Page 25 of The Secret Word (Twist Upon a Regency Tale #10)

C hris’s brief conversations with Lord Crosby, his uncle, and the Earl of Halton, his father’s cousin, confirmed what Michael and Harry had told him. They would have accepted him at any time, though both remained adamantly set against his grandfather. Something with which Chris was in agreement.

There’d be time enough to think about what the family reunion meant for him—for him and Clem, as a couple.

Not today, though. Clem was his wife, and their life together had begun. Meeting the relatives who should never have been strangers was not his focus. Today, the family reunion was just background, a minor theme in the soaring orchestral crescendo that was his wedding to Clem.

Most of the people at his wedding feast were strangers, and they all wanted to meet him and Clem, so it was at least two hours before Aunt Fern took pity on them and told them Chris’s carriage was being brought around to the front door.

“Let’s go home,” he said to Clem.

They didn’t get out without a self-congratulatory speech from Wright, to which Chris replied with a speech praising his bride and thanking his groomsmen.

Harry proposed a toast to the bride and groom, but at last Chris was able to escort his wife to the front steps, and assist her into their waiting carriage.

The younger people, who had accompanied them downstairs, cheered when he kissed her hand and then climbed in behind her.

And then, they were away.

It was only a short drive to the house they had rented. Chris was mindful that what was to come was new to Clem. Thanks to the efforts of Aunt Fern, their embraces so far had been nearly chaste—certainly far more chaste than Chris would have preferred.

Even so, he could control the urge to leap on her as soon as the carriage door was shut. He would have to, for he would not want to frighten her, nor did he want her to be embarrassed in front of her new servants when they arrived at their new house looking as if he had tumbled her in the carriage.

Instead, he took the seat beside her, took her gloved hand in his, and lost himself in thinking about the bedding to come. Not for the first time, he wondered what she had been told.

She was curious, he knew that. And she listened to the servants, so she knew a little. Had anyone thought to explain the details? Was she frightened? She didn’t appear nervous, though. Was she glaring at him?

“Is something wrong, my love?”

Clem blushed. “I was just thinking…”

She broke off, and Chris made what he hoped was an encouraging sound.

“Martha said you would want to kiss me as soon as we were alone, and—” her blush deepened—“other things.”

“Other things?” Chris was intrigued to know exactly what the knowledgeable maid may have disclosed.

“You know, Chris. Embraces and such.” She leaned closer to him and hushed her voice, as if afraid that the driver might hear. “Touching me with your hands. In… places. She said men like it?” Clem sounded uncertain.

“This man likes it,” Chris assured her. “Very much, when it is my hands and your body. And I hope you will like touching me, too. I did not want to start something in the carriage that would leave you rumpled and uncomfortable when you arrived at our house, for if I once start, beloved, I am not certain how much control I will have. I want you. Very much.”

“Oh.” Clem thought about that. “I’m not sure exactly what ‘want’ means, but…Will I like it, Chris?”

“You will like it very much,” he assured her. He would make certain of that. “In fact, you can tell me what you like most about it, and I will do more of that, and if there happens to be anything you don’t like, tell me, and I won’t do it. But not here in the carriage. Not for your first time.”

“Oh,” she said, her face clearing by the moment, and her second, “Oh,” sounded much more cheerful. “Not until this evening, then.”

“Here we are,” Chris commented, as they drew up at their own front steps. This evening? He could wait until this evening if she insisted, but he hoped she didn’t.

By the time he had helped her from the carriage, the front door was open and the servants were lined up in the little entry hall, ready to greet their new employers.

Clem went down the line, greeting the cook-housekeeper, the parlor maid, the kitchen maid, the footman (who was going to provide any valet services that Chris needed), and the boot boy, and presenting them all to their new master.

She had met them all when she interviewed them for their positions, and from what Chris could see, she had done well.

Martha was there, too. Chris greeted her. He’d be keeping an eye on this one. When Clem had said she planned to keep the maid, Chris had questioned her choice. “What if her loyalties are still with your father?” he asked.

“That could be true of anyone we employ,” Clem said. “Since she and I made our bargain, she has been an excellent maid—loyal, as far as I know, and competent. She knows how I like things done. I’d like to keep her, Chris.”

She was Clem’s maid, so it was over to her.

And Clem was right, of course. Any of the servants could be reporting to Wright, to Billy O’Hara, even to Chris’s grandfather.

Time would tell, Chris supposed. He’d be careful not to leave anything that should be confidential where one of the servants could see it.

Meanwhile, he had a wife to kiss, and “embraces and stuff.” She had seemed disappointed that he had not started in the carriage, and he hated disappointing his wife.

Clem was dismissing the staff. How did one ask a lady if they were open to the idea of moving the consummation from the evening program to the afternoon? Especially since Martha and the footman had not left with the rest.

“Clem, would you like Martha to help you into something more comfortable?” he asked.

“I am quite com… Oh. Now? You mean this afternoon?” Fortunately for Chris, she sounded more intrigued than scandalized.

“Yes, why not?” Please, Clem. Please.

Martha gave him an approving nod, and Clem smiled. “Yes. Martha, come along,” she said. “Give me half an hour, Chris.”

“Half an hour,” he agreed, with an internal sigh. He used the time to order a tray of tea from the kitchen to be sent up immediately, and another with food and more tea in three hours.

Then he went up to the bed chamber they had agreed would be his dressing room—they planned to sleep in the same bed.

He stripped out of his wedding finery, washed thoroughly, and put on a banyan—one that he’d bought only that week, since the robe he’d had for the past ten years was not fit for other people to see.

Ready, ready, more than ready he knocked on the door to their shared bed chamber and went inside.

