Page 57 of A Fiery Lady's Accidental Affair

“That’s wonderful to hear, Grace,” said Alicia, stepping closer to her sister. “Congratulations. I am sure you and Mister…Cavendish, is it? I am sure you will be very happy.”

Grace pursed her lips as though she had taken a bite of a lemon.As much as she has always craved it, she has never known how to take it when someone is nice to her,Alicia thought with a sad smile.

“Well,” Grace said again, raising her arms listlessly. “I suppose this is it, then. Even if the circumstances are most irregular—some might say scandalous, though of course, I would not pay attention to such things—now you will be a married woman. I know Mother and Father would be pleased that you will be taken care of for the future.”

Alicia reached out her hands, and Grace only looked to them in confusion for a few seconds before she took them in her own, squeezing gently.

“Thank you, Grace,” she said, surprised by how genuinely touched she felt at this gesture. “And with you having won the hand of your man, it looks as though we will both be all right, after all.”

The door hinge squeaked once more. Alicia squeezed Grace’s hands tightly with anticipation as she looked expectantly at the opening door.

It’s time.

* * *

The Gillingham house was the same as it had been for the previous several weeks. Yet somehow, ineffably, everything had changed completely. Night had long since fallen, yet even as the new Mister and Missus gave their vows and shared laughter and tears with attendees late into the evening, someone had snuck back to the old farmhouse and lit a constellation of candles between the front door and the upstairs, and somehow found time to sprinkle fresh rose petals along this glittering path.

But even more than that, everythingfeltdifferent. Alicia had crossed the threshold into this house dozens of times, had fondly looked on its wooden rafters and modest decorations more times than she could count…but now, after a few words were said before Father Hamlin, the air smelled sweeter, the lights glowed brighter, the corners of the house more full of life and love.

“Perhaps it is simply a matter of perspective, so to speak,” said Laurence when Alicia voiced this observation. To call attention to his joke, he bounced Alicia up and down in his grasp.

“Stop that!” she giggled, clutching his neck all the tighter.

“Only a little farther, Missus Gillingham,” he said in his deep, wonderful baritone. Now Alicia’s eyes stopped examining their home—herhome, she remembered with a swoon—and instead turned to drink in her husband’s glorious visage.

Laurence was as fetching as she had ever seen him standing at the altar in his fine black suit, but it was still that rugged, masculine face that made her feel weak in the knees. Seeing his shining blue eyes look down at her with a smile, Alicia felt a surge of happiness greater than even what she had felt that afternoon.

“I have the rest of my life to look upon this beautiful face,” Laurence said, pausing halfway up the stairs to meet her stare with stars in his eyes. Alicia reached a hand up to caress his cheek admiringly. “Yet I feel I just cannot look at you enough, Alicia.”

“Perhaps we should stay here a while longer, then,” she cooed.

Laurence chuckled at this, then resumed carrying her up to the upper floor of the house. “Tempting though that may be, I’d rather not risk my arms giving out and spoiling this wonderful moment.” Alicia rewarded him for this insolence with another gleeful kick of her legs.

Before she knew it, Laurence had carried her through the door at the end of the hallway, the one she had glimpsed during her visits but never dared to open. And now, pushing it open with his hip, she found herself in a wide, elegant room lit by a hundred candles.

“Oh, Laurence!” said Alicia, her voice full of wonder. Wordlessly he set her down on her feet and she examined their surroundings. Jenny had been here, clearly, judging by how Alicia could see her things were unpacked and her empty bags resting against one of the massive wooden chests of drawers.

And as quaint as the artworks that bedecked the walls in the rest of the house might be, Laurence clearly saved the most appealing paintings for his own room. Most of all she noticed the bed, a grand feathery thing with a carved wooden headboard. Alicia walked closer to it, her mind racing with the possibilities it suggested.

Her heart fluttered as she heard the door close softly behind her. She turned to see Laurence—sweet, handsome Laurence—looking at her with a most becoming blush on his cheeks.

“Well,” he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Here we are. Our wedding night.”

“I think you may be right,” said Alicia with a meekness that surprised her.

For an instant, all they could do was look on one another hungrily. Alicia could not begin to guess just what was running through Laurence’s mind, but if it was anything like her own, it was tied up in knots, thinking of a thousand thrilling things to do all at the same time. The two shared a laugh at their shared paralysis.

“I…have not…been with a woman before,” said Laurence, stepping closer to her, close enough that all his musky masculine smell was caught up in her ragged breathing.

“Nor I with a man,” Alicia answered with a smile. “We shall simply have to do what comes naturally.”

This proved to be the proper course. In a great collision of flesh and desire the two set upon one another. Laurence’s hands felt they were everywhere at once even as they held Alicia firmly in their grasp—lovingly stroking her neck, holding her pert derrière, touching her along her wide hips. Each part of her that he touched awakened a new flow of desire from the sluices that had opened within her, and all the while his lips never left hers as their tongues sought and probed against one another with great ferocity.

“Oh,” Alicia grunted, feeling Laurence’s lips embrace her along the tops of her shoulder blades, nudging the neckline of her gown aside lustily. “Oh, thatoh—”

Her thoughts became simpler, wordless, animal. Nothing existed any longer but her body and Laurence’s. Somehow their clothes disappeared, piece by piece, until Alicia found herself wholly naked and lying on the bed.

She had scarcely registered that Laurence too was unclothed, the full glory of his manhood on unashamed display before her, when she felt her legs part, her womanhood possessed of a needy emptiness she had never felt before.

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