Page 22 of The Love Remedy (The Damsels of Discovery #1)

22

The next day, Thorne went out with notice of a post. He returned with a package addressed to Sadie.

Inside, as he’d suspected, lay another beautiful folio of animals. These animals, however, were not exotic. This was a masterfully illustrated guide to the wildlife of the British Isles. For a long time, Thorne and Sadie sat together and marveled over the details of each drawing. They’d lived entirely in London. Animals Thorne thought of as common, such as badgers, were a source of wonder for Sadie.

Unlike last time, there was no note addressed to her. Thorne suspected this folio was message enough. His father was still interested in meeting Sadie. Thorne rubbed his finger along the edge of the vellum pages as Sadie readied herself for bed. During prayers, they could hear the Peterson siblings out on their landing, squabbling about something.

Yawning, Sadie plumped her pillows up behind her back.

“They are trying to convince Miss Peterson to come with them to a concert,” she confided, snuggling down and setting the folio open on her knees.

“Sadie. It is time for sleeping, not reading,” Thorne admonished. He lowered the wick in her lamp and paused. “How do you know that? About the concert?”

Sadie flipped over a page. “I heard them arguing about it on my way back from the privy. Miss Peterson has been upset since Mr. Peterson came home yesterday, and Miss Juliet thinks a concert will cheer her.”

A concert wouldn’t do anything about Lucy’s rash decision to marry Duncan Rider, that festering boil of a man. Thorne shuddered when he remembered exactly what constituted a festering boil. Working at an apothecary had been far too enlightening.

“Is part of why she is upset to do with your bookkeeping work?” Sadie asked while turning another page, trying to hide a yawn.

“Did she say it was to do with bookkeeping?” he asked his daughter.

Unconcerned with the flipping in Thorne’s stomach, Sadie waited a long moment before she answered, enthralled by an etching of a blind worm.

“Sadie?” he prodded, horrified to hear a note of petulance in his voice.

“I think you should go down and visit with her to find out,” Sadie said. Finally able to tear herself away from the pictures, she regarded Thorne with a serious gaze. “You don’t want her to be angry with you.”

A tiny bit of doubt at the innocence in Sadie’s expression niggled in the back of Thorne’s head, but this went unheeded beneath the larger concern that he’d hurt Lucy.

“I have been gone too many nights already—”

“I promise to go to sleep after five more pages,” Sadie interrupted.

Oh, but his child was canny. Thorne frowned and weighed the desire to see Lucy against the desire to let Sadie know that he knew that she knew.

Girls were hard.

“Five pages. That’s it,” he said.

Two minutes later he stood before the Petersons’ door. He raised his hand to knock but had second thoughts. Perhaps he should have brought her something? Pasties? Flowers?

“What are you doing?”

While he’d been debating himself, Lucy had opened her front door, dressed to go out. She wore a black velvet paletot and beneath it, the pretty mulberry silk gown she’d worn to Sadie’s dinner party.

“I wanted... I heard you were upset,” he stammered.

Her dress, like the ones she wore to work, came almost to her neck. Not as fashionable as most women. Even Mrs. Merkle’s brown gowns dipped below her clavicles.

“You came to see if I was upset?” she asked.

When he jerked his head in a nod, her lower lip quivered, and it took a great deal of control not to take her in his arms.

Lucy pushed the door open wider. “I was going out. David and Juliet are celebrating, and they want me to join them.”

Her hair was braided across the top, and her hairpins glinted in the light from the candle on the landing. Thorne rarely saw her bareheaded, since she usually wore her cap. Regret that he hadn’t spent more time looking at Lucy with her hair down washed over him. What else had he missed out on?

“You do not sound in the mood to celebrate.”

Lucy’s head tilted one way, then the other, and she stepped back into her apartment.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked.

Thorne followed her inside and she removed her paletot, laying it over the back of a chair when she led him into the kitchen. She didn’t say anything as she set an iron pot on a flame and took down two clay mugs from a shelf.

