That Scandalous Summer (9 page)

“No brothers, you mean.” She cast him an arch look. “No, I was an only child. Another way in which my mother disappointed Papa’s family. But Papa never minded it. He spoiled me terribly, almost as terribly as he spoiled her.”

Ah. Perhaps she wasn’t romanticizing her parents’ marriage.

At the thought, he felt the stirring of a very old emotion, disbelief and wistfulness entwined. As a boy on holiday at friends’ homes, over dinner tables and in drawing rooms before supper, he had watched with amazement as the lord and lady of the house exchanged glances, or brushed against each other. What a rare and wondrous thing it must be, to have had happy parents. “It was a great romance, I take it.”

“Of course! But I’m hardly an objective critic. I suppose most children idealize their parents.” She gave him a merry look. “Yours were also perfect, no doubt.”

He could barely fathom the fortune it required to produce such naiveté. “In fact, my brother raised me.” For all intents and purposes, Alastair had played both mother and father to him.

Her expression instantly sobered. “I’m so sorry, sir. How awful for you!”

She imagined he’d been raised an orphan, he gathered. He could not permit that misunderstanding to stand. “My parents were . . . engaged elsewhere.” Embroiled in their own private war, they’d had little time to spare on their children, save insofar as sons made excellent pawns. “Not often present in our lives. My brother saw to my . . .”
Safety
.
Sanity.
Not politic remarks. “Well-being,” he said.

“Oh.” She frowned a little. “Well . . . who knows, sir? Perhaps you’re the better for it. I often suspect that a happy marriage is a
terrible
example to inflict on a child.”

Surely she meant that as a joke. “A rather wonderful one, I’d think.”

“Oh, for the husband and wife, no doubt. But imagine the expectations it creates! That anyone can have such love—or that a man who falls madly in love with a woman will never fall out of it. A child nursed on such fairy tales is bound to develop the
wildest
expectations.”

The frank remark startled him only briefly. Over the past two months, he’d discovered that this kind of intimacy happened a good deal when people looked at him and saw only a country doctor. Where his reputation did not precede him, honest friendships seemed to proliferate.

“Such cynicism,” he said. “Surely you’re too young to be so wise.”

She laughed. “Now your flattery grows transparent. I am, after all, a widow.”

He opened his mouth, then paused. Did she mean that comment as an invitation to ask after her marriage?

If so . . . good God. His curiosity suddenly felt as large as any hunger he’d known.
Why are you hiding here in the country?
For she owned London’s heart: her face was in the shop windows; society would throw itself at her feet if only she deigned to grace it with her presence.

What a pity that their paths had not crossed earlier. He might have approached her openly, with a frank invitation. His liaisons did not usually last longer than a few weeks, but with her, he could imagine making an exception. Most of London’s fashionable beauties cultivated a coy air of mysterious reserve—or its reverse,
an overblown sensuality that turned every other word into a veiled invitation. Her charm, on the other hand, seemed connected to her frankness. He found her honesty strangely . . . refreshing.

Paired with a lack of self-consciousness, honesty would be a great asset to lovemaking.
Tell me what you like,
he’d say.
Show me.

“Have I shocked you?” she asked.

Her question amused him. If only she knew where his own thoughts had been leading. “Not at all,” he said.
Beware, old boy. You are not free for seductions at present.
And she looked too impossibly vivid in her gown, like the spirit of summer itself, with the green fields rolling out behind her, for him to imagine that a friendship between them would be uncomplicated by baser temptations.

So he forced himself to make a neutral remark. “The realities of love aside, I suppose it must be useful to have an ideal in mind.”

“Do you? Then we must debate on it. Do you enjoy debating?”

“On occasion,” he said.

Her head tipped; she studied the clouds overhead. This new view revealed imperfections: a mole high on her cheekbone; the oddly blunted tip of her nose. Her photographs, he suspected, were never taken in profile. This was a view that would never be given to the public.

