Christmas Delights Read online

  As soon as her breaths slowed, she pushed against him, and he realized he had his full weight on her. He shifted to the cushions, attempting to stay inside her as they moved into a side-to-side position. She, however, pulled back, disengaging.

  “Don’t you want to be held?” he asked.

  “I must go. What if Penelope comes back?”

  He could tell she was still out of breath. “The maid will stay with her until you arrive. We can do this more than once, you know. Just relax with me for a while and then I will be ready.”

  She moved back so quickly that she lost her position on the sofa. He grabbed for her as her bottom hit the carpet.

  “Ooof!” Her hands went to her knees and she pushed them together. The slim, firm thighs had him already longing for another go.

  “I’m so sorry,” he apologized. “We should have gone to the bed.” Wary of his own balance since his clothing was still around his knees, he crouched next to her and put his arms around her. “Come, let’s test the mattress.”

  She shook her head. “I need to go, Lewis, truly.”

  “I’ll get you a towel,” he said, feeling a hundred kinds of fool. Somehow he had failed her. Not enough experience, and none with a lady. Had it been wrong to impose la petite mort on her? Perhaps she had really wanted him to stop.

  Turning away, he removed the rubber, pulled up his small clothes and trousers, then went to get a basin and towel. She had her dress over her head before he arrived, but she took what he offered and went behind a screen in the corner. He gathered the rest of his clothes and seated himself on a chair, his senses still swimming from his release and the heavy, sealike scent of sex in the small room. Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to drift until he heard the sound of the screen moving back.

  Victoria put her hand to her chest to still her racing heart. Her first orgasm, followed by an embarrassing fall to the floor, her first lover’s obvious fear that he hadn’t satisfied her, all had her senses on overload. But over and above all that, she was frantic to leave before he saw her again and realized she had blood on the fabric of her combinations, which was, in truth, still bleeding.

  Now that she was a widow, no value would have been placed on her virginity. No one had cared about virgin widows since King Henry VIII’s wife, Katherine of Aragon, had so ardently pleaded that she hadn’t slept with her first husband to stave off losing her position as Queen of England. But nonetheless, Victoria didn’t want Lewis to know. To realize she hadn’t known how to find completion, to keep him from making all that extra effort when she was certain, as she’d been told by friends, that all a man wanted after exerting himself was to sleep.

  She had done it all wrong. Pushing back the screen, she peered out, hoping that Lewis had indeed gone to sleep. She could see his eyes were closed, proving the truth of what her friends had said about men after lovemaking. She tiptoed out, but her hip caught the edge of the screen. It squeaked, and he opened his eyes.

  “Drat,” she muttered. Even with reducing, her hips were generously built.

  Lewis leapt to his feet, his muscled chest still gleaming with sweat. “What?”

  “I am so sorry to wake you. I bumped the screen.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping. I was waiting to escort you . . . if you really feel you must go, of course.”

  Victoria sidled to the door, careful to keep the front of her body facing him for fear that the blood would soak to her dress. Her fault for not wearing a petticoat. “No need,” she assured him. “I am just down the hall.”

  “I want to be a gentleman,” he said.

  “I know you are a gentleman,” she said, walking sideways, as if she were a crab. “But I shall be fine. Err, thank you for an illuminating experience.”

  His expression lost much of its buoyancy. “I didn’t please you, did I? I am so sorry. I’m not used to your sort.”

  Victoria felt her expression freeze into place. “I can explain,” she began. Dear God in Heaven, should she have told him she was a virgin? She’d been afraid he would not take her if she had.

  “Explain? No, dear lady, the fault is all mine. I do not associate with Society. Indeed, I’m just here as a mechanic for the earl, truly. I never should have reached so high. You are too special.”

  “A mere mechanic? You aren’t anything of the kind,” Victoria protested, almost not hearing his compliment. “Of course you are a guest, not just a mechanic. The countess spoke of you from the start. You have been at all of the holiday celebrations. You are simply a gentleman who is good with his hands.”

  She realized her cheeks were flushed as his chin tilted up to enable him to make a closer examination of her. “I didn’t mean . . . well, I did mean, of course. I shall simply say good night.”

  Keeping her skirts tucked behind her, she reached for the door and undid the lock before slipping out, back first. The last thing she saw was his bemused expression. But she heard his words again, like a caress. You are special.

  When she reached the inside of her room, she sagged against the door. She wanted to ring for a maid and order a bath, but no one must know what she’d done. Smiling, she closed her eyes and tucked her arms around herself. She, Victoria, was no longer a virgin. She had finally become a woman, and as awkward as the aftermath had been, the sensations he’d evoked in her had been heaven. The question was, would Lewis Noble ever be willing to touch her again?

  In almost a parody of her life, Victoria sat with her cousin the next day in the morning parlor. The ladies of the house party were all seated around the room, and Victoria wondered if any of them thought she appeared different. She felt altered, as if her walk was that of a sexually experienced woman. The slight soreness between her legs contributed to this, of course, but it didn’t stop her from thinking about what had happened every couple of minutes, and wondering when she would next experience lovemaking again.

