Nora closed her door quietly and stood in her room, the stub of candle no more now than a wick guttering into a pool of wax. She watched the flame struggle to survive and finally die, drowned in its own leavings.
Then her room was dark, with nothing but the moonlight glowing through the closed draperies, occasionally flashing bright when the breeze through the open windows made the fabric swell and recede.
Her body felt like the wind and the candle both—swelling and receding, dying in its own heat. The sensations that pulsed through her, speeding her blood, heating her joints, hazing her mind, were both entirely new and wholly recognizable. She could still feel the hard mound of William’s own need pressing into her body, making her own flower in answer. She knew what it was that he’d felt, that she still felt, though never before had she experienced it, not to this degree.
She was feverish and restless—and, oddly, sore, a liberating ache akin to how her torso felt, her waist and ribs and chest, when an especially tight corset was finally unlaced. Like that part of her body had been denied blood until it had forgotten the need for it, and when the blood pushed through again, it had to forge its path anew.
The ache she felt now wasn’t in her torso. It sat heavily between her legs, where she throbbed in time to her heart. Her breasts, too—the tips felt especially round and sensitive. Only one thing would ease these aches, and she knew, intuitively, instinctually, what. The thing that Christopher sought so often. The thing that William, too, had apparently hunted as if he’d needed the catch to live.
She wanted him. His body, in hers. On hers. All around hers. Those soft, dark hairs that covered his chest—she wanted to feel them brushing over her chest. She wanted the weight of him, the heat, all of him. All the things she’d read but hadn’t fully understood, all the sideways remarks she’d heard her brother mutter or overheard him say aloud with friends—on this day, those random bits had fallen into place, and she’d understood. Earlier in the day, she hadn’t realised that one could kiss with an open mouth, but now she’d experienced that wonder and what it had done to her body, now she understood the alchemy of body and mind and heart.
And she knew exactly what she wanted.
Yet here she was, alone in her room, because, yet again, she couldn’t have it. Yet another freedom granted to men while women sat and waited. The worst part of being sent from William’s room, the most vexing and humiliating? That he’d been right. It was the way things were. The consequences of claiming that freedom for herself would be ruinous. Not fair at all, but true. This was a world in which a woman could claim nothing for herself.
She set the dead candleholder on the table under the nearest window and yanked the draperies open. A gust of autumn air—quite chilly without the filter of the heavy drapes—burst in and raised bumps all over her skin. The moon bathed her in pale blue, flickering now as clouds rushed in. Rain was coming; if not tonight, then tomorrow.
With her thoughts churning and her body surging under her skin, Nora pushed her peignoir from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor in a puff at her feet. She drew her nightgown over her head, dropping it to the floor as well, and stood naked before the window. The wind lifted her hair so that the loose strands tickled her back with coy kisses. Her skin went taut in the chill. Her nipples contracted into hard, rough points, the ache in them increasing nearly to pain. Following her body’s animal instinct to see its needs met, she set her hands on her breasts and nearly cried out at the blades of pained pleasure her own touch brought. Between her legs, that demanding throb, that naïve knowing, grew in urgency. She stepped one foot out, making her stance wide, and sighed as the cool night breeze moved between her legs and brushed against the hottest part of her.
Nora had had similar feelings before—calmer, but similar. She’d had them often since she’d met William. But other than the practical, expedient, and generally unpleasant business of her monthly time, she’d touched herself little between her legs, and had touched her breasts not much more often. A shy skim of her arm across her breast, or a moment before sleep letting her fingers dance in the curls between her thighs, but little more—because she hadn’t understood. Yet another thing she’d needed a man to do: awaken this understanding of her own body. Incite such ardor in her for him that she couldn’t help but know.
But here she was, alone.
Leaving one hand to cup a tender breast, Nora dropped the other, easing her fingers down her body, over her belly, into those curls, and farther, between her thighs. She sighed at the subtle pleasure and explored the velvety-soft flesh, like a small pillow. No—like two lips, soft lips. Pushing one finger between them, she found her entrance. A familiar shyness came over her as she entered unknown territory, but she refused to let it dissuade her. Instead, she forged on, pushing her finger inside her body, seeking. This was where William would enter her. Someday, when they were married. If they were married. If her father could be made to agree to the match.
