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They were both shaking, but whether it was from the cold water, excitement, fear, pleasure or happiness, Adela couldn’t tell. She just held on to Wilson for dear life, catching her breath, absorbing the fact that she was no longer a virgin, and in her heart of hearts elated at the fact.

  “Have I hurt you? Are you in pain?” Wilson’s voice was raw. He hardly seemed able to force the words out, he sounded so taut.

  “No,” lied Adela, and the truth was, for such a momentous act, the discomfort was indeed strangely fleeting. All she felt now was a delicious gathering of tension, like the feelings when she touched herself—or when Wilson had touched her—but subtly and thrillingly different. The urge to move was like a living thing, and she surged against him.

  “Are you sure? You cried out.”

  “I’m sure...yes, I’m sure.” She wanted to command him to get on with the job, but that seemed too crude. Instinct told her men were as susceptible in these moments as women were, and if she gave him the sharp edge of her tongue in desperation, it might spoil his enjoyment. Well, at least that was what she thought might happen. With no practical experience of these matters, she could only guess, only surmise.

  “What about you? Do you feel all right?” The question popped out, sounding so prosaic. She’d never expected to be having a conversation in the middle of her first carnal embrace, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

  “Yes.” His teeth were gritted.

  “Very well...but...well, shouldn’t you be moving or something?”

  Wilson let out a low, despairing growl, his body as tense as wire, and still virtually motionless, apart from a fine trembling. “For God’s sake, Della... I’m trying not to come. I don’t want it all to be over before we even start. I’d like you to have some pleasure in this, too.”

  Adela frowned. The urge to caress him and kiss him and move against him was nearly killing her. She did adore Wilson, for all his foibles and high-handedness. She wanted to be a siren for him, a houri, a pleasure giver, too.

  “But I’ve had some pleasure. I don’t mind.... You should have your turn.” Unable to contain herself, she clenched her inner muscles experimentally, embracing Wilson’s member, and gasping at the jolt of sensation it gave her, too.

  “Oh, Della, Della...please...” he groaned against her ear, “That feels too good.... Oh, my dear, you’ll unman me if you do it again.”

  She did it again, almost groaning herself at the gathering, gathering, gathering sensation it induced. It was like standing on the edge of a precipice, almost there.

  “Della! No!” To her horror, he tried to push away from her, to withdraw, but like a lioness, she clung harder, baring her teeth as she jammed her loins against his.

  Even as she pushed against him, she felt the change. From resistance to hunger. Not exactly acquiescence, but a sudden opening of a pent-up dam, the transformation from tentative boy into man, ravenous and dominating. He thrust and thrust, smooth and deep, clutching her for purchase just as she held on to him, his thick cock pushing in, right to the hilt in a way that made his body knock against the sensitive button of her clitoris.

  She was so close, so close. She strived, rocked, arched, her fingers flexing as she dug her nails into Wilson’s buttocks. He grunted and winced, yet the action seemed to have a galvanic effect on him. His hips hammered, pounding, pounding.

  Yes! Oh, yes!

  But even as Adela clawed for the shimmering prize, the experience she could not have described in words, she was thwarted. With a great roar, Wilson wrenched himself away from her, his hips still working as he withdrew his cock, then thrust it against her hip, rubbing and jerking.

  Shocked, Adela felt something warm and slippery against her skin. His seed, pumping out of him, anointing her. Emotions awhirl, she didn’t know whether to be distraught or relieved. She knew why he’d done it, but the gnawing frustration and emptiness she felt pushed away all rationales and good sense. All her primal urges screamed in outrage and churning desire, harshly denied.

  Wilson seemed shell-shocked for a moment, then literally shook himself, tossing his curly head, blinking furiously. Sliding to one side, he thrust his fingers between Adela’s thighs, where he’d just been, and found her core.

  “What are you doing?” she growled at him, trying to pull away, her heart in chaos.

  “Finishing you. You didn’t spend....”

  “I don’t need that!”

  “You do!”

  Still she tried to get away, but his fingers were too insistent, too clever, too surely focused on the zone of most exquisite sensation. With a sob, Adela subsided, grasping him again, arching and accepting on a primitive level what her rebellious spirit almost resented.

