The Courtship by Catherine Coulter
“Oh, no,” he said. “But not just yet, Helen, not just yet. I’m sorry, but I just can’t. I’m an old man, Helen—” And then he was moving deep inside her again, growing harder and harder by the moment as her mouth was on his, and she was biting him, licking him, and his world once again spun out of control.
“I’m going to die,” he said when at last they were both breathing hard, pressed hard together, his face only an inch above hers because he didn’t have the strength to push himself up higher. “I am thirty-three and I’m going to die. Helen, I may be a man of interesting habits and experiences, but this goes beyond anything I’ve ever known in my life. I’m tired now. Would you like to sleep for just a little while with me?”
She drew a deep breath and closed her eyes. There was a slight smile on her mouth. He kissed her, then once again they were asleep in Lord Prith’s gazebo.
Lord Beecham awoke to realize his butt was bare and he was cold. It was twilight. He slowly eased off Helen. He fastened his breeches and pulled on his boots. He stood over Helen, just watching her breathe. Her legs were glorious, long and white and sleekly muscled, his seed smeared on them, and he groaned with the feelings that flooded through him. He hadn’t asked for this. Life had been perfectly pleasant.
Of course life had been pleasant. What had he done to make it unpleasant? He had enjoyed himself, done precisely what he wanted to do whenever he wanted to do it. He wasn’t vicious or petty, but it was rare that he saw things outside his pleasant existence.
He looked down at Helen.
She wanted him for a partner. She wanted to find that damned lamp more than anything else in this entire world. He didn’t doubt for a moment that she wanted that damned lamp more than she wanted him, except for the few moments when he touched her and she touched him and they came together as fast, as violently as a winter storm lashing out of a midnight-black sky.
He lightly touched his palm to her thigh. Slowly, very slowly, she opened her eyes. She didn’t move, just looked up at him. She smiled at him. “I didn’t get to be on top,” she said.
His muscles nearly went into a spasm. “Next time, I swear to you, next time.”
“It is too much,” she said then. “Simply too much. This cannot continue.”
He had thought the same thing, recognizing the strangeness of this immense need for her, so different from the other women who had come into his life. But to hear her actually say the words made him go right over the edge. It made him nearly wild with rage.
He jerked up and removed his hand from her leg. He straightened. His voice was colder than a delicious vanilla ice at Gunther’s. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Of course it will continue. It is too much, but we will figure all that out sooner or later. Keep these inane conclusions to yourself, Helen. I have promised that next time you will be on top.”
She frowned at him. She cocked her head to one side, regarding him from beneath her lashes. Then she sat up and looked down at herself. She said blankly, not looking at him, “I am wet with you. Very wet.”
“Yes.” He handed her his handkerchief. He turned away to walk to the narrow arched entrance of the gazebo.
“I’ll return your handkerchief to you tomorrow.”
“Yes, do that, since I imagine that you will be needing it again.”
She didn’t say anything at all, just walked around him, down the gazebo steps, across the vast expanse of lawn and into the library entrance on the east side of the hall.
He didn’t move, just watched her. At first her steps weren’t all that steady, and he knew it was because of the special strain he’d put on her muscles, something she wasn’t used to. He smiled. He realized something else then. This proud, very independent woman was fighting him for all she was worth. It cannot continue. Like hell, he thought.
At that moment, he realized that he himself had lost all perspective on this situation.
It was a mighty lust, a lust the strength of which he had never experienced before in his life. And perhaps that was all it was—lust, an incredible lust, a lust that would bring a man to his knees in short order, or simply smite him dead from overindulgence.
This had to be dealt with. He knew there would be no dealing with anything as long as she was beside him, just there so he could make love to her, and not stop.
He had some soul-deep thinking to do. It could be that the conclusion of his thinking just might end up changing the course of his life.
The thought of taking a wife didn’t freeze the blood in his veins. Odd that it didn’t. He was thirty-three years old. He would have thought that life would have settled into its lifelong pattern by now, but, Lord love him, it hadn’t.