Now that she was there, she felt daring, and drew her finger out and back in. And again. The pleasure increased, but not enough. Not nearly enough. Nora thought she might burst from the tension welling up insider her, and this … it could not possibly give her relief.
Was this all there was to making love? This shimmer of feeling? Pleasant, but no more than that. And yet men sought it out like the greatest treasure. Was it better for them? Was it yet another thing bestowed on men but refused entirely to women? This time by God himself?
Still afire with sensual need and now bitterly disappointed, Nora grabbed her nightgown from the floor, shoved it back on, and buried herself unhappily under the covers.
The next fortnight passed uneventfully. October became November, and autumn aged and hardened to its usual chilly drear. The men in the house busied themselves with various kinds of work: her father performed his duties as lord and peer, and Christopher served as William’s liaison with important men in and around Kent. In the evenings, they shared dinner and socialised in the drawing room after, either alone as a family or while entertaining a few guests. No one of particular note, only friends and neighbours among the other noble families of Kent.
On two occasions during those weeks, Nora’s father invited young men to dine with them, making decidedly unsubtle attempts to offer her for their connubial consideration. Nora did her best to catch their interest and inwardly delighted to see William seethe.
It was practically the only enjoyment she had. Daily rain kept her cooped up inside, even when the men were away, and her father hadn’t gone on his weekly excursion since Christopher and William had arrived. What was worse: William had put distance between them since she’d come to his room on his first night at Tarrindale Hall. He was kind and chivalrous, and he spoke and bantered with her as ever, but when she tried to catch him in a quiet moment alone, without spying eyes and ears around them, he ducked away. He wouldn’t even hold his gaze on her for very long. If it weren’t for the fire that still raged during those brief moments when his eyes did meet hers and linger, Nora might have thought his declaration of love had been false.
But the fire did burn, and he did seethe visibly when she paid heed to other men, and Nora was assured that his feelings for her were true. Not that it seemed much to matter. And not that she was particularly successful in drawing the notice of other men—or they in drawing hers. They were polite, and she attempted to be the same. William sat and glowered, but behaved with outward civility.
Even Christopher was subdued. It was all very tedious.
Dull disappointment pervaded Nora’s spirit. The weather, the company, her own body, even love itself was nothing like she’d hoped. She wandered through the heavy, damp air of her home, restless and depressed.
One morning, as the middle of November neared, Nora was first to the breakfast table. Her father had left for London the day before, on parliamentary business, and wasn’t expected back for two more days. Normally, she’d consider this a boon of freedom, but there wasn’t much freedom to be had these days, even when the door to her cage was left open.
She fixed a plate without paying much attention to the fare, and sat. Alone in the room, she set her elbow on the table and propped her head on her hand. As she pushed her fork through her eggs, not bothering to take a bite, her brother and William came into the room together. They were dressed for business already, and she sighed. Another day in the house alone.
It wasn’t raining, but the low, grey sky threatened it, and the ground had been saturated for days, anyway. She couldn’t take Middy out in the sucking mud and risk injuring him.
The men made up their plates and sat at the table. William beside her, which was unusual. Normally, he sat beside Christopher—which she preferred, because she could watch him without being noticed for it, and occasionally catch his eye and see that reassuring burn. Nora turned to him, expecting his eyes to move away. They didn’t. He held his gaze and offered her a warm smile.
“What?”
“We’re going to Dover for the day. I’m meeting with an interested party, and Chris is going to make the introductions.”
Dover was twenty-five miles away over country roads, which took about two hours in Christopher’s Daimler, in fair weather. In the current condition of the roads, and using the older country car, they’d have to move more slowly. Hours’ travel each way, and whatever time they spent in Dover. She really was going to be alone all the day. Looking over her shoulder at the grey gloom outside, Nora sighed again.
“Come with us, Nono,” Christopher said.
Nora whipped her head around and gaped at her brother’s grin. “What?”
William’s hand settled on her thigh. “Come with us. Spend the day away from here with us. No servants, no father, just us. We’ll have an adventure.”
“Well, it’s only Dover,” Christopher chuckled. “But Will’s talent for adventure is renowned. He can even get up to mischief standing before a milliner’s, so perhaps we’ll find excitement in Dover, too.”