  Lewis had been so humble; endearing, really. She wished she had known how to please him, but that had been the point, after all: to gain experience. Her father would continue to insist she marry again soon, and her husband would expect at least a nominally experienced woman. Last night had taught her that some men, at least, wanted a woman to find pleasure in the act. She found she quite agreed with that notion. Her only quibble was that she needed to learn how to do it without subjecting a tired male to additional exuberance that he was ill prepared to offer.

  “What are you thinking about, Lady Allen-Hill? You look so pensive,” the countess said.

  Victoria smiled blankly. “I was recalling, err—”

  “Our fairy tale?” Rose asked eagerly from her position on one end of the sofa. She had a half-finished sock in her lap but had not been working on it.

  “My fairy tale,” Penelope corrected with a lift of her sharp chin. She had fought with Victoria that morning over what dress she would wear and had a pinched look to her features.

  “Penelope,” Victoria admonished. “No one owns a story. And besides, Rose is right. I did have something to report. It seems our fairy tale is coming true yet again.”

  “Is it really?” Penelope asked with wide eyes.

  “Yes. First we had the masquerade, just like the twelfth challenge in the story, and then, last night, I had the eleventh one, in real life.”

  Rose’s knitting needles clattered to the floor. She grabbed for the sock, trying to keep the stitches intact. “Do tell, Victoria.”

  “It was Lord Judah. I went into the Hall of Mirrors and there he was. The mirrors reflected the fireplace and his tiger eyes. Stunning really, to see Queen Avice’s prediction come true right here in modern times. At least in the sense of tigers, if not precisely eleven of them roasting.” Victoria smiled in satisfaction.

  “But only you saw it,” Penelope whined.

  “Perhaps Lord Judah will repeat the illusion for you, if you ask him nicely,” Rose said.

  “He has already departed for home,” the countess said. “I am sorry to disappoint you.”

  P
enelope rubbed her nose. Victoria handed her a handkerchief.

  “Countess, you said I could do puzzles?” the child asked. “May I take Cousin Victoria with me, or does she need to stay with you?”

  “Go ahead, dear,” said their hostess.

  Rose leapt to her feet. “I shall join you. I adore puzzles.”

  Victoria nodded to the countess and stood, happy to have something to busy her hands and mind. As it was, the ladies would continue to ask questions about her thoughts, and they were far too indecent to share. The three of them walked to the sitting room, where several puzzles were set out. In fact, she noted ten different puzzles on the tables. Each puzzle was of a different English or Scottish castle.

  “Here we are in our fairy tale again,” Victoria said.

  “What do you mean?” asked Rose.

  “Remember? Ten castles uncastled.” Victoria made a grand gesture across the tables.

  Rose looked around, her lips parting in a grin. “My goodness, you’re right!”

  Penelope danced around the tables, twirling her velvet skirt. “I wonder what will happen at our end of the fairy tale.”

  “In your cousin’s story, one hopes the princess will save her prince and marry him.”

  Penelope screwed up her nose. “That’s no fun. I do not want a husband.”

  Rose tilted her head, her expression becoming wistful. “You are too young. You will change your mind in a decade or so.”

  “I will not,” Penelope said, stomping her foot. “What is next, Victoria? If it is only boring old husbands we are seeking, then I would like to get through the story as quickly as possible.”

  Victoria thought. “Ribbons ripping comes next, I believe. We shall have to wait and see how that comes about.”

  They seated themselves at the table with what appeared to be a puzzle depicting Pevensey-Sur-Mer Fort and began to sort pieces.

  “Is this the moat or the sky?” Rose asked, holding up a piece about half an hour later.

  The door opened before Victoria could speak, and Lady Barbara stepped in, looking pensive. She held letter paper in one hand and a handkerchief in the other. Her ash brown topknot had been knocked askew, as if she’d been worrying at her pins as she read.

  Victoria intuited that her friend wanted to converse. Since Penelope seemed to be calming under Rose’s influence, she stood and gestured to the fireplace. Lady Barbara shook her head slightly and turned back to the door. Victoria followed her into the hall, closing the door behind them.

  “What is wrong?” she asked, observing that the letter paper wasn’t lined with black, a sign the letter might be a death announcement.

  Lady Barbara took her hand and pulled her into the library on the other side of the corridor. A more masculine room, its wood paneling darkened the space. Without a fire, the room held little warmth either in temperature or atmosphere.

  Victoria glanced at the letter again. “Bad news?”

  “News I could not share with the little one present or, indeed, a near stranger.”

  “I am not entirely clear why Rose is here still,” Victoria ventured.

  “My mother invited her for purposes of her own,” Lady Barbara said.

  “Such as?”

  Her friend pressed her already rather thin lips together. “I believe she intends to thwart some plan of Aunt Florence’s by the offices of Miss Redcake.”

  “How intriguing.” Victoria chuckled.

  “You sound so naughty when you laugh,” Lady Barbara said. “It always seems as if you have the most delicious intrigue in mind. One of the reasons I like you so.”

  Victoria’s thoughts rambled toward her stolen moments with Lewis Noble.

