Fic: A Girl in Black (15/?)
Title: A Girl in Black (15/?)
Author: mrstater
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Characters & Pairings: Mary Crawley/Richard Carlisle, Daisy
Chapter Word Count: 4729
Chapter Summary: As Mary's sexual education is put to the ultimate test, the hunt culminates in unexpected consequences.
Author's Notes: Thanks very much to all my readers for so patiently awaiting this week's update, and most especially to ju_dou for listening to me complain all week about how I had named this chapter most appropriately, because it was going to kill me. Just a head's up, but this is the chapter that finally earns the fic its R/Mature rating, so if sexual content isn't your cup of tea, jump ahead to the scene break.
Previous Chapters |
15. The Kill
For the first time in her life, the reflection Mary studies in her full-length mirror is not her own.
Richard followed her tentative lead through the corridor to the family rooms with due caution, but the instant they were ensconced within her bedroom the initiative was all his. He moves as confidently through it as every other space he occupies: shutting the door firmly behind them and turning the latch, striding to the mantel, then the bedside tables, where he strikes a match from his pocket to light the candles in their hurricane globes before going to the windows to draw the ivory brocade curtains shut against the daylight, finally stopping at the settee, where he shrugs out of the shooting jacket--looking rather relieved to do so--and drapes it over the curved arm.
When his fingers apply themselves to the task of unbuttoning his waistcoat, it occurs to Mary that she ought to be getting undressed, too. She raises her hands to her collar but continues to watch Richard. Waistcoat and necktie removed and folded over the jacket, he seats himself on the cream coloured cushions of the settee. He crosses one leg over his knee to unbuckle the leather gaiter and unlace his shoe; as he repeats the process on the other leg, he looks up and meets her eyes in the mirror.
"I suppose it's appallingly middle class of me to undress myself?" he asks, pulling off his half-boot. He lowers his stocking foot to the floor and places the shoe neatly beside its mate in front of the settee. "Valets and ladies' maids make for rather awkward trysts, I find."
His gaze drifts downward from her eyes, settling where her hands linger at her as yet buttoned collar, and the teasing gleam fades.
"Second thoughts?" he asks. "I swear to you, Mary, my intentions are honourable, but..." A dimple reveals itself in response to the eyebrow she lifts at his word choice, but he continues in all earnestness. "...if you are at all uncomfortable--"
Mary slips her top button out of its hole to prove that she is not. Noting the pleased curve of Richard's lips and the darkening of desire in his eyes as he pushes to his feet, she makes quick work of the rest.
He pads softly in his socks to stand just behind her, and his fingertips brush her shoulders as he eases her blouse off. She seeks his gaze in the mirror, but his eyes turn downward, fixed on the swell of her breasts above her chemise. Mary draws her bare arms out of the sleeves and reaches to undo the buttons at the back of her skirt; Richard pushes it down over her hips, then he catches her elbows to steady her as she steps out of it. Only then does he look up at their reflections, though his eyes still do not meet hers, instead raking over her figure as she stands in corset, chemise, and drawers.
"I'm afraid I won't be able to manage that myself," Mary says as he traces the delicate embroidered rosebuds about her bust line, "but I promise I won't look down on you for being too very common if you stand in for Anna as well as your own valet." She assumes he's familiar with the operations of ladies' underpinnings.
"How very generous of you. But let's not rush things, shall we?"
Richard's fingers trail a tantalisingly slow path up from her corset, along the edge of her collarbones and up her neck to the hair coiled elaborately at her nape. He finds a pin and pulls it out, spilling a section of hair over her shoulder. He slides his fingers through the shiny dark strands, allowing them to curl around his hand as the other seeks another pin and releases more hair. How will she explain to Anna how her coif came entirely undone during a nap? When she notices the way Richard is looking at her--really at her, not just at her reflection as his hand on her shoulder turns her to face him--makes her cease to care about the consequences of this choice.
He pushes her flowing hair back over her shoulders and presses his rough palm to her cheek as she leans in for his kiss. At the urging of his other hand at the small of her back she presses her body to his, only to feel the soft brush of his shirt against her bare arms and chest. She pulls away; with a small sound of protest Richard dips his head to try and reclaim her lips, but Mary runs her hands up over his chest, holding him back.
"Once again you're not properly dressed for our activities."
"I trust you'll see to it that I am," he rasps, and she allows him to capture her mouth again, opening to the sweep of his tongue as she unfastens his buttons, working her way down from his collar.
When she reaches the top of his trousers she hesitates. Richard bites down gently on her lower lip, and, emboldened, she slips her hands inside his open shirt and traces the firm lines of his torso up to his muscular shoulders, bared by the sleeveless undershirt. His hands leave her to tug the straps of his braces down and pull his shirttails free of his trousers, though as he shrugs out of his shirt he never breaks the kiss. He circles her waist with his hands while hers slide along his well-defined biceps, which flex beneath her touch. Is he showing off? Or merely tensing in response to her? Either strikes Mary as endearing, and her lips start to curve into a smile against his until they part in an o of surprise as his fingers press into her ribcage and he spins her so abruptly away from him that she must catch the edge of her dressing table for balance.
"Remember you promised not to think this too common," he mutters, giving the ends of her corset laces a tug before he slips his long fingers beneath the criss-crossed ribbon to loosen them.
Her breath hitches. "Common isn't at all the word I had in mind."
Chuckling low, Richard leans over her shoulder to press his lips to the side of her neck. In the mirror Mary sees her skin flush above her chemise as the whites of her teeth appear to worry at her red lower lip to stifle her groan in response to him nipping at her collarbone. Wanting to feel the touch of his skin and warm kisses on every part of her body, she raises her hands to unfasten the corset's front hooks, but Richard covers them with his larger ones, stopping her from undressing further.
