Andwhywas he awake? She was the reason he was awake.
Damnher, anyway.
Because when he was awake and not occupied, memories rushed in to fill the space. And then he was held hostage by another kind of unassuageable ache.
He’d seen how swiftly a forest recovered from a fire. How the new, tender green growth moved in with gentle but nearly unseemly speed, until one would never see the burn scar, or the dead trees. But that wasn’t until the rains came. And they wouldn’t come until he was home, and building his new life.
He ought to go to Surrey in search of the Clay family. Apart from his promise to build the stage, there was no reason he ought not go immediately. But that was another reason to resent Lillias: the image of Woodley’s daughter was as elusive now as one of those rainbows thrown about by the crystals dangling from the chandelier in the foyer. He’d been driven by a promise and his own needfor answers. His own hope. And it was slipping from his grasp. He felt guilty.
Hugh gave up, sat upright, and began by casting off his nightshirt and hurling it across the room as though it were the cause of every frustration he’d ever known.
He followed this by kicking off the lovingly sewn coverlet.
And finally he lay naked and sweating, but that was hardly better.
Christ.
He rolled out of bed, strode nude across the room, and heaved up the sash window. In came a great gust of fetid air and the unearthly screeches of two cats fucking.
Or perhaps fighting.
Perhaps both.
Was there a difference, really?
“Lucky cat,” he muttered.
Hefeltferal, standing naked—clearly the word of the day—and perspiring at an open window, irritable and restless, acutely aware of every inch of his skin, or, more accurately, the full contours of his being. As though it had been coiled into a cramped place and newly freed, and now was needling him as the blood flowed again.
Skin was useful for more than being the thing between his viscera and bullets, for instance. It was capable of knowing glories.
And he remembered diving into a swimming hole naked with his brother when he was about ten. The delicious icy shock of the plunge that took the breath out of him, sinking from the gold-green dappled surface into the olive dark depths, sinking, sinking until his toes found the sandy bottom and pushed off to launch back into daylight. That triumph of moving with grace in both worlds, on water, on land. Darting like little silver fish to the rock they called the Whale, their limbs pulling them through the water, pouring over their backs. His brother was faster but when it came to longer races Hugh always got there first. His will was stronger than possibly anyone’s.
And the feel of his skin covering a woman’s rippling body. Her nipples chafing against his chest, her fingers digging into his shoulders as they bucked together, her hot breath in his ear huffingmore, faster, the two of them running down the merciful, obliterating blackness of that ultimate, near unholy pleasure. He had a few friendly widows to thank for his sexual education. He gloried in the textures of women and there was almost nothing more gratifying than discovering the kinds of touch that made a particular woman wild, so he could build her desire up like he would a fire started with a flint.
But Christ.
This.
Was thisfair?
He didn’t usually think of things in terms of fair or not fair. You played the cards you were dealt as they were flipped your way. But apparently, unlike an angry bear, he couldn’t shake this thing. Nothing ameliorated this restless, clawing want. Nothing ever could.
Because he of course would not be seducing the virgin daughter of an earl.
He pressed his palms against his eyes and tookin a long breath, blew it out at length. He imagined her lying naked on his bed, and all of his muscles tensed as if he were about to cover her with his body. He wrapped a hand around his tightening cock and gave it a speculative heft. Then decided, no, it wasn’t a good use of his time to spend the night exercising his elbow and nurturing an obsession.
But he needed to burn some of this off or he’d never sleep.
He’d go have a look at the work remaining to do on the stage. Perhaps sweep up a little.
He poured water from his pitcher into the basin and splashed his face with it. Took a long breath.
Suddenly a slight breeze, tender as an exhale, slipped in the window and curled around his neck. A breeze was never far behind when the ocean was just outside. He said “thank you” to whatever deity might be listening, aloud because he would never not say thank you for the gentle, small graces. Because life was comprised of pretty much nothing but that, between battles.
Beyond that, far beyond the ocean, was home. As soon as he finished building the stage he would go to Surrey.
He seized his shirt and pulled it on over his head, got into his trousers and boots. He hooked his fingers into an unlit lantern, then closed and locked the room behind him.