Awaiting the Moon (36 page)

It was not the first time he had experienced that particular sensuous delight, but there was something profoundly special about it… different from any lovemaking he had shared with any other woman. What was it?

He sat at his desk and stared absently at the paper in front of him.

It was her… the expression on her face. In the glow of candlelight the night before, as she knelt before him, more powerful than her submissive pose would seem to suggest, he had caught a glimpse of her face. Her eyes were closed as she suckled and teased him, but her expression was… what was it?

It was as if… as if she was savoring him, tasting him, not just his body but his deepest self, and sweetly smiling as she gave to him; just the sight had made him feel… loved. He went cold and a shiver raced down his back. Was it possible? Could she… could she love him?

It had never occurred to him, and yet he knew she was fond of him. But what he had felt the night before from her was love… pure, sweet, unexpected, and unfelt before. Love shone in her eyes and beckoned him, like a warm light.

Caught between the heaven of her love and the hell of his life, he trembled, on a razor’s edge of sanity.

His mind told him he must draw back—there was no truth in her love, for it was based on an illusion of what she thought he was—but his heart told him to take what he could, for he might never feel so blessed again.

“MA’AM, why do you all think Countess Gerta’s condition is irreversible?” Elizabeth asked Frau Liebner as they sat together awaiting Uta. She had learned from the elderly countess that Frau Liebner knew all about the turmoil that went on during the full moon, and so she could speak of it openly. She was keeping her mind strictly on anything other than Nikolas, for she caught herself dreaming of him at every moment. Even through a difficult morning with Charlotte, she had not been able to chastise the girl for inattention when her own was so divided.

“It is progressing, this sickness. What could anyone do?”

“But doctors—”

“When she was young, she went to Vienna to see a doctor who said that she was frail and must be sheltered. Even then she was… difficult. Emotional. Unstable. Nothing like this, but of course it is getting worse.” She shrugged. “It is simply how it is.”

Elizabeth sat back in her chair and thought. What worried her was that the same things they said about Gerta when she was young also applied to Charlotte now. Was the poor girl doomed to live as her aunt did, eventually going… quite mad? Oh, she prayed it wasn’t so.

And yet there were days when Charlotte was completely normal. Whatever was bothering her was getting worse, though, it seemed. Christoph, too, was moody and unpredictable.

Perhaps… Elizabeth stopped, her eyes widening as she thought. Was Nikolas afraid that the instability in his family was inherited, and was that why he had decided he could, not risk having a family? At that moment Mina carried Uta from the dressing room and gently set her down in her chair by the window. Uta, to cover her embarrassment—Elizabeth could tell the proud old woman disliked being seen carried—fussed with her shawl.

“Ma’am,” Elizabeth said, touching her hand, “I hope you slept well?”

“Oh, I slept very well. Did you, young miss?”

There was an archness in her tone, and she and Frau Liebner both snorted in amusement.

What it meant she could not tell, but just thinking about how she slept, wound in Nikolas’s loving embrace, made her blush.

She was far too aware that morning, for she could feel the unfamiliar nakedness in her nether regions, and she was so sensitive that she felt the difference simply walking. She swallowed and tried to turn her mind elsewhere, but nothing worked. Nikolas… he was all she could think of. He was all she had ever wanted.

After some commonplace conversation she excused herself, thinking some outdoor exercise was in order. She invited Charlotte out for a walk, but the girl was closeted with her brother and would not move. Elizabeth descended to the great hall, dressed for a walk, but undecided as to whether she would go. The dogs worried her, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to go out alone.

At that moment, Bartol Liebner strolled into the great hall from the serving area beyond.

“Miss Stanwycke,” he cried out. “How lovely to see you. Are you going out?”

“I was considering it. It appears to be a beautiful day, but… no one wishes to walk, and so perhaps—”

“Let me accompany you.”

“Are… are you certain, sir?”

“I would be delighted,” he said with a courtly bow, “to accompany so lovely a lady. It would be a great favor to me.”

Muffled against the cold, they ventured out. Herr Liebner took her arm to support her, and they walked the perimeter of the huge castle, dwarfed by the stone walls but sheltered from the wind by their fastness.