  “Ah, now my friend has become pensive,” Lady Barbara observed. “If you will not share your secrets, I can at least share mine.” She thrust her letter at Victoria, who took it and moved to a chair directly under a gas sconce so that she could read it in the dim room.

  Lady Barbara went to the window and pulled back the heavy green curtains. Outside, tiny snowflakes mixed with rain dampened the windowpane. She breathed against the glass and began to draw in the white mist with her finger.

  Victoria forced her attention to the letter. “Where did this come from?”

  “A cousin of mine who lives up north. One of those women who never leaves her home yet all the news comes to her as if by some strange alchemy.”

  She perused the light, crabbed handwriting, wishing her family’s secrets had not reached the hand of a gossip. How was it that a complete stranger, a relative of her late husband, knew more about her family than she did?

  “Is this correct, do you think?”

  “It does explain why Penelope isn’t allowed to reside with her mother.”

  “I don’t believe it. Aunt Clarissa tends to hysteria, but she’s not a lunatic. She was always such fun when I was a child. And Penelope adores her. She’s said nothing about any trouble.”

  “Was she terribly religious?”

  “No more so than anyone else, at least not until recently. It is not as if she read sermons. I believe she was involved in Methodist Temperance, but that is not a bad cause.”

  “No,” Lady Barbara agreed. “But it does seem as if your uncle has cast her off.”

  “And that she is somewhere near the Fort,” Victoria said. “I wonder if Father has been to see her. I cannot understand why he feels he must keep me so in the dark. It is one thing to keep his business matters away from me, but this is family, and female family at that.”

  “Your color is quite high today,” Lady Barbara observed. “Is this all that is troubling you? The issue of Penelope?”

  “No. Please, tell me everything you know about Lewis Noble,” Victoria said, feeling her cheeks warm.

  CHAPTER 8

  Lady Barbara told Victoria everything she knew about Lewis Noble, but nothing new came to light. The man himself had disappeared into the earl’s workrooms in the stable block, and neither of them appeared at dinner. Victoria considered going to his room late that evening, but Penelope had been very clingy, and her compassion for the girl’s difficult situation, coupled with a vague fear that she might be coming down with a cold, made her stay in. No one knocked either.

  The next day, she was back in the parlor with the women, sorting embroidery silks. This reminded her of ribbons ripping, the ninth task of Princess Everilda, and she was happy to continue spinning her tale when Penelope, her hands full of red, orange, and yellow silks, begged her for more.

  “As you may recall,” Victoria began, “Everilda was in her solarium, having experienced her first Christmas miracle at the hands of Queen Avice. Well, time is short for both the princess and us, so it should be no surprise to you that Everilda fell into a kind of daze.”

  She paused dramatically. “And then a parade of tigers entered.”

  Lady Barbara’s hands went still on their bed of blue and purple silks. “Real tigers?”

  “No, she was dreaming,” Victoria assured them. “They streamed toward her. First, nothing but bright light, then breaking into shades of tawny reds and blacks, then finally the vague shape of feline faces, and then the eyes. Those eyes blazed into Everilda’s own gaze, all eleven pairs. Yes, eleven tigers, all came to stand around her in a circle, faintly glowing.

  “The princess woke with a start and looked at the cushion where she had been perched. It had been a simple blue wool before, but now the fabric was dotted with eyes. She traced them with her fingers, counting twenty-two. ‘Be gone,’ she commanded, and the cushion burst into flames. She jumped back with a shriek and reached for a ewer of water, which she threw into the flames.

  “An old retainer woke from her slumber and tottered forward, peering through the smoke. A shape seemed to coalesce behind the wall of gray froth. Everilda reached in and drew out a shiny, supple black shift. But as it came through the smoke, the fabric disintegrated, the strands unraveling until her hands held nothing but black threads that became soot, then nothing
at all. The old woman fell to her knees and began to implore the Mother of God for intercession on the princess’s behalf. But other than irritation at the loss of her favorite cushion, Everilda was unmoved.”

  “It’s like a warning,” Lady Rowena said with a nod of satisfaction at Victoria’s including of a religious element. “If the princess does not have that shift by the end of the quests, she will never see her prince again in this life.”

  Victoria held her hands tightly in her lap, refusing to give in to scratching the itch in her left eyebrow. She had no idea how to resolve this fairy tale, any more than she had of how to deal with the absent Lewis. Surely an ardent lover would make an appearance, send a note, something. What magic must she work to win him into her bed for the remainder of this house party?

  “The sleet appears to have stopped,” she said. “I believe I shall take some air while I can.”

  “Do you want company?” Lady Barbara asked absently, separating a lavender strand from a royal purple one.

  “No,” she said quickly, for she planned to visit the submarine crew.

  She went up to her room and found a sturdy fur-trimmed coat and warm bonnet, then changed into boots. A few minutes later, she was ready to visit the stables.

  Lewis turned away from the blacksmith, who was at his forge in the stable yard, making a replacement for a panel that had been damaged, and went back into the warmth of the stables. Though horses had not been in this space for close to a year, it still smelled strongly of livestock, overlaid by the acrid scent of electrical batteries. The earl had asked him to gather the order of dry cell batteries and get them installed so that trials could begin soon.