Before the water could boil, Lucy faced him, one hand on the counter behind her.

“He wasn’t cheating me. David.”

Thorne took a seat at the tiny kitchen table and regarded her. The mulberry of her gown gave her skin a bluish cast in the orange light of the oil lamp. She looked tired.

“He split our orders from Patel’s with Juliet’s clinic, negotiating better prices for more product,” Lucy explained.

Thorne had surmised as much, but only after he’d figured out what David’s plans with Wilcox were.

“Is Wilcox going to help support Juliet’s clinic as well?” he asked.

“David said as much, but we shall wait to see if Mr. Wilcox wants his family’s name connected with the clinic. You know what he and David want to do?” she asked.

Thorne nodded just as the pot sang out that the water was ready.

“Of course you figured it out.” Lucy turned off the flame. “David said that establishing the friendly society will be of help to me. He’s come up with plans on how to draw custom to the shop from the society, how finally our patients will have a way to pay their bills rather than putting us off or paying us with tarts and the like.”

This sounded good to Thorne, but he kept his mouth shut.

“Do you think... if I had just...” She paused.

“Are you disappointed that he didn’t tell you, or disappointed that he will be leaving behind the apothecary for good?” Thorne asked.

Lucy’s shoulders dropped and she sighed. After a pause in which Thorne feared she might tell him to leave, she pushed away from the counter and came to stand next to him. Uncertain, feeling his way for what he should do—could do—next, Thorne shifted his chair so that it faced away from the table, and held open his arms.

Without a word, Lucy sat in his lap and laid her head on his shoulder. Thorne put his arms around her and breathed through the pain in his chest.

“When we found out that my father left the apothecary to me, that’s when David changed,” she said. Lucy’s temple rested on his shoulder, and she exhaled a puff of mint-scented air against Thorne’s cheek.

“I felt guilty, and even though David told me it didn’t bother him, I was certain it did. So, I resolved to make the shop a success—a place David could feel good about.”

Thorne smoothed a hand down her arm. Her gown had short sleeves, and the cool silk gave way to warm flesh beneath his hand. The contrast excited him, but Thorne centered Lucy’s words. This was a gift, he understood. He’d given Lucy a glimpse into what drove him; now she was doing the same.

“The harder I worked to keep this place open for them, the easier I made it for Juliet and David to go their own way.” Lucy’s sigh twined around his cheek. He must have made some response, for she sat straight, breaking her contact, though he didn’t release her from his embrace just yet.

“You never told them you wanted their help,” he said softly.

“No,” she answered. “We are siblings for all that we are adults. I worried that if I asked David about his project, he would resent his younger sister interrogating him. I worried if I asked Juliet for help, she’d never tell me no, but silently resent her older sister telling her what to do.”

Reluctantly, Thorne opened his arms to set her free, but Lucy stayed where she was.

“Juliet thought marriage would ease my work. She didn’t think it through to where marriage would take my work away from me.”

Don’t marry him.

Thorne bit his bottom lip to keep his mouth from opening and those words from coming out.

“Juliet gave me back the second part of my formula, but I decided...”

As Lucy spoke, Thorne took one of her hands in his, rubbing a thumb over her reddened knuckles. Her soft bottom pressed against his cock, and he had to force his brain to concentrate on her words, not on the way her body called to his.

“I want love in my marriage. The same way my father loved my mother or Mr. Gentry loved his wife.”

Love?

Thorne dropped her hand and stared at the thin S curve of Lucy’s cheek while he picked through his words.

“Marriage is a merger,” he said slowly. “It should be as carefully considered as a balance sheet. In one column you weigh attributes like a sense of humor or attractiveness. In the other you consider finances and shared morals.”

Thorne knew how love upended such considerations, how it made men obsessive and women vulnerable.

Love had an unknowable power. It terrified him to think of being possessed by such power again.

