Page 61 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)

Moria trailed a languid, loving finger down the side of Devyn’s face, the map of his pain written in scar tissue. Devyn untied the fastings of her dress.

“I wanted to ask you earlier, but…as you likely haven’t forgotten, it was madness.”

“Ask your question,” she said, kissing the scar that ended at his jaw.

He ran a hand over the dress before laying it gently atop her trunk in the lord’s quarters of Wintersea Manor.

Their new home. They’d dismissed the servants for a few days of solitude and enjoyed their first interrupted days and nights together, making plans for the title Devyn had begrudgingly admitted he relished taking responsibility for now that he’d seen her, the woman he loved, in his ancestral home, as the lady of the manor he should have given her long before now.

“Were these willow fronds? On your dress? That you wore to marry the duke?”

Moria wrapped her arms about his bare torso. “I tried. I couldn’t replace them. I couldn’t wear a different dress.”

“Oh, Moria,” he said, dropping the dress and holding her against him, kissing her bare shoulder. “You really are a mess.”

“And you! You stormed a church.”

“I did,” he grimaced.

“You stopped my wedding,” she poked him in the chest.

“I told you. You are it for me, you very mean girl. I’d do it again.”

“And I’d choose you in front of all of London again. I’m sorry I forced your hand.”

He pulled her to sit atop his lap at the edge of his bed. “How sorry?”

One hand at his chest, she pushed him backward on their bed. “I promised I’d get on my knees for you.”

* * *

Some time later, when they’d both sated their lust and expended all their energy christening what was to be the home they’d share and rebuild together, she lay on his chest in the portrait gallery.

“I wrote to you,” she said, sharing his air, supplying it. He pulled the tapestry covering them up higher to shield them from a draft.

“I know, I wrote you back,” he said. One hand squeezed her hip and bringing her closer.

“No,” she said, eyes catching on his mouth. It was a testament to what a good mouth it was that with a face like that, it still caught your eyes. “I mean, when you were…gone…I still wrote you letters.”

Devyn made a noise in the back of his throat. She’d drunk down all of his sounds like the sweetest wine, but this was the painful kind. Made her feel a little wobbly and not in a good way.

“You left them for me, but I didn’t have time to read them. I was too busy stopping your wedding. What did you say? ‘That was very unchivalrous of you to go and die when you explicitly told me that you wouldn’t?’”

Moria bit her lip to hold back a smile. He could always pull those out of her.

“No. Sometimes I felt a little angry, but mostly just…pain. Like…there was some shard of glass in my shoe and every step made me bleed but I couldn’t not walk, and I couldn’t take it out because to never think of you at all like you’d never been, it hurt worse.” She sniffed and looked away.

Devyn pulled her close with both hands on her hips and swept her into a kiss. She’d imagined him kissing her like that, while she’d written to him and missed him and conjured the feeling of him on her body. Her imaginings hadn’t been near potent enough.

“I love you,” he whispered into the space between them, trailing her hair out of her face and behind her ears. “Can I read your letters, my lady?”

“I think I’ll save them for special occasions.”

“This isn't a special occasion enough for you? We are married, on our honeymoon, and you are a countess now.”

Moria grimaced. “I was supposed to be a duchess though, but now I’ll have to defer to my sisters.”

Devyn reversed their position. In a single motion, he was on top of her. She let out a sound that was part laugh, part huff of breathy surprise.

“You minx,” he said, holding her arms beside her head and grinding his manhood against her. “And in front of all my ancestors too,” she gave him a hearty laugh, twining his fingers tighter with hers, “I’m going to enjoy making you take that back.”

She tapped her chin with a finger, “Mmm, probably not as much as I will.”

Devyn’s fingers found her entrance, one of his long digits slipped inside.

Moria bit down on a groan. His lips caressed her neck, hers trailed patterns down his back.

Another finger slipped inside her, Moria felt the circular seal of his signet ring against her.

She felt her walls clench around his patient strokes.

“I was right,” she ground out, grasping him as he worked her. “Having a title looks good on you.”

He curled his ringed finger inside her again, again, taking her bottom lip between his teeth.

“Let go, my lady.”

“I’ll go anywhere you go,” she breathlessly replied, arching her back as he made her see stars above their joined bodies on the painted ceiling. “My lord.”

“Together,” he said, holding her against his chest and placing a kiss at her temple, “Countess.”

Moria could barely hold her thoughts together as she panted out, “I have one more place in mind before we sail for Italy.”

* * *

“I can’t believe you wanted to come to one of my salons before setting off on your honeymoon,” Noelle said, greeting Moria with a kiss on each cheek. Moria stood back and gave her sister’s demurely tailored dark blue dress with gold detailing an appreciative nod.

“The only thing worse than coming back here, would be not coming back,” Moria said with a tight smile.

Her husband’s warm, gentle, dwarfing hand was at her back.

The contact of his signet ring brushing against her back, curving to rest at her hip, braced Moria with courage for what she was about to do.

He released her as she walked on to the orchestra platform of Pomfrey House’s ballroom she’d commandeered as a stage, leaning back on his gold tipped cane.