Life had seen him coming around the corner and smacked him between the eyes.
Whatever had happened between them, repeatedly, and even more repeatedly after that, he was prepared to face head-on. He just couldn’t face it with her anywhere in the vicinity. Seeing her, listening to her talk, looking at her, any of it, all of it, turned him into a cock-hard fellow with no thought of anything at all but being inside her and hearing her yell out his name when she clenched and shuddered beneath him. Ah, the pleasure, that gut-deep, nearly painful pleasure. He had promised her that next time she could be on top. He nearly swallowed his tongue at that thought and the incredible image it brought clear to his mind.
After Lord Prith and Flock had left for their evening walk, Flock bemoaning his fate—namely a future without Teeny being his wife—all the while Lord Prith was walking out the front door beside him, Lord Beecham said to a very silent Helen, “I am going back to London tomorrow. I need to go to the British Museum. I need to speak to scholars I know there. I am at a standstill with the scroll.”
She didn’t like it, he could see that plainly, but what didn’t she like, specifically? Him leaving her? She wanted him with her? He began to glow.
“I don’t want to let the scroll out of my sight,” she said, and his innards tightened alarmingly. The damned scroll. He stopped glowing.
“I will make a copy of it,” he said, all clipped and cold, as he rose.
“You are my partner. I don’t want to let you out of my sight either.”
Partner, she said, not the man she’d willingly lusted with nine times in three days. He thought in that moment that he would simply burst with rage. He was on her in an instant, his hands hard around her upper arms and he was shaking her. Not that he could shake her very much because she was nearly as tall as he was, and strong. But she didn’t retaliate, just stood there and let him shake to his heart’s content.
“You don’t trust me, is that it?”
“I don’t know you all that well.”
“Damn you,” he said, “you have made love with me nine times in three days.” It felt excellent to just say it, yell it actually, right in her face. “You don’t know me? Jesus, Helen, you know me all the way to my toes. Yes, I did manage to get my boots off before I fell on you this afternoon. You think I would steal this wretched scroll and go haring off on my own? Steal from you?”
“I know that you are a passionate man. In that, you are true to your reputation. As a partner you have been superbly satisfactory to date.”
“But?”
She just shook her head. “It is so very important to me, Lord Beecham.”
More important than I am? he wanted to ask, but he managed to keep his mouth shut. He ground his teeth and left her then, without a backward glance, and went to her study. He spent the next hour carefully copying the leather scroll. He oiled it again, smoothing down the cracked humps in the leather, then gently laid the cheesecloth on it once more. When he came out of the study, Helen was on the third step of the staircase.
“Do you wish me to take this copy or not?”
Very slowly, she nodded.
Lord Beecham left Shugborough Hall at six o’clock the next morning, damp fog enclosing everything in filmy gray, his luggage and his valet Nettle with him.
16
Lord Beecham raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t used to a furtive Reverend Older. He felt excitement rippling through the man. What was going on here?
“Don’t fret yourself, my boy. Old Clothhead Mathers told me all about this find of yours—an ancient leather scroll written in Pahlavi that speaks of a very old magic. This is a wondrous thing.”
Naturally, Lord Beecham thought, he and Reverend Mathers had agreed to keep all of this between them. He had believed the man would hold silent—indeed, Reverend Mathers had sworn himself to silence because, as he had told Lord Beecham, “this incredible scroll, my lord, it makes up for all the miserable years of mediocrity I have known. To be a part of this, ah, it will give all of us proud modern men amazing insights upon the ancient world. I thank you with all my heart. No, sir, no one will ever learn of this from me.”
Lord Beecham had known Reverend Mathers since his Oxford days. An honorable man, a scholar, a man more attuned to the mysterious ancient past than to a present he found unimaginative and trivial. Lord Beecham had been a fool, and he hated the bone-deep feeling of betrayal. Because he was not a man to spill his guts at the first attack, or even the second, for that matter, his expression remained impassive, his eyebrow elevated. He looked faintly annoyed. But his heart was pounding, slow, deep strokes.
