Mary Balogh - The Secret Mistress

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 voice did. And suddenly and gloriously she knew that she was beautiful, that she had grown into this tall, dark bloom that was herself, and that she was perfect. Perfectly who she was and who she was meant to be. And perfectly loved by Edward Ailsbury, Earl of Heyward.

She blinked several times and swallowed, and reached up her arms for him.

“It is time for love,” she said, and realized that she had spoken aloud.

“Yes,” he said and came down onto the bed close beside her and raised himself on one elbow to lean over her.

Terror returned for a moment, but it soon vanished. For of course, she had been right a little while ago. Time was infinite. There was no hurry. Loving for now was more important than having loved. His mouth moved over hers and over her, and his hands moved and his fingers and his legs. And she was being loved slowly and tenderly and maddeningly until all terror was forgotten and only the need, the loving, remained.

She knew nothing. And that was an understatement. Her mother had told her nothing and Miss Pratt certainly had not—probably because she knew nothing herself. Cousin Rosalie had told her nothing. Why should she? Angeline had rejected every marriage proposal she had had, and Rosalie certainly could not have foreseen this.

And yet knowledge, experience, really did not matter at all, she discovered during the minutes or hours or infinity that passed after they had lain down together. Her hands, her mouth roamed where they would, instinct and need and his own deep inhalations and muffled exclamations leading her on. Embarrassment and maidenly modesty fled with the terror, and she touched him everywhere, even—eventually—there.

He gasped and she closed her hand about him. He was long and thick and rock hard, and soon he was going to be right inside her—she had not spent her life in and out of farmyards without learning a thing or two. No, not rock hard, for he was warm and pulsing and alive.

“Angeline,” he said, and his hand came between her thighs and parted folds and probed the most private, secret parts of herself. She could both feel and hear wetness but was embarrassed only fleetingly. It felt right and so it must be right. His hand felt almost cool against her heat.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

And one of his arms came about her and under her and turned her fully onto her back, and he came over her and lowered his weight on top of her while his other hand came beneath her too. And he lifted her, tilted her as his knees came between her thighs and pressed them wide apart. She felt him there, felt panic, quelled it, and he was pressing inward with a slow, steady thrust until she felt stretched to the limit and felt a return of the panic. He paused for a moment and then thrust hard and deep.

There was a moment when pain was so sharp it was unbearable, and then, before she could either cry out or squirm away from him, it was gone, leaving behind only an almost pleasurable soreness, and he was deep, deep in her. She belonged to him, he belonged to her. And she ached and ached.

She opened her eyes. He had raised himself on his elbows and was gazing into her eyes.

“I am sorry,” he whispered.

“I am not.” She smiled.

She had never averted her eyes in the farmyard or out in the meadows, even though any modest lady would certainly have looked sharply away and suffered heart palpitations. Even so, she had not really expected what followed. When she had watched, she had seen the action only from the outside, with none of the physical sensations that went with the action. Now she felt it from the inside, and the sensations were so startlingly different from anything in her experience before them that she could only feel them and not even try to convert them into language in her mind.

There was no hurry. There was absolutely no hurry. She did not know how long it lasted in minutes. But it lasted a long, long time while he worked her with steady, deep, hard rhythm, a rhythm accentuated by the wet suction of their coupling, and pleasure hummed through her and only gradually built to something more than pleasure but not quite pain. Even the soreness was not quite painful.

Until it all was. And until his movements told her that he felt it too. His hands went beneath her once more, his full weight came down on her, and the rhythm changed as he worked with greater urgency. And something broke in her just when she felt she could stand it no longer, and at the same moment he held rigid and deep in her and made a sound deep in his throat. And she felt a hot flow inside and he relaxed down onto her and she relaxed beneath him, and for an indeterminate time the world went away and yet floated hazily somewhere above her consciousness. She could hear the curtains fluttering and birds singing.

Even infinity had an end.

They had loved. And somehow having loved was quite as beautiful as loving. For of course there was no real end to it.

Infinity might have an end, but love did not.

EDWARD WAS LYING on his back on the bed, one hand over his eyes, one leg bent at the knee, his foot flat on the mattress. He was listening to the soothing sounds of birds singing and the curtain flapping at the window. The air was cool on his naked body, though not cool enough that he was tempted to pull up the covers. Angeline’s hand was in his, her arm against him. Both were warm.

He was relaxed. Utterly, totally relaxed in both body and mind. He had expected, when rational thought returned following the sex, that he would feel guilty. What he had done was reprehensible in every sense of the word. But instead he was relaxed. And happy.

Nothing had ever felt so right in his life.

He could have drifted off to sleep. He had chosen instead to float on the edge of consciousness, to savor the delicious feeling of rightness and happiness. Angeline was sleeping—he could tell from the soft evenness of her breathing. She had murmured sleepily when he disengaged from her and moved to her side, but then she had sighed and gone back to sleep.

Her hair was in a fragrant tangle over his shoulder.

Angeline Dudley. Whoever would have thought?

There was some pinkish dried blood on her inner thigh, he had seen, but no dreadful mess. He would clean it off afterward with water from the basin, if it would not embarrass her horribly to have him do such a thing for her. It struck him suddenly that the small intimacies of marriage, not just the sexual ones, were going to bring him enormous pleasure. It struck him that marriage was going to bring him enormous pleasure.

