Page 18 of Submitting to the Widow

9

APRIL 24, 1826

UPPER ASSEMBLY ROOMS, BATH

After Stephen presented their tickets at the door, they slipped through the entrance hall and into the vast crowd of costumed revelers without notice.

He looked around and gave a low whistle only Jane could hear. “There must be a thousand people here.” Since they’d arrived an hour after the doors opened at six, the fires in the marble fireplaces were banked. The heat from all the dancing revelers alone was so intense, he feared his makeup would run down his chin.

At that moment, Jane turned, giving him a sweet smile and look of complete trust that flickered quickly and then fled her eyes. The twinge of nervousness he’d first felt on entering the ballroom packed with the high and mighty of thetondisappeared. The sheer magic of having Jane by his side made him quite forget where the hell he was and why the hell he was there.

There was already a set of dancers midway through a quadrille out in the middle of the dance floor. Strains of music came from the musicians’ gallery where eleven men played mightily on various instruments, straining to compete with the hum and buzz of the crush of the crowd. How anyone managed to dance, let alone actually comprehend where the dancing was taking place, was beyond Stephen. The line between dancers and the mob of onlookers was hard to visualize.

Although the semblance of propriety was maintained at the entrance where ticketing was transacted, the truth was, no one could possibly oversee where individuals went after that. He’d been careful to construct an explanation that he and Baroness Trevellyn were entering ahead of her aunt, who would be joining them shortly. He was sure he was not the first ticket holder to make such arrangements.

He’d explained the elderly woman had been obliged to visit the retiring room to mend a tear in her hem, and would the upholders of propriety at the door please see that she received entrance based on the ticket Stephen provided? Of course, he accompanied that request with a discreet additional cash sum pressed into an open palm as thanks in advance for the assistance.

Jane leaned close and tilted her lips next to his ear. “Do you think he believed you?”

He gave her a wolfish smile in answer and squeezed her shoulder, brushing lightly against her breast as he returned his hand to his side. “Stay close to me,” he warned, and guided her deeper into the ballroom with a hand pressed lightly at the small of her back.

Many of the women dancing out in the crush of the quadrille had pinned up their long overskirts. Although none of the dancers wore masks, all manner of costumes appeared on men and women in the crowd: bull-fighters, Roman centurions, goddess Dianas, nuns, medieval monks, academic dons, Spaniards, Chinese, Arabs, shepherdesses, goat men, witches, gypsies, and pirate queens, lots of pirate queens. Their faces reflected grotesquely in the candlelight of the huge, suspended cut-glass chandeliers. The light bounced off thousands of tinkling facets to make eerie patterns of light on the ballroom walls in the low illumination.

“Where are we going?” Jane raised her voice above the din of the crowd.

Stephen pulled her close to whisper and graze over the delicate shell of her ear with his tongue. “To the kitchen, eventually,ma petite.” He blew a puff of warm air onto her neck before continuing. “And then on to the next part of what you’ve demanded in exchange for more journal pages.”

* * *

Jane tingled in anticipation.She’d assumed the dangerous part of their plan to pleasure each other in close proximity of the crowd had ended with the earlier episode in the carriage. Perhaps she’d underestimated this outwardly stodgy Englishman.

But the kitchen? What was this unpredictable man going to do to her in the kitchen? At this hour, preparation for the supper would be in full operation. The Assembly Rooms’ kitchen would be nearly as crowded with servants as the ballroom was with dancers.

She nearly giggled at the thoughts racing through her head. Would he make her climb nude into a huge stew pot while he tormented her with unheard-of sensual delights with fish heads, vegetables, and broth? Would their antics go unnoticed amongst the notice of preparation of banquet foods? That last thought made her stomach lurch. She was used to being shunned. However, the barrister had a great deal to lose.

He gave her a frown and put a finger to his lips, signaling she should cease the hilarity, lest they come under suspicion.

After an endless tramp through the mob of revelers, they came into a room where there was a bit more open space with tables placed around an octagonal space with card players at all of them. However, the observers around the room formed their own sort of crush, which they continued to thread their way through.

In the tea room, a crowd was already forming for the supper to come, while servants appeared and disappeared from inscrutable openings at the top and bottom of the room. Where they’d come from and where they went were a well-choreographed mystery. As with most wealthy homes, there must be hidden passageways for unobtrusive service.

Stephen headed directly for an opening at the top of the tea room, following a servant who’d just disappeared, balancing a stack of trays previously emptied onto the long banquet tables at the side of the room.

Suddenly, they were in a dark, narrow passageway. Every twenty feet or so, a stub of a serviceable candle burned in an iron holder attached to the wall. Speeding bodies periodically hurtled past them, carrying loaded trays in the opposite direction.

When they came to a cross path, she gave him an anxious look over her shoulder in the gloom. Instead of turning in the direction of the kitchen to the right from whence a steady line of servants rushed, and the occasional glow of a rough candle could be seen, he pushed her in the opposite direction toward a bottomless darkness.

When she balked and tried to turn in the opposite direction, he took her firmly by the shoulders and marched her backward into the dark abyss.

* * *

Stephen stopped movingwhen they came to an expanse of wall he knew well. She stiffened for a moment when her back touched the rough brick surface and then seemed to come to a decision. She pushed her hands above her head and opened herself to the touch of his lips.

He started with a pattering of kisses on her forehead and then moved on to her eyelids. She’d closed her eyes to build courage in the dark, and he’d taken advantage of the opportunity. He spent long minutes of soft laving with his lips before moving lower to her cheeks. He followed a trail of light kisses with more vigorous sucking of her skin around the cheek area. He knew he’d found a key to her arousal when he could sense her knees buckle so that he had to pull her back up to his level. On the way to moving his hands back down her sides, he stopped at her pirate waistcoat and rolled the fabric down below her nipples.

The minute he suckled her left breast deep into his mouth, she let go with a low moan. At that moment, a servant rushed past them, just a few feet away from their dark hideaway. When he switched to her other breast, footsteps sounded down the end of the passageway corridor, heading toward the direction they’d taken. When Jane opened her mouth in a gasp, he swallowed the sound with a long, probing kiss.

A couple brushed past them in the coal-like darkness, only to claim a place of their own down toward the terminus of the dead-end passageway. When the sound of clothing dropping to the ground wafted from the end of the tunnel, Stephen resumed his campaign to claim every inch of Jane.