Justine Elyot (22 page)

She stood up, needing solitude so urgently that she ran to the shelter of some nearby trees, leant against the bark of one and put her hands to her face, sobbing out the multifaceted emotions of her day.

She only stopped when she heard him call for her, his shouts accompanied by little childish imitations. She dried her face, wiped her nose and set a course back to the shores of the lake, where she smiled at Charlotte and took her in her arms in order to avoid meeting Charles’s eyes.

‘Have you been crying?’ he asked curiously, opening the car door for her. ‘Where did you go?’

‘Just the sun,’ she said vaguely, putting Charlotte down on the seat beside her. ‘So strong – hurt my eyes, you know.’

They drove back to Kingsreach and left Charlotte, after many farewells and tears and cuddles, with her mother.

***

‘She’s taken a shine to you,’ said Charles, setting off again for the Hall.

‘She’s a little dear,’ said Edie, her voice catching again. Why couldn’t she seem to moderate her feelings today? ‘Poor little darling.’

‘Now look, there’s nothing poor about Charlotte. She’s the best provided for child in Kingsreach. And her mother doesn’t go short of attention either. She has suitors by the dozen – she’s a beautiful woman and plenty of men want to play stepfather to a Deverell child. They know they’ll be set up for life. Don’t go wasting your pity where it isn’t needed.’

‘She’s hurt. You hurt her.’

Charles reached over to squeeze her knee.

‘I never intended to,’ he said. ‘I had a reputation, which she knew of – and, before the war, it was well-deserved. But I’m not that man now.’

‘Except where I’m concerned.’

‘Everything’s different where you’re concerned, Edie. All bets are off.’

‘You sound as if you see a future in this.’

He looked startled.

‘Well, I do,’ he said, as if it were self-evident. ‘Don’t you?’

‘I …’ She shook her head, looking away from him, not wanting to see what lay behind the wall of suave reserve she had broken down. This was impossible, utterly impossible. Her mother’s stepson, the man she had confessed to loving. It did not fit into her design at all.

But she did not want to talk about that, not today. Tomorrow, when everyone was back and Deverell Hall fell into its routine, there was time enough to fret. Today was a holiday from all that.

***

She scurried back into the house through a side door, leaving Charles to park the car. In her East Wing bedroom, she threw herself back on the bed and stared raptly at the ceiling. Now she had a moment to herself to contemplate how her post-virginal state felt, and she meant to use it to the full.

She was an experienced woman. It did not feel as different as she had expected it to, apart from the obvious physical side-effects between her thighs. The tenderness seemed to spread through her body, infecting her with a tremulous vulnerability that she must make sure Charles never saw. Charles, her deflowerer, the man who had taken her across that bridge – now there would always be a bond between them. She simultaneously thrilled at and recoiled from the idea. It was all so complicated, and yet it was so dangerously addictive – she could see that now. To fall once was to keep falling; there was no end to it.

Even the sound of his boots on the gravel far below made her heart speed up and her stomach convulse.

Damn it, Edie Crossland, you can’t fall in love with him, you simply can’t. It’s your body playing tricks on you, making you think that, because he’s had you once, you want him always. It’s a biological ploy, Edie, that’s all.

However much sense she tried to talk into her nerves, they would persist in tautening and bursting into fountains of excitement every two minutes, so she gave up trying to be calm and fell into a glorious reliving of the morning’s activities.

She was still trying to remember the exact sensation of him upon her when he entered the room, laughing to find her laid out on the bed with her arms up and her cheek to the pillow.

‘I’ve forgotten what I came say to you now,’ he said in a low voice, coming to sit on the bed beside her, his hand drifting over her light cotton blouse.

‘Words,’ she said, still blissfully abstracted, arching her spine slightly to encourage his touch. ‘Mmm.’

‘Don’t make me take you in this mean little room when we have the entire Hall at our disposal,’ he said. ‘Come on, get up. You need to dress for dinner.’

‘What?’

Edie forced herself into an upright position and blinked at her lover.

‘An intimate dinner, my love: just you, me, Tom and Giles. The servants have their instructions – we are to be attended to by only you and footman Giles. Except you won’t be serving us. You will be our honoured guests. Do you see?’

‘I … don’t think I do. The servants …?’

