Improper Arrangements (3 page)

The sitting room of my suite was spacious and bright, the draperies left open to let in the sun. A round table stood in the middle of the room, its only ornament a small cut-glass bowl filled with Michaelmas daisies. I removed my bonnet, set it down and smoothed back my hair with trembling hands.

I walked back to the door, my skirts brushing against his half-naked legs, and shut it firmly. He was watching me, I knew it, but I couldn’t make myself turn to face him. I let my head drop against the door, welcoming the way its satin surface cooled my brow.

“I don’t even know your name,” I whispered.

A rush of movement, and he was behind me. Not touching me, but close enough that I could hear and feel his every breath.

“Eli. What is your name?”

“You may call me Alice.” No need to burden him with the rest of it.

“Will you look at me, Alice?”

I turned, letting my weight fall against the door. He wasn’t an overly tall man, perhaps an inch or two shy of six feet, but as I stood little more than five feet in my slippers he still managed to tower over me. I met his gaze and admired once again the stark, wild beauty of his ink-and-silver eyes.

“Are you sure?” he whispered. “You must be certain.”

“Yes...yes. I am.”

It wasn’t the truth, not precisely, but it would do. Was I certain I wanted him? Yes. Was I certain I would learn, with this man, just what poets and composers and authors of ladies’ fiction rhapsodized about so enthusiastically?

Yes
.

Chapter Two

Setting one hand firmly on the door, just above my shoulder, Eli lifted his other hand to my face, tracing the line of my cheekbone so gently that my skin trembled and shivered at his touch. He slowly lowered his head to mine, his mouth brushing against my lips, featherlight at first, but so assuredly that I was happy to open my mouth for him.

And then came the mesmerizing glide of his tongue as it delved beyond my lips, sparking a thousand pinpricks of surprised delight in my fingertips, toes and other areas never before awakened by a kiss.

I wasn’t sure how to respond—it had been nearly a decade since I’d last been kissed—but instinct welled up from deep within, whispering, directing me how to respond. I tilted my head back ever farther, my mouth pressing eagerly against his, and felt my arms rise, as if of their own accord, and settle on his shoulders. My tongue darted forward, meeting his, and my daring provoked in him a thrillingly atavistic growl.

Perhaps it was the heat of the room, or perhaps it was simply my reaction to Eli, but my garments suddenly felt unbearable, their weight and pressure excruciatingly confining. My hands went to my jacket, intent on unfastening it, but he was there first, deftly opening its innumerable buttons. He did the same with the bodice of my traveling gown, spreading it wide to bare my shoulders.

Then he reached for the narrow satin ribbon that held shut my chemise. The bow came loose and the fine cambric drooped low. I grasped the bottom edge of my corset, pulled down sharply and my breasts bounced free, ready for his gaze.

“Beautiful,” he said, caressing my small, tight nipples with roughened fingertips. Unsure of what I ought to do, I simply stood and watched, my hands at my sides, letting the marvelous sensations wash over me. I wanted to touch him, but what if I made a mistake and shattered the spell that had fallen over us?

He bent his head and closed his mouth over my left breast, something so unexpected that I flinched, just a little. Drawing my nipple deep into his mouth, he circled and flicked at it with his tongue, pulling away for a second to admire the engorged pink crest. Then he took it into his mouth again, sucking and licking and nipping, his left hand moving on my other breast in much the same fashion. My skin was so pale against his sun-darkened hands, so soft compared to the beautiful abrasion of his beard.

And then his mouth was on mine again, his lips hard and bruising, his fingers caught tight in my hair, pulling my head back so fiercely I almost cried out. He was breathing heavily, and the hot rush of it against my face was thrilling and faintly alarming.

He reached down, skimming over the curve of my breast and the indentation of my waist, grasped my right hand, and held it to the front of his breeches. A decent woman would have resisted, would have snatched her hand away.

I would not. I could not.

I let my hand rest on his erection, confined so closely in his breeches, and then I tightened my fingers over it, squeezing gently so as not to hurt him. He groaned, the sound so low and sensual it was closer to a purr, and thrust his groin into my hand.

I had to see him, had to know this part of him for myself. I pushed his braces off his shoulders and scrabbled at the front of his breeches, finding the buttons that fastened their fall front, and undid them with shaking fingers. He wore nothing beneath. I dragged the garment low on his hips, out of the way, and took him in my hand.

He was smooth, solid stone come to life, moving and pulsing and blazing hot. I closed my fingers, marveling at how something so hard could also feel so velvety smooth, almost delicate. Tightening my grasp, I felt ridiculously satisfied when he let out a moan of pleasure.

“I love the feel of your hand on my cock. Much more of this and I’ll come all over your hand,” he muttered against my ear. “Is that what you want? Or do you want more?”

