Etta led him inside and up the back stairs to her bedroom door, tugging him in by the hand. He closed the door behind him and looked down at her, his eyes dark with uncertainty, but also with longing.
God, how desperate was she? Very, very desperate, it seemed. ‘Warm me up. Then you can go home to your bed.’
At the word ‘bed’ Max seemed to lose all restraint. He swept her up into his arms, kicking off his boots, and sat her on the edge of her mattress, pulling her into a deep kiss that seemed to make every hair on the surface of her skin stand on end. Then every thought left her body, an overwhelming need to remove every piece of fabric taking over.
She pulled open his shirt, running her fingers over his hard chest.
‘Muscles! So many muscles. What have you been doing?’
‘Boxing,’ he mumbled into her hair, before groaning as she slipped her hands into his breeches. She realised she was moaning too, delighted with what she found. He pressed against her for one brief, delicious moment.
Then he was moving lower, tugging at her chemise, his hands at her ankles, her knees, her thighs. Etta groaned withpleasure as she felt his fingers right where she needed them most.
‘Oh good god!’
Etta leapt back. ‘Oh no! I’m so sorry. Is it that I couldn’t shave? I had no idea where I could even get a razor.’
‘What? Shave what?’ Max blinked, then shook his head, as though coming back to himself. ‘Etta, I have defiled you!’
He started pulling his clothes back on, eyes wild and anxious.
‘My lack of control was abominable! Why, I have acted in the most ungentlemanly way …!’
‘Because I asked you to!’ Etta stumbled over the bed towards him, laying a calming hand on his shoulder as he yanked his boots back on. ‘Because I wanted you to. Didn’t you want to as well?’
‘Of course I wanted to!’ Max turned to her, boot in hand. ‘It is all I have wanted from the moment I pulled you out of that cellar. But I am a gentleman, Henrietta. A gentleman does not ravish a lady – not under any circumstances.’
Oh god, Etta thought. So there was a male version of the Ladies Do Not list. Of course.
‘Nobody has to know, Max. Nobody has seen us. It’s absolutely fine.’
But his mouth was set in a firm line as he pressed her back into her bed, tucking in her sheets.
‘No, Etta. This has gone far enough for tonight. We shall speak tomorrow.’
He gave her one last, lingering kiss, then tore himself away and rested his forehead on hers.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said again, almost to himself, and then left.
Etta sighed, then blew out her candles. Hopefully, by tomorrow, Max would have chilled the fuck out. But who knew? She didn’t have a contemporary copy of the Gentlemen Do Not list handy. She’d read plenty of Regency romances, but it looked like Georgette Heyer rules applied here: chaste kisses and gently pulled curtains over secret trysts and midnight romps. Unless she was missing something, there was an awful lot of historical inaccuracy going on in her favourite reading matter.
Chapter 32
2023
Hetty hovered over Jemima, who was hard at work at her pristine sewing machine surrounded by swathes of fabric. ‘Oh, I love you, Hetty, but do shove off. You’re standing in my light again.’
‘But are you truly certain she’ll like it?’
‘Of course she’ll like it. Here, put these pins away. They’re rattling away on the table like buggery and it’s doing my head in.’
Hetty held the tin of pins emblazoned with a cartoon of an orange-haired boy and white dog – Jemima called it her ‘Tintin Pin Tin’ – and bit her bottom lip anxiously. ‘They didn’t really have colours like this in 1817, you know.’
Jemima sighed, stopping the machine to turn a corner. ‘So you’ve said, dearie. But then again they didn’t have sewing machines either, did they?’
Hetty was chewing her cheek now. ‘No, and they truly are most ingenious. Aunt Jemima, I can’t tell you how thankful I am. Really, it’s so lovely of you.’
Jemima stood up and shook out the bright orange andyellow fabric. The shot silk shone brightly, like the sun. Like Stella, Hetty had thought when she bought it. Her own dress was two shades of blue, like moonlight across a winter lake.
