Improper Pleasure

“An artist, then? You study the statuary as if you were a connoisseur.”

“I am just a woman.”

“Not just. If you were just any sort of female I would not be here. I would not have come every week for over a month just to see you and watch you from afar. No, not just any woman, Emmy.”

“I…I must leave,” she stuttered, pulling away from him, fearing her weakness. It frightened her, this unbridled response to him. It terrified her to know it was not only her body responding to this man, but her mind, her heart—her soul.

“Don’t run, Emmy. We have both waited for this moment.”

“I…I can’t.”

“Next week you will be here. You won’t run and never come back to me?”

When she did not immediately answer, he brought her chest up to his and held her close. Her body absorbed the heat radiating from his broad chest, chasing away the dampness of the morning. “You will promise me now, that next week you will be here. You have to return, Emmy because I have to see you. I have to.”

Her heart soared upon hearing his low, fervent words. Dazed, Amelia nodded, unable to do anything else but clasp his words to her breast and hold them tight. One more week, she told herself, just once more, and then she would never again return to Highgate.

Chapter Two

Fog hovered above the wet grass, swirling until it wrapped itself around her body like a shroud. The light from the sun, struggling to break free of the black clouds that hung low overhead, cast her in an incandescent glow that made her appear more ghostly spectre than woman.

As if in a trance, Adrian pushed open the black and gilt iron gate. It protested on its hinges, but with a scrape along the fieldstone path, the gate swung open. He stepped into the cemetery, his feet carrying him over to Emmy.

The mist grew thicker, engulfing her so he nearly lost sight of her in the gloomy cocoon of fog. But then a cloud parted, revealing her as she sat on the bench, her head lowered, the long black veil billowing softly in the crisp spring breeze. She was holding a book and he saw that her hands were bare. His gut reacted to the sight of those small white hands. It was strange that such a simple thing should arouse him so.

As he neared her, his gaze remained focused on her delicate, pale hands; his mind filled with images of her palms sliding along his chest and traversing over his belly. Three little brown freckles lay enticingly between her thumb and index finger, spaced far enough apart so that he could kiss each one. He wanted to fall to his knees and clutch her hand to his mouth, kissing the freckles then stroking his tongue along each one, wetting her hand for the easy glide along his skin. He imagined that hand—her left hand—with its freckles, sliding up his shaft. He wanted to feel her fingers stroking him, soothing his flesh that burned. It had been too long since he enjoyed the simple pleasure of touching—of being touched.

He stood beside her, looking down at her bent head which was covered with her plain bonnet. “I despise the dawn. I loathe it with a passion. It is only the thought of meeting you that draws me out of my bed to brave the morning light.”

She raised her head and studied him from behind her veil. “I adore the morn. It is a time of peace and tranquility. A part of the day for quiet reflection and memories. It is truly the only time that is entirely mine.”

What drove her here? Was she grieving for a fiancé? A lover? Had she been meeting someone else here all this time? The thought tore him apart and he was amazed at how damned jealous he felt. She was his…

“Walk with me?” he asked, offering her his arm while fighting to contain the riotous emotions inside him. He would not think of other men, would not imagine her waiting here in this secluded spot for any man other than him.

She stopped them before a weathered statue of a woman kneeling, her stone hands cupped before her in supplication. The statue was garbed in a long flowing robe while a veil shielded her features.

“This one is my favourite.”

He felt those words, said in Emmy’s quiet voice. He felt that touch as he watched her hand, slight and freckled, skate down the length of the wind-worn sculpture. He was entranced by that hand gliding over the shoulder and waist of the statue. It was as if he could feel that same hand caressing his naked flesh. And he burned. Christ, every inch of his flesh grew hot as he imagined Emmy’s white little fingers trailing along his body.

Touch me that way, he wanted to say. Look at me that way._But he kept silent, and instead allowed himself to become mesmerized by the sight of Emmy’s gentle hands and imagining her soothing touch roaming along his aching, lonely body.

“How forlorn she looks residing over this tangled patch of overgrown shrubbery and brambles. It is as though she has been utterly abandoned—sentenced to years of loneliness until she crumbles to dust. No one will remember her and her presence here. No one but me.”

Reaching for Emmy’s hand, he covered it with his, watching with a sense of power how his large hand engulfed her little one. Never had his body been so hard with anticipation, with passion and simple seduction. Never had he felt a more visceral connection to a woman. It was more than lust that drew him to her.

“From the moment I first glimpsed her through the brush she captured my heart. She has been left all alone, abandoned to this beautiful but lonely spot.”