  Gasping, she bent like a bow, pressing her sex to his hand. Her mouth went soft as he kissed her, his tongue thrusting into the warm interior just the way his cock had thrust into her body moments ago. He was trying to sweeten the experience, bring some tenderness to the act of finally dispatching her lust. She should be grateful, she knew that, but still, she hated him that moment as much as loved him.

  Heat pooled in the pit of her belly, like syrup boiling and rolling. She might die, any second, if something didn’t happen. Then that second ticked, and the thing did happen. She opened her mouth to scream with pleasure, but Wilson kissed harder, containing the sound, increasing the pleasure.

  Adela jerked and rocked and bucked, her mind a white haze, her sex fluttering, pulsing, grabbing at emptiness, at the void where Wilson’s cock should have been. Overcome, she called him a foul name she’d once heard a street urchin utter. She barely knew how she remembered it; it just came out, seemed right.

  “I’m sorry,” said Wilson some little time later, when Adela was lying on his dressing gown, curled up tight and trying not to think too hard about anything. Frowning, she rubbed at his seed where it had dried on her skin.

  “For what?” she asked in a small voice. Wilson had sounded vaguely cross, and the slight coldness had sliced at her. This wasn’t how she’d imagined the blissful aftermath of the sensual embrace might be. But then, of course, she’d always expected the embrace to come after marriage, and to have been shared with a husband who doted on her. Surely the expectation of most women?

  “I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to give in to your blandishments.”

  Adela shot up, sitting straight, then twisted toward him. All her uneasy languor had disintegrated. What on earth did he mean? She had a suspicion.

  “What on earth are you talking about...‘blandishments’? You seemed more than pleased by my willingness not so long ago. What are you trying to imply, Wilson? That I’m a weak and fleshly woman who can’t control her own urges and I’ve...I’ve polluted you somehow?”

  It was nonsense. She knew that. She knew he knew that. But inside her, sorrow for what was not had started to boil in a most peculiar way that destroyed her rationality.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, looking a bit red along his elegant cheekbones, and as confused as she. “I chose my words poorly. I didn’t mean...well, I don’t know what I meant. I only know I should have been more responsible and more continent.” He hauled his shaggy dark hair back from his brow and combed it with his fingers. “It’s not that I didn’t want you...or don’t want you, Della. It’s just that I should have resisted my urges, instead of encouraging yours. There might be consequences.”

  She knew what he meant, even though he’d pulled out. It was entirely possible that a little bit of his seed was still inside her. Doing what it did... And she wasn’t going to show her naïveté by asking.

  “Of course. I might be with child.”

  “Indeed.”

  Adela reached for her clothing, grabbing at her drawers. Somehow they’d got twisted up, and she wrenched at them, clenching her teeth. Then clenching them even harder when Wilson calmly took the garment out of her hand and untwisted it. Without a word, he passed it back, and she turned away from him and wriggled
into it, fumbling with the fastenings. Fortunately, she managed to get her chemise on the right way round.

  Wilson was getting into his clothes, too, but without warning, he snapped at her. “How could you be so idiotic, Della? I’m just a stupid, weak, lickerish man, desperate to know what shagging a woman feels like.... You must have known I wouldn’t be able to control myself. Yet still you threw yourself at me even when you knew you might become enceinte.”

  Adela stood up to get into her dress, crushing a delicate little wildflower under her foot, along with certain silly, girlish, romantic notions she’d only just realized she was harboring.

  Had she wanted to snare Wilson that way? Many of her friends from the collegiate were betrothed. Some were even already married after a single season. She wasn’t totally obsessed with the idea of becoming a bride, but she couldn’t deny it had crossed her mind. And when it had crossed, Wilson had always been the theoretical groom. Buttoning her bodice, she heard again his words in her head: Desperate to know what shagging a woman feels like....

  Like the mechanism of a clock ticking out the hour, it dawned on her.

  She hadn’t been the only virgin in the dell.

  Stupid tears welled in her eyes, and she dashed them away surreptitiously. What should have been a quiet time of peace, after the sharing of a precious mutual gift, had devolved into an ugly blame-slinging contest.