“After what Duncan has done to you, I should think that you would find it difficult to love him,” he said. “Are you seeing love where there is none so that you will feel better about your betrothal?”

What he wanted to know was, did she? Did Lucy love Duncan Rider?

Lucy stood up, and the ghost of her body against Thorne made him shiver with loss. Hands on her hips, she regarded him with a sneer.

“Why would you question my decisions when you yourself are about to marry a woman you do not love?” she asked.

The oceans in her eyes had darkened to storms, and Thorne stood as well.

“ I never said I needed love for marriage. I need to marry a woman who can raise Sadie—”

“You have raised her just fine on your own. What Sadie needs is to live in a household filled with love,” Lucy said, her words clipped and jagged.

“Love in marriage is chasing a foolish dream,” he argued. “One person will always love the other less.”

Feck.

Why had he said that?

Thorne abruptly walked out of the kitchen, away from Lucy, away from everything she made him want.

On his heels, Lucy continued to prod him with her words.

“You are blinded and bound by what you won’t allow yourself to do.”

Thorne spun around and advanced on Lucy. A dangerous combination of lust and anger and the sensation that he stood on the edge of an abyss heated his blood and clouded his brain.

“I am bound only by what is right—”

“You have trapped yourself,” Lucy countered. “You are so afraid of going back to who you were that you cannot move forward.”

“I am moving forward now,” he said, crowding Lucy against the wall.

Her hands came up and rested on the velvet designs of his waistcoat. What did it say that he’d rushed out of his set of rooms clad only in a waistcoat and shirtsleeves?

The lack of control made him furious, and he set his mouth to the creamy skin of her neck, next to her ear.

“I want you, Lucy Peterson,” he confessed, letting the words vibrate against her flesh. “I want to be in you one last time. Will you let me?”

—

Stupid man.

Of course Lucy would let Thorne back into her bed. She was weakened by desire and a desperate need to touch him one more time, just to be certain.

Their kisses were fierce and clumsy, off-center and desperate. Lucy tasted the smoky Darjeeling of his nightly tea from his lips and his tongue, while Thorne ran his battered fingers through her hair, dislodging pins and letting down her braids.

“Bed,” he ordered, asked, pleaded? The grit beneath his voice made it difficult to distinguish, but Lucy knew it was all of those at once.

Bed.

A normal woman would break their kiss and lead him demurely by the hand into her boudoir, eyes lowered. Lucy wasn’t a normal woman. This was why Thorne would marry that sour-faced widow and hie off to Scotland with Sadie. He wanted a woman who wouldn’t question him or society or the powers that be.

That was not Lucy.

They stumbled into the bedroom, unable to keep from kissing each other. Clumsy with either lust or frustration or a mix of both, they pushed at each other’s clothes with a mindless abandon. As it was, Lucy did not have time to be relieved that she’d dressed in her prettiest corset cover because she gave Thorne no opportunity to admire it.

This was not a protracted seduction.

Her gown fell to the floor with his trousers and belt, her hairpins and stockings, a stew of linen and silk that tangled round their ankles and made them unsteady on their feet.

They fell into the bed, Thorne covering Lucy, warming her in the cool air with the heat from his body.

“I don’t have a—” Thorne broke their kiss to speak, but Lucy put her finger to his lips.

“There is a tin of condoms in the bedside drawer.”

In the pause that followed, Lucy prepared herself for his exit. A godly woman would not have prophylactics where her Bible should be.

Thorne stared at her, unblinking, then framed her face with his hands.

“Say they were there for me,” he said. “Please. Even if it’s a lie.”

Oh, the pain of a broken heart. Even after it has healed, the scars can pull it off course. The most sensible of men turn into fools, and the most practical of women into cowards.

“I could never do this with anyone else,” Lucy confessed.

She didn’t mean sex.

