She was his own true love.
Nine
Plum was not happy.
Oh, she knew she had no right to be unhappy—everything she’d ever wanted had been handed to her: she had a husband, a kind man with whom she suspected she had fallen in love; five children who, if they weren’t exactly what she’d imagined when she thought of her ideal family, were at heart good children…relatively good children; she had a home and security and was free from want or need; but despite all of the many blessings she counted as she lay snuggled up against her husband’s chest, the soft rumble of his snore ruffling her hair, she was not happy.
She felt particularly ungrateful when she thought about the reason she was so unhappy—Harry was not impressed with her mothering skills. She dismissed his explanation about not wishing her to die in childbirth as simply Harry being kind and not wanting to embarrass her in front of Thom and Temple by admitting that he thought she was a poor mother.
“I am ungrateful,” she whispered as she traced a finger along Harry’s bicep. “What does it matter if he doesn’t think I’m as good a mother as his first wife? Del is right, mothering isn’t everything. I have other qualities, other talents. My whole life does not revolve around being a mother. I am a person unto myself, and do not need to be judged either by my ability to bear children, or my ability to raise them. I am me, Plum. That should be good enough for anyone.”
Brave words, her inner Plum said in an annoyingly mocking tone. The truth is, being a mother is what you want, it’s what you’ve always wanted, all you’ve wanted. A family—that’s what you’ve craved your whole adult life, and now you have one and you’re not happy.
Plum told her inner voice to go take a long walk along a short cliff, and turned her attention from self-pity to proving her excellence as mother to both Harry’s existing children and the ones she hoped to bear.
One thought leading to another, Plum’s fingers found themselves stroking a path from Harry’s arm, down his side, over his hip, to that part of him that lay nestled in quiescence along her thigh. She knew full well why he had spilled his seed outside of her body the previous night, but she had been too caught up in the moment of passion, in the knowledge of her love for him, to beg him to give her a child. Instead she said nothing while he gently cleaned her off, reluctant to ruin the warm feeling that came when he settled back into bed, pulling her up against him, their arms and legs entangled as if their bodies could not be separated.
Plum tipped her head and glared down at the part of him that was the cause of all her woes. “You’re not even handsome like the rest of Harry. To be truthful, you’re a bit funny looking.”
He stirred (all of him), his arousal stiffening and growing before her eyes.
“Funny looking?” Harry sounded annoyed. Plum smiled at his cute little belly. “What sort of comment is that for a wife to make the morning after a wedding night?”
She kissed his chest, then tipped her head up to smile into his disgruntled face. “I didn’t mean it as an insult, husband, but you have to admit that part of the male anatomy is rather…comical.”
His eyes widened. His nostrils flared. His arousal hardened. “My rod is not comical! It’s an extremely fine specimen of its kind.”
“Harry, I’m sorry if you’re offended by my opinion, but I can’t help it—it looks…funny. Look at it!” They both looked. It waved at them. “You see? It’s all red and purple, and has that silly little bit of skin that slides back and forth like a purple visor on a helmet.”
“Plum,” Harry said, breathing loudly through his mouth, “you will cease deriding my rod. It is not comical or funny looking. It is manly. It all but throbs with virility. Vigor is its byword. I’ll have you know that women the world over have been known to swoon before it. I have had nothing but praise and gratitude from all of the women it has pleasured.”
Plum’s giggle died a cruel death as she narrowed her eyes at him. “Oh, really? Women the world over?”
“There are legions of women out there who would be happy to write up affidavits attesting to the completely un-funny nature of my rod,” Harry continued, waving his hand at his crotch. “It is a majestic thing, a masculine testament to the act of love, a warrior, if you will—”
“A purple-helmeted warrior of love,” Plum snorted as she wished all of those women who had shared Harry’s body to the devil. “You sound like the very worst sort of prose, husband. I didn’t say it was not a thing of great enjoyment—”
“You mocked it! You derided it!”