Had Emmy been abandoned? Left alone in the world by a husband taken too soon, or a man who no longer cared for her? He experienced a mad, almost desperate urge to ask her, but then she spoke, her voice so quiet and without artifice.

“It is her face, I think, that draws me. It is veiled and concealed from us, yet one can imagine what she looks like beneath the veil and her crown of blossoms.”

He stepped closer to her so that his coat caressed her cloak and the toe of his boots touched the tips of her half boots. “What is the purpose of the veil, do you think?”

“I know little of art.” She smiled tremulously and lowered her head, as if she were ashamed of that admission. He tipped her face up and brushed the pad of his thumb along her cheek as he looked through the lace to the blue of her eyes.

“You needn’t know anything of art to appreciate it, Emmy. You only need to feel it and experience the emotion the work gives you.”

“Perhaps the sculptor thought her too beautiful to be standing in such a sorrowful place. Perhaps the veil is there so we do not see her lack of beauty, so that we look beyond the physical and into the heart of her, so that we may take the time to know her as something more than a physical beauty. What do you see in her?”

“Sadness. Loneliness. Need.” He was not looking at the statue, but at Emmy, her shrouded face showing those very same things. “She needs to be understood and loved by a man who would protect her. A man who could pleasure her. A man who would guard her secrets and not allow her to crumble to dust.”

A faint smile broke from her lips and she lowered her head to study her hands which were clasped before her. He tipped her chin up once again, wishing he could lift the veil from her face to see just how beautiful Emmy truly was. For he knew she was. She had eyes a man could drown in. Lips made to be kissed for hours and designed to provide immense pleasure to a man. Her skin was the sort men wanted to touch over and over, and each time he would marvel at the softness, the suppleness, the astonishing purity of it.

She looked at the statue once again. “Because thou has the power and own’st the grace to look through and behind this mask of me, and behold my soul’s true face. The words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

He pressed closer, felt her sway ever so slightly into him. He wanted to touch her. To feel her beneath his hands before she melted into the gray fog, leaving him alone, frustrated, yearning to see her once again.

“Emmy, you cannot know what you do to me with your honesty. It empowers me,” he said, unable to control his thoughts. “I can’t explain it. You give me such strength. Somehow you have been able to reach deep within me and touch the man. It is more than a physical attraction between us. It is something I have never before experienced. Something powerful and beautiful—”

“Sssh, don’t say it,” she begged, pressing her cold fingertips atop his lips. “Words are so very difficult to take back and forget. Memories fade with time, but words never do. They linger in our minds, our hearts, haunting us. Right now, silence and memories would serve us much better.”

“What I feel right now defies words, Emmy. I have never felt so vehemently about anything, as I do about you.” She swayed again and he gripped her arms, holding her tight.

“You must release me,” she said in a breathless sob. “You must. You don’t understand. I am not who you think I am.”

“Are you a widow, lonely for your husband? A scorned woman, searching for a man to make it right? Tell me who you are, Emmy. I want to know. I must know.”

“I am nobody.”

“No, you are not. When I close my eyes all I can see is you. Even now I can smell you, almost taste you…Christ, how I want you, Emmy.”

Amelia allowed herself to sag against the hard breadth of Adrian’s chest. The inner struggling, the war waging so deep inside her was almost over. Today she would go against everything she had ever believed—would toss aside every fear she had ever clung to. Today, she would allow Adrian to take her on a journey he had begun and only he could complete.

Only Adrian made her feel this way; like a woman in every sense of the word. In this little copse she was nearly his equal in mind and beauty. In station and wealth. Here in this little spot she was simply Emmy, and he Adrian. Nothing of their lives outside of this spot intruded.

Droplets of cold rain began to fall from the sky and Adrian reached for her hand, pulling her so that she was running behind him as he steered them toward the secluded alcove, where there was a roof of carved stones and pillars that resembled obelisks. They would be dry. It would be dark. And they would be utterly alone as the rain fell down around them.

Chapter Three

Catching her around the waist, Adrian pressed her against the stone wall as another echo of thunder rumbled across the sky. The scent of cool, spring rain and fresh churned soil saturated the air. She could also smell him—Adrian—the scent a mixture of spice and wool and a hint of tobacco. She could feel him, the heat radiating off his broad, tall body as he stood before her.

His head was bent to hers and his breath ruffled the tendrils of hair that had escaped from beneath her bonnet. “Let me see you,” he asked in a whisper as the pad of his thumb caressed her lips that lay hidden beneath her veil.

Fear and pride ate away at her confidence and Amelia struggled to hold on to the only shield that prevented him from seeing how very ordinary she truly was. And even if she were a beautiful woman, she couldn’t remove the veil. Her face, her name, must forever remain a mystery to him.