More
, I thought. Definitely more. But my throat had gone dry, and when I opened my mouth to answer, no words came forth. So I looked up, met his stern, questioning gaze and nodded.

It was all the encouragement he needed.

He pushed my skirt and petticoats up to my waist, leaving the wires and tapes of my fashionable crinolette to dangle uselessly. “Bloody thing,” he grumbled, pulling at the ties that fastened it about my waist. They were knotted securely, but that was no impediment to a man in a hurry. He snapped them with one quick jerk of his hand and lifted me free of the collapsing cage.

“Much better. Now I can get close to you.” As if to illustrate his words, he pushed me hard against the door, letting the entirety of his body press against mine.

He drew back fractionally and reached between my legs, through the wide opening of my drawers, and covered my woman’s mound with his entire hand. His fingers curved low, and after giving me scant seconds to grow used to the feel of his hand on my sex, he pushed one finger inside me, then a second, moving them about in the most delicious fashion. When he pulled them out they were wet, and he used the moisture to draw a silken path from my opening to the little hidden place above.

He traced a circle around and around the spot, never quite touching it, though I pushed and wriggled against his hand and sighed endless, silent entreaties.

“Not yet. I want to be inside you when I make you come.”

I thought he would carry me to the bed, or at least lay me down on the floor, but instead he pushed my legs wide, bent his knees, and drove his member—his cock, as he’d called it—into me, then and there.

“Wrap your legs around my hips,” he ordered, his voice hard against my ear, and as I did so he pushed even deeper inside me. Then he straightened his legs and pinned me against the door.

“Hold on,” he whispered, and that was the last thing he said before he got down to the serious business of ravishing me senseless.

I knew his hands were beneath me, supporting my bottom, drawing me close, but I couldn’t feel them. All I could feel was his cock impaling me against the door, pushing in and out of me with such intensity that I feared the hinges would fail or the door would shatter and we would tumble into the corridor beyond.

Then Eli shifted his stance, tilting my bottom back a fraction, and something changed. He was rubbing against a spot deep inside me, and what had already felt marvelous a moment before now felt better, so much better that I cried out despite myself.

“You like that, do you? What about this?” Leaving only one arm to bear my weight, he reached between our bodies and found, with unerring precision, the pearl between my legs.

This time he didn’t tease. This time he rubbed it with sure strokes of his thumb, steadily driving me higher, ever higher, all the while pounding into me just as relentlessly.

The familiar tightness grew within, winding tight and heavy, and I clung to his shoulders as if they were my anchor in a storm. My climax was gathering, an enveloping, silver-bright cascade that swept over and through me, and I was falling into it, tumbling head over heels, the roar of my heartbeat deafening me to all else.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.

Eli drove inside me harder and harder, both hands on my bottom again, and I didn’t care that my head was bumping against the door, that the solid wood was beginning to hurt my back, that anyone walking down the corridor might hear my cries and know exactly what we were doing.

“Holy fuck,” he gasped, and then pulled away abruptly. I felt a rush of hot fluid against my inner thigh, soaking into the fabric of my drawers. In that instant I shook free from the waking dream that had ensnared me since the moment we’d first touched, back on the road to Argentière.

He lowered me to my feet but made no move to pull away, leaning heavily against me, his hands settled lightly on my thighs, his head buried in the crook of my shoulder. Long moments passed, marked only by our slowing heartbeats and my growing dismay.

In the space of only a few minutes, we’d progressed from simple kisses to the sort of transgression that often had far-reaching consequences. I’d been through this once before, eight long years ago—what had I been thinking to endanger myself like this again?

“Alice? Are you all right?”

“Quite all right, thank you. Let me excuse myself for a moment...I need to clean...”

“Of course. I’ll wait here.”

I scurried into the bedroom, hideously aware of the semen dripping down my thigh and the general disarray of my person. As my bags were still in the sitting room with Eli, I was forced to wipe myself dry with my drawers, which I removed and crumpled into a ball; I would deal with them later. It took but a moment more to fasten my bodice and jacket and smooth out my skirts. My hair I abandoned as a lost cause.

I opened the door to the sitting room, half hoping that he had already left and spared us the awkwardness of this conversation. But he was there still, his expression grave and not a little troubled.

“I’m not sure what to say,” I began, determined to at least be honest with him. “I’ve never done anything like this.”

“As you said earlier,” he answered.

“Would you mind terribly if I asked you to go?”

“If that is what you wish.”

“I do. I mean, I think it’s for the best if you do. I don’t know you, after all, and this...this was a mistake.”

“Then I’ll go.”

“I am terribly sorry if I—”

“Don’t apologize,” he said. To my everlasting relief he sounded sincere, and not in the least aggrieved.

“Thank you again for your help with my things,” I added awkwardly, wishing I had something better to offer by way of farewell.

I stood back as he approached the door, opened it wide and paused at the threshold.