The thought strangely fascinated him. These were secrets waiting to be discovered. He found himself studying her more closely yet, avid to find more. The shape of her ear was not shell-like, her earlobe a touch too large for that pretty description—stretched, perhaps, by years of heavy earrings. But ideal for a kiss. The faint
freckle on her throat sent another thrill through him. He wanted to touch it, to whisper against it,
I’ve found you.
For that matter, the slope of her neck begged to be brushed with a hand.
His
hand, before he cupped her nape and guided her gently backward onto a bed . . .

“Then let us debate this proposal,” she said, blithely unaware of his rapidly developing . . . condition. “Love is one of the more
dangerous
ideals a young girl might have. Why, the first man who declares himself will inevitably appear to her like her destiny, leading her to ignore all manner of
other
considerations.”

“Perhaps.” He spoke slowly, for it was a battle now between his wits and his body, which wanted to embarrass him like a schoolboy. Good God. He’d never approved of men who used brothels, but if celibacy spelled the end of his dignity, he might reconsider his contempt. “Or perhaps . . . her expectations will guide her to the best of matches, and steer her safely past those roués who look for something less than love in a marriage.”

That had sounded very virtuous. He smiled, pleased with himself.

Tilting her head, she said dryly, “How sweet. But do you truly think love so easily recognized as
that
? Why, a rogue may speak of love as easily as the morning editorials—more easily, in fact, for I find most rogues have a great distaste for reading.”

His enthusiasm lessened abruptly. She was not a moralist, he hoped. “I take it your husband disappointed you, madam.”

Ah, that was too blunt. The look she gave him changed as their eyes met; he felt as though he
saw
her decision to retreat from him in the way her smile firmed, like a wall hardening.

“But what a bore I am,” she said. “I promised to show you a lovely spot, and instead I babble at you.”

The strength of his disappointment amazed him. On its heels came wry resignation. She was not looking for a confidant, after all, but a silent ear, an audience that did not talk back. Ladies of her rank did not befriend their doctors.

“I imagine you very rarely bore anyone,” he said. Gallantries were what she expected, and this one was easy to offer.

Her smile slipped a little. Ah, but wistfulness did lovely things to her face. Though she would not admire them in the mirror, the faint lines that fanned from the corners of her eyes lent her beauty a human quality that roused in him the most peculiar and unexpected feeling.

If not her husband, then who had disappointed her? Such clumsiness was unforgivable; he would bloody the man’s face. No, he would do more than that: he would cup her face and smooth his thumb along her lip and whisper,
He was not worthy of you.
Then he would show her what she deserved: steadfast attention, a man who understood how a woman’s body worked, who could name each of its parts and manipulate them to her pleasure . . .

Christ, man. Take hold of yourself
. He had long ago accepted that his character placed him among the more rash and impetuous men on the planet, but these fancies were a very quick development, even by his own natural tempo.

As though she divined his thoughts, she said, “We’re nearly strangers, Mr. Grey. I wonder why it is that I feel so comfortable with you? It seems to me that silences are particularly hard to share, don’t you think? But not with you.”

She liked flirting. That much was clear. Provoke and retreat; provoke and retreat. It was the natural tempo of the coquette. “That’s a compliment, I believe.”

“Yes, it is. Let us be silent for a few minutes, then.”

And so in silence they walked onward, beneath a sky that deepened from a pale blue into a vivid cerulean as the sun slid a little lower. He felt the most absurd impulse to take her hand—his fingertips twitched with the anticipation of what her fingers would feel like, clasped in his—the warmth of her skin, the softness of her knuckles—and he made his hand into a fist, and then put it into his coat pocket, lest it slip the rein and seize hers without permission.

A smile came and went on her lips. She ducked her head to hide it from him, which made him all the more curious to know what had inspired it. Infatuation, of course, could spring up at any time: he had fallen in love with women he’d glimpsed out the windows of trains, or across ballrooms, or on the quay as his ship docked. And he’d fallen out of love just as quickly, as these women had walked onward—or, worse yet, as he grew to know them. Beauty was a toxin to the wits, infatuation its ally—but by God, the drug was heady when it hit. It blurred other eyes, other smiles, other faces, until only hers, in this moment, seemed distinct to him.

Ah, but his brain was
not
rotted. Surely it was statistically improbable that anywhere on this earth another woman existed whose smile curved with such breathtaking gentleness. He would gladly accept the inevitable disappointment for a chance to feel that mouth on his own.