She looks up in question to meet the reflection of his eyes, so bright blue in the dim of the red-papered room. His answer is to lower her hands to her sides and work the clasps himself. He does so deftly--until the one beneath her breasts catches. His cheek twinges as he pulls at it; the sound of fabric giving way is followed by a tiny series of clinks as the eyelet strikes the mirror and then the top of the dressing table, skittering across the polished surface. Richard doesn't have the good grace to look even vaguely sheepish about rending the corset as he unclasps her garters, finally releasing her from the confining boning, and shucks it aside, or even to notice that he's done it at all.
Mary doesn't dwell on it, either, as he takes a step back from her to unbutton his trousers. She watches in the mirror as he pushes the tweed down his hips to reveal his long, lean legs, thighs still covered by the form-fitting cotton underpants, and then peels his undershirt up to bare the chiselled lines of his chest. Her eyes rake the muscles that ripple over his back as he bends, balancing on one foot and then the other to remove his socks.
A shiver from her own state of undress in the chilly room makes her take note of the fact that she is not warmed by a ladylike flush at her first glimpse of the nude male form apart from ones depicted in Renaissance artwork and sculpture. In fact she feels no embarrassment whatsoever even when she turns around to face him as he straightens up, her fingers grasping the silk at her hips to lift her chemise over her own head; Richard makes no move this time to help her undress, instead warming the skin of her belly and breasts with bold caresses as her slip joins the mounting pile of discarded clothing. Why should she, when she has never felt more confident of anything than their mutual desire?
His fingers fit into the valleys between her vertebrae and draw her against him, while hers slide over the notch between his collarbones as she tilts her face up toward his. Richard's breath is hot on her mouth as his lips glide with hers, teasing her by giving her nothing more than a taste of him and leaving after a moment to kiss her jaw and neck and down between her small breasts before finally kissing one. Mary gasps, as much at the feel of his rough tongue curling around the sensitive hardened peak of her nipple as at the sight of him doing so, his eyes turned up to her as he takes pleasure in--and gives pleasure to--her body. Strangely, the meeting of his gaze in the midst of such an act strikes Mary as the most intimate part of this experience yet, and a sting in her eyes makes her glance away.
The reflection in the mirror of her fingers raking through Richard's hair as he fondles her breasts does little to help her regain composure, though when she sweeps her gaze lower, the absurdity of being naked on top but still wearing her drawers and thick woollen stockings and sturdy walking boots does. Perhaps Richard has the same thought, because his mouth and hands leave her breasts and she finds him easing her down to sit on her dressing table bench before he kneels on the floor in front of her to unfasten her boots.
"Careful," Mary warns, watching his fingers fumble with the buttons. "Anna can repair an eyelet on a corset with few questions asked, but I'd have to send the boots to the mender."
"Will Anna believe you tore your corset undressing yourself for a Sabbath rest?"
Mary's cheeks redden as reality takes root in her mind that it will not be possible keep this tryst entirely secret. "Probably not."
Having divested her of her shoes, Richard places his hands on her thighs. "Are you certain wish to go on?"
Even now, he would put a stop all this if she asked him to--though rather less willingly than before, as evidenced by his fingers slipping beneath the edge of her stocking, rolling it down to the top to bare her thigh. He dips his head to press his lips to the inside of her knee. Mary's calf muscle twitches, the kiss tickling her tender skin.
"We've come this far," she says. "No turning back now. Anna will be discrete." She worries that the words and the voice in which she speaks them, tensed against her reflex to jerk her leg in response to his lips teasing the sensitive spot behind her knee, will not convince him of her certainty.
Apparently it is needless anxiety, as Richard pushes up the lacy hem of her drawers and kisses his way up her thigh. Sitting up on his knees, he hooks his fingers over the waistband of her underwear and tugs them downward. Mary's heart flutters as he removes this last modest barrier, however scant, and slips his hands beneath her bottom to lift her, naked, into his arms. He stands and carries her across the room to her four-poster bed, balancing her against the edge as he pauses to fling back the coverlet before depositing her atop the sheets.
Trembling, she tries to convince herself that she is merely cold, though she knows her nerves have at last caught up with her. She rolls onto her side, tucking one arm across her breasts and shifting one angled leg to hide her private parts as best as she can, not ashamed of being naked in front of Richard, but of turning coward now, at the crucial moment. She shuts her eyes against the sudden sting of tears, only for them to snap open again at the rustle of fabric as Richard steps out of his undershorts. To her dismay she cannot bring herself to let her gaze linger long on his distinctly male anatomy, but relief rushes through her as her eyes meet his and sees the crisscrossed smile lines at the corners as he regards her with affection--and understanding.
He slides into bed beside her, turning to face her on the pillows, lying near enough that their knees touch as he rests his hand in the dip of her waist, but with enough space between them that she doesn't feel overwhelmed to find herself in bed with a nude man. At least not any more than is necessary, and lessening by the moment as her heart gradually slows to keep time with the light stroking of his thumb along the sharp bottom edge of her ribcage.
"I hope my state of undress meets your elite standards better than my choice of country weekend attire," he says.
Mary gives a low hmm, appreciating his attempt at easing her anxiety for making a joke at his own expense, self-deprecation not being one of Richard's natural tendencies. She uncurls her arm from around herself and traces the lines of his chest down to his trim waist, enamoured with the sprinkling of soft hair, golden in the flickering light of the bedside candles, across his pale skin.
"You don't ride." She looks up at him. "How do you keep fit?"
"Boxing."
