The Secret Mistress

“I just had tea,” she said.

He had not, of course. Perhaps he was hungry. Probably he was hungry. He was coming toward her across the room, skirting around the end of the bed as he did so. He stopped in front of her, framed her face with his hands, pushing his fingers into her hair as he did so, and kissed her. She set her hands on either side of his waist beneath his coat.

It had sounded a little silly when she had said it downstairs earlier, but she had meant it. She still meant it. She would follow him to the ends of the earth if he asked it of her. And he loved her, not Miss Goddard.

He loved her. He would be unable to live a happy life without her.

He had lifted his head and was gazing into her eyes. And his fingers, she realized, were working the pins free of her hair. She slid her hands up under the silk of his waistcoat and spread her fingers over his back on top of his shirt. He was very warm. Her hair fell suddenly over his hands, about her shoulders, down her back.

“Edward,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

She had never spoken his name before, even in her mind. It seemed not quite to belong to him. Except that it belonged to her lover. Her soon-to-be lover. She swallowed.

He lowered his head again to kiss her just beneath one earlobe. His tongue flicked over a tender spot she had not known was there, and a surge of something raw, almost painful, darted down through her body and along her inner thighs to weaken her knees. Her toes curled inside her shoes.

His hands were working at the back of her dress, opening the buttons there. She slid her hands free as his mouth moved beneath her chin and down along her throat, and she moved them to undo the buttons of his waistcoat.

She spread her hands over his chest as her dress parted down the back and his hands crossed inside it to pull her against him. He lifted his head and kissed her mouth again, his own open and hot and demanding, his tongue pressing inside and caressing surfaces until that raw feeling returned and multiplied. Her hands were trapped between them.

And then he raised his head again and looked at her with an intense look in his eyes that she had not seen before—something heavy, something … passionate. She dropped her arms to her sides, and he drew her dress off her shoulders and down her arms until it fell about her feet, leaving her clad only in her flimsy undergarments and silk stockings and shoes.

He turned to the bed and drew back the counterpane and the top sheet before drawing off her undergarments.

“Sit down on the edge of the bed,” he said then, and she sat after kicking off her shoes.

He kneeled down in front of her, took one of her feet to set on his thigh, and drew off her stocking before moving to the other foot.

He was in no hurry. It was almost as if he savored every moment. But how could he? Angeline hummed with … something. Something terribly needy. But of course, she was naked—entirely so once her stockings were gone—and he was not.

She was naked in a room alone with a man in broad daylight.

She fairly pulsed with … whatever it was.

But really there was no hurry. It is time to love, he had said downstairs. And time was not always just one second long or even one minute or one hour. Those were artificial divisions, imposed by humankind. Time was infinite. And it was time to love.

“Lie down,” he said, but she got to her feet instead and reached for his coat. One hand blocked her. “No.”

“Yes,” she said, and his hand fell away.

She undressed him slowly and terribly inexpertly. His coat, she decided before it was off, must surely have been sewn onto him. It was no wonder valets were often hefty-looking men. His waistcoat, by contrast, its buttons already undone, slid off over his shirt and fell to the floor with no trouble at all. She tugged his shirt free of his breeches, and he lifted his arms while she pulled it off over his head.

She got distracted then. So did he, she suspected. For he was taller than she, and she had to lean into him in order to get the shirt off his arms—he did not lower them or lean forward to make her task easier, of course—and her breasts pressed against his chest and the shock of it, naked flesh to naked flesh, had her closing her eyes and drawing a sharp breath and staying just where she was, her own arms raised along his, his shirt bunched above them like a limp flag.

Their eyes met, and then their lips met, and then his shirt went fluttering over her head and his arms came about her and hers about him and she almost swooned at the sheer masculinity of him. She could smell his cologne and something else—him. Perhaps it was sweat, but who would have thought that sweat could smell so gloriously enticing?

“You are still half clothed,” she said against his mouth.

“I am,” he agreed.

She slid her hands to his waist and fumbled with the buttons there until she had them all undone.

And then terror, embarrassment, maidenly modesty, sheer uncontainable excitement, some instinct for self-preservation and very survival—something silly anyway—took over and paralyzed her, and she could go no further.

She wormed away from him and lay down on the bed, her head on one of the pillows. She did not draw up the covers even though the air from the window felt suddenly cool. She shivered, though somehow not from cold, and smiled at him—and watched as he pulled off his boots and his stockings, his breeches and his drawers.

And then he was as naked as she and a hot desert blast had replaced the cool breeze coming through the window.

Oh, goodness. Oh, goodness, oh, goodness.

She had seen her brothers when they were boys. They had all gone swimming and diving together, usually in forbidden deep waters, but while she had always kept her shift on, they had never deemed it necessary to keep their drawers on in front of a mere sister.

She had thought she knew what to expect.

But boys grew into men, and sometimes men felt … passionate.

And, oh, goodness.

Had her mind ever described him—even if approvingly—as an ordinary man?

He was all solid malehood, beautifully proportioned, well muscled in the places he ought to be muscled, lean elsewhere, and … well, modesty prevented her from adding anything else to the mental review of his attributes.

His eyes were roaming over her too, she realized.

“I am too tall,” she said.

“I know,” he said, “that at one time you were a beanpole and were described as such.”

“Yes,” she said. “I was the despair of my mother, whose height I overtook when I was twelve. And at that time I had no shape whatsoever, unless an arrow has shape.”

“Angeline,” he said, and there was something about his voice—for one thing, it was deeper than usual, huskier, “you are no longer a beanpole.”

She knew that. But his words implied more. His eyes implied more. His