“I don’t, when I swim. I’ve lost more than one pair to the murky depths. Enough to have taken the lesson, at least.”
“If you had been, you’d surely have seen me,” she said. “You looked straight in my direction for a moment, and I was certain I’d been caught.” But he would surely have said something if he had caught her there, trespassing once more upon his land. “I was at most twenty feet away.”
“I’m blind as a mole without my spectacles. And you—you often wear earth-toned gowns. Probably you blended with the rest of the landscape, to my sight. Did you watch me?”
“For longer than it would be prudent to admit,” she said, and the last coil of her hair came tumbling down her back as he removed the final few pins. “But you climbed out, and I knew you would be seeking your spectacles. I left before you could spot me there.”
“And how much did you see?”
“Everything.” She nudged him with her shoulder in censure when he cast back his head and laughed. “I was curious! You can hardly blame me—”
His fingers tangled in her hair, and he pressed his lips to hers to quiet her protests. “Then it seems you have the advantage of me,” he said. “But not for long. Turn.”
Mercy gave him her back, felt his hands slide down to her shoulders and meet just above the neckline of her gown, lingering over that first button closure. The haste that he had exhibited in shedding his outerwear had faded to nothing, and instead he had acquired a steady patience, as if this act of divesting her of her gown were a pleasure of its own. One to be savored.
“Do you know what is meant to happen?” he asked idly, conversationally, his hands warm even through the fabric of her gown.
“Yes.” Mostly. “I’m not ignorant.”
“I didn’t intend to imply you were,” he said. “I’ll confess I don’t really know what women are told, or when. But I do know you were quite young when you lost your mother—”
Mercy winced.
“—And to the best of my knowledge, it would have been she who was meant to tell you.” A few more buttons undone, and the cool air in the room whisked over her skin. “My mother probably would have taken up that mantle, had you ever shown any inclination to be married. She might still do. Of course, you shall have to let her, and to pretend you don’t know any better.”
“At the rate you are going with my buttons, I’m not certain I will.”
“Don’t fuss. I’m enjoying myself immensely.” He made an approving sound deep in his throat as he kissed her shoulder. “How do you always smell like cinnamon?”
“It’s in my soap,” she said, shivering at the mild abrasion of his cheek against her skin, the rasp of stubble tingling upon her sensitive flesh.
“Is it? It’s delightful.” He helped her to wiggle out of her gown, and the material slid off of her legs and pooled on the floor beside the bed. “Of course, now I run the risk of an inconvenient erection at the slightest whiff of a Chelsea bun.”
A giddy laugh rose in her throat, and she found it—lovely. She had not thought to find humor in this, but it was a welcome surprise. His fingers tangled in the laces of her stays, and hers found the tapes of her petticoats, and then there was only her chemise left. Light, gauzy linen which left little to the imagination. But then, it had not been meant to be seen.
“Do I get to undress you?” she asked.
“If I can bear to let you,” he said wryly, and she lifted her arms so that he might draw her chemise off over her head. And then he sat for a moment in mute silence, hands still clutching the rumpled fabric of her chemise, as if her nakedness had stunned the words straight out of him.
He looked at her as if she were a revelation, like a long-awaited dream come to life. “I’ve had an epiphany,” he said, his voice thick with desire.
“What, just now?” From only the sight of her bare breasts?
“Yes. Just now,” he said, and still he sounded astonished, amazed. “All my life I have striven to do the right thing, the proper thing. To be responsible and serious and steady. I have eschewed all manner of pleasures, all manner of wickedness, in the service of being who I thought I had to be, what I thought it was necessary for me to be.”
“Thomas, that’s really not much of an epiphany.”
A hoarse laugh rattled in his chest. “That’s not the epiphany,” he said, and his fingers attacked the buttons of his waistcoat, wrenching the material from his body with a renewed sense of urgency. “The epiphany is that I can beboth. Wicked and responsible. The one does not deny the other. I only needed you,” he said, “to show me that. Always, I have only needed you.”
The confession produced an ache in her chest, along with a titillated skirl of excitement. “And do you intend to be wicked with me, then?” she asked, and stretched out her fingers to toy with the buttons running along the front of his shirt.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I was so wrong. It’s not giving up, Mercy. It’s givingin. Accepting all those things I have long denied. Becoming the truest version of myself.” He seized her hand in his, drawing her wrist to his mouth to press his lips there, where her pulse beat wild and strong. “Will you be wicked with me?” he asked.
“Yes,” she breathed, and relished the hitch of his breath in his chest as she crawled into his lap, into his arms. “Oh, yes.” For as long as he was hers, she would be his in return. To indulge the both of them, for too short a time, in whatever wickedness she might wrest from him. In whichever ways he pleased, for she thought she might have stumbled across an epiphany of her own.
That whatever wickedness he had held tightly leashed inside of him would undoubtedly please her as well.
Chapter Twenty