  But she still couldn’t stop herself.

  “Well, I’m sorry, Wilson. I was just a weak, lickerish woman. We do have urges, you know, just like you men. I was subject to the carnal itch, that’s all, and I forgot myself for a moment and reached out for you as the convenient one to scratch it. Nothing more.”

  What in the world is wrong with me? When did I turn into such a shrew?

  She glanced at Wilson and saw a look of horror on his face as his head popped out of the opening of his shirt, an expression of genuine pain. But then it was gone again, and his beautiful mouth thinned into a line that was almost ugly, if anything about Wilson could ever be considered thus.

  “Well, that is gratifying, Adela. To know that my cock means nothing more than that to you. I never realized you were quite such a progressive.” His eyes narrowed, hard and brittle as slate. “I will, of course, marry you if you are pregnant, despite the fact that my finer feelings mean so little to you.”

  Your feelings mean everything to me. Or at least they did....

  “Well, I’m sure I’m not with child. I’m told that it’s most unlikely the first time.... So I think you can breathe easy and count yourself lucky that you’ve probably escaped the horrible fate of marrying me. It’s clear that you find the idea repugnant.” She flopped down again, to pull on her boots, unable to look at him. The silly tears were threatening once more, and she would not show him them, she simply would not.

  “I don’t find you repugnant, Della. Not at all. That should have been obvious.” She felt a jerk, and realized he was trying to retrieve his dressing gown from beneath her. Shake her off so casually, would he? “Although I am very averse to the idea of being trapped into marriage, and I’ve seen the way your mother’s eyes dart from you to me when we’re in the same room. It seems to me she sees me as a good catch for you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Adela leaped up, shamed to admit that her mother probably did feel that way, with three daughters who’d all need marrying off. And that in her own secret daydreams, Adela had supported Mama’s hopes, even if she’d never informed her parent of the fact.

  Wilson whipped up the robe and whirled into it in a way she’d have thought dramatic and dashing in any other circumstances, even though it now bore some grass stains.

  “Ah, but it’s not ridiculous, is it? We’re cousins, but not very close ones. Your mama is playing the odds. Hedging her bets. Three daughters and no son, and she’s a woman of middle years...and if anything should happen to cousin Henry, well, you don’t have to be a logician or any other kind of theorist to arrive at the obvious solution.”

  He was right. So right. Mama would have tried to marry her off to Henry, just in case, if he hadn’t already been engaged elsewhere. Anything to ensure that Grandfather’s wealth and title would come to her eldest daughter through marriage, if she herself couldn’t produce a brother for Adela, Sybil and Marguerite.

  “Of course you wanted me to scratch your itch, Della, but it served your mother’s purpose, too. Did she put you up to it?”

  Like a mighty wind, anger swirled inside her. How could he be so hateful? He was wrong, and Mama, for all her scheming, was not as devious as all that.

  Without thinking, Adela fetched back her hand to strike him, but he caught it in a firm grip, meeting her glare. She thought he might kiss her in anger, to punish her somehow, and for a moment he seemed to let his guard down in readiness. Feeling the lapse, Adela jerked free, spun around and set off down the path leading back to the house, hurling the words “You’re disgusting!” over her shoulder as she went.

  Hurtling along, her eyes blurred with tears, she just wanted to get away from him, as fast as possible. She sped along on instinct, not even sure that she was going the way they’d come....

  Then bang! Something thick and greenish-brown flew into her face with a crack, as if from out of nowhere. Pain exploded in the bridge of her nose and she saw stars as a hot rush of blood gushed from her nostrils and splattered crimson down the front of her gown. At the same time, she heard thudding footsteps approaching and a body bashing through the undergrowth.

  Go away, Wilson, was her final thought as unconsciousness claimed her.

  8

  Mother and Daughter

  Rayworth Court, 1891

  Where the dickens was that girl?

  Mrs. Amelia Ruffington glanced around, seeking a familiar figure, stubborn and slender, and clad in black. Not seeing her daughter Adela, Mrs. Ruffington shuddered. The sun was warm and pleasant, and the company convivial, but somehow, “mislaying” Adela like this, in these particular circumstances, always brought with it a dark, disquieting memory.