‘They’ll be safely downstairs. Giles will bring all the dishes up.’

‘But if the servants are guests, who is going to be the …?’

‘Servants? Darling, Tom and I have fought in the trenches. We don’t need to be waited on hand and foot. We can fend for ourselves, you know.’

‘Won’t they think it odd?’

‘“They”?’

‘The servants.’

‘They aren’t paid to question what we do, Edie. They might gossip but they can’t take their gossip out of the Hall. And do you care about a bit of gossip, anyway? You are above that.’

‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘I’m one of them.’

‘No, you aren’t,’ he insisted. ‘You’re mine. That puts you in an entirely different position.’

‘I am not yours,’ she said hotly, but he put a finger to her lips and shook his head.

‘Don’t argue with me, Edie. Whether you know it yet or not, you are. Now come on downstairs and we’ll find you something suitable for cocktails.’

She almost ran back up the back stairs when he led her into Lady Deverell’s chambers.

‘I can’t,’ she whispered in a panic, but he pulled her onwards.

‘Yes, you can. You’re about her size and shape. Her gowns will fit you like gloves. Come into her dressing room and I’ll choose one for you.’

‘I can’t,’ she repeated, even more urgently, but they were in the sumptuously filled closet before she even finished speaking.

‘You can. I’ll be your maid. I’ll dress you. On the strict condition that I can undress you again later.’

‘Charles –’ She was flustered, but he was so resolute that she ceased trying to move him and stood like a mannequin in the centre of the room while he cast his eye over racks and racks of gorgeous evening gowns.

‘I don’t think black,’ he said, rejecting a jet-beaded number in midnight lace. ‘A fresh little rosebud like you doesn’t wear it well. And white isn’t appropriate any more, is it, my dear?’

He turned and gave her a wicked smile. Her cheeks flamed.

‘We can’t,’ she said, in a final attempt to steer his course away from her mother’s wardrobe. ‘What if I spoil the gown? What if we are found out?’

‘That day will come eventually,’ he said equably.

The words terrified her. This was all galloping away from her, much too fast.

‘Don’t,’ she muttered.

‘Don’t what? Prepare for the inevitable?’ He turned back to the rail, fingering exquisite gowns whose price tags would pay for a year of good dinners for her friends in Holborn. ‘Now this –’ he said, taking a dress of a peacock-blue silk with a chiffon train attached to the shoulders. At the embonpoint, sapphires and diamonds glittered in an eye-catching knot and the skirt was overlaid with glittering lace, tiny seed pearls sewn into the pattern.

‘It’s beautiful. I haven’t seen her wear it.’

‘It suits the shade of your hair.’ He held it up to her. ‘I’m sure it will fit you. Come on. Take off those drab parlourmaid’s-day-out things and let’s see you in your full glory. Not that you need any clothes for that.’

‘Stop it. Look, I’m really not sure about this …’

‘I am. Slice a bit off my certainty and use it for yourself, if you like. Chop chop, get those buttons undone now.’

Edie’s fingers fumbled but she undid the blouse and then the hobble skirt, relieved to be out of it, for its material was too thick for the summer heat and it had made a chafing band around her waist.

‘That dreary underwear can go too,’ said Charles lightly, already ransacking the drawers for corsets and silk stockings. ‘What are you waiting for?’

She knew he had seen it all before, but she still blushed to denude herself entirely before him. When he turned around, holding a pile of impossibly frilly wisps of material, he smiled like a thirsty man who has caught sight of an oasis.

Swallowing first, he said, ‘That’s the girl. Now, I’m going to put these on you.’

‘I can’t wear her underthings. Surely it’s not … quite … well, you know …’

‘They’ll be washed,’ he said offhandedly. ‘I’ll put them in the laundry hamper.’

‘Not today,’ exclaimed Edie. ‘The servants!’

He laughed wholeheartedly at that. ‘Oh, you sound like your dear mama sometimes, you know.’

‘You’re not to tease me about it,’ she said, sticking out a rebellious lower lip. ‘It isn’t fair.’

‘All right. I’m sorry. God, I could have you right here and now, you gorgeous little puzzle. But I’m going to make myself wait. Going to force myself. Dinner will be all the more piquant for it.’

Edie, tired of being naked, urged him to make a start.

