When he moved away a little, it was only so that his right hand could trace its way down her body, across the soft swell of her belly. She had stretch marks there, silvery and faded now since they were eleven years old, but if he saw them and they bothered him, he did not show it. Whatever he thought about them, and his thoughts must be as complicated as hers were, he did not share it with her, and she was glad.
His erection was no longer pressing at her core; because he had shifted, it lay heavy on her thigh, and his exploring fingers replaced it. He’d stopped talking some while since, his mouth being fully occupied, and she was grateful once more that he did not raise his head and think to comment mockingly on how wet she was, and what it signified. In fact, she was grateful that he did not raise his head at all. There was nothing that he was doing that she wished him to stop. Her hands had moved to trace the corded muscles of his shoulders and upper arms; she was greedy to touch more of him, but couldn’t reach. She wanted to bite him, to leave a mark. Later, she would.
He wasn’t tentative this time either. Far from it. His thumb stroked her pearl of Venus for a while, and then his fingers slid confidently inside her. She clenched on him, and arched her back, digging her nails into the hard muscle of his upper arms, pushing her breasts up to fill his mouth and fingers in a wordless plea she’d have been shot before she uttered aloud.
Now he did lift his head up, revealing his face, wet and dazed and curiously defenceless, and what he saw in hers made him shift again, to enter her at last, but then in one smooth movement he was rolling them both over, so that she straddled him. He had the sense not to speak to her now and ruin it. They were both breathing hard, and he reached down to cup her buttocks and squeeze her tightly. He filled her, stretched her in a way that was both familiar and new, and she put her hands on his chest and began to move. After a little while, she closed her eyes and gave herself up to the pure sensation of it, riding him, shamelessly using him to give her pleasure as he thrust up to meet her. She tried, but did not entirely succeed, to forget who he was – her husband, now – and why they were together. It had been so long.
She did not cry aloud when she came, though she badly wanted to, but she threw back her head and rode it out on him, grinding against his hardness. When he saw her cupping her breast and pinching her nipple, he urged her forward with gentle pressure of his hands so that he could get his mouth on her again to give her what she needed, what it seemed he needed too, and with a great groan of release, he spent himself deep inside her, his face smothered in her abundant flesh.
After a while, she said, ‘Roll me over again,’ and when he did not respond immediately, she repeated it, tugging sharply on his hair. He obeyed then, still inside her, and only pulled away from her when she was on her back. He lay beside her, propped on one elbow, and watched as she slipped a pillow under her pelvis, raising her knees to her chest.
Nobody had ever called him a fool. ‘My precious seed,’ he said in light, ironic tones that held a wealth of tangled meaning.
‘Precisely. I have been talking to wise women of my acquaintance, my sister chiefly, and this is what she recommends, undignified though it undoubtedly is.’ She could have given a longer explanation, curious details of feminine wisdom that she thought might have interested him, but she was trying hard not to let her tone towards him soften, drift towards intimacy. Whatever they had just done, they had not made love.
‘I do not care a great deal for dignity, and if you are worried your posture appears odd to me, banish that concern from your mind. It is damnably erotic.Youare.’
‘Ridiculous,’ she said shortly. If she had cared at all what he thought of her, she wouldn’t have let him see her like this. But it was too important to neglect for the sake of mere appearances.
‘Not so. You are a spectacularly beautiful woman, and you have just taken your pleasure from me, and I from you. And it was no common, fleeting pleasure, but exquisite release. Whatever else we both know, that remains true. It is very easy to forget our bargain. I have forgot it. Your lovely breasts are still flushed pink where I kissed and licked them. We are naked here together. You smell of me, and I of you. If I sucked my fingers, I would taste you. And in a little while, we will do it all again. And again and again, as often as we wish. How could that not be erotic? Do not lie to me and say you don’t feel it. You’re not a liar, Viola.’
Not taking his eyes from her, he raised the fingers that had been deep inside her to his mouth and slowly, slowly began sucking on them. Despite herself, she felt a fresh thrill of arousal and of need surge through her. Good God, she had feared this. She needed to keep up her barriers, fragile as they were, because however much she might tell herself that this was just a transaction between them, a cold bargain, the unbridled passion they ignited in each other could not be denied. There was nothing cold about that. And passion was so dangerous. She’d almost let it ruin her once before.
7
Emily Muncaster had been a wedding guest along with her new husband, naturally, but Viola had had little opportunity to speak with her amongst the clamour of the Constantine family. They’d snatched a moment together on the morning of the ceremony, no more than that, and Viola had been glad to see her best friend looking well and happy, though her pretty face was presently clouded with anxiety. ‘Are you quite sure you want to go through with this madness?’ Emily had hissed urgently when none of Viola’s sisters was close enough to hear.
‘I am. I am committed. And there is no need to be so concerned for me.’
‘I am more concerned even than I was before, when I read that appalling letter. Perhaps you are not aware that sometimes, you look at Lord Ventris as if you hate him, Viola!’
‘Only sometimes?’ she said lightly.