Thorne gathered her hands in one of his and stretched her arms above her head, trailing his tongue down her neck to the dip in her throat, to the underside of her clavicle, to the tip of her nipple. Ever so lightly, he caught her nipple between his teeth and tugged once, twice, then pulled her into his mouth.

Lucy’s back bowed in pleasure, and she littered words of encouragement around them so Thorne would not, could not stop suckling her nipples and leaving a trail of tiny bites down her belly.

He reached over the side of the bed and came up with the cravat he’d just removed. Lucy bit her lip and contemplated what might happen next. She took the strip of linen from him and ran it over her eyes, her breasts, her throat. All the while he retrieved the tin from her bedside drawer and took out a condom.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

Thorne climbed back into bed, the condom tied at the base of his erection. He glanced at the cravat, his expression predatory like that of a wolf sighting a lamb.

Lucy was no lamb.

She raised herself up onto her knees and met his kisses with her own. While Thorne ran his hands down her spine to cup her bottom, Lucy made sure to touch every part of him that fascinated her. The last time, her hands had been tied and she’d let Thorne take control. The sensation of letting go was so foreign and delicious, Lucy hadn’t minded that her touch had been limited.

Tonight, however. Tonight was to be the last time they would be connected, her tongue inside his mouth, his cock inside her quim, their skin pressing and rubbing and searching for ways to come closer together than physics allowed.

When Thorne reached for the cravat, Lucy rebelled. If this would be the last time, it would be on her terms.

“Lie down,” she told him.

Thorne hesitated, his eyes moving from the cravat to her expression.

“If that is what you want,” he said without a hint as to his feelings either way. Keeping his hands on her bottom, Thorne settled on his side, smoothing his palms against her skin so that by the time he lay on his back, he’d trailed his fingers in between her thighs.

Lucy bit her bottom lip, then pulled his hands away and brought his arms over his head.

He must have approved of her tying his wrists lightly together, for his cock lengthened and his breath came out in a hiss when she leaned over him to tie the bonds. He raised his head and caught one of her nipples in his mouth, gently sucking it and flicking his tongue against it in a wicked manner.

When she was finished tying him, Lucy climbed between his thighs and stroked his erection, taken aback by how hard the column of flesh felt beneath the condom.

“I don’t know what to do now,” she confessed. Although her desire had cooled somewhat since they first burst into the bedroom, Lucy hadn’t pulled herself out of her body yet. Still, if she couldn’t figure out what to do next, it would be difficult to remain engaged.

Let go.

Thorne had no judgment on his face, no charity in his gaze. Instead, he lifted his bound hands over her head and gently urged her forward so that she sat up against his erection.

Lucy frowned, trying to remember the naughty postcards she’d looked at so many years ago, the woman straddling the man’s lap.

“I won’t lose my balance and fall over?” she asked.

“No,” he said. An unnameable expression changed the shape of his face as her body threw him into the shadows. “You will be in control, and I will hold you up.”

I will hold you up.

Lucy dug her nails into the skin of her palms so she didn’t cry. Over and over Thorne had urged her to let go. What he hadn’t said, what Thorne could only show her, was that letting go during making love didn’t have to be him tying her up and telling her what to do. She could tell him what to do—tell herself what to do.

Letting go meant trusting.

Lucy raised her hips and set herself over him, then slowly sank down onto his cock. He stretched and filled her even more in this position, and she had to close her eyes in order not to fly out of her body too soon.

Thorne, sensing her hesitance, brought his hand between them and gently circled her clitoris. A gush of pleasure eased Lucy’s way until she had taken all of him.

When she opened her eyes, Thorne had his eyes closed, his face tense with desire. Tentatively, Lucy moved her hips, trying to find a way toward the friction she craved. A shudder of pure lust shook her spine when she raised her hips a fraction and pushed down. Without opening his eyes, he groaned, raising his bound hands over his head, then grasping the headboard.

Thorne had not granted Lucy this heady power to make him dependent on her for his pleasure.

She’d taken the power on her own.