“I did not mock—”
“It’s a wonder you haven’t shredded my confidence in my use of it,” Harry said as he rolled her over onto her back. “In fact, I believe you owe proof to my rod and me that you still believe in it. Me. Us.”
“Women the world over?” Plum asked, her body melting wherever Harry touched. “Affidavits, Harry?”
He nipped her nose. “Perhaps that was an exaggeration.”
“I fervently hope so,” she answered, wrapping her legs around his hips, moaning softly as he claimed her mouth. His breath was hot and quick on her lips, but not nearly as rapid as the wild beating of her heart. He sucked her lower lip into his mouth, and Plum thought she was going to cry with the pleasure of it. He nipped the corners of her mouth, wordlessly demanding she part her lips to him, and she thought she would faint. His tongue plunged into her mouth, sweeping all objections before it, tasting her, teasing her, stroking her own tongue, and she thought she would die. But when he began to suckle her tongue, when he coaxed her tongue into exploring his mouth, when she tasted his groan of sheer delight, she knew she was in heaven. She pulled him down onto her body, pulled his head closer, trying to taste him, feel him, join with him all at the same time. Her senses swam with the contact, too much too quickly, too much stimulation, too little control, but none of that mattered as she arched up against him when he plunged his tongue into her mouth, little whimpers of pleasure gathering at the back of her throat.
Harry heard those whimpers and lost the thin shred of control that had kept him from plunging himself into her body. “St. Peter’s cods, woman! I’m just a man! I can’t stand such temptation.”
She blinked at him, her eyes misty with desire, her skin heated with passion. She knew he was speaking, but she didn’t understand the words. “Why are you talking? Now is not the time for talk, Harry. Now is the time for making love.”
“Stop that,” he ordered as her legs moved restlessly beneath him, rubbing against him in a provocative movement. “Don’t move, don’t kiss me, don’t breathe. Just lay there, and perhaps I’ll be able to get through this without shaming myself a second time.” He bent to caress her breast with his lips. She slid one leg out from beneath him and wrapped it around his calf.
Harry reared backward like he had been shot in the behind, his eyes positively feasting on her flesh, his look so heated she swore she could feel its touch. “So soft,” he said hoarsely as he looked at her. “Everywhere I look, creamy white skin, glistening, a veritable playing ground of delectable flesh, and it’s mine, all mine.”
Plum couldn’t stop the laughter from burbling out. Harry looked like he was about to rub his hands with glee. “Yes, I’m yours, all yours. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”
“I want to touch you everywhere, I want to taste you, I want to plunge deep into your silken folds and lose myself in your heat.”
She ran both hands up his arms. “And what’s stopping you?”
He made a noise deep in his chest. “I’m a gentleman. You must have the choice of what you want first. Touching, tasting, or plunging?” His voice was rough, gravel-edged, and it thrummed deep within Plum.
Harry kissed her again, a deep kiss, a demanding kiss, a kiss that gave no quarter. “Make up your mind. Quickly. I don’t have much time before I…er…I don’t have much time.”
“
Mmm. Perhaps I can do something to help.” Plum squirmed out from beneath him, pushing him over onto his back. “What a perfect opportunity for the Steeplechase.”
Harry stared at her in delighted surprise as she straddled his thighs.
She smiled. “You’re absolutely right, Harry.”
“Yes, of course I am. Er. About what?”
She put out a hand to touch him, and he groaned deep in his throat. “You’re hot and hard and velvety smooth, but not funny looking. Not anymore.”
He grabbed her wrist and stopped her exploration. “For the love of God, woman, not now. Not unless you want it all to be over,” he ground out. Plum smiled and slid herself forward on his lap until the tip of him teased her heated core.
“In the Steeplechase, the jockey—me—has absolute control over the stallion. That’s you,” she added, just in case he missed that point. “The jockey’s responsibility is to make sure her stallion doesn’t run himself out before the end of the race.”
