“What do you call it?” The question sounded silly to her own ears, but she dragged her fingertips along the length of him, drawing out a low moan from him as if she had caused him pain.

  “Christ,” he muttered, his head falling back. “Did your husband never—”

  “There are a great many things my husband never did or told me.” She stroked him again and watched his eyes close, watched his lips part and his breath catch. “Alexander, what do you call it? This,” she said, and stroked him again.

  “My cock,” he said. “Dear God, if you keep doing that…”

  She pulled her hand away, suddenly ashamed. Had she gone too far? She had wanted to touch him. As soon as she saw him, that part of him, large and tipped upwards, she had wanted to wrap her fingers around him and— “I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. Please forgive me.”

  His eyes fluttered open. He looked at her, confusion pulling down his eyebrows. “Why are you apologizing? God in Heaven, I thought I was going to come right there.”

  She didn’t know what he meant. In lieu of explaining himself, he took her hand and guided it back to him. “When you do this,” he said, his voice a rough rasp across her cheek. “I fear I may break apart before I can repay you in kind.”

  Ah. That she understood. His hand fell away from hers as she slid her own down his length, but he stopped her again before she could go any further.

  “No, not yet. Please,” he added. “I’ve waited too long for this. I don’t want to rush.”

  She didn’t want to rush, either. They had the entire night before them yet, and there she stood, fully clothed, even a spot of gravy leftover from dinner still streaked on her sleeve. And then what he had said played over again in her head, as if she was only hearing it for the first time. “What do you mean you’ve waited too long?”

  He brought his hand up to cup the side of her face, his thumb brushing along the edge of her cheekbone. “I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought of you over these last few years. And even… before.”

  “Before?” She tilted her head into his touch, but she watched his face, the clouding of his gaze as he seemed to slip away from her.

  “My wife was not faithful to me in action, Julia. And I… I was not faithful to her in spirit.” He kissed her forehead, then tipped up her chin to look at her, his gaze so intent the rest of the room drew back into a haze of nonexistence. “Perhaps it was wrong of me, to look elsewhere. Perhaps it did nothing but further drive a wedge between us. But if you think ill of me for wanting you while I was married to another woman, I won’t blame you if you choose to turn around and leave me here.”

  Never in her wildest daydreams had Julia imagined there might have been something more to his kindness to her throughout all the years she’d known him. But that he had wanted her? That he had desired her while they had both been married to other people? No, she could hardly wrap her head around the realization.

  “Why did you never…?” Oh, but she already knew the answer to that. Because if she had known how he had felt all those years ago, she might not have been able to claim fidelity to her husband during their ill-fated marriage. She might have been tempted to do more than simply dream of Alexander after her husband had rolled away from her in their bed at night.

  “Enough,” she said. To him. To herself. Before she pressed herself against him, her hands on his bare shoulders, sliding around his neck as she pulled his head down and kissed him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  * * *

  Julia had no concept of time, of anything else in the world progressing beyond the four walls of Alexander’s bedroom. She did not kiss him sweetly or delicately, but instead with her fingers pushing into his hair, with her lips parting his before their tongues met and her body arched against his.

  His arms moved around her, his fingers blindly seeking out the buttons at the back of her gown. She startled at the realization of what he was doing, and she tried to pull away from his hands and out from the circle of his embrace at the same time. “No,” she said, and broke their kiss. Her hands slid down from his head, her palms flat against his chest. She didn’t push him away, but she held him there, placing that infinitesimal amount of space between them.

  “I’m sorry.” His own hands fell back to his sides. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Now that they’d come to it, she wasn’t sure how to say it out loud without feeling like a fool. But she didn’t want to undress in front of him. She didn’t want him to see her body, the marks on her skin from the times she was with child, the heaviness of her belly and bosom, all of the evidence that she simply wasn’t a young woman anymore. Perhaps it wasn’t fair of her to tell him to take off his clothes when she couldn’t bring herself to remove her own, but the shame Frederick had instilled in her while he’d been alive… Well, it lingered. How he had never cared to see her naked, how he had advised her to eat less when her hips and waist had begun to thicken. How she had stopped checking her reflection in the mirror for fear she would find some new fault he would eventually point out to her.

  She sighed. “I don’t… I don’t want to undress for you. Not yet.”

  He nodded. No complaints, no arguments. Just a simple acquiescence to her wishes. “But, may I…?” He reached for her, but waited for her to step toward him rather than close the distance himself. When she went to him, his hands grasped her above the waist, his thumbs beneath her breasts.

  She buried her face in his shoulder as his caresses moved upwards, his thumbs gliding over her nipples, hard enough for her to feel it through the fabric still between them. Before Julia could stop herself, her tongue slipped out to taste him, the salt and sweat of his skin, the warmth of him even fully undressed as he was.

  And then he was down on his knees in front of her, his hands sliding over her hips, her legs, before they delved beneath the hem of her gown.

  “What are you doing?” The question tumbled out of her, while her hands wavered in the air before they found their way to his shoulders for balance.

