Secret Admirer by Michele Jaffe
“Everly, I am telling you. This is not the right way.”
The shot blinded him, hurtling him to the frozen ground. Frozen but warm, in patches, warm from the blood.
“No!”
He caught the fingers just as they went over the edge, barely. “I’ve got you,” he yelled, straining with all his strength. “I’m not going to let you die.”
“It’s too late now. There’s nothing you can do, Lawrence. Nothing.”
Nothing nothing nothing nothing echoed down the cliff, and now in his mind, indictment and sentence all at once, nothing you can do.
“He just let go,” Lawrence said, and silence fell over them like a blanket. Finally, he shrugged, and added in a cold voice, “Maybe he was lucky. There are worse things than dying for your country.”
“Like what?”
“Killing for it.”
He reached up to rub his right shoulder and found that Tuesday was already massaging it for him. Covering her hand with his own, he brought it to his lips. He should tell her the whole story. About Rafael. About Maria.
“I love you, Lawrence.”
But not tonight. He did not want to risk ruining it. Besides, he was ravenous.
“Come on,” he urged, keeping her hand clasped with his. “Our dinner is getting cold.”
The corridor they were in ended in a staircase that took them up to an enormous ballroom, made larger by its emptiness. It was a huge cavernous shadow except in the middle where a hundred candelabra of different shapes and sizes had been arranged in row after row around a square, like a forest of flaming silver trees. It was one of the most dazzling sights Tuesday had ever seen, but Lawrence did not let her stop to admire it. Instead he led her into the center, where, atop a luxuriant Turkish carpet woven to look like a swath of light green grass, a table laid with silver and crystal and a hundred orchids stood surrounded by three-dozen silk-covered pillows, inlaid with mirrors.
“I don’t really entertain very much anymore,” Lawrence explained, almost sheepishly, “so I am afraid we had to make do with whatever we had lying around.”
“You did this in half an hour?” she gasped.
Lawrence had felt self-conscious bringing her here. Two years earlier, before he had sold everything, he could have impressed her with the gorgeousness of his furniture and his art and his wine. He could have set the most sumptuous table for her, put out the salt cellar in the shape of a castle that had been a gift from the duke of Saxony, the golden dolphin soup turreen from the Pope. The house would have glittered and every corner would have held a masterpiece.
But all that was gone, the Lawrence Pickering that had all that was gone, and now there was just him, this empty house, and this most extraordinary woman. He could have had all that again, but he no longer wanted it. And now he knew why. Seeing the expression of wonder and joy on her face made him realize this was better. He wanted to spend the rest of his life doing things that made Tuesday happy, that made her feel cherished, that surprised her. That made her look at him the way she was right at that moment. He felt like a god.
“Tuesday, I—”
She moved to stand right in front of him, to force him to look down at her, to force him to see all her gratitude, all her love, all her admiration in her eyes. “Yes, Lawrence?”
“I think—” He was lost. He was losing himself in her, to her.
She tried to raise one eyebrow and slid her hand down to the waist of his breeches. What she wanted most, at that moment, was to seduce him. To make him feel vulnerable so he would be alive to how much she loved him. She savored knowing she made him feel weak. He made her feel so strong.
“I think we should dine,” he stammered.
She stood on her toes and kissed his neck and murmured, “Why?”
“Because I have not been hungry like this in years. And because food is—”
Tuesday kneeled in front of him and smoothed her hand up the front of the bulge in his breeches. Using her lips and her teeth she managed to untie the laces and slide them open. Then she turned her mouth sideways and licked from the tip of Lawrence’s newly freed shaft to its base.
“Unnecessary,” he finished his sentence in a moan.
Her lips closed around the head of his member and this time she sucked him all the way into her mouth. Her hand slid around to join her mouth and she felt his knees tremble beneath him as her thumb stroked the base.
His moans, deeper now, spurred her on. Her cheeks molded themselves to his contours and the pressure inside him grew until every part of him felt like it was shimmering. Then he looked down and saw her looking up at him. The heat of her gaze loosed whatever restraints were left and the force that had been building surged through his body, pounding along every limb and sending him bursting into her mouth.
Lawrence had never been seduced by anyone before, would never have allowed himself to be, but he let himself go entirely with her. She drank his pleasure from him hungrily, until he protested and begged and ordered her to stop and began to get hard all over again. Only then did he remember where he was and his name and what he had been planning to do and he lifted her from her knees. Kicking his pants off his ankles he carried her toward the cushions around the table and set her down in the middle of a pile of them.
“That was not what was supposed to happen tonight,” he informed her, deftly untying the laces of her bodice.
Bringing him to a climax had been one of the most sensational and arousing experiences of Tuesday’s life. Every time his fingers grazed her skin, she felt an echo deep inside her body.
“How come you get to say what happens?” she sighed.
“I am in charge.”
“Why?”