‘Can I at least put some drawers on?’

‘I suppose so,’ he said dolefully, handing over a frothy, frilly pair in black lace. Edie had never worn such an article and she felt peculiarly exotic as the lace tickled at her skin and quivered over her bottom.

Charles seemed fascinated by it too, laying his palm over her cheeks and cupping them, then stroking the flounce-covered curves. He moved his hand lower until his skin connected with the backs of her thighs, then his fingers massaged the soft, vulnerable skin at the very top, right by the elasticated border of the drawers.

Edie could feel the blood rushing around her body and a resulting sultry heaviness between her legs. He could let his fingers creep under the elastic, he could let them push between her lips …

But he did not.

Instead he helped her on with her silk stockings, nominally black but so sheer they were the faintest dark sheen on her pale legs.

Next came the corset, and he laced her in tightly, almost too tightly. She held on to the clothes rail for support, gasping and coughing.

‘I’m not as slender as all that,’ she protested. ‘You’ll cut me in half.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, loosening them a little. ‘It does make your behind swell so deliciously. I got a little carried away. But look at yourself in the mirror. You’re a perfect hourglass.’

She was, and she stared, unused to seeing herself on such voluptuous display. She never wore corsets ordinarily, believing, along with her father’s women friends, that they were constricting to the health and happiness of females. But they certainly made one look astonishing.

The garment was made of sleek satin, and was black with red velvet swirls and red ribbons. It was cut necessarily low and did not cover the bust, so as not to show over the neckline of the gown. Edie’s breasts were bared, their nipples swollen and red with excitement, while beneath them her waist was perfectly nipped in, giving her a wickedly wanton appearance.

‘Gosh, I look like something from a brothel,’ she said.

‘Hmm,’ said Charles approvingly. He stood at her shoulder and put his hands over her breasts, watching the pair of them in the mirror as he kissed her neck.

‘Even more so now,’ she breathed, lost in sensation, despairing of ever being fully dressed, but finding the despair not at all unpleasant.

‘I want to keep you chained to the wall,’ he said, kissing her ear. ‘Dressed like this. My own little private slave girl, to have whenever and however I like. What would you think of that?’

‘Oh, no,’ she gasped, feeling she really ought to object to the notion, but it was so appealing at that moment that she hadn’t the heart. ‘I couldn’t … do that …’

‘You’d have no choice. I’m going to do it later. I’m going to tie you to the bed. I promise you.’

‘Charles.’ But her legs couldn’t support her and she had collapsed backwards into his chest, swimming in sensual rapture. The feel of his thumbs on her nipples undid her every resolve, as did his lips and teeth on her delicate skin. He could make her his whore. He could do it.

‘Can’t we stay here?’ she whispered. ‘I’ve no idea what I’ll say to your brother. I can’t face it, Charles.’

‘Nonsense. He’ll adore you. Come on.’

He gave her one last kiss, brisk and businesslike, then returned her to her feet, hands firmly on her shoulders.

‘The gown,’ he said, picking it up from the footstool over which it lay draped like a cold, blue waterfall. ‘I’m putting it on you while I still have the will.’

She stepped into it, shivering at its delicious coolness as Charles guided it up her legs and over her hips. It was constructed so as to require no buttons or other fastenings and it clung snugly, holding her breasts in place better than any foundation garment could.

‘Oh, I thought it might not fit but …’

She could say no more, but gaped at her reflection. She looked so elegant, another woman in another world. This was not Edie the bluestocking with the bitten-down nails. This was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the daughter of Ruby Redford.

‘Bloody hell,’ murmured Charles, his palms on her chiffon-covered upper arms. ‘This is what she must have looked like twenty years ago.’

‘Oh, take it off,’ she cried impulsively. ‘Your brother will guess my secret.’

‘Well, I was rather thinking along the lines of telling him, actually.’

‘What?’

‘Why not?’

‘Charles, no! Until I am able to tell her myself, it’s terribly unfair to have a house full of people who know something she doesn’t. Something with the power to ruin her.’

‘As you wish,’ he said, shrugging. ‘But he’ll notice the resemblance, I can promise you that.’

‘So perhaps let me take it off? Wear something plainer, less … her.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘That dress was made for you.’

‘But it wasn’t.’