He drew back from the warmth of her body, resting on his side, and watched her stretch languorously and smiled at her catlike contentment. He did not know whether he drew more satisfaction from her obvious delight in the act or the pleasure she gave him.
If the first days of his homecoming had been a hell of misunderstanding and estrangement, these last few had been the opposite: complete sympathy and acceptance.
He was drifting into sleep when he felt her move. He opened his eyes to find her facing him, the sheet pulled decorously over her breasts that were as much a joy to look at as to taste.
A line of tension marred her attitude of relaxation. William brought himself fully awake as he had a hundred times in his life, though never before because his wife was troubled.
She stared up at the bed curtains. “Do you think I am wanton?”
“What?” He had heard her but had no idea where the preposterous thought had come from.
“Do you think I am a wanton woman, William? You know what I mean.” She spoke with the first sign of irritation he had heard in three days.
“I am not entirely sure I do know what you mean. Explain yourself.” He bit his lip trying not to laugh at her even more pained expression and rephrased his question. “Explain a bit more fully, if you please, my dear.”
She was silent a moment longer then did as he asked, “Do you think I am the kind of woman who would find pleasure in the act—in sex—whether married or not?”
It felt like a trap.
“William, I enjoy it so much. Too much.”
By the stars, he loved her, he thought. He wanted to gather her close, comfort and caress every inch of her, but instead he tried to consider this as a fear rather than the best news he had heard in a year.
“And that makes you think you are a trollop?”
“Could be a trollop.” She emphasized the could even though there was no doubt she had been a virgin their first time together. “Trollop . . hussy,” she continued. “Yes, any one of those.”
He pressed a kiss to her shoulder and she smiled a little, but did not move closer.
“William, half the reason I married you was because I wanted you.”
She made it sound a confession, when she must know that it was more than half of his reason. Now there was a fire ship he had best avoid.
“Of course I was already insanely in love with you, only too naive to know it.”
“Is that what it was? Naiveté? On my part it was fear.”
She kissed his chin, a maternal gesture that lasted a moment. “While you were gone I ached so. Every time I let myself think about our one night together...” She blushed a little and he nodded.
“Oh, I understand completely, Lavinia, only I never realized that my wife would be as lonely as I was.”
“Which is why I wonder if I am a hussy after all.”
“Let me ask you this, Lavinia.”
She turned toward him again with that honest intensity that had poured from her since the beginning.
He loved that look. Yes, he loved it. Had his rudeness that day grown from fear? Had be known even then that his life would never be the same again?
“Tell me, wife, would you sleep with Dolley if he came to your room?”
“No!” Her eyes widened with something like revulsion and shock.
“Would you have relations with a man if he offered you wealth and jewels?”
Her revulsion gave way to a sad guilt. “Not for money, but I married you for the wealth of safety.”
“Indeed, but you married me for that. Even if sex was half the reason you married me, it was not the heart of it.”
“No.” She smiled. “But you see then, we are back to the same question. I had sex with you because I wanted it more than I wanted to see the next sunrise. Where is my self-control?”
Gone for good, he hoped. “Let me ask you this: if you saw a man in the field without a shirt on, would you think of sex?”
She blushed and stared at him for so long that his own smile dimmed a little.
She kept on looking at him directly as she said, “There was a seaman friend of Chasen’s visiting and he was stripped to the waist, sitting under a tree mending the shirt he had been wearing.”
She paused and he nodded encouragement. “And the very first thing I thought of was how you would look sitting in the sun with that fine sheen of sweat coating your body.” Raising her hands she covered her eyes. “Oh, am I hopelessly depraved?”
“No, my darling, you are every husband’s dream.” She lowered her fingers and he framed her face with his hands.
“You make up for dozens of years in a damned hammock with a hundred other frustrated men snoring around me.”
“Then Mrs. Newcomb was wrong about marriage,” she said with some satisfaction and this time he did laugh out loud as he pulled her to him.
“She most certainly was.” He was sure of it even though she had never spoken to him on the subject.
The kiss he gave her was for reassurance but soon became something more.
“We do have months and months of separation to make up for.” He raised his head and found the answer in her eyes. Pulling her close once again he whispered, “Let’s see precisely how wanton we can be.”
~ ~ ~
William thought about his wife’s confession a dozen times. It made him laugh. It made him happy. It made him long for bed. But threading its way through the joy of their reunion was a troublesome guilt. There was still a part of him that he held back, even as she gave him every bit of herself.
The journals. Stacked on the table near the fire. He had brought them up from his office to his bedroom and read them in the long night hours while she slept. The three were now as well read by him as by any Braedon. She must have seen the books there. Sometimes he thought she knew he was reading them, but she had not asked about them. Not once, even in their most intimate moments.
And she had had ample opportunity. They spent their first days together constantly, talking of every small detail of their new life. She would not let him demur but insisted he tell her his wants and his interests whether it was the plan to paint the entry hall or whether it was all right for the boys to swim without one of them there. It was as if she was making him practice for the more difficult discussion ahead.
She never once mentioned the journals and eventually he realized that she was waiting for him to speak first about them and about the part of his life that he would not let go. Until he did, he knew that the Braedons still came between them.
He moved the volumes to the bedside table even though the light was poor and reading difficult. And then left them there for two more days and nights.
Finally, one night when the moon was something less than full and its waning light filled the room, he moved them to the pillow where she would lie.
For she came to him each night. He knew it was not the norm that most husbands shared their wives’ bed, but allowing her to choose to come was one more way to give her power, to make her feeling of helplessness a thing of the past.
Whatever the reason, he loved the moment when she would tap at the door and open it, usually not even waiting for his call. Sometimes she would tiptoe in as though this were some assignation, other times she would burst into the room as though love was as powerful a fuel as gun powder. Always she was his Lavinia—his love, his life.
