Page 7 of Scandalous Nights With the Earl
‘She was lucky, then.’
The length of her hair fell forward like a rope as she said these words, like a mythical goddess fashioned in flesh.
‘Hell.’ The curse escaped because for this moment on this night under a passing storm he felt lighter. He wanted to kiss Wilhelmina St Claire but he understood that of course he could not and should not. So instead he took her hand, warm and fragile in his own, and simply held it, liking the way her fingers curled up to reach for him.
His blue eyes were rimmed in silver and if she saw questions there he did not voice them.
He held her as if she were made of glass, a brittle and fragile thing, easily broken. Outside the wind was loud but in here the crackle of the kitchen hearth fire was gentler.
A house that had withstood sorrows and change. Willa had heard so much said of the Elmsworth lords in Society that it was hard to believe even half of it.
And yet the truth of Phillip Moreland’s hurt was here, in his silence and stillness. So much so that she sought to help him.
‘When you allow the past the power to mould you it is difficult to find a future.’ Her words were softly said as he pulled his hand away.
‘There were times when I barely wanted one…’ He stopped at that, his body rigid as he stood. ‘I should not be here speaking to you of these things and alone at night…’
‘Because it is easier to live with grief than to imagine something different?’
‘Easier and safer, Mrs St Claire.’
At that she stood too, seared in the shock of what was erupting inside of her. She had never felt like this before, never felt the aching thrust of pure want rush across sense, and it scared her.
‘You are so very beautiful.’ The words came from her unbidden, but the truth was there in every syllable and she could not take them back.
‘Lord.’ His pupils flared and the mask he wore so tightly seemed to shatter as his mouth came down upon her own.
Lionel’s kisses had always been damp, weak things, lacking in ardour. But Phillip Moreland’s lips held the full onslaught of the sensual, his hands in her hair turning her to the kiss, deepening and exploring. She opened to him as she never had to her husband or to the one disappointing lover she had taken after Lionel’s death, and the room spun, fantasy hovering within passion, his strength and beauty both glorious and shocking. Tipping her head, she opened her mouth wider, allowing him to taste her, to know her, to seize all that he wanted, and when she cried out in a voice she hadn’t heard herself use before, the voice of a want so desperate, there was no tempering it.
And take he did, with his lips and his tongue and the strength of his hands until roiling waves of desire boiled upwards and beached between them, waves she enjoyed without shame or question.
A fully clothed triumph. A startling discovery. Nothing unhidden. Warm against cold. Soft against hard. Delight amidst wonder. There was no answer to the question of what this was. There was only feeling, the candlelight flickering and the wind outside.
When he finally brought her against him and held her still she felt the rapid beat of his heart matching her own and was pleased he did not whisper untrue things, for this was enough and she could not have borne lies.
Her whole world had been turned upside down and what risks she might have believed in at the beginning of the night were nowhere near as certain now.
No future. No permanency. No ties.
A simple connection and then a severance. Just this moment. When he raised his head so that he might see the time on the long-case clock in the corner she knew that she had lost him. The kitchen was no place to be caught together, for the scullery maids would be up early.
She felt drained, her dressing gown loose and her hair tangled.
‘I need to go.’ She would get in first before he said it.
His glance swivelled around to her own, intense and forceful, but he did not move.
‘We cannot be found here.’ Her words hinted at other things.
He stepped away then, his shirt pale in the moonlight and his hair dark. She felt him there still on her body in the places that were different.
And then she left, quietly through the kitchen and up the staircase, each footfall taken as though she were walking through mud. In her room she shut the door and leaned against it, an emptiness inside.
The eighth Earl of Elmsworth, Phillip Moreland, was not for her. They had stolen a fine measure of passion but now it was finished, banished to memory. To the impossible.
Tomorrow she would leave the estate and she might never see him again. Even if they did meet at some Society event he would ignore her because he should. What had happened tonight was completely untenable, a small, forbidden connection in the long and complicated road of life.
Yet her body felt alive in a way it never had and the memory of those years lying with her husband whilst he completed his marital duty was suddenly horrifying. She had thought that was what intimacy was. A necessity. A thing to be endured. But now she knew the wonder in it, the delight and the enchantment. Phillip Moreland had shown her that at the grand old age of thirty and she would have to live with this knowledge for the rest of her life. Alone.