"Boxing! Against people?"
Richard shrugs faintly. "I've been known to go a few rounds with the boys in the warehouse, or with my chauffeur."
"Well. I suppose if you ever break your nose, at least I know you're attractive underneath your clothes." Mary presses her palm to Richard's skin, sliding it back up to his chest and enjoying the rumble beneath it as he chuckles low.
"That's not a very great risk, I assure you." He brushes her hair back from her face, his fingers combing downward through the length of the strands until they come to rest on her breast. "Most often my sparring partners are so terrified of bloodying the boss that the punching bag in my basement makes a better partner. In any case, it's excellent exercise, and helps reduce the tensions of work."
"So does not working."
"True. But it also reduces my income."
His thumb finds her nipple, skimming back and forth over the tip until it hardens to a peak. Mary shifts closer to him, and her knee presses between his so that their legs tangle together. Richard's hand leaves her breast, slipping beneath her arm to settle on her shoulder blade. She feels the rumble of his voice in her chest when he speaks again.
"I play tennis, too, if that's better suited to your breeding. Though I think you've crossed the class divide by saying you'll picture me naked." When she ducks her head, blushing, Richard takes her chin between his fingers and draws her face back up for a brief kiss. "I'll happily return the favour. In fact I must confess I already have."
He hooks his leg over her hip and rolls her onto her back. Mary's stomach hitches inward with a feeling of vulnerability as Richard seems to loom over her for a moment, his gaze raking her from above as he straddles her, a knee on either side of her thighs pinning her to the mattress, strong callused fingers curling around her shoulders as he supports himself on the tight muscled coils of his arms. Caging her.
At once she dismisses the thought. She lifts her head off the pillows and wraps her arms about his neck, meeting him with a kiss as he lowers himself onto his elbows to claim her mouth again. She is not trapped. This is her choice. She invited him here. She enjoys the masculine weight of his body on her.
However, just as she releases her tension and gives herself over to his kiss, her fingers tangling in the curling ends of his hair in back, Richard shifts. One knee moves from the outside of her thigh to nudge at her legs, coaxing them apart. As he settles his hips against the cradle of hers, she feels his hardness at her entrance, and the vagaries of the act of love come suddenly into sharply detailed focus.
"Try and relax," Richard murmurs, nuzzling her cheek.
Mary realises that her fingers slipped from his hair to his shoulders, her nails boring half-moons into his skin as her thighs clench tight around him. She tries to loosen her grip on him, but her limbs won't obey, gripped with the concern about her realisation of what is to occur. An uncomfortable, untidy business, Granny told her, and Mama said, Many girls meet their husbands in terror.
"Mary?"
Richard pushes up on one elbow as he removes his other hand from her shoulder and slips it between their hips. At the sound of her name she lifts her gaze to meet his, tilts her chin upward in defiance even as she lies in bed, her hair fanned out over the pillows; she is not like other girls. There is more to you than that.
"Do you trust me?" he asks, and the heel of his hand presses into her mound as the tip of his finger finds her most intimate place.
Mary holds her breath at his touch, watches the small reflection of the candlelight glimmer in his dark, dilated pupils, like a gem. Gems mothers in America bestow upon their daughters on their wedding nights, Granny's scorn crackled that day across the tea table; more like pearls of wisdom, Mary thinks now, remembering what Mama said on the walk home. The first time is uncomfortable, but it's also a new and exciting time of learning to trust and letting your husband know you in a way no other person on earth does. Richard isn't her husband--not yet--but Mary releases her breath, and a soft moan, and relaxes beneath him in her bed.
"Yes," she tells him. "I trust you."
At once Richard kisses her again, as if the words are a promise and he means to seal it. Not only with his lips, but with his body, his hand sliding out from between them to grasp her hip as he positions himself to enter her. So slowly, pushing in bit by bit in response to the small sounds of discomfort she can no more stop herself making than she could the ones of pleasure; the arm which holds him above her, coiled tight, quivers.
Mary places her palms flat against his shoulder blades and wraps her legs around the backs of his thighs, her feet hooked beneath them, and draws his weight down on her, his fullness into her. She gasps, and Richard remains very still.
"Are you all right?" His voice is scarcely a breath.
Mary smiles and traces a fallen lock of hair back from his forehead. "Never better."
He begins to move inside her, rocking his hips slowly down into hers and withdrawing again, his pace at first languorous but gradually accelerating--at Mary's encouragement. The pleasure coaxed by his fingers before was undeniable, and that is part of it now, but this is more than mere physical sensation.
We're not so very different, you and I, he told her the first night they met. Not only not very different, she's come to think in all the time they spent together since, but in fact, they are the very same.
She lifts her head to kiss his shoulder, and glimpses their reflection in the mirror.
And now they are one.
~*~
"That's not the hounds, is it?" Richard's voice rumbles into Mary's consciousness; she didn't realise she fell asleep, but her lashes tickle the edge of his chest as she opens her eyes, her head pillowed on his shoulder. "Admittedly my knowledge of the hunt is lacking, but oughtn't it last longer?"
"How long has it been?"
Mary raises her head and her left arm, which has been slung across his waist, and pokes her hand out from beneath the bedclothes to wipe the crust of sleep from her eyes, meeting Richard's gaze as he peers up at her from the pillows. Hazily, she thinks, though she can't be sure in the shifting candlelight of the darkened room, and if so whether it's a lingering trace of their lovemaking or because he, too, slept. When she starts to push herself upright on her right elbow, Richard's arm about her shoulders pulls her back down to him, reaching his other hand across to cup her cheek, threading his long fingers into her hair.
"Not long enough."