‘And the rest of the time…’ The former governess’s cheeks were flaming. She was a married woman herself now; perhaps she understood better, even if she didn’t want to say so. ‘And as for him, I can’t tell what he’s thinking at all, apart from the fact that he never takes his eyes off you for a second.’
Viola embraced her friend. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said inadequately in her ear. And then, ‘I’ll write to you, I promise, when we leave here. We must not lose touch, ever. I will want to hear all your news, whether important or trivial.’
Emily’s new home was close enough that she’d not been obliged to stay overnight, but Winterflood House was still full of Constantines in the days after the wedding – Viola’s mother, all five of her sisters, Sabrina’s and Allegra’s husbands, and those of their children who were not away at school. The older ones, including Ned and Robin, hadn’t been fetched here; it wasn’t the custom, and Viola had judged that it would be unsettling and awkward for her sons, and for herself. They had never known her attention to be divided, and for a short while at least, it must be.
Their younger cousins would be running riot in the grounds even now, terrifying every animal for miles and making a nuisance of themselves in the stables and anywhere else they happened to be. The adults would be celebrating her marriage and their family reunion in the traditionally noisy, argumentative Constantine manner. There would be fallings-out and reconciliations. Drama. Old scores would be settled and new ones brooded over. Sabrina was calm and so was Laurence; the rest of them were anything but, and enjoyed nothing more than a good argument.
It was not an atmosphere conducive to a honeymoon of any kind, and so Viola had left her mother to act as hostess to the mayhem and decamped with her new husband and a few servants to the Dower House in the grounds. She’d always thought it would be her home on the distant day that Ned married, and perhaps it still would be – the future was so uncertain. But it was quiet and private, which was what they needed.
Despite her fine words to her mother that memories of Edward would be everywhere and so it didn’t matter in the least, it had seemed sensible to start their married life together in a place that held no recollections of the late Duke at all, for her or for Ventris, who was after all his cousin. She had to rack her brains to remember her first husband ever setting foot in the Dower House. Maybe once, when he had first taken her around the estate, more than twelve years ago? She’d been so intimidated by all the grandeur he showed her that she couldn’t remember any of those first days very clearly, and didn’t want to. But this house was small and perfect, a Queen Anne jewel set in a lovely formal garden, and it had always been kept well maintained, as all of Winterflood was. She had a great fondness for it – it was on a human scale, unlike the big house.
It was very strange to wake with a man in her bed. Edward had always come to her, stayed a while to do what he had to, and then left, murmuring that he was sure she would sleep better undisturbed. When she had been in a delicate condition and after the boys were born, he had not visited her at all, so her bed had been cold for many years longer than she had been a widow.
As a young girl just married, though, she’d lain alone in her rumpled sheets after his departure and wondered if it was merely awkwardness that drove him away, or if he so desperately missed the wife he’d loved that he simply could not bear to see her take Elizabeth’s place. But then, she had not known, because she’d never dared to ask, if her opulent, silk-hung bedchamber in the main house had once been Elizabeth’s, and before that had been Julia’s. One woman divorced and vanished, presumably abroad; the other dead and greatly missed. Edward had married Elizabeth around the time of her own birth; either of those women would have been easily old enough to be her own mother. People on the estate occasionally talked about Duchess Elizabeth, with respect and affection, and God knows Edward had spoken of her constantly, but no one ever dared to mention disgraced Julia.
Julia – there were no portraits of her anywhere, and her name had been so thoroughly crossed out in the family Bible, presumably by Edward, that it could no longer be read. Viola didn’t even know if she was alive or dead, thirty years after she’d run from Winterflood and Edward with her lover. It gave her a sense of women’s lives as impermanent and fleeting, leaving little trace, of no significance at all if they didn’t produce heirs, if they otherwise failed to behave as they should, and she didn’t like it. Her own fate could so easily have been similar; Winterflood could have been Tarquin Armstrong’s, and she’d have been forgotten, or remembered only as another woman who had proved sadly unsatisfactory when it mattered most.
But it did no good to think like that. She’d not wanted to be alone any longer, and she was not. Here was Ventris in her bed, and he was certainly real enough. He took up a deal of space – he sprawled, utterly relaxed, at her side. He was lying face down, his dark head buried in a pillow, and the sheet and coverlets had slipped down to expose his strong arms, the broad expanse of his back, and a tantalising glimpse of his taut buttocks. She might have helped a little. Pulled the fabric down an inch or two, and then more. Made a frame for the picture. When he wasn’t awake and annoying her, when she wasn’t confused and uncertain and anticipating hurt – or even when she was – he was undeniably a sight worth looking at.
He was also unnaturally aware of his surroundings, despite the fact that she had thought he was sleeping soundly. He said lazily now, his voice muffled but perfectly audible, ‘I’m a little cold, madam, but if you’re enjoying the view, I don’t want to deprive you of it.’
She sighed loudly. ‘I like you so much better when you’re not talking. But it never lasts.’
He made another of those uncannily swift movements and rolled over onto his back. But he didn’t pull up the sheets, and neither did she. This view now was different, but just as good. Better, even.
