He reached up and fumbled blindly with her bodice, yanking at the collar until her other breast was exposed. Taking one of her hands, he guided it to her chest, pressing her palm against her flesh, urging her to touch herself. She hesitated at first, embarrassed to behave that way in front of him. But she wanted to do it, wanted to feel the brush and slide of her own fingers while he was there, while he was watching her.

  Something changed then, a frantic energy taking over the both of them. His mouth abandoned her breast in order to trail kisses up and along the length of her throat, the bristles of his unshaven jaw scraping at the sensitive skin beneath her ear. Her skirt…

  They both grabbed for it at once, but she worked quicker, while he shoved the last corner of blanket aside that still lay between them. He tipped her back and climbed over her, a shadow prowling across her vision, a darkness made of heat and palpable desire. She spread her legs wide, the chill air of the bedroom cool on her bare thighs, above the line of her stockings. But there he was, like fire in corporeal form, his knees bracketing her hips, not a tremble from his arms as he held himself perfectly still above her.

  “Yes?” He was right there, the tip of him just nudging her entrance, and even that light touch was enough to make her hips jolt.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, Alexander. Please!”

  Slowly… Dear God, he moved so slowly to begin with. Only an inch or so at first, the sheer size of him stretching her, making her hold her breath as he pushed inside. He was larger than her husband. She hated to think of it at such a moment, but it caught her off guard, the little sparks of sensation it sent through her, something she had never felt in all her years with Frederick.

  “Are you all right?” He paused, and she could hear the constraint in his voice, that he was holding back, waiting for her assurance that he had not hurt her.

  She nodded tightly. Her hands found their way to his shoulders, gripping him until her knuckles turned white, until her nails dug into his skin. And then she lifted her hips, urging him to keep going, to finish what they had started.

  A sound rumbled out of him, not quite a purr and not quite a growl, before he slid the rest of the way into her. There was a moment then, when he stayed there, his hips flush with her own, their bodies fully joined. It was an irrevocable change in that instant, the realization that there would be no going back after this. That Julia would not ever want to.

  Alexander pulled back and thrust into her again. Still slow, excruciatingly slow, as though he was afraid of harming her, of frightening her. But his reservations seemed to disappear quickly, and soon Julia’s hands slid down to the middle of his back, her fingers gripping the slickness of his perspiring skin, the flex and pull of the muscles there.

  Dear God, it was almost too much. All of her years of imaginings hadn’t prepared her for this, for how it felt to have him inside of her, filling her up with every thrust of his hips. She wanted to make it last, but she could already feel that telltale wave of… something roiling up through her, spreading up and outward like a fever about to break.

  She cried out before she could stop it, loud enough that anyone awake in the house at such an early hour would have heard her. But she couldn’t think, could only clutch at Alexander as the aftershocks pulsed through her. Meanwhile, he thrust into her once… twice more, before he suddenly pulled out of her, his eyes shut tight as a hoarse cry scraped its way from the back of his throat. And then he collapsed beside her, his seed spilling onto the discarded blanket from before.

  It took Julia a minute to catch her breath, to trust her eyes and her ears and her other senses to fall back into working order. She brushed the back of her hand across her brow, sweeping away her tangled hair along with a sheen of sweat that had accumulated on her face. Between her legs, she still throbbed. As though she had already had enough, and yet she still wanted more. But her gaze strayed to the blanket, the corner of which he used to wipe himself clean before he balled it up and tossed it onto the floor. Her mouth was dry as a desert, and she dragged her voice up from where it had gone to hide away in her lungs.

  “Why did you do that?” She nodded her head towards the blanket. It wasn’t an accusation. She understood what he had done, and why he had most likely done it. No doubt he thought he was helping her, saving her by withdrawing just before he could finish inside of her.

  He stood up and crossed the room, passing through the shafts of moonlight that stretched through the windows. He gave himself a more thorough washing at the basin on its stand, then brought over a damp cloth for her use, as well.

  As he strode back to the bed, she took a moment to appreciate the beauty of him. He was such a perfect mingling of hard lines and gentleness, and she blushed anew at the thought of having the liberty to touch and admire him, at having every right to do so.

  The bed creaked beneath his weight. She let her legs fall open as he wiped her clean, taking such care that she couldn’t prevent the burn of tears from forming at the corners of her eyes. “Why did I… what?” he asked, after tossing the used linen onto the blanket already on the floor.

  She sighed. She was no good at speaking about such matters. Her mother had never encouraged questions about the marriage bed, and attempting to speak with Frederick about anything more personal than how one preferred their tea was regarded as equal to breaking one of the Lord’s commandments. “Why did you stop?” She cleared her throat and plucked nervously at the edge of a pillow. “Why did you pull out and… spill yourself on the blanket instead?”

  He drew back from her a little. “Forgive me, but I thought… Well, at the last minute I realized you might not wish to worry about finding yourself with child. And I would never want to force the condition on you, if it wasn’t what you wanted, what you were ready for. I didn’t want you to regret it or blame me for not thinking of you in time. So I thought—”

  She reached out and placed her hand on his arm. He appeared sincerely flustered, but she didn’t want him to worry about such a thing in the future when she could tell him the truth about it now.