He draws her in for a kiss, his lips melting against hers and Mary’s opening at once to the almost lazy sweep of his tongue. She hmms in contentment, and Richard responds in kind with a low sound that vibrates against her fingertips as they settle in the hollow of his throat to feel his pulse. The steady beat of it, however, reminds her that before this they were discussing the time, and she leans back slightly in his arms, lifting her eyes to the mantel clock across the room. She can't make it out in the dim, but it doesn't really matter, the muted yaps and squeaks drifting up from the yard now unmistakably the noise of hounds returned from the hunt.
"Papa would come back early from a hunt the day I take a lover," Mary mutters, breaking the kiss, though Richard is not dissuaded, trailing his lips down her chin and jaw to her neck instead. She pushes against his chest. "You'd better go."
Richard huffs, but disengages himself from their tangle of limbs. "I suppose I had--though I doubt Lady Edith will be popping in for a sisterly chat about how the Honourable Mr Napier proposed marriage to her as they took a jump over a hedgerow?"
"I'm not sure which of those is the least likely," Mary says drily. "A jump, a proposal, or a sisterly chat."
Sitting up in bed, she drawing the sheets up to cover her nudity. Richard, she observes, does not share her concern about post-coital modesty and strides naked across the room to draw back the heavy draperies, filtered daylight illuminating him through the sheer muslin curtain beneath. She admires him from behind, swallowing when he turns to retrieve his underclothes from the floor.
"And you could always come back tonight," she says.
Stepping into his drawers, Richard's lips purse together in an expression which, by the time he's drawn his undershirt over his head, blossoms into a full smirk. He shambles to the bedside, resting his fingers on Mary's knee through the counterpane. "Lovemaking agrees with you, does it? I rather suspected it might."
"Are you remarking on my sexuality, or patting yourself on the back for your own prowess?"
For all Mary's initiative in asking him not once but twice in one day to visit her bed, she finds her confidence waning as Richard continues to dress while she remains in bed, covering herself with the sheet that is now crumpled and dampened by her fist as she clutches it higher above her breasts, hugging her knees to her chest.
"Might I trouble you to bring me my dressing gown?" she asks as she watches him tugs his braces up over his shoulders. "It's one thing for Anna to find out what I got up to this afternoon, but she needn't discover me entirely in the state in which you left me."
"Must you make me sound like some cad in a gothic novel who left you weeping in a torn dress?"
Richard pulls the wardrobe doors open, and despite Mary's instructions that her dressing gown is hanging at the end of the rack, the one she wore during their midnight meeting in the library, he does not take it down, instead flicking through the hangers to examine each article of her clothing.
"You wore this when you first caught my eye across a crowded ballroom," he remarks, fingering the beaded sleeve of her black gown. "No man wants to kiss a girl in black, you told me--but I did..." He moves on to the next gown, the one she wore to the ball celebrating Agnes' wedding. "I kissed you in green."
"And of course we mustn't forget my sunburst gown," Mary says referring to the one hung next to that, worn just last night, "which you so cleverly pointed out is a reflection of my self-centredness. Perhaps we ought to get you a matching tie."
Ignoring her, Richard holds up her ivory gown with the chiffon drape sleeves. "I've never seen you in this one. You should wear it tonight."
Mary quirks an eyebrow, uncertain what to make of a man taking such a keen interest in her wardrobe--though she suppose she oughtn't be surprised, given his attention to his own clothes.
"Wouldn't the scarlet gown be more appropriate?" she suggests. "Seeing as I'm a fallen woman now?"
Looking at her in amusement, he replies, "Hardly subtle, though. Whereas the white is so very demure. No one would suspect you're not."
"And yet you say demure as though you mean just the opposite."
"Mmm. I was just thinking about how the colour would set off your hair and eyes...and compliment your skin..."
"As my skin is such a distraction--" A flush prickles up from the sheet as his eyes seem to touch her as tangibly from across the room as his fingers did in bed--However will we sit across the dinner table from each other without giving ourselves away? "--I must insist you hand me my dressing gown, if you really are to have a prayer of escaping without being seen."
"I'm not a praying man, remember?" Richard says as he complies--hooking her ivory gown's hanger over the wardrobe door as if wearing his choice of gown is her end of a bargain they just struck.
Mary does silently offer one or two of her own, but the prayers of a fallen woman prove to avail very little. Richard turns the lock, only for the door to swing suddenly inward and a petite figure in a pink dress to barrel into him as he steps back, sloshing water from two pails onto his shoes.
"Oh Lord a-mercy!"
"Daisy!" Mary gasps as Richard wastes no time pulling the kitchen maid roughly into the room, and nudging the door shut with his foot. "What are you doing upstairs in the afternoon?"
The scullery maid's eyes dart about from Mary, clad only in her thin dressing gown, to the pile of clothes and undergarments on the carpet, to Richard in his shirtsleeves, collar open, tweed coat and waistcoat draped over his arm, widening with realisation as her pale, mousy face flushes red.
"Well?" Richard demands, and the girl cringes. "Answer your mistress."
"G-getting Lady Edith a bath, m-m'lady!"
"Then why aren't you in Lady Edith's room?" Richard snarls, giving her a little shake as his grip tightens on her arm.
"Oh Lord!" Daisy cries again, big eyes welling. "I'm so sorry, Lady Mary, I got the rooms mixed up...I can hardly see straight since they all came back early from the hunt, shouting for brandy and baths and someone to go for the doctor..."
"The doctor?" Richard echoes. "Was someone injured?"
"Not Edith, surely!"
Daisy shakes her head, screwing her eyes shut and squeezing out tears. "No, m'lady--the Turkish gentleman. He's dead!"