  He gave her no reply. His answer was to show her what he was doing, what he intended to do.

  His hands skimmed over her calves, up and over her knees, and then above the line of her stockings to the bare skin of her thighs. She knew, even before he arrived there, where he was working towards.

  “Julia,” he said, and he looked up at her, eyes glinting in the firelight. “If you want me to stop at any moment, let me know and I will.”

  She nodded quickly, while her fingers dug deep into the muscles of his shoulders.

  A soft brush of his thumb across her slit, and she gasped. It was how she touched herself, in her most private moments. Yet there he was, on his knees before her, drawing the same bliss from her she had only ever achieved with the work of her own hands.

  And he didn’t stop. Again and again, his fingers moved over her, until he slid one of them inside of her, and she sobbed with the pleasure of it.

  She couldn’t let go of his shoulders, even as he drew up the front of her skirt, even as he leaned forward and his mouth took over from the ministrations of his fingers. Another moment and then his tongue was teasing her there, thrusting inside of her, and her hands found their way into his hair, holding on for dear life while everything fell apart around her.

  Her legs threatened to give out beneath her, but Alexander caught her, scooping her up and carrying her over to the bed. If she had been in any mind to protest at his help, she would have, that stubborn independent streak fighting for dominance. But instead she allowed herself to revel in his care of her, the way he gently laid her on the bed, as though she was incredibly precious. The way he stretched out naked beside her, the light from the fire at his back, casting him in silhouette.

  “You’re stealing all the heat from the fire,” she teased him, while his hand slid up and down the length of her arm.

  “I am the one without any clothes on.” He grinned, and in that moment he both looked his age and yet somehow younger, the last several years stripped away from his features.

  Between the aftermath of what he’d done to her and the calming touch of his hand stroking her arm, a languor swept over which she did not think she could defeat. The warmth and the golden darkness of the room, the presence of Alexander beside her all made her feel so safe that she could hardly keep her eyes open. “I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed that she couldn’t stay awake, that she had an overwhelming desire to let him wrap his arms around her and hold her until she…

  Her eyes blinked open. It was dark above her, all around her. Goodness, she must have fallen asleep. For a moment, she thought she was in her own room, that she had tucked Zora in for the night and gone to bed and nothing else had occurred. But she knew, in that way even a mind and body fogged with sleep will always know, the room was not her own.

  Alexander.

  Julia rolled onto her side from her back. He was beside her in the bed, one arm flung over her waist, sound asleep. At some point he must have dragged a blanket over the two of them to keep from getting chilled. Because the fire had burned down, and as her eyes adjusted she noticed the faint, cool glow of moonlight from the windows. A clear night, then. And most likely cold.

  Another shift and she tucked herself closer to him. A brush of her fingertips across his chest told her that he was still naked, or at least from the waist up. Should she wake him? She didn’t want to, didn’t want to spoil the moment; the peace and perfection of having him beside her, with his arm holding her close.

  She thought back over what he had said before, his admittance that he had wanted her even while they had both been married to other people. All those years…

  She didn’t want to tell herself they were wasted years. But it still hurt, how the both of them had suffered with their spouses — she with a husband who had never loved her, Alexander with a wife who had turned to another man and left him with a child to raise that was not his own — when they could have had so much more.

  No. No, she wouldn’t think like that. Been unfaithful to their partners? Of course not. Julia had dealt with enough guilt at the mere thought of Alexander while her husband had still been alive, dragging her down like a weight around her neck. She could not have lived with herself if she had ever acted on her desire for him. But the fact that five whole years had passed since the accident that ended both their marriages made her wonder why.

  Why hadn’t he said anything to her before now?

  Maybe he’d feared his own feelings wouldn’t have been reciprocated. Maybe that was why he had begun with asking her to care for Zora, as a way to bring her closer to him before he had the courage to make his true feelings known.

  Julia sighed and closed her eyes. She had no idea what time it was. Late, of course. And also probably early. What time did the servants come through to rebuild the fires? She didn’t want to be discovered sleeping in Alexander’s bed, but neither did she want to leave and shuffle back to her room in the middle of the night. Surprisingly, she felt no shame over what they had done — or what he had done to her — but servants had a tendency to gossip, and if they had already spoken about Mrs. Halberd’s… extramarital adventures where her daughter could hear, Julia didn’t need a night spent in Alexander’s bed to be used as more grist for their scandal mill.

  She moved again. As reluctant as she had been to undress in front of him, several hours of sleeping in her gown and stays and stockings made her now rethink her previous shyness. She wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep like this, with her buttons digging into her spine and something else around the area of her rib cage shifted down to where it wasn’t supposed to be.