Why had he thought just the opposite even a week ago, even a few days ago? Even when he had looked forward to marriage with Eunice, he had not thought of it in terms of pleasure. But he did not want to think about Eunice. He hoped she really would not be disappointed when he announced his betrothal to Angeline. And he hoped she was not becoming infatuated with Windrow. But, no, surely not. She was far too sensible.

And then Angeline drew a deep, ragged breath through her nose and let it out slowly through her mouth with a sigh—a long, satisfied-sounding sigh. He turned his head to smile at her. He hoped she would not be assaulted with guilt when she came fully awake. She had a great deal more to lose from all this than he did, after all.

Though he had his life to lose if Tresham happened to find out. The thought did nothing to dim his smile.

She did not come awake gradually, however—unless the slow inhale and exhale qualified as gradual. By the time he had finished turning his head, she had abandoned his hand and was scrambling up onto her knees beside him. She leaned over him, one hand on the bed, the other on his chest, and her eyes sparkled into his. Her hair was a tangled cloud all about her.

“Now,” she said, “I am your mistress.”

As though it were the pinnacle of achievement to which all properly brought-up young ladies ought to aspire.

Good Lord! All his relaxed contentment fled out the window.

“You dashed well are not,” he said. Had she misunderstood? She could not possibly have. He had talked of marriage. He had told her he was going to make her another offer. “You are going to be my wife.”

“After you have asked nicely and I have said yes,” she said, “back at Hallings tomorrow or the next day. Today I am your mistress. Your secret mistress.”

“Mistresses get paid for their services,” he said. “We are going to be married, Angeline. Just don’t get any ideas about refusing me. I swear I’ll—”

“When we get up later to dine,” she said, both hands on his chest now close to his shoulders, her face hovering over his, her hair like a curtain on either side of them, “you will pay me—what is an appropriate sum? But no matter. It is merely a token payment. You will pay me one sovereign, and it will be official. I am your secret mistress. It sounds very wicked. It sounds delicious. Admit it.”

Indignation wilted and he laughed.

“Edward,” she said softly.

“Angie.”

“And that will be another secret,” she said. “Your name. I will only ever use it when we are together like this.”

“Man and mistress?” he said. “Employer and mistress? Is it going to cost me a sovereign every time? It could get expensive.”

“You can afford it,” she said. “You can afford me. You have to, do you not, for you cannot live happily without me. You have already admitted it. My price, though, is one sovereign to cover the first eighty years. After that we will negotiate.”

“In that case,” he said, “I will be generous and make it a guinea.”

“I will always call you Heyward when we are not alone together like this,” she said, “and no one will know. I will be your secret mistress all the rest of our lives and no one will suspect a thing. My brothers will always think you are nothing but a dry old stick and will pity me and wonder how I can stand such a dull marriage.”

“That is what they call me?” he asked her. He took her by the elbows and eased her down so that her bosom was against his chest and her face was a mere couple of inches above his own.

“That is it,” she said, smiling. “They have no idea, and they never will.”

Her eyes were bright with warm laughter and love. His own smile faded.

“Angeline,” he said, “that is precisely what I am, you know. I cannot countenance any wildness in myself or extravagance or drunkenness or debauchery or gambling or recklessness—apart from today, that is, when I have broken just about every rule I could possibly break. I will never change. I am just an ordinary man, a very proper man, a dull man. There will be very little excitement in your life if—when you marry me. If is no longer an option for you, I am afraid. But you must not glamorize me. You will only be the more disappointed when the truth becomes apparent to you.”

Her smile had softened. She laid her head on his chest, turning her face so that one cheek was against him.

“You still do not quite understand, do you?” she said softly. “I do not want you to change. I fell head over ears in love with you the first time I saw you just because you are who you are. You were there behind me at that inn before Lord Windrow came inside, were you not? Yet you uttered not one improper word. When he did, you chose to reprimand him rather than ignore him or leave the room. When he would have fought you, you pointed out how illogical violence would be under the circumstances, even though I am sure you could have beaten him and even though you then stood accused of being a coward. When he would have left, you stepped between him and the door and insisted that he apologize to me. And then, rather than speak to me when we had not been formally introduced, you left without a word. I did not know for sure until then that there were gentlemen like you. I had experience only with gentlemen like my father and my brothers and their friends. I did not want to marry anyone like them, for whoever I chose would not remain faithful for long, and how can there be marriage and parenthood and contentment and friendship and happiness and growing old together unless there is fidelity? Maybe my mother would have been different if my father had been. Maybe she would have been happy. Maybe she would have remained at home more. Maybe she would have enjoyed us—me. From the moment I saw you, I wanted you. I desperately, desperately wanted you. And not just someone like you, though that is what I had hoped to find when I left home, even though I doubted and still doubt that there are many such men. I wanted you just as you were, and I want you just as you are. I want you to live your dull, blameless life of duty and responsibility. I want you to be a very proper, perhaps even stern husband. I want you to make me feel you care. I want you to be a father who spends more time than is fashionable with his children. And in private, when we are alone together, I want you to be Edward, my secret and wonderful lover.”