He took a breath full of sun-warmed earth and fragrant hay and honeysuckle and exhaled on a disbelieving
laugh. No women until Alastair wed again? He was
doomed
.

She glanced over but did not ask the cause of his humor. “Here,” she said, and turned through an opening in the hedges onto an unpaved path. The trail led catercorner across the field into a wood where sunlight filtered through the branches and cast dappled spangles over a carpet of moss and fragrant, fallen leaves. Down a gentle slope they wended, to what turned out to be the bank of a well-hidden lake.

Lifting aside the fronds of a willow, Mrs. Chudderley beckoned him to follow her to the very edge of the water. From this vantage, the entire wood-shrouded lake revealed itself, glassy beneath the cloudless sky.

“May Lake,” she said. “So called because it is never more beautiful than in May, when the trees are blossoming. But even in June, it suffices.”

A breeze struck up, riffling the stands of willow, moving their fronds like fingers through the water. “Ah,” he said softly. Yes, he understood why she thought this place special.

“Ah,” Mrs. Chudderley echoed just as softly, and her glance toward him was radiant with understanding . . . and something more. He had studied women too long to misread that look.

He could not resist it. Why should he? A brief moment of indulgence . . . for both their sakes.

He reached out to cup her elbow. Best to move slowly, to communicate that she could refuse him. The choice was hers.

Her luminous eyes remained fixed on his. Her lips parted as he trailed his hand from the point of her elbow to her wrist.
God.
Her bare skin, that small, vulnerable
patch exposed between cuff and glove, was indescribably soft. His thumb rubbed her pulse once, twice. A small noise came from her, the loosening of her breath, a sound as meaningful as the shushing of silk as a dress fell to the floor. This was how it began: how a woman came undone.

He drew her against him. The willow fronds whispered and snapped over the water. A little flirtation, that was all. Two fellow cynics, taking their summer amusement where they found it.

He lowered his mouth to hers, breathed against her lips. No hurry. They stood together, mouth against mouth, as his hand trailed up her arm, slipped around her small, fine-boned shoulder to palm her back. Inch by inch, his fingertips discovered the delicate ridge of her spine. The rhythm of her breath against his mouth grew more distinct. Her body was awakening to his, and the message made his own body tighten. He traced her spine downward, then upward again, reaching the warmth of her bare nape, the heavy weight of her chignon, the cool softness of her hair against his knuckles.

Her eyes were like light through the shallow waters of a lagoon. Green as the home of mermaids, wide, fastened to his.

He cupped her face, his thumb stroking her satin-smooth cheek. The space between their bodies—a finger’s width, no more—told him how they would fit together.
Perfectly.

Closing his eyes, he molded his lips to hers. A single lick along the seam of her lips won his entry. Her mouth parted. She tasted cool and clean, like water from a fresh alpine brook.

His hand found the small of her back again, that
graceful curve above her arse. A small stretch of perfection, worthy of worship in any language. He tasted her more deeply, his tongue meeting hers, and she swayed into him and began to kiss him back. Oh, she was hot and clever with her mouth. No moralist would kiss like this. His hand tightened; he felt the rigid boning of her corset, and beneath it, a dizzying softness. If she wore any petticoats, they were thinner than a breath of air.

More than a brief kiss, then. More voluptuous. More open-mouthed. Everything about her was edible. He wanted to taste her sweat.
Life, right here.
Life was short. Its sweetness, he would not deny. Was this not a legitimate philosophy? Seize pleasure where he found it. Leave the more complex considerations to others.

He caught her lower lip in his teeth and suckled it, hungry for the salt of her skin. Some low noise she made inspired him to chart the line of her jaw. Then the slope of her throat. God, she was
perfect
.

The thought broke his restraint. The kiss grew savage; her hands closed on his waist and tightened, her fingertips digging, and he answered the silent demand, ravishing her lips, her mouth, tasting her cheeks. His skin against hers would cure this hunger. He stepped into her, and she stepped into him; too much clothing, God, the way she smelled, he would eat her in bites, he would start here at her throat—