His eyes opened even wider as she slid herself a little more forward.
“Timing is everything in the Steeplechase. Slow and steady wins the race.”
Harry stared at her, speechless, a pulse pounding furiously in his neck as she slid along the length of his arousal where it pressed stiffly against his leg.
“I’ve found that by delaying our gratification, by prolonging the sweet torment, the final moment of ecstasy can be heightened tenfold.”
She slid down his thigh, her body tightening in anticipation. “A hundredfold.”
Harry whimpered hopefully as she moved upward toward his groin.
“A…a…” Their combined moisture provided a delightful friction, a friction that coiled tighter and tighter inside her until Plum opened her eyes very wide, positioning him against the center of desire. She looked deep into his hazel eyes, eyes that spoke louder than any words, eyes that told her how much he wanted and desired her, and with a sob of happiness that at last she had found him, the ideal man to share her life, she took his lower lip into her mouth, nipping it as she suddenly plunged downward. “…a thousandfold!”
“St. Peter and all the saints,” Harry gasped as she sank onto him, holding his shoulders and panting slightly as her woman’s flesh quivered around him.
Plum closed her eyes for a moment to enjoy the sensation of having him buried so deep inside her, but opened them again when her husband uttered a garbled, strangled choke. His fingers flexed into her hips, holding her tightly down against him, prohibiting her from moving the way she wanted to move. She felt muscles she didn’t remember she had twitching around him, gripping him tightly, wringing harsh moans of pure masculine pleasure from Harry’s throat. His head had lolled back against the pillow, his eyes were fixed on her face, but she could swear they were unseeing.
He had also stopped breathing.
“Harry? Husband?” She shifted forward to administer a rousing slap, but the sensation of sliding along his hard length made her pause. Harry’s chest heaved once, then again. Plum sat back, her eyes narrowed with pleasure as he slid back into her. She gripped his shoulders hard, her fingers digging into his muscles as he shuddered beneath her. She rose up, pressed her forehead against his, and eased back down, inch by slow inch.
“Stallions in the Steeplechase,” she said as she experimentally flexed a set of inner muscles, smiling a slow, knowing smile when Harry growled in response, “can be run for a very great length of time if the correct pace is set.”
Harry seemed to have other ideas. By the time she had found a rhythm that made him moan nonstop deep-throated moans, he suddenly flipped them both sideways until she was on her back again, her legs hooked around his hips, as he plunged into her so deep, she thought he had pierced her heart.
“You’re mine!” Harry snarled possessively as he pounded into her heat. Plum didn’t care that he was acting like a primitive, possessive, dominant male. All she cared about was that he was hers! All hers!
“Mine!” he said again and seemed to want some sort of response from her, but she wasn’t capable of words. That delicious tension, that coil wound up inside of her was tightening and twisting and spiraling her out of control again. She lifted her hips to him, pulling her knees high on his back, taking him in deeper than before, nipping his neck with joy. The coil was starting to unwind and she had no idea when it was going to stop.
“My wife,” Harry groaned, plunging into her again and again. Plum began to sob a litany of nonsense, words that had no meaning, only emotion as she felt her being come loose from its moorings and merge with Harry’s. Their two souls together lit up like a bonfire behind her eyes, and she cried out his name, sobbed it against him as he suddenly withdrew from her body, shouting his own declaration of fulfillment into her neck as he thrust himself against her belly.
“I…believe…you…won…that…race…” she gasped against his shoulder, holding him tight against herself.
“Bloody right, I did.” Harry responded into her neck, his voice as shaky as she felt. “You helped a little, though.”
Plum didn’t have the strength to smile. Truly, she had no strength for anything, not even to protest his withdrawal from her body. She knew his reasoning for such a ridiculous act had nothing to do with his own pleasure, but she also knew that she would have to redouble her efforts to prove her worthiness as the mother of his yet unborn children. She didn’t have much time left to her, biologically speaking. It was now or never. “And I choose now,” she said softly, mustering enough strength to turn her head and look at her husband.