Nora stared at William’s hand. Under her gaze, he squeezed her thigh. “Come with us, darling.”
Stunned by his use of the endearment and his intimate contact here in the dining room, after weeks of courtly distance, Nora looked across the table at her brother, who seemed unsurprised.
“Oh, I know all about your illicit love affair. Consider me Will’s champion. And yours. As long as I have anything to say about it, you’ll not marry some doughy count or daft baron. If you want this uncouth colonial, then I shall do all I can to ensure that you have him.”
“Truly?”
Christopher spanned the table and held out his hand. She set hers inside it and felt his warm love as his fingers clasped hers. “As I told Will, you cannot make a show of it before Father until he’s been brought round, or all will be lost before it’s begun. But yes, Nora. Truly. I want you to be happy, and you won’t be if you stay trapped in this world.”
The heavy burden of Nora’s malaise didn’t miraculously evanesce with her brother’s words. Its mass clouded her mind and her heart, and she couldn’t quite believe it was all so simple. Moreover, she chafed at the notion that men still managed her life. These men were on her side, but her happiness was up to them, not her. She wanted a chance to make her own choices.
William squeezed her thigh again. “Nora?”
Perhaps she simply wanted too much. It should be enough that William and Christopher offered her the chance for happiness, even if she couldn’t take it for herself.
She offered William a smile. “I’m glad. I’d like to join you in Dover today.”
Dover, a port town with an ancient history, sat at the narrowest span of the English Channel: the Strait of Dover. On clear, calm days, the land of France was just visible. From the French side, the chalky magnificence of the White Cliffs of Dover could be seen with greater ease.
Sitting on the narrowest distance between England and France, Dover represented England’s best access to the European continent. It also represented its greatest vulnerability to attack. Until and unless aeroplanes became common and useful, most Europeans who wished to visit Great Britain, and British citizens who wished to travel on the continent, passed through Dover. And many hostile incursions on British soil had made landfall here.
The world was at peace now, but the people of Dover squinted across the Strait, as if it were their solemn duty of birth to stand at the vanguard and protect the realm. In fact, throughout history, it had been their duty.
As an important port town, Dover was also a centre for industry, and it had the look of it—grimy and dingy at its heart. The countryside was lovely, and the coast majestic, but once the buildings rose up and hemmed in the streets, all colour and light faded into shadow.
The ride from Tarrindale was a joy—warm enough, and dry enough, for the top to stay down, and, though the roads were rutted and muddy, Christopher drove carefully and didn’t jar his passengers overmuch. By the time they arrived on the outskirts of town, the sun filtered valiantly through the clouds, offering a watery cheer to the air. Dressed in a russet wool walking suit and a matching wide-brimmed hat, with a motoring duster and veil over the ensemble, Nora sat behind the men, her eyes closed and her head tipped up to face the wind. In the front seat, the men spoke business. She kept her ear tuned to their chatter but didn’t participate. They seemed to forget she was with them, but she didn’t mind. She breathed as deeply as she could and enjoyed the fresh air and escape from the house.
In Dover, they toured the Port, and William approached stevedores and dockmen and peppered them with questions about their work and the traffic over the Channel. They went to the site of the aborted tunnel project, but after nearly thirty years, there wasn’t much of it left to see. Dover had taken it back.
After a light luncheon at a café near the harbour, the men dropped Nora in the shopping district, and she spent a listless two hours browsing hats and gloves and shoes she didn’t really want before they were back from their meeting with the ‘interested party’—Chester MacDougal, the owner of a shipping and transport company whose primary focus was import-export with the continent. They found her in a glove shop, where she was completing a purchase, a pair of dove-grey kidskin gloves with embroidered trim that matched the soutache braid on her outfit—the first thing that had roused any interest in her.
She didn’t need to ask how the meeting had gone. The deep furrow between William’s eyebrows was report enough. She reached for the hand that hung slack at his side and gave it a squeeze. His hand lay in hers as if he hadn’t noticed, and she let it go.
“Well!” Christopher cheered as they stepped out into the desultory afternoon light. “I say we salvage the day with a trip to our famous cliffs!”
“Did it go really so poorly?” Nora asked William.
His chest and shoulders rose, a sigh and a shrug at once. “MacDougal likes the idea. He ate up everything I gave him and wanted more. But he won’t work with me or Scot-Western, or any American company. He wants to buy the equipment from us and dig the tunnel himself.”