Read Chapter 16
Author: mrstater
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Characters & Pairings: Mary Crawley/Richard Carlisle, Daisy
Chapter Word Count: 4729
Chapter Summary: As Mary's sexual education is put to the ultimate test, the hunt culminates in unexpected consequences.
Author's Notes: Thanks very much to all my readers for so patiently awaiting this week's update, and most especially to ju_dou for listening to me complain all week about how I had named this chapter most appropriately, because it was going to kill me. Just a head's up, but this is the chapter that finally earns the fic its R/Mature rating, so if sexual content isn't your cup of tea, jump ahead to the scene break.
Previous Chapters |
15. The Kill
For the first time in her life, the reflection Mary studies in her full-length mirror is not her own.
Richard followed her tentative lead through the corridor to the family rooms with due caution, but the instant they were ensconced within her bedroom the initiative was all his. He moves as confidently through it as every other space he occupies: shutting the door firmly behind them and turning the latch, striding to the mantel, then the bedside tables, where he strikes a match from his pocket to light the candles in their hurricane globes before going to the windows to draw the ivory brocade curtains shut against the daylight, finally stopping at the settee, where he shrugs out of the shooting jacket--looking rather relieved to do so--and drapes it over the curved arm.
When his fingers apply themselves to the task of unbuttoning his waistcoat, it occurs to Mary that she ought to be getting undressed, too. She raises her hands to her collar but continues to watch Richard. Waistcoat and necktie removed and folded over the jacket, he seats himself on the cream coloured cushions of the settee. He crosses one leg over his knee to unbuckle the leather gaiter and unlace his shoe; as he repeats the process on the other leg, he looks up and meets her eyes in the mirror.
"I suppose it's appallingly middle class of me to undress myself?" he asks, pulling off his half-boot. He lowers his stocking foot to the floor and places the shoe neatly beside its mate in front of the settee. "Valets and ladies' maids make for rather awkward trysts, I find."
His gaze drifts downward from her eyes, settling where her hands linger at her as yet buttoned collar, and the teasing gleam fades.
"Second thoughts?" he asks. "I swear to you, Mary, my intentions are honourable, but..." A dimple reveals itself in response to the eyebrow she lifts at his word choice, but he continues in all earnestness. "...if you are at all uncomfortable--"
Mary slips her top button out of its hole to prove that she is not. Noting the pleased curve of Richard's lips and the darkening of desire in his eyes as he pushes to his feet, she makes quick work of the rest.
He pads softly in his socks to stand just behind her, and his fingertips brush her shoulders as he eases her blouse off. She seeks his gaze in the mirror, but his eyes turn downward, fixed on the swell of her breasts above her chemise. Mary draws her bare arms out of the sleeves and reaches to undo the buttons at the back of her skirt; Richard pushes it down over her hips, then he catches her elbows to steady her as she steps out of it. Only then does he look up at their reflections, though his eyes still do not meet hers, instead raking over her figure as she stands in corset, chemise, and drawers.
"I'm afraid I won't be able to manage that myself," Mary says as he traces the delicate embroidered rosebuds about her bust line, "but I promise I won't look down on you for being too very common if you stand in for Anna as well as your own valet." She assumes he's familiar with the operations of ladies' underpinnings.
"How very generous of you. But let's not rush things, shall we?"
Richard's fingers trail a tantalisingly slow path up from her corset, along the edge of her collarbones and up her neck to the hair coiled elaborately at her nape. He finds a pin and pulls it out, spilling a section of hair over her shoulder. He slides his fingers through the shiny dark strands, allowing them to curl around his hand as the other seeks another pin and releases more hair. How will she explain to Anna how her coif came entirely undone during a nap? When she notices the way Richard is looking at her--really at her, not just at her reflection as his hand on her shoulder turns her to face him--makes her cease to care about the consequences of this choice.
He pushes her flowing hair back over her shoulders and presses his rough palm to her cheek as she leans in for his kiss. At the urging of his other hand at the small of her back she presses her body to his, only to feel the soft brush of his shirt against her bare arms and chest. She pulls away; with a small sound of protest Richard dips his head to try and reclaim her lips, but Mary runs her hands up over his chest, holding him back.
"Once again you're not properly dressed for our activities."
"I trust you'll see to it that I am," he rasps, and she allows him to capture her mouth again, opening to the sweep of his tongue as she unfastens his buttons, working her way down from his collar.
When she reaches the top of his trousers she hesitates. Richard bites down gently on her lower lip, and, emboldened, she slips her hands inside his open shirt and traces the firm lines of his torso up to his muscular shoulders, bared by the sleeveless undershirt. His hands leave her to tug the straps of his braces down and pull his shirttails free of his trousers, though as he shrugs out of his shirt he never breaks the kiss. He circles her waist with his hands while hers slide along his well-defined biceps, which flex beneath her touch. Is he showing off? Or merely tensing in response to her? Either strikes Mary as endearing, and her lips start to curve into a smile against his until they part in an o of surprise as his fingers press into her ribcage and he spins her so abruptly away from him that she must catch the edge of her dressing table for balance.
"Remember you promised not to think this too common," he mutters, giving the ends of her corset laces a tug before he slips his long fingers beneath the criss-crossed ribbon to loosen them.
Her breath hitches. "Common isn't at all the word I had in mind."
Chuckling low, Richard leans over her shoulder to press his lips to the side of her neck. In the mirror Mary sees her skin flush above her chemise as the whites of her teeth appear to worry at her red lower lip to stifle her groan in response to him nipping at her collarbone. Wanting to feel the touch of his skin and warm kisses on every part of her body, she raises her hands to unfasten the corset's front hooks, but Richard covers them with his larger ones, stopping her from undressing further.