*

Clem had expected Martha to be full of last-minute advice, but all she had to say was, “I reckon Mr. Satterthwaite knows what he’s about, Miss. Ma’am, I mean. Just trust him, I say. If he’s the man I think he is, he’ll make sure you enjoy it.”

“I’ve heard it hurts,” Clem disclosed. Several of the married women at the wedding breakfast had been keen to share their own opinions with the bride.

They had left her no wiser, since none of them had been specific.

Furthermore, their views on the matter, so presumably their experiences, varied widely.

At one extreme was the matron who advised her to lie still and think about something pleasant.

At the other was the young wife who blushed vividly while confiding that her husband was lusty and that she loved it.

Martha shrugged. “Maybe a little sort of a pinch-like pain the first time? You know he has to put his thing inside you, right? When you swive? Once you’re used to it, it won’t hurt at all.”

His thing? What thing? And inside her? She supposed something had to go inside her, because after all, “swiving”—as Martha called it—was how a baby would get there, but Clem wasn’t at all sure how swiving worked, or whether she wanted to find out.

She supposed it was too late to worry now.

She consoled herself that Chris’s kisses felt wonderful, and that Martha, at least, and possibly her former maid, Amanda Brown, had enjoyed the experience.

And even the “lie still and think of something pleasant” matron did not appear to be damaged in any way.

A knock on the door was followed directly by Chris. Martha bobbed him a curtsey and left. Clem stared at him, hoping her trepidation didn’t show. “The tea tray arrived. Would you like a cup?”

Chris seemed to be examining her. “Shall I pour you a port or a sherry, beloved? You seem anxious. A drink might help.”

“Is it that bad?” Clem blurted. “Do I need to be drunk to bear it?”

In two swift steps he was sitting on the sofa at her side, his arms around her.

“What have people been telling you, you poor darling? It isn’t bad at all.

In fact, I mean to make certain you find it wonderful.

And, as I promised, if I do anything at all that you don’t like, you need only say.

” He punctuated his sentences with kisses, and Clem could feel some of her worries melt away.

“What do you need to know to feel more confident?” Chris asked.

“What do you put inside me, and where does it go?” Clem demanded. “Is it your tongue, Chris? Because you have done that already, and I liked it. Am I with child now?”

Chris’s eyes widened. “No, kissing isn’t how we will make a baby,” he said. His frown was thoughtful. “Have you never seen one of those naked statues? People sometimes have them in their gardens.”

Clem shook her head.

“Or a dog or a stallion that is ready to mate?”

“Not that I know.” It was annoying that she was so ignorant. As if the whole world knew a secret and she was the only one left out. “Can’t you just tell me, Chris?”

“Give me your hand,” Chris said, and when she did, he placed it on his groin. He had something long and hard—a rod or a cylinder—under his banyan.

“What is that,” she asked. “Something in your pocket?”

“It is part of me,” he said. “Put your hand around it, Clem. Feel it.”

She gripped it, and Chris shuddered. She snatched her hand back. “Did I hurt you?”

He shook his head. “Not hurt, no. It’s just—Darling, when a man wants to be with a woman the way I want to be with you, that part of him grows hard, ready to enter her. When you touch it, it feels…” He shook his head as if he was lost for words, and settled for, “Amazing.”

“May I see?” Clem asked.

He showed her, untying the sash of his banyan and folding it back.

She frowned at the strange appendage. “I don’t understand. Where does it go?”

“There is a part of you that it is made to fit,” he assured her. Let me show you. I’ll just touch you with my hands, Clem, and won’t do more unless you wish it.”

“Kiss me some more first,” she said, bargaining for time. She was not afraid of kissing. She was, however, afraid of this mysterious part of him that was, supposedly, made to fit somewhere on her body. She’d never seen the like.

Fortunately, Chris did better than just kissing her.

He encouraged her to kiss him back until she forgot to be nervous.

He taught her how to use her lips and her tongue and to share an intimacy with her mouth that she’d never imagined.

Nor had she thought it possible that doing so would cause a heat to rise within her and kindle glorious feelings in parts of her body she’d mostly ignored until this very moment.

And then he was touching those parts, murmuring praise because she was unaccountable wet down there, and apparently that was a good thing.

When he introduced first one finger and then another inside her, they slid easily in the moisture.

“This is where we shall join, beloved,” he told her, and she wondered if that part of him truly would fit.

But there was no room in her for fear, for her new husband filled her senses. With skilled fingers and mouth, with murmured words of love and praise, he introduced her to the pleasures of which her body was capable.

When at last he joined with her, placing that part of him at the entrance his fingers had so recently breeched, she was more than ready—and he was right.

He and she were made to fit together. The pinch that Martha had predicted was so mild and over so quickly, she barely catalogued the moment before it was swept away by the rhythm they established between them.

It was the same rhythm he had been setting with his lips and fingers, but now it was all consuming, driven by the pumping of his hips and hers, and building her pleasure higher and higher until she screamed his name, desperate for…something.

“Let go, my love,” he murmured. “That’s it. Let your thoughts go and feel. Be what you feel.”

Was it fireworks, or falling off a cliff, or a crescendo of music, or a combination of all of those? She did not have the words for the peak of sensation that left her floating, boneless, and satiated.

As she stilled, Chris pumped twice more, then stiffened above her.

She opened the eyes she did not remember closing, and saw his eyes screwed shut, his mouth twisting with effort as she felt a warm gush deep within.

Had she not just been through the same experience, she would have thought he was in pain.

And indeed, the pleasure was so intense that the need for it to culminate was a kind of pain.

He slumped upon her, then after a moment apologized, and moved to roll the pair of them onto their sides, still joined.

“I like it,” she protested. “I like your weight.”

He smiled sleepily, and placed a sweet, friendly kiss on the nearest corner of her lips. “I hope you liked what we just did.”

“You know I did,” she said. “When can we do it again?”