Christopher clapped his hand over William’s shoulder. “And that’s something, Will. That must be a massive sale. Your father will be thrilled. It’s the best meeting you’ve had in all of England.”
Another heavy, heaving sigh. Nora understood, if her brother didn’t. It wasn’t the business that had captured William’s interest, or the profit. It never had been. He loved the project—the idea, the plan, the potential. He loved the discovery and the progress, the promise of a future no one else had realised. And now, someone else meant to take his work and stake his claim. It hadn’t been his best meeting, it had been his worst.
She squeezed his hand again, and this time, he squeezed back and held on.
“They are impressive, I’ll give you that.”
“They stand for the stalwart English spirit,” Christopher explained. “We won’t be moved if we don’t wish to be.”
A bleak puff of sound that might have been a laugh left William’s lips.
The three stood in a row at a vista point atop the cliffs, where the coast dipped into a shallow cove and arced back out to the Channel again. The breeze had become a wind, and the sky had darkened to stormy grey. The cliffs glowed eerily bright against that gloom. The water, stirred by the gusts, roared as it chopped at their base. Christopher was right—the cliffs were a metaphor for the English spirit: rigid, suspicious, and impervious to change.
As they watched, a rock fall started across the cove—at first, just a few white pebbles tumbling down the sheer face, then a few more, and then, suddenly a narrow rush, like a stony waterfall, straight into the water, where the chalk was devoured in a foam roil. Not even the White Cliffs of Dover could withstand the workings of time. The earth crumbled, and the world moved on.
Matthew Arnold’s poem came to Nora’s mind, and she began to recite the last stanza: “Ah, love, let us be true / To one another! for the world, which seems / To lie before us like a land of dreams, / So various, so beautiful, so new, / Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain …”
At her side, William picked up the last lines and recited them with her: “And we are here as on a darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, / Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
They finished and simply stared at each other. In William’s eyes, Nora saw love for her, and need. She saw, too, that he had lost his hope—in his work, but also in them. His confidence in being able to win her father over was crumbling like chalk into the sea.
Before either of them could speak, lightning cracked through the sky, into the Channel, and thunder pounded hard and long above them, like war drums. The dark skies opened wide, and all the water in the heavens seemed to rush down at once. William grabbed Nora and pulled her under the paltry shelter of his coat, and the three ran pell-mell to the open car.
The downpour settled in to stay, precluding the party from returning to Tarrindale that night. Glad that their father was too far away in London to fret that they wouldn’t make it home, they took rooms at a coastal inn. It wasn’t the kind of establishment that normally catered to the noble class, and Christopher muttered about the low ceilings and hard chairs, but Nora liked it—it was clean and dry, when they were muddy and wet, and the innkeepers treated them like royalty, without knowing who they were.
After stoking up the fire to make them warm and dry in their bedraggled traveling clothes, and serving them a rich meal of roast beef, potatoes, and peas, with warm brown bread and excellent tea, the innkeeper’s wife showed them upstairs to what she assured them were “the best rooms in all of Dover, yes they are,” three rooms taking up the whole of the first floor.
She showed Nora into her room first, and it was nice—small and crowded with ungainly old furniture, but clean and cozy. The inn had electricity, and three glass lamps, humming quietly, made a sharp yellow light. The woman showed her each of the room’s humble amenities with a flourish, making a particular fuss over the private water closet. A room with a large bathtub was shared among all the rooms on the floor.
Nora thanked the woman and assured her that she had no other needs. Christopher kissed her cheek, and William gave her a quiet, gallant nod, and then she was closed in the room on her own.
She tossed her ruined hat on the seat of a chair, unbuttoned her rumpled coat and dropped it to the floor, and stood there, in her rain-stiffened clothes, surrounded by blood-red Victorian upholstery and heavy carved wood. Outside the windows, the storm crashed on.
It wasn’t late; if they’d been home, they would still have been in the drawing room, perhaps starting a game or listening to music on the Victrola. Was she meant to go to bed so early, or to sit alone up here with nothing to do while the men went down to the pub, as Christopher had suggested to William during dinner?