She looks up in question to meet the reflection of his eyes, so bright blue in the dim of the red-papered room. His answer is to lower her hands to her sides and work the clasps himself. He does so deftly--until the one beneath her breasts catches. His cheek twinges as he pulls at it; the sound of fabric giving way is followed by a tiny series of clinks as the eyelet strikes the mirror and then the top of the dressing table, skittering across the polished surface. Richard doesn't have the good grace to look even vaguely sheepish about rending the corset as he unclasps her garters, finally releasing her from the confining boning, and shucks it aside, or even to notice that he's done it at all.
Mary doesn't dwell on it, either, as he takes a step back from her to unbutton his trousers. She watches in the mirror as he pushes the tweed down his hips to reveal his long, lean legs, thighs still covered by the form-fitting cotton underpants, and then peels his undershirt up to bare the chiselled lines of his chest. Her eyes rake the muscles that ripple over his back as he bends, balancing on one foot and then the other to remove his socks.
A shiver from her own state of undress in the chilly room makes her take note of the fact that she is not warmed by a ladylike flush at her first glimpse of the nude male form apart from ones depicted in Renaissance artwork and sculpture. In fact she feels no embarrassment whatsoever even when she turns around to face him as he straightens up, her fingers grasping the silk at her hips to lift her chemise over her own head; Richard makes no move this time to help her undress, instead warming the skin of her belly and breasts with bold caresses as her slip joins the mounting pile of discarded clothing. Why should she, when she has never felt more confident of anything than their mutual desire?
His fingers fit into the valleys between her vertebrae and draw her against him, while hers slide over the notch between his collarbones as she tilts her face up toward his. Richard's breath is hot on her mouth as his lips glide with hers, teasing her by giving her nothing more than a taste of him and leaving after a moment to kiss her jaw and neck and down between her small breasts before finally kissing one. Mary gasps, as much at the feel of his rough tongue curling around the sensitive hardened peak of her nipple as at the sight of him doing so, his eyes turned up to her as he takes pleasure in--and gives pleasure to--her body. Strangely, the meeting of his gaze in the midst of such an act strikes Mary as the most intimate part of this experience yet, and a sting in her eyes makes her glance away.
The reflection in the mirror of her fingers raking through Richard's hair as he fondles her breasts does little to help her regain composure, though when she sweeps her gaze lower, the absurdity of being naked on top but still wearing her drawers and thick woollen stockings and sturdy walking boots does. Perhaps Richard has the same thought, because his mouth and hands leave her breasts and she finds him easing her down to sit on her dressing table bench before he kneels on the floor in front of her to unfasten her boots.
"Careful," Mary warns, watching his fingers fumble with the buttons. "Anna can repair an eyelet on a corset with few questions asked, but I'd have to send the boots to the mender."
"Will Anna believe you tore your corset undressing yourself for a Sabbath rest?"
Mary's cheeks redden as reality takes root in her mind that it will not be possible keep this tryst entirely secret. "Probably not."
Having divested her of her shoes, Richard places his hands on her thighs. "Are you certain wish to go on?"
Even now, he would put a stop all this if she asked him to--though rather less willingly than before, as evidenced by his fingers slipping beneath the edge of her stocking, rolling it down to the top to bare her thigh. He dips his head to press his lips to the inside of her knee. Mary's calf muscle twitches, the kiss tickling her tender skin.
"We've come this far," she says. "No turning back now. Anna will be discrete." She worries that the words and the voice in which she speaks them, tensed against her reflex to jerk her leg in response to his lips teasing the sensitive spot behind her knee, will not convince him of her certainty.
Apparently it is needless anxiety, as Richard pushes up the lacy hem of her drawers and kisses his way up her thigh. Sitting up on his knees, he hooks his fingers over the waistband of her underwear and tugs them downward. Mary's heart flutters as he removes this last modest barrier, however scant, and slips his hands beneath her bottom to lift her, naked, into his arms. He stands and carries her across the room to her four-poster bed, balancing her against the edge as he pauses to fling back the coverlet before depositing her atop the sheets.
Trembling, she tries to convince herself that she is merely cold, though she knows her nerves have at last caught up with her. She rolls onto her side, tucking one arm across her breasts and shifting one angled leg to hide her private parts as best as she can, not ashamed of being naked in front of Richard, but of turning coward now, at the crucial moment. She shuts her eyes against the sudden sting of tears, only for them to snap open again at the rustle of fabric as Richard steps out of his undershorts. To her dismay she cannot bring herself to let her gaze linger long on his distinctly male anatomy, but relief rushes through her as her eyes meet his and sees the crisscrossed smile lines at the corners as he regards her with affection--and understanding.
He slides into bed beside her, turning to face her on the pillows, lying near enough that their knees touch as he rests his hand in the dip of her waist, but with enough space between them that she doesn't feel overwhelmed to find herself in bed with a nude man. At least not any more than is necessary, and lessening by the moment as her heart gradually slows to keep time with the light stroking of his thumb along the sharp bottom edge of her ribcage.
"I hope my state of undress meets your elite standards better than my choice of country weekend attire," he says.
Mary gives a low hmm, appreciating his attempt at easing her anxiety for making a joke at his own expense, self-deprecation not being one of Richard's natural tendencies. She uncurls her arm from around herself and traces the lines of his chest down to his trim waist, enamoured with the sprinkling of soft hair, golden in the flickering light of the bedside candles, across his pale skin.
"You don't ride." She looks up at him. "How do you keep fit?"
"Boxing."
"Boxing! Against people?"