Moving her hips faster, Lucy took note of every muscle that moved on Thorne’s damaged face, adjusting her pace to provoke the clenching of his teeth or the tightening of his muscles as he gripped the headboard. The more focused Lucy became on Thorne, the less self-conscious she was about taking her pleasure. Leaning forward, Lucy kept the rhythm of her hips, but adjusted her angle so that every time their bodies came together, it pulled a spark of bliss from the center of her. She lowered herself, moving faster, searching for completion and unable to find it.

“Help me,” Lucy told Thorne. “Help me come, I don’t know how.”

Thorne’s eyes opened and Lucy sucked in a breath. His pupils had widened and the flush on his cheeks ran over the scar, making it pop. Something elemental and raw stared out from behind his eyes, and she’d never felt so present in her body, in her pleasure, as she did when Thorne gave her what she’d always wanted.

His vulnerability. His truth.

Bucking his hips, Thorne lifted them both off the bed, and Lucy’s head fell back as he filled her almost more than she could bear. With a twist and a grunt, he pulled his wrists from the linen constraints and put his hands on her skin. They jerked and thrust, fighting to reach their climax, holding on to each other tightly though their grip slipped from the sweat created by a frantic coupling. Lucy fought for control. Of him. Of herself. Of her thoughts and her doubts.

I love you.

Lucy did not say the words aloud, but they shook her to the core as they echoed in her head, and instead of her mind directing her body, her heart took over.

She loved him.

It might be that he had no love for her. It might have been that this was a simple coupling, that the words he covered her with were lies as he urged her on.

It didn’t matter.

Letting go means letting love take over.

Beginning in her toes, a sparking sensation lit her skin and rendered her immobile as the waves of her climax ran through her body. Over and over she shuddered, keeping her eyes open and fixed on his black stare as he bowed his back one last time and came, pulling her core against him and holding on so tightly there would be marks later.

The world around them, constructed of chemistry and physics, universal laws, and cold, hard realities disappeared for a split second, and all that existed was Lucy and Thorne, cocooned in bliss, holding on to each other at the edge of a precipice.

Just as Lucy decided to tell the truth, Thorne’s eyes closed, and he turned his head away from her.

So.

No room for any more revelations tonight.

Thorne had his rules, and he might bend, but would never break.

Lucy was still, and might forever be, alone.

She didn’t even know she was crying until a teardrop fell onto Thorne’s temple.

“Are you hurt?” he asked. “Was I too rough?”

This time it was Lucy who looked away as she slipped off his body, keeping her eyes averted.

“No. No, I am fine.”

Lie? Not a lie?

Lucy removed the condom for him, taking care not to spill it, and placed it on the handkerchief he’d left out.

If she were capable of great courage, Lucy would speak her truth to him, but what good would it do to know what they’d never have?

Instead, she got out of bed and covered herself with a paisley shawl, keeping her back to Thorne. Rather than dress himself, he came to stand behind her.

“I...” he began, then stopped.

If he were to speak a declaration of love, Lucy would have known. In her bones, she was certain she would have known and would have turned around to embrace him.

His silence hit her between the shoulder blades, and the room cooled.

“I’m not certain what time Juliet and David will be returning,” she told the dresser against the opposite wall. “Perhaps we should...”

“Of course.”

Lucy stared hard at the dresser, memorizing the curve of the drawer pulls, the joining of each corner, the width of each drawer. Again, he came to stand behind her, dressed now, ready to take his leave.

She did not believe it was pride that kept her from turning now to send him off with a goodbye.

No.

Lucy was scared that if she did turn, the truth would spill out of her and over his hands and onto their feet, and because Thorne would never break, he would deny her truth.

She didn’t deserve denial.

Lucy deserved love in return.

So she kept staring at that dresser as he stumbled through a thicket of words that probably made no sense to either of them. She stared as he left her bedroom, walked down the hallway, out of her home, and out of her life.