In his question, the disquiet pressing close shifted further away. They were not hurting anyone. They were just living.
‘Stay with me till the morning, Willa. Don’t go home.’
‘I think you should know that Anna asked me today at Gunter’s whether we were lovers. She said she’d noticed a spark between us and if she could see it she said that others would too. She urged care.’
‘We are older. We have both been married. We are immune from all the silly rules Society sets out so arbitrarily.’
‘You may be, my Lord Elmsworth,’ she drawled, ‘but I am not, for a double standard applies only to the upper echelons. My background is more lowly and I could easily be placed beyond the social pale with my behaviour should we be discovered.’
He rolled her over and lay on top, looking down at her with a wicked smile on his face. ‘I will protect you, I promise.’
‘How?’ Two could play at this game.
‘By whisking you away to the very ends of the land and having my way with you. Like this.’ His mouth covered one nipple and he played with the hardening bud against his tongue. ‘And like this.’ Further down he went, the cold trail of his mouth making her shiver with delight. ‘And then like this.’ He opened herlegs and found her centre, his forefinger on the place where all feelings came from as she squirmed, wanting more. Which he gave her, with his fingers at first and then with his mouth and then with the hardness of his sex filling her, riding her, on and on as the wispy gauze curtains blew in the breeze and the stars inside her exploded into light and life and loveliness, taking away all the darkness.
He was hers and she was his and there was no space between them. No words either to question the wisdom of what they were doing.
In the morning she saw him by the window looking out at the dawn. He always wore his shirt, she thought next, and wondered why he did not disrobe and lie naked as she did. The cotton was wrinkled from their night together and the buttons at the front were undone.
She remembered undoing them one by one as he had watched but when she had tried to slip the fabric further down from his shoulders he had stopped her with a kiss and then with more.
‘Good morning.’
He turned to look at her, his hair tousled and the dark shadow of a twelve-hour beard on his face. He looked as if she had caught him out and was slightly surprised, and when she glanced down his manhood was fully aroused and waiting for her.
She smiled and he came to her then, fitting himself around her before driving in, without preamble, without softness, pushing further and further, and keeping her there. Still. Waiting. The drum of blood. A growing answer deep within her and his returning one. With only a little movement he brought her to a place she could barely contemplate, a spiralling hot want that struck her, unbidden, twisting her insides, making her shout out his name, her nails against his back under the shirt clamping him still.
On and on until there was nothing left of sense or place but only feeling, only this. Only them.
And then she slept.
When she woke he was fully dressed and sitting on a chair by the bed, watching her. In his hands he held a small framed drawing which he passed to her.
The woman in it was the most beautiful female Willa had ever seen, with her blue eyes, blonde hair, pointed chin and her head at a slight angle as if the world amused her but she did not know why. Willa knew who she was immediately because she had briefly glimpsed her once and heard all the many and varied descriptions of the incomparable Miss Gretel Carmichael.
‘I wanted you to see what my wife looked like.’
She sat up, pulling the sheets around her. The Golden Girl. The debutante who had set the Ton alight with her beauty.
‘When was this done?’
‘Two years after we married. It was her Christmas present to me.’
‘No wonder you miss her. All that beauty and promise…’
‘You asked me once if I had tried to kill my brother and I said I had meant to miss. The reason for it all was Gretel.’ He took in a breath. ‘She was sick, much more sick than any of us realised, and she was desperate to conceive a child. I told you we had tried but had had no luck, and perhaps she thought it was my fault, which it may well have been. But she went to see my brother and asked him to give her the baby that I could not, the heir to Elmsworth. I swear that I knew none of this until she confessed what she had done a month or so before her death.’
Willa saw in Phillip the sadness that was so much of who he was, the aching chasm of guilt that showed in his eyes and on his face as he told the story.
‘Oliver refused, of course, and Gretel retaliated by telling me that he had then tried to take advantage of her. There was abruise on her arm and her hand was cut, so I had no reason to believe that he had not, such was her power over most men. I went to see my brother to give him a stern warning never to come near us again and to protect the name of our forebears, but as I pointed the pistol away my hand started shaking and it went off…’ He frowned. ‘My mother’s hands shook the same way mine do and perhaps I have inherited the condition, though of late with you here I have not noticed it so much.’
Willa got out of bed and stood beside him. ‘You did not kill him, Phillip. Oliver is alive.’
‘By luck only. And after that Gretel deteriorated markedly, for I could see the difference in her day by day.’
‘She was sick. That was not your fault, either.’
‘I think I harm people, Wilhelmina. Everyone who comes close to me gets hurt and I want you to be safe. I should never have had that gun in my hand and I still cannot be sure why I did. I have not touched a firearm since.’
