The pursuit of her own needs was causing everything else to fall out of place, invitations, introductions and endearments.
Yet Stephen Hawkhurst had remained honourable in his promise of privacy. Not in a public word or gesture did he appear as a man who had taken all she would offer and wanted to again.
‘Are you free tonight?’
She should shake her head and say no. She should smile politely and deem all that had been between them a mistake. She should ask him to release her from any promises and vows whispered in the heat of passion and walk away. Unhurt.
But she couldn’t. Instead she waited.
‘I will be in the carriage on the corner that turns into Upper Brooke Street at twelve tonight.’
When her heartbeat speeded up she knew that he could feel it. ‘Then I shall be there.’
As the music finished Hawkhurst led her back to her sister and Rodney and Cassandra and Nathaniel joined them. As she stood opposite Hawkhurst, making polite conversation, every part of her longed to be closer, knowing him, feeling him.
‘You look a little tired, Aurelia.’ Cassandra laid a hand on her arm, shaking her back to the present. ‘Are you sleeping well of late? I think it must be catching, for Hawk has been exhausted, as well. Yesterday Nathaniel found him asleep after the noon hour when he went to call.’ Aurelia did not dare to look over at Stephen Hawkhurst to see his reaction to such a statement, but the web of their lies began to tangle. She knew she would need to be careful and yet she only wished it was already midnight.
His chamber was festooned with candles and freshly cut roses when he led her into it three hours later. A well-thought-out tryst: two glasses and a bottle of wine sat on the table before the sofa. Rhenish, she noticed, and expensive. Her father had once enjoyed it.
‘You look beautiful tonight, Aurelia.’
‘So do you.’
At that he smiled and, pouring them each a glass, raised his own. ‘To us, then. To this. To wherever it takes us.’
His eyes showed a clear-cut want. Not knowing quite know how to reply, she stayed silent.
‘Cassandra suspects we are sleeping together.’
‘She told you of this.’ Her horror vied with sheer embarrassment and that chased on the heels of a worry about Leonora. ‘She will never allow Rodney to marry my sister now. I have ruined her chances.’
He laughed at that, then swallowed what was left in his glass. ‘I think Cassie’s world view may be more expansive than you give her credit for. And she is not a gossipmonger.’
‘But someone else will be. One day.’
His hand took hers, all humour gone. ‘If that happens, I will protect you.’
But not love you? She almost said it, almost blurted it out, this want for more, because she knew in that one particular moment with the smell of candle wax and petals strangely mixed that she loved Stephen Hawkhurst more than life itself. She would risk her family and the reputation of her sisters for him, throwing all caution to the wind and taking what her body craved.
With trepidation Aurelia walked to the window. she knew Hawkhurst made her foolish and imprudent, but when he moved up behind her she simply turned into his arms and accepted warm lips that came down across her own.
The world reformed into only feeling, his hand across her skirts pulling them up, skin touching skin, his thick maleness scalding her soft flesh, asking for entrance.
‘I want you.’
Her voice commanding exactly that which her head had tried to refuse, but the urge was too strong and she gave in to reason as he pushed within her, her nails running down his back in runnels of both shame and passion. But elation had begun to play its high notes deep within, too, the answering need, the thin clenching knowledge that made her back arch as he rode her against the wall in the light of the candles and the moon and the silence.
Afterwards her head dropped on to his shoulders, both their heartbeats racing in unison. And then she began to cry, because she knew she could do nothing to stop this enchantment between them and that it could only end in the ruining of her family.
He felt Aurelia’s tears soaking into the fabric of his shirt and listened to the racking sobs.
He had not hurt her physically, he knew that, her body wet and ready for acceptance, her hands and teeth keeping him to his task of loving, and the waves of climax flowing strong between them. When he pulled back he even felt resistance as she tried to halt the uncoupling.
Nothing made sense any more and he struggled for equilibrium.
Aurelia knocked him sideways, that was the trouble. She made him question all that he had believed in and understood to be true.
Every single person he had ever loved had been lost, save for Alfred, and the truth had scalded him with grief. He remembered the master at school giving him the news of his parents’ death, unfeelingly, as though death was only a small blink in the day-to-day running of a busy schedule. He remembered his brother, too, gone as he had tried to drag him away from the mad Frenchman on the hills above Lyon.
If you do not love, you can never be hurt.
It had been a motto that he recited every time he left another woman and he had not allowed himself the chance to get close.
Until Aurelia had breached the wall, tearing down his isolation like a wave against a sandcastle, and so easily that any opportunity to regroup was gone.
‘I do not want this…this…but I cannot stop it.’ Her hands gestured to her body, shaking with the angst of all she relayed to him. Like him, caught in a maelstrom.
‘Ahh, sweetheart,’ he replied, the endearment coming without notice. ‘Believe me when I say this is a gift seldom enjoyed by others.’
‘You have felt it before?’
‘Never.’
Her answering smile was beautiful. ‘I think I should go home now. Papa wakes early sometimes.’
‘I will take you.’
Leonora was waiting in her room as she carefully opened the door and let herself in.
‘Where have you been?’
Aurelia knew the moment her sister realised she had been crying. ‘What has happened, Lia? Has Hawkhurst hurt you?’
‘You saw the carriage?’
‘From The window. He is dangerous, Lia. Dangerous and distant and reckless. Rodney says he is a spy.’ The look in her sister’s eyes nearly broke her heart. ‘You cannot do this. You must not. After Charles…’
‘He is nothing like his cousin.’
‘Hawkhurst has killed people. Lots of them. It is why he carries that darkness within. Oh, my God. You will be ruined again and this time by a master.’
Leonora’s glance took in her tousled hair and the creases in the gown.
‘You have slept with him?’
Her sister’s chest rose in consternation, her mouth falling wide with the shock of it all, but Aurelia found she could not lie.
‘More than once.’
‘And you will do so again?’
‘Yes.’
At the bareness of her reply Leonora sat down. ‘Tell me why?’
A different tack and unexpected. No longer a child, but a young woman who needed a reason. ‘For years I have been a ruined widow, isolated and alone.’ She held up her hand as her sister began to