Louise Allen - Regency Surrender - Passion And Rebellion

He started to chuckle.

‘It isn’t funny.’

‘But it is, though. Far funnier than almost burning the house down around my ears. And you, madam...’ he gave her a squeeze ‘...couldn’t stop laughing about that.’

He kissed her brow in a comforting sort of way. And then her mouth, as his fingers sought the ties of her bodice.

‘Surely you cannot still be thinking about...about...’ Oh, but he most definitely was. And the minute he slipped his hand inside her gown, she was thinking about it again, too. Not just thinking about it either, but wanting it.

‘Since we’ve been married,’ he groaned, pushing aside an inconvenient swathe of material so that he could get at bare skin, ‘it seems to be damn near all I can think about.’

‘B-but we can’t.’

‘I don’t see why not. Mr Brownlow already knows what we’ve come up here for.’

‘Oh, surely not!’

‘Of course he does. He almost caught us at it in the drawing room, don’t forget.’

‘As if I ever could,’ she cried in mortification.

‘Mary,’ he said more gently, stroking the hair from her forehead. ‘You don’t really want me to stop, do you? Not...now?’

He ran his hand up the outside of her leg, pushing her skirt out of the way. A thrill shot through her, making her heart beat faster, her insides melt and her hips squirm.

‘It would be a positive crime to disappoint Mr Brownlow.’

‘Oh, don’t speak to me of him,’ she whimpered, torn between giving way to the delicious sensations he was rousing and the notion that she oughtn’t, she really oughtn’t, behave like this any more, not now they had indoor servants.

‘Not another word,’ he agreed affably. ‘In fact, I’m sure I can put my mouth to much better use.’

He did. He set about making love to her with such skill that before long her world shrank to the size of one bed, and the only two people left were the two people on it. What had started out downstairs as playful rose swiftly again to a crescendo of desperate need. The urge to scream when her release came was so overwhelming she didn’t know how to deal with it. In the end, she pressed her mouth into his shoulder to muffle the cry.

Afterwards, they lay together panting and just looking into each other’s eyes in a kind of mirrored awe. She was shocked at herself for responding to him with such ardour, in spite of her awareness that the servants must know what they were doing.

And he must be wondering what kind of a woman he’d married. One minute she’d been saying she felt self-conscious. That she really couldn’t...do that. The next she’d been tearing at his clothes in a kind of frenzy, wrapping her arms and legs round him, and coming to such a cataclysmic release she’d...she’d bitten him. She could see the teeth marks on his shoulder!

‘Oh, what have I done?’ She raised trembling fingers to his shoulder. Then pressed penitent lips to the reddening crescent.

* * *

She’d made him feel like a god, that’s what she’d done. He’d never been with a woman who responded to him the way she did.

‘It’s nothing.’ He shrugged with feigned nonchalance, whilst desperately trying to stifle the unfamiliar, and slightly disturbing, emotions welling up inside him.

‘It isn’t nothing. I’ve left a bruise....’

‘A mark of passion. Such things happen between lovers all the time.’

He winced at the look on her face. He’d been trying to make light of a moment he was damn sure was going to live in his memory for a lifetime. Instead he’d made her think of her wondrous passion as something...tawdry.

Sitting up, he turned his back on her and thrust his fingers through his hair in annoyance. He should have just admitted he liked it. He could have done so in a teasing kind of way, so that she wouldn’t guess how deeply she’d moved him, couldn’t he? And then she would have smiled and...

God, but it was damn complicated, being married. The good moments got all snagged up with darker feelings until he couldn’t unravel the tangle.

‘Look, Mary...’ He sighed with exasperation. ‘If ever you do anything I don’t like, I will be sure to tell you. No need to get worked up over such a little thing.’

‘I...I’m sorry.’

The tremor in her voice made him turn to look at her sharply. Her little face was all woebegone.

Damn. Why wasn’t he more adept with words? His explanation of how his mind worked had come out sounding more like a reprimand. And he’d hurt her. Which was the very last thing he ever wanted to do.

‘Look, I warned you before we got married that I’m a blunt man.’ In lieu of smooth words, he reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘So this is the truth. I like being married to you.’ Far more than he’d thought possible.

‘Oh. Well, I like being married to you, too,’ she said shyly, returning the pressure of his hand.

He lifted her hand and kissed it.

‘There. That’s all right and tight, then.’ He got up and reached for his clothes. ‘Think I’ll go for a ride.’ Clear his mind. And let her recover.

Because if he stayed he was bound to end up saying something that would make this awkwardness between them ten times worse.

* * *

All of a sudden, it seemed to Mary, the place was teeming with servants. When she’d eventually plucked up courage to go downstairs and face Mrs Brownlow, the woman had told her exactly how many she would need to run a house of this size efficiently, then brought them all in. She didn’t even go through the motions of letting Mary interview them. She just hired the people she always hired on whenever Mayfield had tenants.

Not that she could fault any of them. Each of them knew exactly what they were supposed to be doing—and each other, too.

She was the only one who seemed to feel like a stranger here. Who wasn’t totally comfortable with their role. She was used to doing housework, not ordering others to do it, that was half the trouble.

So, as the spring cleaning commenced, even though the new year had not yet come round, Mary took to walking about the rooms with a rag in her hand, and a scarf tied over her head, desperate to find some dirt, or a cobweb, Mrs Brownlow’s team might have overlooked.

While her husband rode out early to avoid, she suspected, all the bustle, even though he muttered vague excuses about tenants. And only making love to her at night, behind the closed doors of their bedroom.

‘There’s a carriage coming up the drive, my lady.’

Mary looked up from the skirting board behind the sofa—where she’d found a satisfyingly thick layer of dust—to see that Mrs Brownlow herself had come with the news, instead of sending her husband.

‘You’ve got visitors. So I’ll take that,’ she said, snatching the duster from Mary’s hand. ‘You shouldn’t be doing it, anyway,’ she grumbled.

Though what was she supposed to do all day, now that her husband didn’t seem inclined to chase her round the furniture any longer? Sit on a sofa and twiddle her thumbs?

‘I’ll have Mr Brownlow...’ who’d taken on the mantle of butler ‘...show them to the drawing room while you go and change into something more suitable.’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Mary, fumbling the strings of her apron undone and making for the door.

Change? Into what? She supposed she would look slightly better in a clean gown, rather than one she’d been crawling around on the floor in, but not much. Neither of the other gowns she owned were in all that much better condition, after serving as bedding, then withstanding her time as cook and housemaid.

There was her wedding gown, of course. Only was it suitable for receiving callers?

What did the wife of a viscount wear for receiving callers, anyway?