Eugenia was hardly able to breathe.
“That’s not what you want, is it?” he asked.
“No,” she murmured. “Well, perhaps.”
“I know what you want,” he said. “I know what you need.”
A sobbing breath escaped, but she still said nothing, because Ward was drawing her to her feet and pulling her gown up, right there in the dining room. If she kept her eyes shut, this could be happening to someone else.
Some other lady was trembling and helpless in the grip of big male hands that were stroking fire into her legs—no, the fire was already there.
Ward turned her about. “Bend over, Eugenia.” It was a command, but she would have obeyed a suggestion, a hint, anything. She bent over the table, quivering.
His hands ran up her legs, sliding over her arse.
“Do you want me?” A warm, large body covered her from behind. Part of it was hot and silky, and throbbed against her bottom.
“Yes,” she panted.
There was no French letter in the dining room, of course, so nothing came between them. Every inch pulsed as he pushed inside. They cried out in unison, shock radiating to the ends of Eugenia’s fingers and toes.
Her hands curled on the tablecloth and she dimly heard a glass topple. Ward pulled back and thrust forward again.
“I’ve never felt anything like you.” She thought the words were forced through his teeth, because “you” was lost in a groan as he thrust home.
“More,” she said fiercely. She felt shameless in her hunger. For years, she had paid little heed to her body other than to dimly note if she was hungry or tired. Now her priorities had reversed.
His hands slipped to her hips and gripped so hard that she might have bruises. “You want me to take you, Eugenia?”
She couldn’t answer, the words wouldn’t shape in her mouth, but he understood and began thrusting harder and harder. As a child, she’d visited the belfry of St. Paul’s Cathedral when the bells were ringing. Their deep clang had pounded through her, leaving her deafened afterwards.
Now white heat rang through every part of her, roaring all the way to her fingers and toes.
After she stopped convulsing, she discovered she was limp on the table, Ward’s sweaty body curved protectively on top of hers, both of them gulping deep breaths of air. The tremors of that huge pleasure, that great voice, still throbbed in her legs.
“I’ve never felt anything like this,” Ward said, his voice hoarse.
Eugenia had never experienced anything so earthy, so animal-like, so primitive. It turned her into a different woman.
The kind of woman who stands and lets her skirts fall down, takes her lover’s hand without words, and draws him to the door.
Takes him upstairs.
Chapter Thirty-four
Saturday, June 13, 1801
The four of them swam every morning. Eugenia learned to float on her back unaided—though she still didn’t put her face under water. They played enough croquet so that Otis and Lizzie grasped that cheating made the opposing players walk directly off the lawn.
At night, every night, Ward made love to Eugenia with the skill, passion, and endurance of a primitive, profane kind of god, not the one worshipped in the parish church. Certainly not the one that Vicar Howson believed in.
After Howson was dispatched abroad, the vicarage stood empty for a week or so before a young man with yellow hair and cornflower blue eyes moved in, and after that, the butcher’s gold chain was forgotten and all anyone talked of in the village was his eyes.
A letter came and went from Susan. A new governess was to arrive on the following Wednesday. With Eugenia’s blessing, Ruby, who was enchanted by Lizzie and Otis, had decided to stay on as nursery maid.
“They’re not like other children,” she told Eugenia.
“I know,” Eugenia said. “I know.”
The fortnight fell behind her like a fever dream.
One night Gumwater set the dining table as if for a royal banquet, and Eugenia took the children through the entire meal. She invented problematic situations and quizzed them about proper behavior.
“If your hostess spills water on the table, how would you behave? What about if the person to your right becomes inebriated and bursts into song?”
It was only because Ward was a silent witness that she realized how many societal rules dictated that dinner guests ignore the truth or look the other way if a man urinated against the wall, if someone cast up their accounts, or if an irascible guest berated his wife.
Letters flew between Ward and his solicitors as they prepared for a spirited battle over Otis’s guardianship. He mentioned them occasionally, but never shared them. Of course, there was no reason to allow her to read them.