Well, absolutely not. Determined to demand that the men include her in their evening, she went to the mirror that stood near the windows and checked her appearance—and knew at once she’d be going nowhere. She couldn’t believe she’d sat in the inn’s dining room in such a state.
Her hair was a snarled nest, and her blouse looked as though it had been wadded up and stomped on before she’d worn it—or perhaps while she’d worn it. She worked the pins out of the tangle on her head and managed to get her hair down and somewhat arranged, and she could manage, perhaps, a braided chignon in the morning, but her clothes—without Kate, she hadn’t a clue how she’d make something presentable of this mess, and she had no other clothes to wear.
The next problem occurred to her: she didn’t know how to undress herself. Kate had fastened her into a corset that morning, and the laces tied at the middle of her back. The buttons in front were tiny and purely decorative. Kate had a way of tying a corset that ensured the laces would never undo when they oughtn’t. And her blouse buttoned at the back as well, more than a dozen tiny pearl buttons. Could she even reach them all? She tried—no, she could not.
She would have to sleep in her clothes. In her corset.
Distress gathered steam in Nora’s chest and made her heart chug. She couldn’t even undress herself. She was exactly as helpless as all the men around her seemed to think she was, dependent on others for every moment of her life.
No—that wasn’t true. She could manage her own clothes when she dressed as she wished. It was the cage of the corset, the proper ladies’ garment, that had her trapped. In breeches, she was free. She was dependent because Society demanded that she be.
Well, enough of that.
Still, there was the problem of the corset for this night. Sleep would be impossible in it. She supposed she’d have to go down and find the innkeeper’s wife and hope that ‘lady’s maid’ was one of the services available. If it was, she could ask for the same help in the morning.
Wait—no. A better idea occurred to her. A defiant idea. A willful idea. Wicked, even. Oh, yes. A very good idea. Possibly brilliant, depending on the outcome. Here they were in Dover, miles from home, miles from Society, where no one recognised her, or William. Here, they were anonymous. They were free.
Flush with the power of wanton rebellion, Nora grinned and opened the door.
There were two other rooms on this floor, plus the bathroom and a maid’s closet. The maid’s closet was easy to discern; the door was plainer than the others. The bath was situated in the middle of the corridor, and the door was open, so she had no trouble setting that one aside as well.
Two doors left. One of them was her brother’s room, the other, William’s.
There was no risk in any regard. If Christopher answered the door she tried, she’d be faced with her brother. No shame in that. Of course, he meant to go out into the rain and enjoy what delights Dover had to offer, and he might already have left. William might have gone with him, though his mood had been quiet and unsocial at tea, still churning with the disappointment of his day.
She picked a door and knocked.
When it opened, William stood there, his coat, tie, and waistcoat off, but this time, his shirt was still buttoned. Pity. One of the best memories of her whole life was the sight of his chest showing through the space between the plackets of his open shirt. Strong and contoured, covered lightly with curls of dark hair across his chest and down the centre of his belly in a narrow line that disappeared into his trousers.
The frown he’d been wearing all day deepened, and he took a step back. He seemed determined to be a gentleman, even twenty-five miles from home in a country inn where no one knew who they were. “Nora, no.”
“I need your assistance.” She grabbed his hand and pulled.
He stood firm and moved not at all. “Nora, I can’t—you test my strength. I need some distance, or I’ll do something we both regret.”
“And what would that be, Mr. Frazier?”
As always, he winced when she used his surname like that. At home, she’d begun to call him William even in her father’s hearing; he’d become a member of the family in the Earl of Tarrin’s eyes, and his given name was now appropriate. Since then, she deployed the name ‘Frazier’ only when she meant to make a point.
“You know.”
She did know, and knowing made it all the more aggravating. She set her hands on her hips and stared up at him in challenge. “You make two unwarranted assumptions: one, that you could do something I wouldn’t want, and two, that I would regret what you want to do.”
He blinked. “Nora …”
“I need your assistance, William. Please come.”
When she tugged on his hand again, he took a cautious step into the corridor and closed his door. She led him to her room and drew him inside. Once they were safe behind her closed door, she locked it and turned back to him.
“This is a terrible idea,” he said. “Your brother will turn on me if he thinks I’m treating you badly.”
“You wouldn’t treat me badly, though, would you?”
“Of course not.” He blew out a breath and looked around the room. “What assistance do you need?”
