* * *
‘The wedding night seems a long way off,’ he said three weeks before the day, after one long, delicious kiss in the laundry where he found her after drawing sketches of the head laundry maid and her little team.
The women had trooped off to the drying yards, lugging dripping baskets of linen with them, leaving her in the steamy warmth, her hair lank and her face red. ‘I look a mess,’ she protested when Ivo caught her up and kissed her.
‘You look flushed and lovely and decidedly wanton,’ he countered, picking her up and sitting her on the long sorting table. ‘I want to make you even more disordered.’
‘You make me feel disordered,’ she said, trying to make a joke of it. ‘Ivo—what are you doing?’
‘Helping you cool off.’ His hands were busy with the fastenings of her bodice, then he tugged at the shoulders and she found herself sitting there in her chemise. One glance down at the thin muslin and she realised what his gaze was fixed on—the curve of her breasts pushed up by her stays.
At least I am so red in the face with the heat he will not see my blushes, she thought as his hands fastened on her waist.
‘Ivo!’ The downward pressure of his hands pulled down the edge of the stays until she felt her nipples escape. It felt...
Goodness, that feels so... Touch me, Ivo, please...
As though by arching into his hands she had spoken out loud he moved in closer, bent his head and touched his tongue to the brown aureoles showing through the damp cloth, licking, fretting as she felt them harden and her breasts began to ache.
‘Ivo... Yes.’
What do I look like? she thought wildly as she fell backwards into a pile of table linen.
Ivo was pressed between her thighs, bent over her. She could feel the hard thrust of him, intimately tight against her, even through skirts and petticoats and his breeches. Then she stopped caring about anything but Ivo and wanting him. There was too much fabric between them and she wanted bare skin, to run her hands over those muscles she had seen at the inn. Her hands made claws and she raked them down the unyielding cloth of his coat, moaning in frustration at not being able to touch him.
His right hand was on her thigh now, pushing up her skirts, and she arched against him, not knowing what she wanted, only that she needed something, needed him...
Then Ivo pushed back, pulled her upright and jerked her bodice back into place. ‘Someone is coming, I heard the yard gate bang.’ He looked at her. ‘Oh, hell.’
‘Coal store.’ Jane managed to totter to her feet, grabbed at her sketchbook and ran for the door into the room where the fuel for the boilers under the coppers was stored. Did it have another door out? She was not sure, but anything was better than being caught in an amorous tangle amid the damask cloths.
They collapsed against the door as it swung closed behind them, both panting.
‘There’s the door to the yard,’ Jane whispered, nodding to where light came in around the battered old planking. Behind them the room filled with the sound of chattering as the laundry maids trooped back in.
‘Miss Newnham’s gone,’ one of them said. ‘Fancy His Lordship wanting us all painted—never heard the like.’
‘She’s nice,’ one chipped in. ‘A proper lady, she is, interested and not talking down to us.’
‘Aye, well, she’ll want her washing done, just like the rest of them,’ the head laundry maid interrupted. ‘How’s that fire, Madge? Do we need more wood under the big copper?’
There was the sound of metal rattling. Jane held her breath and felt Ivo tense beside her, then the girls called, ‘No, it’ll do another half-hour. I’ll get these tablecloths in, shall I?’
Jane and Ivo both slumped against the door.
Just like naughty children up to mischief, she thought and was seized with the urge to giggle.
Beside her she could feel Ivo shaking, then a muffled snort escaped him. He took her hand and took three long strides to the outer door, cracked it open, peered out and then they were outside and round the corner into the shelter of the open wood store.
Jane slumped against one of the posts and gave way to helpless giggles. Ivo sat on the saw horse and laughed until the tears ran down his face.
After a few whoops he managed to get himself under control. ‘Lord, I think I’ve cracked a rib again.’ He pulled out a handkerchief, looked at Jane and passed it over, then wiped his hand over his face. When they had both calmed down he grinned at her. ‘“A proper lady, she is,”’ he quoted, setting Jane off again.
‘We cannot go into the house looking like this.’ Jane straightened up at last, gave a last swipe at her face with the handkerchief and tried to pin back straggling locks of hair.
‘The rose garden,’ Ivo said, holding out his hand.
It was surprising that, after such a tumult of sensation, she could feel calm and happy and at ease with him. They strolled down through the back gate without encountering anyone and made their way round the side of the East Wing into the rose garden, sheltered by high hedges and, more importantly just at the moment in her view, secluded from most of the windows in the house.