Tonight she came in and walked right up where to he stood between the mirror and the clothes press. Their first kiss was long, sweet, and left them both breathless, but she was unwilling to stop. She pressed her mouth to the pulse at his neck, then trailed more kisses down the column of his throat, finally raising her mouth to his for a deep, hungry kiss that was torture and delight. He wanted her this moment—this instant—and he scooped her up and carried her to the bed.
He knew the moment she noticed the journals. He could feel the change as passion gave way to tenderness.
“You read them, William?” Her arms were around his neck but her eyes were on the worn volumes.
“I have.” It took real effort to even speak the words and she must have known because she gave him that smile he could only call maternal and could not quite bring himself to hate.
He turned and sat on the bed with her in his arms, but she had her own plan and wriggled from his arms and onto the covers.
She pulled off her slippers and tucked her bare feet under her. She would leave her hair loose until they were ready for sleep and she used both her hands to push it down her back. The movement showed off the elegant line of her neck and breasts and William felt his mouth go dry.
She smiled at him then, with such naive pleasure that he pulled his own stocking-clad feet up onto the bed and settled across from her.
“You read the journals,” she repeated.
He reached over to take her hand. “I read them all.”
She raised his hand and kissed it. He kept hold of hers and kissed the palm, then raised it and held it against his heart.
“Lavinia, I never knew a woman’s loving touch until you.” Tears filled her eyes and he hurried on.
“I came close once. When I met the marchioness. Close enough to know what I’d missed. Until I met her, I had no idea that women could be so kind.” Like you, he thought but did not say. “I want you to read them, Lavinia.” He handed one to her.
“Now?”
“One passage at least. I know it is selfish of me to insist when I made you wait days for me to speak of it.”
She touched his hand lightly. “It’s all right.”
“Only you are generous enough to give me permission to be selfish.”
“But you so rarely are. And this is so very,” she paused, “so very like opening your heart to another. No one does that easily.”
She opened to the spot he had marked. While she read, he thought of her sweet question, “Am I a wanton?” and realized that while he had been amused by it, it had taken courage on her part to even broach the question, to “open her heart” to him. Had that fueled his own nerve?
She read in silence but her attitude was as good as a commentary. When she was finished with the passage he had marked, the one and only time he had met his father, she moved to his side. He put his arm around her and let her cry.
When the tears had drowned her heartache she sat up, her eyes filled with a need for revenge.
“That miserable man. If he were not already dead I would beat him with a stick.”
“As long as it is him you want to beat and not me.”
“You will not distract me with your teasing. What he did was disgraceful.”
“Lavinia, what my mother did was disgraceful. They were evenly matched in that.”
She shook her head briskly as though she did not agree with him but would not be so crass as to argue.
“Can you see that I was afraid to love you, Lavinia? What did I know of it? Did my mother know love? If she did, it cost her everything to claim it. Was what my father knew with the marchioness love? If it was, the cost to the marchioness was too great. I did see love in the marriage of Angus’s parents but Jeannie was taken from Carroll and that became its own cautionary tale. Care too much and you lose yourself or the one you love. I did not think it was worth the risk—until I met you.”
“Only a man would see the navy as a safer place.” She touched the scar on his face, the one at his collarbone that angled to his shoulder. “Never mind that you could die in battle or a storm or accident. Your heart was safe.”
“Until you. Lavinia, you are the first woman to want something more than money or some other meaningless token.”
Her hand stilled in its seductive progress. He did not think it was jealousy he saw in her eyes; how could it be? She knew that she was the one he loved.
“That night you asked if we could be friends all but broke my heart. What woman had ever wanted that from me before? For us it was not love at first sight, but what we have is no less powerful for that. Even when we declared our love and shared it here in this bed I held back this last confession. I was afraid to trust your goodness and my own heart.”
She blinked back tears. “I was afraid that you would never truly trust me again.”
“How could you doubt it?” He was not sure he wanted that answer and hurried on. “Even unsure you were still willing to lie with me?”
“Well, I trusted you.” She spoke as if she could trust enough for both of them.
“As I do you. Now and always.” He hoped he would always remember that she needed words as much as action. “I will not say that I will never be angry again or speak rash words, but no matter, I will always love you.”
She nestled closer to him and he put his arms around her. They sat for a long while like that, no passion between them, both lost in thought.
“I like this part second best,” she said.
He laughed knowing what had first place.
“I love that in the last five days we have talked, truly talked with each other about everything from my roses to our children to the new housekeeper and whether she and Dolley will deal together. Sharing, William, I love sharing my life with you and you sharing in return.”
He sighed and she nodded. Yes, she knew as well as he that there was one last thing that he must share. “You need to know that my idea of a perfect world does not quite match yours. I am willing to risk love with you. I trust you, but I am not ready for more than that.”
“Not ready for the Braedons?” It was the first prompt she had given.
“I may never be ready for them.” He shook his head. “You need to know that I am like my father in one thing and I pray to God it is the only way. I may never be able to let the past go. You need to know that, accept that.”
“Of course I will. Your love and your happiness is more important to me than anything else. Even family.”
He shook his head. “I hope that I do not demand too big a sacrifice, but I am too selfish to give you up. I love you, Lavinia, and my dearest wish is to make a life with you and a family.”
“And we will. Wherever it takes us we will be together in all the ways that matter.” He reached for her. As they fell back against the pillows Lavinia pulled him to her. “Welcome home, William.”
The End
If you enjoyed The Captain’s Mermaid, I would be honored if you would tell others by writing a review on the retailer’s website where you purchased this title.
Thank you!
Mary Blayney
Please read on for a peek at more books in the Braedon Family Series.