Richard shrugs faintly. "I've been known to go a few rounds with the boys in the warehouse, or with my chauffeur."
"Well. I suppose if you ever break your nose, at least I know you're attractive underneath your clothes." Mary presses her palm to Richard's skin, sliding it back up to his chest and enjoying the rumble beneath it as he chuckles low.
"That's not a very great risk, I assure you." He brushes her hair back from her face, his fingers combing downward through the length of the strands until they come to rest on her breast. "Most often my sparring partners are so terrified of bloodying the boss that the punching bag in my basement makes a better partner. In any case, it's excellent exercise, and helps reduce the tensions of work."
"So does not working."
"True. But it also reduces my income."
His thumb finds her nipple, skimming back and forth over the tip until it hardens to a peak. Mary shifts closer to him, and her knee presses between his so that their legs tangle together. Richard's hand leaves her breast, slipping beneath her arm to settle on her shoulder blade. She feels the rumble of his voice in her chest when he speaks again.
"I play tennis, too, if that's better suited to your breeding. Though I think you've crossed the class divide by saying you'll picture me naked." When she ducks her head, blushing, Richard takes her chin between his fingers and draws her face back up for a brief kiss. "I'll happily return the favour. In fact I must confess I already have."
He hooks his leg over her hip and rolls her onto her back. Mary's stomach hitches inward with a feeling of vulnerability as Richard seems to loom over her for a moment, his gaze raking her from above as he straddles her, a knee on either side of her thighs pinning her to the mattress, strong callused fingers curling around her shoulders as he supports himself on the tight muscled coils of his arms. Caging her.
At once she dismisses the thought. She lifts her head off the pillows and wraps her arms about his neck, meeting him with a kiss as he lowers himself onto his elbows to claim her mouth again. She is not trapped. This is her choice. She invited him here. She enjoys the masculine weight of his body on her.
However, just as she releases her tension and gives herself over to his kiss, her fingers tangling in the curling ends of his hair in back, Richard shifts. One knee moves from the outside of her thigh to nudge at her legs, coaxing them apart. As he settles his hips against the cradle of hers, she feels his hardness at her entrance, and the vagaries of the act of love come suddenly into sharply detailed focus.
"Try and relax," Richard murmurs, nuzzling her cheek.
Mary realises that her fingers slipped from his hair to his shoulders, her nails boring half-moons into his skin as her thighs clench tight around him. She tries to loosen her grip on him, but her limbs won't obey, gripped with the concern about her realisation of what is to occur. An uncomfortable, untidy business, Granny told her, and Mama said, Many girls meet their husbands in terror.
"Mary?"
Richard pushes up on one elbow as he removes his other hand from her shoulder and slips it between their hips. At the sound of her name she lifts her gaze to meet his, tilts her chin upward in defiance even as she lies in bed, her hair fanned out over the pillows; she is not like other girls. There is more to you than that.
"Do you trust me?" he asks, and the heel of his hand presses into her mound as the tip of his finger finds her most intimate place.
Mary holds her breath at his touch, watches the small reflection of the candlelight glimmer in his dark, dilated pupils, like a gem. Gems mothers in America bestow upon their daughters on their wedding nights, Granny's scorn crackled that day across the tea table; more like pearls of wisdom, Mary thinks now, remembering what Mama said on the walk home. The first time is uncomfortable, but it's also a new and exciting time of learning to trust and letting your husband know you in a way no other person on earth does. Richard isn't her husband--not yet--but Mary releases her breath, and a soft moan, and relaxes beneath him in her bed.
"Yes," she tells him. "I trust you."
At once Richard kisses her again, as if the words are a promise and he means to seal it. Not only with his lips, but with his body, his hand sliding out from between them to grasp her hip as he positions himself to enter her. So slowly, pushing in bit by bit in response to the small sounds of discomfort she can no more stop herself making than she could the ones of pleasure; the arm which holds him above her, coiled tight, quivers.
Mary places her palms flat against his shoulder blades and wraps her legs around the backs of his thighs, her feet hooked beneath them, and draws his weight down on her, his fullness into her. She gasps, and Richard remains very still.
"Are you all right?" His voice is scarcely a breath.
Mary smiles and traces a fallen lock of hair back from his forehead. "Never better."
He begins to move inside her, rocking his hips slowly down into hers and withdrawing again, his pace at first languorous but gradually accelerating--at Mary's encouragement. The pleasure coaxed by his fingers before was undeniable, and that is part of it now, but this is more than mere physical sensation.
We're not so very different, you and I, he told her the first night they met. Not only not very different, she's come to think in all the time they spent together since, but in fact, they are the very same.
She lifts her head to kiss his shoulder, and glimpses their reflection in the mirror.
And now they are one.
~*~
"That's not the hounds, is it?" Richard's voice rumbles into Mary's consciousness; she didn't realise she fell asleep, but her lashes tickle the edge of his chest as she opens her eyes, her head pillowed on his shoulder. "Admittedly my knowledge of the hunt is lacking, but oughtn't it last longer?"
"How long has it been?"
Mary raises her head and her left arm, which has been slung across his waist, and pokes her hand out from beneath the bedclothes to wipe the crust of sleep from her eyes, meeting Richard's gaze as he peers up at her from the pillows. Hazily, she thinks, though she can't be sure in the shifting candlelight of the darkened room, and if so whether it's a lingering trace of their lovemaking or because he, too, slept. When she starts to push herself upright on her right elbow, Richard's arm about her shoulders pulls her back down to him, reaching his other hand across to cup her cheek, threading his long fingers into her hair.
"Not long enough."