“How are you finding your mission here, Miss Stanwycke?”

The cold of the air had taken her breath away at first, but the exercise was welcome, and she soldiered on, glad of even the support of the older man’s arm, for the wind was whipping up and becoming stronger. “It’s not without its challenges. Charlotte is a delightful girl, but—”

“But too morose, yes, I know. I worry about the family often, miss.”

“It’s so wonderful that you care for them so much,” she said, glancing over at him.

His balding head was wrapped in a scarf, but his lively black eyes were visible. “They are my life,” he said simply. “They are everything to me.”

“It must have been difficult, though, when you were young, to leave your family and come here.”

“Ah, but I was coming with my sister, Maria, and she was the only one in my family who truly cared for me. The rest… they despised me.”

“But why?”

He shrugged. “I do not know.”

“But Frau Liebner… she married your brother, am I right?”

“Yes, but always she has disliked me, too, I feel. I fear my brother, Viktor, poisoned her mind against me. Have you never noticed? Has she never said anything?”

“No… I don’t think so,” Elizabeth replied. She thought about it. “No. Not at all.”

“Ah, perhaps she begins to see my devotion to this family.”

“Has she questioned it in the past?”

“Oh, yes, she has thought terrible things, that I wish to interfere. It is not my place, but she thinks I push.”

“Oh.” They walked on in silence for a while.

“It is just my worries for the family, for poor, frail Gerta.” He shook his head and made a sound between his teeth.

She glanced at his expression. Did he know everything? Did others, despite Nikolas’s circumspection, know the secret?

“You must have noticed how she is?” he continued. “Ill. Often ill. And… not quite right in the head. I suggested a doctor, but no, they are too proud to expose her to medical help. Always it must be kept quiet, and yet poor Gerta… how can they not get help for the dear girl?”

It was so exactly what she had been thinking that Elizabeth was astonished into silence. Was it true, though? Did pride alone keep Nikolas from getting help for his sister? He certainly hid her weakness, shielding her as best he could, and Elizabeth had thought of that as a loving gesture, but if it kept her from getting help—

The wolf dogs bounded out from the stable area and Elizabeth couldn’t help it, she started back. They stopped in front of her and Bartol, snarling uneasily.

“Perhaps… perhaps we ought to go back,” she said. The dogs, with their wolf faces and aggressive attitude, still worried her. They must not be out at night, she realized, for she had not been confronted by them when she went out with Nikolas to rescue Gerta.

“Ach, they are mere puppies,” Bartol Liebner said, but he turned with her and guided her back the way they had come. “Have you had enough of a walk anyway, perhaps?”

She glanced at him and saw the beginning signs of weariness on his face and thought he might have asked more for his own sake than hers, so she said, “Yes, I think I have. But I appreciated your arm, sir.”

“And I appreciate your kindness and beauty, miss. It has enlightened the days at Wolfram Castle. And we all see in Nikolas a difference.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh,” he said, gasping, “I should have said nothing. I am so sorry! Forget I said anything at all, Miss Stanwycke.”

Mortified by how far the gossip about her and Nikolas had evidently spread, she said not another word until they parted with mutually friendly words.

She had completely lost sight of her original stiff resistance to the count’s charms, she thought, in a maudlin mood that afternoon. A few kisses, some petting, and she had lost her way, falling in love with a man unattainable by his own admission. But did it change anything? He evidently had no intention of marrying, and yet she had allowed herself to get entangled and become… well, his mistress in all but deed.

“I need to talk to him,” she said to her reflection that evening as she undressed for bed. “I need to tell him this can’t go on.” As many times as she had made that resolution, and as many times as she had failed to keep it, she hoped to be strong, Finally.

She slipped along the chilly passages one more time to his room and slid open the passage doorway. He had asked her to come to him, for he had a surprise for her, he said, and so she would. Perhaps for the last time, though. She must find the strength to regain her autonomy. If their lives were never to be merged, then their bodies should not be.

He was ready for her with twenty or more candles lit, and his “surprise,” as he had named it, in the middle of the floor. Her eyes widened.

“What is that?” she asked, circling it.

