wicked little snippets of lace imaginable, none of the lace covering much of anything, just framing those breasts of hers that were the new Jessie’s breasts, not the old Jessie’s.
His hand hovered. Her breasts were rising and falling, looking as delicious and white as the frosting of the wedding cake Badger had baked and decorated until the wee hours of the morning the night before their wedding. Lightly he touched his fingers to her left breast. He closed his eyes and let his fingers trace over her flesh, warm flesh, warm Jessie flesh. Surely she hadn’t always looked like this, all white and full and round, arching up, staring at him as if he were a god from some ancient and exciting myth come to earth to claim her. Suddenly, with no invitation at all, he saw her as she’d been on a long-ago night when he’d come over with a bottle of port to her father’s tack room to toast his racing victory of that day. She’d been sitting cross-legged in a rickety chair next to her father’s de
sk, dressed in the most disreputable old shirt and breeches he’d ever seen, wearing no shoes, just thick black socks that he was certain had holes. Her hair was plastered down to her head and yanked back in a severe braid. Then she’d said in that snide, bratty voice, “Papa said I could stay a moment to greet the loser. I beat you but good today, James. You lost all your concentration in that second race, nearly fell off your poor horse’s back when that jockey tried to kick you. I laughed and laughed and won, naturally.” Then she’d stood, still grinning at him. “I’ll keep beating you, James. It’s your fate.”
And she’d sauntered out of the tack room like an arrogant boy, her father laughing his damned head off at what she’d said, and James just standing there wanting to tie her up in strong rope and throw her into the Patapsco River.
His fingers stopped caressing that white flesh.
20
“JAMES? WHAT’S WRONG? Are my legs squeezing you too tightly? Am I hurting you?”
“Oh no.”
She tightened her ankles.
“That’s a bit much, Jessie. Yes, a bit much, nearly too much actually but don’t loosen up any.”
He felt her heels pushing against his back, forcing him more closely against her. He brushed his fingertips over that wicked satin lace. It felt nearly as soft as her flesh.
“You’ve never touched me there before. It’s interesting. Do you like the chemise?”
“It’s not much like you,” he said. He was staring down at his brown, callused fingers that were again lightly stroking her breasts.
“Maybe it’s like me now that I’m different.”
“Or maybe it’s Maggie trying to mold you into her shape.”
“She has a shape that would be very nice to be molded into. The chemise was her wedding present to me.”
“She did well. Now, Jessie, just be quiet. Don’t you know what I’m doing here? How can you just chat about nothing at all when I’m touching your breasts?”
She turned her face away from him and was on eye level with a small dish of calf brains. Looking at those brains, all soft and cooked in butter, she said, “I’m scared.”
“So you’re scared, and I’m thinking that if I make love to you it will be incest. What a combination we are. Damnation.”
“What do you mean, ‘incest’?”
“Six years, Jessie—for six years you’ve been like a little sister to me. You’ve annoyed me endlessly. I’ve felt protective of you countless times. Remember how I’d come up to you and ruffle your hair or pull on your braid? Then, of course, I’d want to thrash you, but that was denied me, more’s the pity. Even when you sprawled all over me in the Blanchards’ garden, I didn’t think of you as a female. You were just Jessie, the brat in breeches who was always in the way.”
“I’m not your bloody sister, James. You didn’t even think of this incest business at all yesterday, did you?”
“No, I didn’t, but today’s different.”
He leaned over her, kissed her hard, and said into her mouth, “Yesterday you were tipsy, you were giggling, you had those cute little streamers hanging down.”
“So I have to get intoxicated for you to think of me as your wife and not as your sister?”
“No, it’s not that. Damnation, Jessie, if you want the truth, yesterday I didn’t do a damned thing to you. Do you think a man wants to be intimate with an unconscious female? You even snored a couple of times when I was hauling you to the horses. Do you think that’s conducive to amorous feelings?”
“You didn’t do anything?” She shoved at his chest, and he pulled back, standing between her legs, her ankles still locked behind his waist, her breasts still covered. Suddenly, he ripped open her chemise and pulled it wide. She gasped, trying to cover her breasts, but he grabbed her hands and pulled them over her head. He leaned down, kissed her, then brought her hands down and held them at her sides.
“I never realized you looked so nice, Jessie, or is this something you’ve added since you got to England?”
Not just nice breasts, he thought, unable to look away from them. Lovely breasts. Whiter than a cow’s fresh milk, her nipples all soft-looking, a warm pink, and he wanted to touch her and kiss her, but he held himself still.
“I just rub Maggie’s cream all over me every time I bathe, nothing more.”
“A magic cream. Fascinating. You don’t have any freckles on your shoulders or breasts.”