Reverend Older leaned forward, patted Lord Beecham’s sleeve and dropped his voice to a near whisper, “Now, don’t you worry, my lord. None of this will go beyond me, Reverend Mathers, and his brother. You see, Reverend Mathers didn’t willingly tell Old Clothhead, no; it seems that my friend talks in his sleep whenever he is unduly excited or worried about something. Old Clothhead said his brother spoke of strange and magical things and this ancient old scroll written in Pahlavi that would tell all about it. Of course, Reverend Mathers would have brought you to me eventually. I am renowned for my knowledge of old myths that have a grain of truth to them. I searched you out, my boy. I am here. You may now ask for my assistance.” Reverend Older finally pulled away a good six inches from Lord Beecham’s ear and beamed at him.
“Yes, I propose that we be partners, my lord,” he continued. “I can assist you in ways you never dreamed possible. We will explore all those possibilities together. Now, do tell me all about it.”
The man talked in his damned sleep. Lord Beecham wanted to laugh at the vagaries of fate, but his uppermost reaction was vast relief that Reverend Mathers had not intentionally betrayed him. And apparently he had not said all that much specific in his sleep, thank God, which was why Reverend Older was here, now, trying to whisper in his ear. He smiled down at Reverend Older and said pleasantly, “No. There is nothing to tell. This is all a fabrication by Old Clothhead. You should not encourage him to drink so much brandy.”
Lord Beecham had seldom if ever seen a frown on Reverend Older’s face. There was one now, deepening the lines alongside his mouth. “Come, my boy, you don’t wish to be the coy one here.”
Yes, now he could hear the frustration, the burgeoning anger.
“I can help you. I can do incredible things for you. Now, where did you come across the scroll? Have you managed to translate all of it yet? Does it give exact details about any sorts of magical instruments or objects?”
Thank God Reverend Older didn’t really know anything, just about the scroll, but no specifics. But he knew about magic, and so it was greed that was pushing him. It was a disappointment, but Lord Beecham wasn’t unduly surprised. His fellow man rarely showed honesty, much less honor, be he churchman or not.
“Ah,” said Lord Beecham, shading his eyes from a barely existent sun’s rays, “I believe I see Lady Northcliffe, just over there on the walkway, speaking to her husband. Excuse me, Reverend Older.”
“Wait! You must deal with me, my lord!”
Lord Beecham turned slowly back to the man he had always liked, had always admired, a man who frankly amused him. “There is nothing to tell you. There is no strange scroll, no ridiculous magical anything. Old Clothhead is spinning yarns. You have approached the wrong person. None of this has anything to do with me.”
“But Old Clothhead told me he followed his brother because he was acting so mysteriously. He said his brother met with you at the British Museum, in one of the small back rooms. He knows who you are, my lord. Come now, don’t cut me out. I need to be in this, I surely do.”
“Good day, Reverend Older.” Lord Beecham dodged an earl’s carriage, a dray filled with ale kegs, and three young bucks riding horseback, and made it intact across the street. He wondered cynically if Reverend Older had made an unwise wager at a horse race. He bowed to Alexandra Sherbrooke and turned to her formidable husband.
“Good day to you, Douglas. You are well?”
“I passed my thirty-fifth birthday in the warm bosom of my family. Of course I am well. Do you now believe I am too old to be well? What do you want, Heatherington? Stop staring at my wife or I’ll bash your pretty face and knock you into the next street.”
Alexandra Sherbrooke, roughly half the size of her husband, nudged him aside and took Lord Beecham’s hand. “How are you, Spenser? Ignore poor Douglas here. He fancies that he found a gray hair this morning and is trying to blame me for it, all because I enraged him last night by taking Ryder’s side in an argument.”