  “I can’t,” she said. As simple as that.

  “You…?”

  And yet it wasn’t as simple as that. Of course it wasn’t. “I can’t have children.”

  There should have been more to her confession than the quiet statement of those four words. They should have rang through the air with the resonance of a death knell, anything more meaningful than the soft tremble of her ragged voice.

  “You already know enough of it, I’m sure. Village gossip and my… absences. I was always so ill when I was pregnant. My younger sister wrote to me with assurances that it was good to be so unwell, that it meant the baby was more likely to be healthy. That my body was doing what it should.” She pulled her hands into her lap, her fingers pulling at one another as though she could transfer the pain of the memories into each pinch and pull of her fingertips. “But after my last… loss,” she said, wincing at the word, hating how weak it sounded. “The physician gave his opinion that I would never be able to conceive again.”

  “I see.” He rubbed his hand against his cheek. “But perhaps—”

  “Alexander, I’ve not bled for six years.” She spread out her hands on her lap, before she could dislocate her knuckles by tugging on them too hard. “I’m done. My body is… it’s finished. That is, if it had ever truly begun in the first place.”

  She told herself she wouldn’t cry, even as he reached out and pulled her towards him, gathering her into his arms and wiping the tears from her cheeks with a sweep of his thumb.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. But she pressed her face into the curve of his neck, listening to the thrum of his pulse against her ear until her breathing slowed. “It’s fine. I’m fine.” Such lies, the largest she had uttered in years. Because it wasn’t fine. It had never been fine. For years, it had been the one thing pulling her through the quiet misery of her marriage to Frederick, that one day she might be able to bear a living child, someone she could pour all of her love towards, someone who would love her in return. And yet her body had failed her over and again, and all while her husband became more and more distant, and all because of her inability to perform the single task for which he had told her women had been created.

  Alexander kissed her forehead and then her cheek. He said nothing, simply allowed her to cry onto his shoulder while he rubbed her back and brushed her hair back from her face. After several minutes, he reached for the edge of another blanket at the foot of the bed and wrapped it around them, creating a cocoon of safety and warmth in the middle of his chilled bedroom.

  It was a remarkable thing, how good it felt to be held by another person. Neither of them needed to speak, and she didn’t want them to. Just the sound of his steady breathing, his heartbeat beneath the palm of her hand was enough. “Thank you,” she whispered, and pressed her lips to his shoulder.

  His arms tightened around her, and the warmth of his breath settled on the top of her head as he pulled her down onto the bed with him.

  Julia wouldn’t go back to sleep, she told herself. Even as her eyes closed and her own heartbeat slowed inside her chest. But if she did, she wouldn’t blame herself for it in the least.

  Chapter Fourteen

  * * *

  Julia awoke at dawn. Alexander’s bedroom was still cold, proof that no one had yet come to clean out the previous day’s ashes and light a new fire. She slipped out from his embrace, careful not to disturb him, careful to tuck the blanket around him again as he’d never woken up again to dress during the night. Quickly, her hands still fumbling with tiredness, she gathered up her shoes and crept back to her own room on the balls of her feet.

  She heard and saw no one during her brief dash down the hall. Once inside her bedroom again, she noticed it bore the quiet chill of a space that had been empty for the entire night. It also meant no one had visited her room yet either, and so she allowed herself to hope that no knowledge of her time spent with Alexander would make its way down to the floors below.

  While the first light of day lit up the windows behind her curtains, she stripped out of her gown and stockings and hurriedly washed herself with the cold water and soap leftover from the day before. Her skin broken out in a crop of goosebumps, she dragged clean clothes from her wardrobe and dressed, all while ignoring the faint soreness between her legs that served as a constant reminder of what she had done only a few hours before.

  And what had she done? Her fingers paused in combing out the tangles from her hair. She had spent the night with a man she had desired for the last twelve years. She harbored no regrets over it. Rather, she wished she was still in his bed with him, reveling in the warmth of his body, the gentleness of his touch, the ineffable kindness of him in his treatment of her.

  Immediately, her mind went to when they might next be alone together. Tonight, perhaps? And would this now become the routine of her nights, slipping into his room under the cover of darkness and then sneaking back to her own before the servants awoke?

  It all seemed so clandestine, so illicit. A laugh threatened to burble out of her at the thought of it. She, Mrs. Julia Benton, former wife and now widow of the vicar of Barrow-in-Ashton, carrying on an illicit affair with a man to whom she was not married. Goodness, no. Scandal was not for someone like her. Even if word was to get out, who would believe it? She could hardly bring herself to believe it, despite the fact she still bore the evidence of Alexander’s nips and bites on her skin. If anyone expected Alexander to fall in love or marry again, they would no doubt anticipate his choice to be someone like his previous wife, a sparkling ornament of beauty and charm, and certainly not a woman who had spent seven years proving over and again that she could not have children.

  Because they would expect Alexander to want to have another child. A son, of course. To carry on the family name and lay claim to any inheritance pinned upon his masculine shoulders. Though with the rumors of Zora’s parentage, the village probably supposed he would be happy enough with any child — boy or girl — as long as it was truly his.