“I need help undressing.”
“What?” His eyes went wide, but Nora was undeterred. In fact, she liked this, to be the one in charge while he stood by, shocked and wary.
“My corset. I can’t unfasten it on my own.”
“Nora, no. My God. I can’t—no.” He turned to the door. “I’ll have a maid sent up or something.”
“I’m not naked under it, William. I would have thought you’d undressed enough ladies in your day to know that. I’m not asking you to ravish me, only free me.” She wasn’t sure she’d refuse a ravishing, actually, but they’d take on that topic when the time was right.
His eyes narrowed, and his mouth opened, just slightly. “Do you know what you do to me?”
She did; this encounter had reminded her, after all the days of his distance. In fact, she thought she understood that distance at last. Had he stood back because he wanted her so badly? Oh, she liked that. She could forgive him for that.
But a question had arisen, one that had vexed her now for weeks. “If I asked you a delicate question, would you answer me directly?”
“I would try, yes.”
“Why do you want it so much?”
“It?”
“You know, sex. Why does it drive you so hard, the need for it?”
“I’m not sure I agree that it drives me so hard. I’ve gone without it now for some weeks. More than a month.”
That didn’t seem so long to Nora. He’d been in bed with another woman only a fortnight or so before he’d professed his love for her? Hmpf. “You, and men in general. I don’t understand why it’s so appealing to you.”
He laughed—openly, raising his face to the ceiling. “You drag me into your bedroom and ask me to undress you, and you say you don’t understand the appeal of sex?”
“Don’t laugh at me. It’s an honest question. I don’t understand.”
His eyes became slits again, and his head tipped to one side. He studied her like a puzzle he almost had solved. “My darling Nora. I’ll answer. But may I ask you a delicate question first?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and nodded.
“Have you ever touched yourself?”
The question surprised and embarrassed her. “What?”
“The sensitive parts of your body. Your breasts, between your legs.” His voice had got slow and husky, and his eyes had dropped to the parts of her he described.
She felt her cheeks flame bright, but she answered. “Of course I have.” Though she wanted to be strong and assertive, a woman in charge of her own power, her voice barely made sound. “I … was disappointed.”
William smiled and met her eyes again. “If so, it’s because you don’t know how.” Stepping close, he picked up her hand. “Do you want me to show you? Would you regret that?”
He’d wrested control of the encounter, but Nora was too shaken to do anything about it. “I don’t understand.”
He turned her hand and traced the lines on her palm. The tickling touch made the muscles at her centre clench and release. “I haven’t stopped thinking of you for months. Then you came to my room at Tarrindale, and since then I’ve been tormented by the memory of you in my arms, your body so warm and free and close to mine. But I won’t take your virginity before we’re married, Nora. I won’t put you in the position of having to lie to your father about something like that.”
Her father had never once mentioned sex to her, in any context, even before he’d decided she should be a proper lady. He wouldn’t even discuss the birth of animals in her presence. “Why do you think he’d ask?”
“I don’t know that he would. But I know men like him, full of honour and tradition, and I know how he’d feel if you weren’t a virgin when you married. I don’t want you to have to lie if he asks.”
He was right, of course. She couldn’t imagine her father asking such a thing, but if he did, the shock might well kill him, and she wasn’t a very good liar in any case. Besides, Nora wasn’t sure she wanted to lose her virginity before marriage. She wanted William—she wanted to rip his clothes off right now, her body didn’t seem to care that sex would be disappointing—but the thought of giving away the very thing she was supposed to hold more precious than anything else loomed too large and frightening to confront. “All right,” she finally answered. “But I still don’t understand what you mean.”
His hands had worked their way up from her palm, and now he traced his fingers over the soft skin of her forearm, from the hem of her sleeve, just below her elbow, to her wrist. That innocent touch left trails of lava behind, burning away its innocence and leaving blatant, erotic need behind. “I would like to show you how to touch yourself.”
“What?” The word was only air, lost in the storm beyond the windows, but William understood.
“You want help undressing. I’ll help you get your corset off. We’ll stop there, and then I’ll show you.”
The storm outside had a burst of temper, and lightning and thunder shook the windows. Nora wondered if perhaps God had offered his opinion on the matter between them.