The literary salon Viscountess Ludlowe hosted usually took up the massive billiards room at Pomfrey House in London; they’d had to move this evening’s event to the ballroom to accommodate the number of guests.

A couple hundred chairs took up the room, filling up with bodies dressed in Bond Street’s finery looking for their name on a chair, and some standing along the back wall.

An evening with London’s former diamond, currently married to her besotted, newly minted and mysterious Earl, had drawn out a crowd ready to witness whatever new spectacle the former society favorite had in mind to entertain them with.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you will please take your seats,” Viscount Ludlowe announced. The audience followed, wordlessly. Turning to his sister-in-law and guest, he asked, “Lady Moria, would you like to tell us what your entertainment for tonight’s salon entails?”

Moria stood from her chair on the little stage.

“Many years ago, there were quite a lot of you who, collectively, made one young lady feel inferior. Like she had something to prove,” she paced, her husband nodding to her to keep going, “I know what you’re thinking, “just one young lady?” Turns out, she wasn’t the only one.

She made friends with two other young ladies, and together they saw a lot of things, heard a lot of things, said a lot of things, in order to feel superior. ”

The Countess of Clairville placed her hands behind the back of her mauve gown, walking along the stage.

“One day they decided to write them down, as insurance. Any piece of information was like pawns in a chess game to these ladies. Rarely, if ever, did they use it, and only when out of options. Then someone they trusted used that book in an effort to bring one particular lady down, to take from her what wasn’t meant for either of them in the first place.

What was in the book was never meant for anyone to see, and so, I’ve called you all here, to say that I have never been sorrier, and so that you can have it back. ”

There were a lot of questions and general comments from the gallery. Lady Moria cleared her voice, and the general melee came to a halt.

“You see, I’m trying this new thing where I don’t talk about people behind their backs. I’m giving you your entry, you can do with it what you will. There were over 127 entries in total in that book, and so, if you sat at a chair with a card for your name, I’d like you to look beneath your seat.”

Devyn’s heart was in his eyes when she looked to stage left.

She didn’t know if she’d ever get used to seeing him look at her like that, if she ever wanted to get used to it.

Her friends, a couple of her siblings flanked him, giving her smiles too; but her eyes focused on him.

He’d found her a scarred girl. He’d never given up on her through it all, even when she’d almost resigned herself to a role she wasn’t suited to play.

A storm of hands opened gold envelopes they’d found beneath their seat, some laughing, some ripping the contents to shreds, some raising their voices.

One lady jumped from her seat, marched up to a gentleman, and slapped him.

Another lady knocked another lady’s hat clean off her head and onto the floor. When she shoved her, a third lady joined in; on whose side she was fighting, was unclear.

More than one gentleman got up wordlessly and stormed out, leaving the lady at his side behind.

More than one lady shoved a man somewhere in her general vicinity and hurled accusations.

At least several ladies, young and old were in heated arguments or an all-out brawl.

“Quick question,” Noelle said, leaning down to her older sister’s height. “Is this the scene you were picturing tonight?”

Moria grimaced and shook her head. “The ladies have gone…wild.”

Noelle sighed, then nodded to her husband.

Fitzwilliam Pomfrey put two fingers in his mouth and let out a loud whistle.

Nothing.

He repeated the motion again, this time louder and shriller. The movement in the ballroom stopped. Moria had to stifle a laugh at the sight of Lady Althea, her sister’s grandmother in law, holding a small potted fern over her head as if about to hurl it at another lady.

“As I shall remind you, you are all in fact, ladies, and gentlemen. I have never witnessed such behavior,” Fitz said with a disapproving grimace.

Many of the occupants of the room took stock of their state of agitation, the dishabille of their wardrobe, or the toppled chairs or ferns around them.

The Countess of Clairville motioned with a hand to a large table on the other side of the ballroom.

“In an effort to try and fix the way all of us young ladies specifically relate to one another, lady to lady, I have erected a table, laden with cards and quills and pots of ink. I’d like you to write an apology to whomever you may have wronged, to set it right, as I’m trying to do with all of you. ”

When no one moved to follow her directive she kept going, suddenly the bravest that she’d been, no longer held back by her need to overcome, by the need to prove herself. She was fully loved, for who she was, all parts of her.

She began speaking, finding Kate Herring looking back at her as she swallowed a lump in her throat, and the words flowed out of Moria.

“Everyone deserves the chance to be unencumbered by the weight of a secret, to move out of its shadow,” Moria said, holding her friend Tristan’s eyes from the second row.

“Everyone deserves the chance to put things right, while you still can,” she said to Lawrence, her eyes following the empty seat beside him that would have been Sarah’s.

“Everyone deserves the chance to say what they’ve been carrying in their heart and be heard,” she said, looking to Bridget Kelley.

And the amends that were made, with some reluctance and not without effort, became more of what the Countess of Clairville was known for, as well as the besotment in her eyes when her husband peppered her with kisses as she exited her little stage, rather than all of the scandals of her past.