  Julia placed her hands over her abdomen. She could never give him that. But was it even what he wanted? His wife had been gone for five years. If he had been in any kind of a hurry to marry again and father more children, she supposed he would have done it already. But, no. He’d returned from London without a wife, without any prospects or plans of a future increase to his family. Instead, he had sought her out to be his daughter’s governess, and now she was…

  What? His lover? His mistress? Surely Frederick would have been able to produce a more colorful selection of words, something along the lines of whore or harlot. But Julia didn’t care. For once in her life, she did not care what her husband would have thought of her behavior. For when had Frederick ever cared about what she did, except in how it reflected on him?

  Julia finished dressing, braiding her hair and pinning it around her head like a coronet before she wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and walked down to the library. The house was still caught in the peaceful boundary between night and day, but she could hear the faint clatter of pots from the kitchen as breakfast was prepared, and the light step of maids traveling upstairs to light the various fires of the house.

  The library was cold, but she didn’t mind as it helped to clear her head and keep her mind alert. The next hour disappeared as she searched through the vast shelves for books on ancient history, mythology, birds and beasts, and mathematics. There was little to be found of French or Latin, though she did find a book of German hymns and a volume of Italian poetry with accompanying illustrations that would not have been proper for Zora’s eyes.

  Armed with a stack of books for later perusal, she returned to her own room to leave them there before heading over to the nursery to check on Zora. The girl was already awake and sitting on the end of her bed, curled up in her nightgown with Ellen the kitten cradled in her lap.

  “And how did she find her way up here?” Julia asked as she opened the nursery curtains and flicked at a thread of frost that had formed on the window.

  Zora ducked her head as she trailed a piece of knotted string over her legs for the kitten to chase. “I thought she might be lonely, so I brought her up from the kitchen for someone to play with.”

  “Oh, of course.” Julia wasn’t about to tell her to return the kitten to the kitchen. No doubt the animal would soon be doing all of its sleeping in the nursery, in between roaming the corridors and shadows of the house for mice and other easy prey. “Come along. Time to get dressed and start the day.”

  The sun shining outside the windows promised fine enough weather for a short walk outside before settling inside again for breakfast and the day’s lessons. They bundled up in cats and scarves and thick, woolen mittens, then began a leisurely trudge against the frost-gilded lawns. Zora stopped frequently to study the crystals of ice along the edges of the fallen leaves, and the trail of her footsteps behind her, and the feathering of clouds across the bright blue sky. And all while asking questions about how frost formed and why the days grew so short in the winter and if there were really places in the world where the sun did not shine for days or even weeks at a time.

  The questions — and answers, courtesy of Julia’s beleaguered mind — continued through breakfast, though Zora became more subdued at the beginning of her lessons due to the fact she was supposed to sit and read quietly about the geography of New South Wales. Julia settled down with an assortment of stockings — her own and Zora’s — that needed mending, smiling to herself at how many snags and tears there were in the knees of Zora’s, and wondering if she should not simply begin affixing knee pads to all of the girl’s clothing in the future to save herself the extra work.

  A knock at the nursery door interrupted the quiet. Julia had barely finished saying “Come in,” before Mrs. Holland entered with one of the maids behind her, the latter carrying several parcels in her arms.

  “A delivery for Miss Halberd,” Mrs. Holland said in lieu of a greeting. “And for you as well, Mrs. Benton.”

  Julia set aside her sewing and went to the table where the maid deposited the packages. “From Mrs. Decatur?” She read over the card tucked among the neat strands of ribbon tying everything together. “Already?”

  Mrs. Holland plucked out the card and opened it. “It seems she had a few ready-made items available, and with a few alterations to suit your measurements decided to send them on early. As a first installment, she calls it.”

  “Well, then.” Julia opened the top package, displaying a swathe of fabric that when unfolded revealed a new gown for Zora. It was a simple day dress, nothing remarkable, but rendered with extraordinary skill and so beautiful in its tailoring and details that Julia gained a healthy measure of respect for Mrs. Decatur’s — and her employees’ — skills.

  “Oooh,” Zora pronounced with the same amount of awe reserved for a colorful caterpillar or a particularly sparkly rock discovered at the bottom of the streambed. “May I try it on?”

  “To see if it fits?” Julia held it out to her. “Of course.”

  Julia helped her undress and dress again, stepping back as Zora twirled around and smoothed her hands down the front of the patterned fabric. “Do you like it? I like it. I think Papa will like it, too.”

  “I believe he will, yes.” Though Julia didn’t doubt Zora could come shuffling into the house caked in mud from head to toe and her father would still see her as one of the most beautiful creatures to inhabit the earth.

  “Now let’s see yours!” Zora dove for the other parcel, opening it up and pulling out a gown of pale green with a pattern of light pink flowers and pink and white braid along the high waist.

  Now it was Julia’s turn to feel overwhelmed, though she did her best not to show it. “It’s rather vibrant,” she said, running her fingers along the fine braiding. It also didn’t look like the sort of gown a governess should wear. It was too well made. Too bright. Too brilliant at drawing attention towards it, along with the person wearing it. “I shall have to save it for a special occasion.”