She didn’t care about God. Or her father, or anything or anyone not in this room. Every part of her throbbed and thrummed for the man before her. “Will … “ The words got stuck in her suddenly muddy throat. She swallowed and tried again. “Will you touch me?”
His lids drooped heavily over his eyes, and he took another step, erasing what was left of the distance between them. She craned her neck to look up into those sleepy, sensual orbs. In this light, they were burnished gold.
“Would you like me to?” he asked, reaching around her and putting his fingers to the top button of her blouse, at the nape of her neck.
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
“Then I will.” He bent and covered her lips with his. As his tongue searched every part of her mouth, his hands worked the pearl buttons of her blouse—expertly, without a pause, as if he spent his days disrobing women. Nora set such thoughts aside and instead hooked her arms around his neck, arching into his kiss, his touch, his heat.
When her blouse was open, he pulled it free of her skirt, then tugged it from her arms and tossed it away. He opened her wide leather belt and tossed it in the same direction. Her skirt was next, falling into a heap around her ankles, which were still closed into the leather of her boots.
Now, she was down to her corset, vest, drawers, and stockings, and Nora realised, perhaps too late, that she would lose her stockings when William removed her corset.
William, however, had clearly not missed that fact. Ending their kiss, he helped her step over the mound of her skirt, and then dropped to his knees before her, unfastening her garters with a hand at each leg, taking each fastening singlehandedly. When the sturdy stockings slipped to drape over her boots, he lifted one foot, unbuttoned the boot, and slid it off, taking the stocking with it. Then he did the other. She stood barefoot and barelegged before him, and he slid his strong hands from her ankles up her calves, to the hems of her drawers, before unfolding gracefully back to his feet.
“You are glorious,” he murmured and turned her around. When he loosened the lacing on the corset, Nora couldn’t help but gasp at the sudden, beautiful relief, that blissful surge of blood and breath flowing freely again. She lifted her arms above her head, and he pulled the corset up and off, careful to leave the loose laces in their eyelets. He was knowledgeable indeed about women’s clothing.
Out of a habit so often repeated it had become instinct, Nora rubbed at her ribs, massaging away the itch and ache from the corset stays. William’s hands pushed hers away, and he kneaded her gently, easing the ache. She moaned and sagged back, letting herself fall against him.
His beard brushed her cheek. “Tell me to stop, and I will.”
Unsure what to expect, Nora nodded. She was his now, in his control, in his hands, and she didn’t want anything else. She would give him anything he wanted.
William’s palms skimmed the length of her arms, from her shoulders down, and picked up her hands. Covering her hands with his, nesting them together, he lifted one and brought it slowly to her chest. He stood behind her, held her up with his strong, steady body. Nora felt the cotton of his shirt against her bare shoulders; she smelled the lingering hint of starch under his own scent and that of the rain and the inn and Dover itself.
Guiding her hand with his, he pushed into the neckline of her vest until they cupped her breast together. Already this touch was profoundly more intense and sensual than her own alone had been. Her nipples tightened into aching knots. William guided her forefinger and thumb to a hard, puckered nub and pinched his fingers over hers, first lightly and then with more and more pressure, until Nora jerked in his arms and cried out in surprise. Her joints shook and her blood steamed.
“See?” he breathed at her ear, curving his body around hers, surrounding her.
Speech was impossible, so she only nodded.
“Did it feel like this when you tried it?”
She shook her head.
“Do you want me to stop?”
She shook her head.
“Do you want more?” The question chugged over his laboured breath.
She nodded—and William’s hands slipped away from hers. But only for a moment. He swept her up into his arms and carried her to the chair near the window, sitting down and settling her on his lap.
Dazed and besotted, Nora let him move her as he would. What else would he show her about her own body? Would he show her anything of his?
She sat across his lap, as he’d arranged her. He picked up her hand again and eased it over her thigh, up her side, across her belly, up between her breasts, and cupped the other this time. This time, she knew what to do and did it herself. William smiled warmly, his eyes sparking with pride and pleasure—and with desire of his own, a desire that had given his cheeks a warm tint.
He picked up her other hand and guided it as before, over her thigh, up to her belly—and back down, then up again, this time on the inside, until he pressed her hand to her centre, where she was hot and trembling. Oh, she didn’t want this to be disappointing like it was before. She wanted this hot, restive need that filled her and pulsed through her to be sated. She wanted, she needed, to know its source.