He draws her in for a kiss, his lips melting against hers and Mary’s opening at once to the almost lazy sweep of his tongue. She hmms in contentment, and Richard responds in kind with a low sound that vibrates against her fingertips as they settle in the hollow of his throat to feel his pulse. The steady beat of it, however, reminds her that before this they were discussing the time, and she leans back slightly in his arms, lifting her eyes to the mantel clock across the room. She can't make it out in the dim, but it doesn't really matter, the muted yaps and squeaks drifting up from the yard now unmistakably the noise of hounds returned from the hunt.
"Papa would come back early from a hunt the day I take a lover," Mary mutters, breaking the kiss, though Richard is not dissuaded, trailing his lips down her chin and jaw to her neck instead. She pushes against his chest. "You'd better go."
Richard huffs, but disengages himself from their tangle of limbs. "I suppose I had--though I doubt Lady Edith will be popping in for a sisterly chat about how the Honourable Mr Napier proposed marriage to her as they took a jump over a hedgerow?"
"I'm not sure which of those is the least likely," Mary says drily. "A jump, a proposal, or a sisterly chat."
Sitting up in bed, she drawing the sheets up to cover her nudity. Richard, she observes, does not share her concern about post-coital modesty and strides naked across the room to draw back the heavy draperies, filtered daylight illuminating him through the sheer muslin curtain beneath. She admires him from behind, swallowing when he turns to retrieve his underclothes from the floor.
"And you could always come back tonight," she says.
Stepping into his drawers, Richard's lips purse together in an expression which, by the time he's drawn his undershirt over his head, blossoms into a full smirk. He shambles to the bedside, resting his fingers on Mary's knee through the counterpane. "Lovemaking agrees with you, does it? I rather suspected it might."
"Are you remarking on my sexuality, or patting yourself on the back for your own prowess?"
For all Mary's initiative in asking him not once but twice in one day to visit her bed, she finds her confidence waning as Richard continues to dress while she remains in bed, covering herself with the sheet that is now crumpled and dampened by her fist as she clutches it higher above her breasts, hugging her knees to her chest.
"Might I trouble you to bring me my dressing gown?" she asks as she watches him tugs his braces up over his shoulders. "It's one thing for Anna to find out what I got up to this afternoon, but she needn't discover me entirely in the state in which you left me."
"Must you make me sound like some cad in a gothic novel who left you weeping in a torn dress?"
Richard pulls the wardrobe doors open, and despite Mary's instructions that her dressing gown is hanging at the end of the rack, the one she wore during their midnight meeting in the library, he does not take it down, instead flicking through the hangers to examine each article of her clothing.
"You wore this when you first caught my eye across a crowded ballroom," he remarks, fingering the beaded sleeve of her black gown. "No man wants to kiss a girl in black, you told me--but I did..." He moves on to the next gown, the one she wore to the ball celebrating Agnes' wedding. "I kissed you in green."
"And of course we mustn't forget my sunburst gown," Mary says referring to the one hung next to that, worn just last night, "which you so cleverly pointed out is a reflection of my self-centredness. Perhaps we ought to get you a matching tie."
Ignoring her, Richard holds up her ivory gown with the chiffon drape sleeves. "I've never seen you in this one. You should wear it tonight."
Mary quirks an eyebrow, uncertain what to make of a man taking such a keen interest in her wardrobe--though she suppose she oughtn't be surprised, given his attention to his own clothes.
"Wouldn't the scarlet gown be more appropriate?" she suggests. "Seeing as I'm a fallen woman now?"
Looking at her in amusement, he replies, "Hardly subtle, though. Whereas the white is so very demure. No one would suspect you're not."
"And yet you say demure as though you mean just the opposite."
"Mmm. I was just thinking about how the colour would set off your hair and eyes...and compliment your skin..."
"As my skin is such a distraction--" A flush prickles up from the sheet as his eyes seem to touch her as tangibly from across the room as his fingers did in bed--However will we sit across the dinner table from each other without giving ourselves away? "--I must insist you hand me my dressing gown, if you really are to have a prayer of escaping without being seen."
"I'm not a praying man, remember?" Richard says as he complies--hooking her ivory gown's hanger over the wardrobe door as if wearing his choice of gown is her end of a bargain they just struck.
Mary does silently offer one or two of her own, but the prayers of a fallen woman prove to avail very little. Richard turns the lock, only for the door to swing suddenly inward and a petite figure in a pink dress to barrel into him as he steps back, sloshing water from two pails onto his shoes.
"Oh Lord a-mercy!"
"Daisy!" Mary gasps as Richard wastes no time pulling the kitchen maid roughly into the room, and nudging the door shut with his foot. "What are you doing upstairs in the afternoon?"
The scullery maid's eyes dart about from Mary, clad only in her thin dressing gown, to the pile of clothes and undergarments on the carpet, to Richard in his shirtsleeves, collar open, tweed coat and waistcoat draped over his arm, widening with realisation as her pale, mousy face flushes red.
"Well?" Richard demands, and the girl cringes. "Answer your mistress."
"G-getting Lady Edith a bath, m-m'lady!"
"Then why aren't you in Lady Edith's room?" Richard snarls, giving her a little shake as his grip tightens on her arm.
"Oh Lord!" Daisy cries again, big eyes welling. "I'm so sorry, Lady Mary, I got the rooms mixed up...I can hardly see straight since they all came back early from the hunt, shouting for brandy and baths and someone to go for the doctor..."
"The doctor?" Richard echoes. "Was someone injured?"
"Not Edith, surely!"
Daisy shakes her head, screwing her eyes shut and squeezing out tears. "No, m'lady--the Turkish gentleman. He's dead!"
Read Chapter 16