“This is my house.”
“Does that mean I am in charge at my house?”
“No.”
“Where can I be—”
His lips teased over hers and when he pulled them away she found that she was no longer wearing any clothes. Lawrence, also naked, lay on his elbow alongside her, unable to take his eyes off of her. Her skin turned gold in the candlelight and the mirrors in the cushions covered her stomach and thighs with circles of silver light. She had pinned her hair up, but it began to fall loose in tendrils that dipped like invitations over her shoulders. One looped just under her nipple, and Lawrence had to run his finger along it.
He wanted to make her feel things she had never felt. To savor her body. To have her lose control, give herself up to him entirely the way he did to her.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered to her, but she shook her head.
“I want to see you. To watch you.”
“Close your eyes,” he repeated, this time in a voice that promised her she would not be sorry. “Trust me.”
She closed them and he tied his shirt like a blindfold around them. “Lawrence, I—”
“Trust me,” he said again and she relaxed.
It was the most extraordinary dinner of her life. Lawrence had learned all her favorite foods and had his masterful chef prepare them for her. But it was not only the menu or skill that made it so special. It was not being able to see. The candied lemons on the broccoli were more tart-sweet, the rosemary in the wild mushroom ragout that topped the veal was sharper, the hint of sage in the chestnut soup was more woodsy, and the ginger cake with caramel on top was more gingery-caramely-sublime than any before.
Without her eyes, her other senses became stronger. She had never before considered the erotic potential of nubbly broccoli, or the arousing feeling of having caramel dribbled over your lips, then over your body and having someone slowly lick it off while you suck cream off their finger. She could feel each individual strand of silk on the tassel that he dragged with drugging slowness over her skin, leaving her body trembling. The silkiness of the pillows alternated with the coolness of the mirrors against her back as she arched her hips forward, begging Lawrence never to leave off stroking her with the petal softness of the
As he dabbled the oil onto her stomach and worked it with his fingertips down her thighs, down her calves, down to her ankles, it was as if her other climaxes that night only built pressure, not relieved it. Her body was aching for him to touch it, but he ignored her pleas and stretched out next to her, his mouth at her feet, and sucked her toes into his mouth one by one. He started with the smallest toe, licking it first, then engulfing it, then moved to the next, and the next. As he worked he massaged her arch and the ball of her foot with his thumb. The sensations he caused fizzled through her from her heels to her ears but were concentrated, almost painfully, between her legs.
When he had her largest toe in his mouth, her moans were so agonized that he took pity on her. Only then, as she cried out to him, did he slide one hand up the inside of her thigh and begin, barely, to stroke her. Sensation pounded through her body, overwhelming her completely. She arched against him and he pulled away, teasing her, until she relaxed. Not being able to see his hands, only being able to feel his mouth on her feet and his fingers slipping now into her, now over her, drove her mad. Her body was humming with desire.
His teeth skimmed some sort of magic place on her toe and his fingers, one on top of her and one just inside, found her most tender spot and all at once the hum turned into a pounding crescendo. It crested explosively again and again as Lawrence continued to ply her, relentless now, and intensified as he cruelly sucked her into his mouth. She was dying, she was dead, she was soaring, she was unaware that he was now lying next to her, unaware that he was holding her tight, unaware that he was kissing her ear and whispering to her. And then suddenly she heard what he said and everything she was feeling fell away and all she knew were the words echoing in her mind, louder than any other words she had ever heard, the words “I love you Tuesday.”
He loved her. He said he loved her. Tuesday pressed her lips to his and kissed the words from them.
“Make love to me,” she whispered.
Lawrence hesitated. It was supposed to be a night only for her, for memorizing every inch and scar and secret of her body. But her responsiveness had set Lawrence on fire, destroying all the rest of his carefully conceived plans for how he was going to seduce her. And when she now pressed her fingers against his chest, when she pushed him down and blindly climbed atop him, when she said, “Be inside me, Lawrence,” he was powerless to keep his hands off her, his body from hers.
He slid into her while her body was still vibrating with pleasure. He pulled her to his chest and wrapped her legs around him so she was sitting on him, on his lap, then pulled the blindfold off of her.
Her eyes came open slowly. Their gazes were exactly level and she found she was looking into the blue blue depths of him.
“I love you Tuesday,” he told her again, letting her see him, all of him, as her body held him deep inside. “I did not dream I could feel this way with anyone. You are the most—”
“Shhh,” she said, kissing the words from his lips. She did not want him to say them, to use them up and forget them. She whispered, “Show me.”