“Ah, God, Nora,” William muttered, letting his head fall to her shoulder, and pressed his lips to her throat. “You test my will, darling.”
She didn’t want to test him. Her doubts had evaporated in the heat between them. If he wanted her, he could have her. Virginity be damned. He meant to marry her, so what difference did it make, if they both wanted it?
Her thoughts stopped when he pushed their hands into her drawers, over her belly, between her legs.
“Show me how you touch yourself.”
Feeling shy, but too enraptured to resist, Nora moved her hand under his, sliding over the soft pillows of her intimate folds, pushing between them with her finger, finding her entrance. Oh, please, let it feel better than before. Like her breast did. She pinched her nipple again, and gasped as the electric bolt shot through her.
But the sensation of her finger inside her was not much better than it had been when she was alone. Somewhat more intense, simply because this situation was more intense, with William holding her so intimately, his hand right there, against her most vulnerable flesh, his voice low and rumbling in her ear, his need washing over her in palpable waves. But there was no electric jolt, no fire that would explain why sex was at the heart of everything.
William chuckled lightly and took charge of her hand again. “No, darling, not like that.”
Surprise shook a dash of sense over sensation, and she opened her eyes. “What? But that’s—isn’t—don’t you—”
“Yes. That’s where I’ll be inside you. But there’s so much more to it. Here. Feel.”
He drew her fingers up, through her folds, until her finger grazed something that made her whole body spasm. “What?” she gasped, pulling away from the surprising sensation.
William brought her hand out of her drawers and to his mouth. He sucked them in, his eyes closing, and she felt his groan rumble at her fingertips. Heavens, how could something simple like that, him sucking her fingers, make her ache so?
He pushed her hand down again, into her drawers, back to that place, and moved her dampened fingers in a circle, rubbing firmly but gently over a small nub, something she’d never known was there, on her own body, smooth and hard as a bead. There was the electric jolt she’d sought.
“Oh,” she gasped as her hips flexed and shook, moved by a need beyond her control. “Oh!”
“That’s it. Don’t stop.” His hand left hers, slid downward, and his fingers played around her entrance. After a moment, he pushed his own finger inside her, slowly, as if expecting her to resist him. She did not. “God, Nora. God. You’re hot and wet. So beautiful.”
Nora could hardly understand the words he said; she was focused with every fibre on the centre of her body, her soul. Her fingers, his finger, moving in wild metre, drawing something up from her core, something she hadn’t known existed. Up, up, up, it came, chasing her—or was she calling it? It didn’t matter, as long as it came. She remembered her hand on her breast and tweaked her nipple, and the hungry thing inside her leapt closer.
A rhythmic sound like a drumbeat filled the room—it was her, grunting each time her fingers made a circle, Williams’s finger pushed deep, her hips rocked, her belly clenched. And it was him, too, grunting with her, his breaths roaring around the room like a steam engine. His own need pressed at her bottom; his whole body moved under hers, tensely, desperately. In a sudden flurry, he ripped her drawers down to her knees and pushed her thighs apart.
Oh God, something was coming, something huge and new and terrifying. It was coming, it was coming, it was coming.
The need and heat inside her was too big, and, fearful of the crash when it came, whatever it was, Nora went stiff and still, lifting her hand. William froze, too.
“Don’t stop, darling,” he gasped. “You’re so close.”
Nora thought she might explode, and she was afraid. “I don’t—what is it?”
“Everything,” he answered. “Trust me.” He pushed his finger deeply into her again. So much better than her own insignificant attempt had been.
She trusted him, so she began again, rubbing those tight, firm circles until her overheated muscles quivered and her belly felt like molten lead.
And then—“Oh God! Oh God! William!” She did explode. Fire and light and brilliant ecstasy burst through her, and Nora couldn’t breathe. She went rigid as a board in his arms, and he held her, his finger inside her, its thrusts slowing.
“Feel this, Nora,” he pulled out of her and took her hand, drawing it down between her thighs, pressing it to her searing, damp centre. She felt herself throb in time with the bliss pulsing through her veins. “Do you understand now?”
Oh heavens, how much she understood. Everything.
She was free.