  Slowly, carefully, she sat up and extricated herself from the weight of Alexander’s arm without waking him. A low sound came from his throat as he rolled onto his back, the blanket slipping down to his waist with a brush of his arm. She looked at him, at the outline of his shoulders, his upper arms, his chest…

  No. She shouldn’t wake him, shouldn’t bother him now. Instead, she reached down and slipped off her shoes, letting them fall off the edge of the bed with a dull thud onto the rug below. Twisting her own arms behind her back, she managed to undo the top few buttons of her gown, enough that she could breathe more easily and adjust the part of her underclothes that had moved out of place.

  “There.” She rolled her shoulders inside her loosened sleeves and began taking her pins out of her hair, or at least the ones that hadn’t already fallen out while she’d been asleep. There was a tangle at the back she would have to work out with a comb in the morning, but she worked the worst of it out with her fingers, the heavy waves of her hair falling over her shoulders and down to her hips.

  “Julia.”

  She gasped and looked down. Alexander’s eyes gleamed at her in the darkness, picking out the pale moonlight and reflecting it back to her.

  “Oh.” She gathered up what she could find of her pins and set them on the nightstand beside her. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize.” His voice was low. Husky. “This is better than sleep.”

  “This?” She glanced down at herself, at the bed around them, as though there was something of great interest tucked into the shadows she hadn’t yet noticed.

  “Seeing you,” he explained. “In the dark.” He reached out and curled a lock of her hair around his fingers. “I’ve dreamed about what you would look like, with your hair down like this.”

  Julia had always loved her hair. Frederick had often expounded on how vanity and pride was a sin, so she had always kept it pinned tight in a simple knot at the back of her head, never taking the time for elaborate braids or twists or curls that would show off its beauty. But despite the vacillations of her health, her hair had always remained thick and shiny, always with a soft wave through it that ended with a slight curl at the tips. It wasn’t much, she thought, but it was something that made her blush with pleasure as Alexander brought a lock of it to his lips.

  “What time is it?”

  He pulled himself up onto his elbows, the blanket skirting lower around his hips. “I’m not sure. I’d say…” He glanced at the windows, at the cold remains of the fire. “Around two, perhaps three o’clock?”

  She swallowed. “I shouldn’t stay here. If someone comes in…” She left the rest of it hanging in the air between them. If one of the servants was to arrive to light the morning fire, and found her in bed with the master of the house, no doubt the tale of it would spread like a poison through the lower floors. The governess who became a mistress only a short while after moving into the house, as though that had been her very intention from the beginning.

  Alexander opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again with a shake of his head. “You must do what you think is best.”

  “I’m thinking of Zora,” she said. The child already had a shadow of ignominy hanging over her head thanks to her mother’s infidelity. Julia had no desire to add to the darkness with rumors of her own behavior.

  “I know you are.” And Alexander brushed his fingers across the tops of her knuckles.

  She began to turn, to swing her legs over the edge of the bed, but something stopped her. Nothing Alexander said or did, but a tightening in her own abdomen, a resolve brought on by nothing more than a reluctance to scuttle back to her room like a church mouse when it seemed as though the night had only begun a short while before.

  She moved back to where she had been. Her hands fidgeted with the collar of her gown until she worked up the courage to push the fabric down, baring her shoulders and the tops of her breasts to the chill air.

  To anyone else, it might have been nothing. Many women, infinitely more fashionable than she ever claimed to be, often wore gowns revealing vast portions of upper arms and neck and chest. But she had been nothing more than the wife of a vicar in a small village, and now a widow and a governess. She was not the sort to put herself on display, to call more attention to herself than was permitted.

  Alexander breathing. It was a sharp huff of sound, not quite a gasp but enough to draw a line beneath the moment. He reached up and brushed her hair back from her shoulder, then slid the tip of his finger along her neckline. When he came to the hollow between her breasts, he hooked his finger over the fabric and tugged down gently, until the bodice dragged lower and her chest…

  With a deft turn of his wrist, he slipped his fingers beneath her left breast and lifted it free of the gown. “God in Heaven.” His words sounded like a prayer, though the look in his eyes was anything but virtuous. Onto his side, he moved closer as he stroked his thumb across her bare nipple, as he cupped the heavy weight of her breast in his hand.

  Julia wanted to close her eyes, wanted to let her head loll back as the sensations from the tip of her breast shot like a dart to the growing heat between her legs. But she couldn’t bring herself to look away. She wanted to watch him as he touched her, to see what it looked like when someone brought pleasure to another person.

  She thought it would be entirely one-sided, that every sweep of his thumb, every light pinch of his fingers was purely for her benefit and no one else. But she could see the shift of the blanket as his cock twitched to life, could not deny the lust in his eyes as his gaze drank in the heavy curve of her breast.

  Without thinking about what she was doing, she leaned forward, towards him. His lips replaced his hand on her breast, his kisses light at first before he drew the nipple into his mouth, teasing it with the heat of his tongue, with a gentle graze of his teeth. Julia hissed at that mixture of pain and desire as it lanced through her. “More,” she said, the word a mere whisper of sound. But Alexander heard her, and he nipped her again, hard enough that she grasped his head between her hands, holding him there until she could dare to breathe again.