He cupped his hands beneath her bottom and moved her up and down his shaft, first tenderly, then, as she took over, more urgently. Her good arm wrapped around his neck and she arched backwards as he slipped a hand between their bodies and touched her again, asserting control. The faster she moved, the softer he touched. When she slid over him in long, shuddering motions, his caress deepened; in short fast ones, they withdrew. The contrasts sparked tiny explosions of feeling all over her body, until, with both his thumbs on her and his member filling her, stretching her, the explosions began to coalesce into one powerful current. His lips found her neck and her shoulder as his fingers rolled over her. He forced himself to concentrate on her, to ignore the overpowering tension in his body, and brought his lips down over her nipple, grazing it with his teeth, and deep in her throat Tuesday purred.
Lawrence felt the reverberations through his entire body, shattering his resolve. This time when she pressed against him insistently, urgently he responded by stroking her against his shaft as it pushed into her. Somewhere nearby fireworks began to explode, filling the room with loud bangs and bursts of light, but Tuesday and Lawrence did not notice. She clung to him and he sank into her and with each thrust he smoothed and teased her a little longer until pleasure crashed through them both like a bolt of lightening, and their gasps and moans and pleas set the candles around them flickering like a summer storm.
Dawn was just getting ready to turn London pink when Lawrence picked Tuesday up in his arms and carried her around to blow out the remaining candles. Then he conveyed her through a discreet door into a small, cool chamber. The only thing in it was a bed covered in silver silk, but the walls and floor had been painted to look like slabs of glowing pinky-orange marble. No, Tuesday realized, putting her hand out, they were slabs of pinky orange marble, made to glow by tiny lanterns that hung behind them. The effect was ethereal and became more so when Lawrence adjusted the lanterns so that the room was lit only from below. He moved across the glimmering floor and crawled into bed next to her.
Tuesday had not seen Lawrence give his discreet signal, and did not hear the guards slide into position around the house. She had been too distracted, first with the magic of this room, and then with her own thoughts.
Lawrence was on the tip of dozing off when he had the uneasy feeling of being watched. He opened his eyes, moved them from one side to the other, and saw Tuesday staring at him with a strange expression.
“Is something wrong sweetheart?”
Tuesday shook her head. He studied her and was just closing his eyes again when she blurted, “Do you have a mistress?”
His body went rigid. He rolled onto his side to look at her and he seemed nervous. “I am not sure how to answer that question.”
George had been right. Tuesday was biting her lip and telling herself she did not care and berating herself for asking and wanting to rip his heart out and—
“I mean, I’ve already gotten your father’s permission,” he went on, interrupting her thoughts, “but I was waiting to ask you to marry me until all of this was over.”
She had to sort the words to make sense of them. “You want to marry me?”
“Did you think I was lying about all those things I said? That you are marvelous and I love you?”
“No. I just didn’t think—”
Lawrence did not like the way she was taking it. Like it upset her. “I don’t want you to decide now,” he put in hastily.
“I want to decide now.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“ ‘Yes I will marry you’ or ‘yes I want to decide’? I just need to be clear.”
Tuesday sat up and faced him and said in her low, rumbling, unmistakable voice, “Yes I want to marry you, Lawrence Pickering. I love you. I want to be your wife.”
When Lawrence was thirteen he had taken all the money he had saved by running errands and taking stupid wagers and bought his first property—his first home with a roof. It was over a tanner’s studio, so it stank and was hot all the time, but he didn’t care. He pulled Bull out of school and the two of them ate mutton pie for dinner off their own table and drank real ale out of their shared mug and went to bed, Bull on his new mattress, Lawrence with his cheek pressed against the bare planks of the floor—there was a mattress f
He had never felt that way again, not once. Not until the moment when Tuesday said, I want to marry you, Lawrence Pickering. I love you. I want to be your wife.
Listening outside the door, the Lion could not wait to kill him.
Chapter 28
Lawrence had not been completely candid with Tuesday. Pickering Hall itself was empty, but he still kept an office in the small octagonal building—it had only six rooms—called the banqueting house that stood in the garden. That was where he was standing, trying to review the results of the search for Albert Marston, but mostly dreaming up presents he wanted to give Tuesday—he had already sent Tom out twice, once to a jeweler and once to a brush seller to get her a new set of paintbrushes—when Elwood arrived.
“I have some news for you, sir,” Elwood began, as if it were just news, as if he were not about to destroy Lawrence’s life. As if he were not about to show him, without space for doubt, that Lady Tuesday Arlington was a duplicitous, manipulative, bitch.
“Yes?”
“You are not going to like it.”
“Is it about George Lyle?”
“No.” Elwood swallowed. “It is about this.” Elwood held a piece of paper out to him.
It was badly scrawled, but still legible. Too legible.
“ ‘Lady Tuesday Arlington is a thief and a liar. If you don’t believe me, believe your own eyes: check the bottom of her mother’s trunk and see what you find. Yours, A concerned friend,’ ” Lawrence read. He looked at Elwood. “Where did it come from?”
“It was delivered by a messenger this morning to my office. He disappeared before I could ask him where he got it.”
“So?”
“I sent some men to Worthington Hall to check.”