“No, just the line across my nose.”
“Your skin is very white.” He sounded in pain but Jessie was dogged, teetering on the edge of fury. “You really didn’t do anything to me yesterday?”
“Not a thing.”
“You didn’t take my clothes off when we got here?”
“No, Mrs. Catsdoor took care of you.”
“So this is the first time you’re seeing me at all unclothed?”
“Yes.”
He released one of her hands because he had to touch her breast. The instant she was free, she made a fist and hit him in the jaw, so hard his head flew back. He grabbed her hand again, cursing.
She tried to rear up, but he was heavy against her. She fell back against the tablecloth, panting, shrieking, “You bastard! You lied to me. You made me think that it was all over and done with so I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. And now here I am, still both a physical and spiritual virgin with you standing between my legs, my ankles locked behind you, and you’ve ripped my beautiful chemise that Maggie gave me and you’re staring at my bosom. All for the first time, not the second time so I wouldn’t have to be all that embarrassed. I hate you, James. Damn you, let me go.”
“No,” he said, and he leaned down and kissed her left breast. “You’re not my damned little obnoxious sister, not with breasts like these you aren’t.” He shoved himself against her and she tried to struggle away from him. She unlocked her ankles and her legs fell down over the end of the table. She was sliding off, pressed so hard against him now that he thought he’d die if he didn’t come into her this very instant. Not an instant from now, but this instant.
It was more than a man could take. He kissed her other breast because he couldn’t help himself, then he reared back, pulled up her gown and petticoats, stared at those long legs of hers, now covered with soft white cotton stockings, tied mid-thigh with garters of peach satin. The garters matched her chemise? He trembled. He stared down at her.
It took him a moment to realize she wasn’t struggling anymore. She was just lying there staring up at him, watching him look down at her.
“You’re not wearing drawers,” he said. She was wearing only her peach satin chemise that came merely to the top of her thighs. He was shocked. Even Connie wore light muslin pantalettes that tied with pretty ribbons just below her knees. Lots of pretty lace trimming, of course, but they were still drawers and covered everything. He’d always enjoyed kissing up her legs, pulling those ribbons loose with his teeth, then slowly pulling them off her.
“No,” she said, her voice as thin as the layer of sweat on James’s forehead. “Maggie told me not to wear any pantalettes for thirty days after we were married. She said it would drive you mad knowing I was naked beneath my riding skirt or my gowns.”
“Why just thirty days?”
“She said after thirty days I was to do it only randomly, that you would never know when you looked at me if I was wearing anything beneath my chemise or not. She said that would drive you mad as well for at least six months.”
“And after six months?”
“Then I was to leave them off only as a reward. She said a man started showing his true colors after six months and needed to be handled with more guile. I told her I knew all your true colors already. I told her I’d seen you punch a stable lad who’d drunk a bottle of gin and slept next to one of your horses, that I’d heard you yelling your head off crying foul when someone better than you beat you in a race. I even told her I’d heard you belch, but that was just one time and you didn’t know I was there.”
>
“Good God,” he said, aware that he was but a pair of breeches away from coming into her, that her breasts were quite naked, and she was talking his ear off. He had to regain some semblance of control here. If he didn’t, he’d do something stupid.
“Jessie, be quiet now. We’ll speak more about Maggie’s underwear strategy a bit later. Right now, while you’re not looking at all like the old Jessie, I’d just as soon come inside you and get it over with. Would you like that?”
“You’re looking at me.”
“Yes. Your woman’s hair is as red as the hair on your head. It’s incredible, really, with all that white flesh of your belly. There’s so much of you that’s balm for a man’s lust, I don’t know where to look first. Now, will you bash me again if I let your hands go so I can kiss your breasts?”
“No, but perhaps later I will when I’ve had time to think about it some more.”
He released her hands, leaned down, and took her nipple into his mouth. He was flooded instantly with lust and warmth. He blew on her nipple, then said, “Do you like that?”
She didn’t say anything, but she grabbed his face between her hands and pulled him down to her again. He didn’t leave her breasts for a very long time. And even when he eased his fingers up her thigh, he still kissed her breasts. She was shaking. Surely that was a good sign. When his fingers touched her flesh, she heaved upward so violently she nearly knocked him off her.
“Goodness, should you be doing that, James? No one’s ever touched me there before. Only me, and that’s when I bathe.”
“Yes, I should touch you here every day, perhaps four times a day. At least I should be doing this to the new Jessie. Promise me something.” He lightly stroked his fingers over her, even as he looked at her glazed eyes.
“What?”
“You’ve got to stay the new Jessie, at least when we’re making love.”