Harry’s chest rose and fell quickly as he struggled to catch his breath, his skin slick with perspiration, his eyes closed. He raised a hand as if to protest her words, but it fell back to the bed, lifeless. “Now is completely out of the question, wife. You killed me. I am dead. I am deceased. I am a former Harry. Later, perhaps in a year or two, after I’ve recovered from this insidious method of murder you chose to destroy my poor man’s body, we’ll discuss my resurrection, but not now. Now is not possible. Now does not even exist for me. See? I am no more.”
Plum used the cloth at the side of the bed to wipe off her belly, then rolled over onto her side and propped her head up on one hand. “You can speak.” She sighed a mock forlorn sigh. “I must not have done it right if you can still speak. I shall simply have to do better the next time. I will make it my life’s goal to improve, Harry. No doubt with practice, I will.”
His eyes rolled back in his head. “If you do, you really will kill me.”
“Flatterer,” Plum said and snuggled up against his damp chest.
“How did you know about the Steeplechase?” he asked a few minutes later.
Plum had been prepared for that. While she wasn’t willing to admit she was the author of the Guide, she had decided that Thom was right in judging Harry open to such instruction, and that hinting she had read it would not be a bad idea. The key was to tell him the truth without telling him too much truth. “The Steeplechase is one of the activities described in the Guide to Connubial Calisthenics.”
Harry cracked open one eye. “You’ve read it?”
“Yes. I’ve read it.” Frequently over the past few years, if for no other reason than to remind herself exactly what sort of things went on in a marriage bed. It had been so long since she had any experience in that matter…
“Ah. I was hoping to get you to read it a bit later, after we’ve had some…uh…experience with one another, but it’s just as well if you’re familiar with the book. I assume your first husband gave it to you?”
Plum picked her words carefully. “He was responsible for me reading the Guide, yes.”
Harry made a noncommittal hum and closed his eye again, his arm tightening around her as she relaxed against him. That was one hurdle past. Things were going to work out. They had to. It was simply a matter of her putting her mind to the task.
***
“My life is going to rack and ruin, you know that, don’t you?” Plum asked four weeks later.
Unfortunately she asked it of Edna, her timid maid. Edna had improved over the past few weeks to the point where she now no longer crossed herself whenever her mistress spoke, but she was still a bit twitchy whenever Plum gave free rein to whatever unconventional thought floated around in her mind.
“But, ma’am, that’s ever such a pretty gown,” Edna said, her eyes puzzled as she watched Plum frown at herself in the looking glass. “The color suits you perfectly. I don’t see that it will ruin your life.”
“That’s not what I meant, although Harry does have a very good eye for color, much better than mine.” Plum stopped frowning at her thoughts and took a good long look at herself in the glass. The rich wine of the watered silk set off her dark hair well, and the cut of the gown, although a bit higher in the bodice than she was accustomed to, was flattering. “He really is very good to us, bringing in Madame Sinclair to make new wardrobes for Thom and me, and yes, Edna, the gown is very pretty, but the fact remains that despite being the possessor of ten new day gowns, four dinner gowns, six chemises, three ball gowns, two riding habits, and more stockings and gloves than I can count, my life is still going to rack and ruin.”
Edna made an inarticulate, near-eep sound that had Plum closing her lips over the rest of her complaint. Edna was looking wary enough; the last thing Plum wanted was for the maid to be run off before her hair was done.
Fifteen minutes later Plum dismissed Edna and went in search of her husband. Today was the day of reckoning. Her reckoning. “Good morning, Thom. Have you seen Harry?”
Thom paused at the top of the staircase, the two footmen who were trailing her halting obediently behind. “I believe he went down to work on his project.”
Plum nibbled her lower lip. “Oh.”
“He was whistling, and he looked like he wanted to smile,” Thom said helpfully.