It was large and copper, long and wide. He smiled as he watched her, knowing she had never seen anything like it, for he had had this made just for himself. “It is, my sweet, a bathtub, one made for two.” He reached down and splashed some of the fragrant, steaming water, spattering her.

She stood by it and reached down. “It’s so hot!” She swept her hand through the water.

“Mmm, how lovely!”

“It is my own design,” he said, smiling at her expression of joy at the warm water swishing through her fingers. His poor Elizabeth! He feared she had been often cold in the months since arriving at Wolfram Castle, but for this one night she would feel warm, if he had his way. And he intended to have his way. “The problem was in keeping this much water hot while enough was heated to fill it. So there is a basin at the bottom that holds heated stones, and it keeps the water warm much longer.” He circled and took her hand, stroking her palm with his thumb. “As long as needed.”

She looked at the tub and then up at him.

“Yes,” he said to her unasked question. “Would you like to try it out?”

She closed her eyes and sniffed the steam. “Lavender. How heavenly, Nik.” She bit her lip and looked up at him, then squeezed his hand. “It’s tempting. May I really? I… I shouldn’t… I truly should not.”

She was hesitant, and he worried he had taken her too far the night before. He must not expect as foregone what he wanted to pass, he thought. He must allow her to experience this with no pressure to go further than she had already gone, or even as far. She looked… frightened. He took her in his arms. She laid her head against his chest, by his heart. She loved to listen to it, she had told him, and it seemed to him the strength of the beat was a reassurance for her.

“Elizabeth,” he said gently, threading his fingers through her unbound hair, twisting the silk between his thumb and forefinger, “I promise you nothing will ever happen that is not your choice. I care about you very much. If you wish I will stay out of the room and you may bathe alone, or I will confine my participation to washing your back. And other parts.” He could not resist adding the last part.

She flushed an adorable pink. “You’re wicked,” she said breathlessly. She wrapped her arms around his waist and gazed up into his eyes, her own the blue of the Aegean. “No, Nik, I… I’d like to be with you, but… but just kissing and touching. I… I can never do the… the other.”

The other
. Making love. He had thought her wishing his advances, perhaps even waiting for them—or at least that was the sense he had had the night before—but either he had been misled by his own desires or she had doubts that were taking a toll on her attraction. He felt desolate, and though a fragment of his disappointment was in knowing he would not see fulfillment that night, he felt pain for her and the deep hurt she had suffered when a man so carelessly broke her heart and deserted her, for he had the sensation that her reluctance that night was due to a reawakening of her old pain. He would cheerfully plunge a dagger in that man’s heart for hurting her thus.

And yet, if she truly was fond of him, if perhaps she even loved him, what was he going to do but break her heart anew?

Wretchedly confused by his own warring emotions, he could only let it go for this one night.

“It shall be exactly as you wish, Elizabeth,” he whispered.

He undressed her, taking his time with her robe, and then slipping her nightrail up over her head, delighting in the warm tones of her lovely alabaster skin flushing to pink underneath, the rosy nipples hardening at the rush of cool air. Where he had shaved the night before was soft and sweetly folded like a tight, secretive bud, concealing intimate delights that made him hunger and ache. He took her hand and guided her to a stepstool he had placed by the side of the copper behemoth and watched her delicately walk up and climb in, relishing this candlelit sight of the curves he had come to know so well by touch. As she sank into the water, her breasts bobbed enticingly.

She sighed and closed her eyes. “Oh, Nik, this is heavenly!”

He swallowed hard and caressed her neck. “May I… may I join you?”

When she looked alarmed, he continued, “You have my pledge. I shall wash your back, but no more. You know me, Elizabeth. Trust me.”
As you did last night
, he finished in his mind.

She nodded shyly.

He pulled his clothes off with trembling hands and climbed in with her. She floated on her stomach, her arms over the back of the tub and her head in her arms; her rounded bottom rose above the milky water like a pale ripe peach. He slid his hands up her legs to her hips, and she moaned softly as he soaped her bottom, taking exquisite care, enjoying the ripeness of her curves and how her pale skin flushed as he touched and caressed.