  The horrid shock of fear and worry when she’d been sitting on a lawn, much like this one, drinking tea, much like this, and Wilson Ruffington had walked out from among a stand of trees, carrying Adela with her face and her dress covered in blood.

  Horrible. Horrible. Horrible. A day of disaster. Poor, poor Adela. Suffering not just the pain and shock, but a permanent disfigurement, too. Her straight and elegant nose, so much like that of her handsome father’s, had been badly broken. Not the best efforts of the finest surgeon the Ruffingtons could afford had been able to correct it, and Adela’s nose remained crooked to this day.

  But where was she now? And, for that matter, where was Wilson?

  Mrs. Ruffington reached out, almost expecting tea, and found that she’d been drinking lemonade. Good grief, anxiety over Adela was quite taxing her wits. She took a sip and pulled a face. Not sweet enough. The robust tang of the lemons reminded her of Adela, too. Her willful yet still strangely lovable daughter, a strong personality, always challenging but never tedious.

  Yes, Wilson was nowhere to be seen, either. Was there any chance the two of them might be together? Mrs. Ruffington’s heart leaped. Might there still be a chance for those two, despite Adela’s undisguised disdain and dislike of her cousin? It was a constantly perplexing puzzle. Until the day of the broken nose, Mrs. Ruffington had been so hopeful of a match between them, and her eldest off her hands at eighteen, despite her independent nature and worryingly radical outlook.

  But then the accident had occurred, and all had changed. Adela had barely spoken to Wilson after she’d regained her senses, and had looked upon him with patent dislike, despite the fact that the young man had carried her all the way back to the house, having happened upon his cousin insensible, during one of his health walks.

  A dark suspicion stirred, and Mrs. Ruffington quashed it. As she always did. It was nothing more than that. Nothing. Nothing.

  And yet Adela’s enm
ity toward her cousin remained, and the rather strange young man who’d once seemed quite smitten with her eldest daughter had seemed indifferent at best to her at every social encounter since.

  Shaking off the less than pleasant thoughts, Amelia glanced around the happy group on the lawn, her heart warming at the sight of her pretty Sybil, so enchanting in one of her new summer frocks, smiling winsomely at Lord Framley. The young aristocrat was grinning back adoringly.

  Ah, those two are so smitten!

  There was the great hope for the fortunes of the Ruffington women, in the face of her father-in-law’s cruelty and stinginess. A brilliant marriage into a high family with vast wealth would ensure the comfort and security of them all. And then it wouldn’t matter if Adela persisted in her spinsterish ways, and didn’t try to overcome her unfortunate nose, and less than perfect skin. She could remain unwed, while Sybil’s new family supported the lot of them and covered their ever-mounting debts.

  And that would mean the diamonds wouldn’t have to be sold, after all.

  “Are you well, Mrs. Ruffington? You look a little perturbed about something. May I get you some more lemonade? Some sugar biscuits, perhaps?”

  Snapping away from her ever-present worries, Mrs. Ruffington looked up and smiled with pleasure, a flutter of feminine excitement in her breast. Even though still technically in mourning, she couldn’t stop herself feeling this way at the attentions of a handsome younger man.

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Devine. That’s so kind....” She made a practiced gesture toward her glass, one of her most elegant, she thought, hoping that the amenable young solicitor would notice the delicacy of her wrists in her black lace mittens. “I was just wondering where my Adela had got to. It seems a shame that she’s not out here enjoying this beautiful day with us.”

  Blair Devine beamed at her, inducing more flutters. He really was a most thoughtful man, and so clever, too. Mrs. Ruffington had been so pleased to meet him at her friend Violet’s poetry evening and was impressed by his professional credentials as well as his good looks. She knew he’d done discreet services for a number of her acquaintances, and some of the suggestions he’d made about her own situation were very exciting. The possibilities he’d raised, though a little problematical in some aspects, that might eventually lead the way to a radical improvement in the fortunes of her daughters and herself. She hardly dare think about it all too deeply, though, in case it all came to naught.