“My brother was wrong about that ridiculous notion of his, Alexandra. Imagine, letting children decide whether or not they wish to work in the factories, whether or not they wish to be assigned to be apprentices, or to be given schooling. It is the parents’ choice; it must be, else there would be chaos and havoc. Can you imagine our boys being allowed to make any kind of decision? It is utter nonsense. You will retract your support when you see him next.”
Alexandra Sherbrooke just laughed and leaned closer to Lord Beecham. “Now, about this gray hair of Douglas’s. Perhaps now, if you continue to bait him, he will consider you as the cause of this gray hair. Who knows?”
“Hello, Alexandra.”
“Why must you continue to call this damned dog by his first name?”
Alexandra patted her husband’s arm as she continued speaking to Lord Beecham. “It is good to see you. I don’t suppose you know anything about Helen Mayberry?”
“You know very well that I am now Helen’s partner and that I returned with her and her father to Essex, to Court Hammering.”
“Yes, but you are here and she doesn’t seem to be. Where is she?”
“She is at home. I am back here to use better minds than mine at the British Museum.”
“Oh, goodness, Spenser, does this mean that you have found anything about King Edward’s lamp?”
“It is all bloody nonsense,” Douglas said, his dark eyebrow raised higher than any of Spenser’s eyebrows.
“Well, Douglas, actually it isn’t,” and with those few words, Douglas Sherbrooke was all ears. He stared at Spenser Heatherington. “It is surely a myth,” he said slowly, “a silly tale that just won’t die. Don’t say there is something to it.”
“Just perhaps there is.”
Douglas began a tapping rhythm with his cane on the walkway, a sure sign that he was getting excited. “Yesterday I heard that lecherous old reprobate, Lord Crowley, telling some fellows who were nearly ready to fall down dead drunk that he was on the trail of something fantastic, something that would make him very, very rich. I never considered that it could have anything to do with the lamp. Was that what he was talking about?”
“Well, damn.” Lord Beecham sighed. “I hope it wasn’t, but with my blasted luck, I’ll wager it was.” He sighed again and this time streaked his long fingers through his hair, making it stand on end. Alexandra raised her hand and smoothed down his h
“Please don’t, Alexandra,” Lord Beecham said, taking a step back. “Else your fierce husband will pound me into the walkway. I’m too young to be pounded, only thirty-three. Now, I just managed to escape Reverend Older and he had already heard about it from Reverend Mathers’s brother, whom he refers to as Old Clothhead. Other than you and Alex, Reverend Mathers and me, no one else in London should know about this. But it turns out that Reverend Mathers talks in his sleep and his brother told Reverend Older and God knows who else. Damnation, is there nothing at all sacred? Nothing that a man can depend upon to remain only his?”
“Yes,” Douglas said absently, stroking his jaw, “his wife. You mean all this started with Reverend Mathers talking in his sleep about it?”
“I fear so. And now Lord Crowley—damnation, that man makes me want to scrub my soul after I am forced to be near him. On a good day, he might even be worse than my father, who was bad enough, let me tell you. Hell’s bells, I don’t like this. I’ll wager he knows a bit now. At least it is not specific, but he will burrow about, you know his reputation. Perhaps half of London knows what he knows now, at least the scurrilous half. I would not be surprised now if some of these buffoons ended up in Court Hammering trying to threaten Helen. Damnation, now I must think of some way to protect her.”
“Protect Helen?” Alexandra said, her left eyebrow going up. Her cloak then fell open. Her husband’s eyes glittered before he pulled the cloak shut again and said to her, “You will go to your modiste, tomorrow at the very latest, and you will instruct her to hoist up this blasted gown a good three inches. Just look at Heatherington. The fellow has nice teeth. I would hate to have to knock them down his dog’s throat were he to ogle you, and he would find the temptation well nigh impossible to deny. He will be moaning on the walkway soon, his jaw broken, if you continue to flaunt yourself.”
“I see,” Alexandra said, ignoring Lord Beecham and eyeing her husband. “Let me see if I have this exactly right. You feel sorry for the gentlemen because I am forcing myself upon them.”