He turned his head to look at me one last time. A flicker of some emotion, too elusive to identify, moved across his face, then was gone.

“Goodbye, Alice.”

Chapter Three

As soon as the door had clicked shut behind him, I went to the window and forced myself to admire the entrancing view. Oceans of sky so blue it nearly hurt my eyes, a few stray clouds scudding by, and above all the inescapable mass of the mountains, so near and yet so remote, their upper slopes heavy with snow even in high summer.

It seemed impossible that men had stood atop those peaks to stare down at the world below. Had Eli climbed them? I wished, suddenly, that I had asked.

It was done. Over. I need never think of him again, nor dwell on how foolish I had been. And I had been foolish. I knew nothing of him, not even his surname. He could have been anything, anyone—a vagabond, a brute, a madman—and I was vulnerable, a woman traveling alone in a foreign country.

I was twenty-six years old and had endeavored, ever since the sobering mistakes I had made eight years ago, to be the very model of rectitude and sensible, level-headed behavior. All gone in a matter of minutes.

“Enough,” I said to the empty room and the echoing mountains beyond. What was done was done. I had made a mistake, but it need not lead to catastrophe. No one knew, apart from Eli, and he didn’t seem the sort of man to gossip. Assuming he hadn’t left any of his seed in me, I should be safe from pregnancy.

Now I simply had to forget. That was the solution. I had to busy myself, do something, else find myself wallowing in doubt and recrimination.

I would paint.

I’d been traveling almost nonstop for the past week, and while I’d been able to make rough sketches of the sights I’d seen, I hadn’t yet had the chance to capture the colors and details of the views that had affected me most deeply.

It was the work of seconds to set up my little traveler’s easel on the table in front of the window, affix to it a half sheet of pristine Arches paper, open my tin of watercolors and unroll my bundle of brushes. I borrowed a cup of water from the nearby flower arrangement, there being no other ready source in my rooms, and opened my sketchbook.

I leafed through the drawings I’d done—Lake Geneva at dawn, placid cows grazing in their summer pastures, the mottled amethyst petals of a
Dactylorhiza alpestris
—but none inspired me.

I wanted to paint Eli. Never mind that a heartbeat ago I’d resolved to forget him. Never mind that fixing his face in my memory was pure, unalloyed folly.

I took up a pencil, sharpened it on a scrap of sandpaper and set the first line on the paper. It was the arch of his brow, always my favorite place to begin when drawing a person’s face. Another sweep of the pencil and I had his nose, including the crooked bit just below the bridge. A flurry of short, soft strokes, and I had his eyes. The rest of his face followed, little more than brief lines that suggested the curve of his lips, the shadow of his beard and the fall of his dark, waving hair.

A sketch alone wasn’t enough—I needed to capture the almost otherworldly color of his eyes before my memory of them faded and blurred. While I might never look at this drawing again, I had to see those eyes one last time.

I dipped my sponge into the cup of water I’d purloined from the flower arrangement and dampened the paper just enough to let the pigments settle in. I dabbed a dot of cobalt blue on my palette, a smaller dot of vermilion, a drop of water to lighten the resulting gray, and let the shades flow together. Allowing only the tip of my favorite squirrel-hair brush to touch the color, I let it wash over the irises, scarcely darkening them, letting the pigment work with the stark white of the paper to produce the shade I sought. I dried the brush, touched it to the gray on the palette, let it linger on the paper a further half second, just to capture the ring of color that banded his irises. Then I filled in the pupils, dark and intense.

I pulled back and examined what I had wrought with a critical eye. The contrast was right, but it wanted some blue. The merest hint of French ultramarine, laid wet on top of the near-black, was all it needed. And there...done. Eli’s face, his eyes, as near as I could fashion them.

Less than an hour before, I’d been in his arms, so close I could hear his every breath. He had made me feel things I had never expected to feel, had led me to delights that I’d long assumed were the province of fables and no more.

And I had let him go. I had let him walk away without discovering his surname or asking for his direction. I hadn’t even thanked him—had, instead, banished him like a thief caught skulking in the corridor.

It was for the best. It was truly for the best. Why else had he agreed so readily to leave? He must have felt, too, that I was right.

I set the drawing on the far side of the desk, taking care to weigh down its corners. The rest of my supplies I tidied away, rinsing my brush in the remaining water and drying it thoroughly on an old handkerchief I kept in my supplies case for just that purpose.

The clock on the bedroom mantel chimed noon. Half the day was gone already, and I’d entirely forgotten about the pressing issue of a guide for the next stage of my journey. If I wished to receive prompt answers from the men I had come here to interview, I needed to send off messages to them now.

Armed with the list my brother had given me, I sat at the desk again. Tom no longer had the time for much climbing, but he was a longtime member of the Alpine Club and a reliable source of information on anything to do with mountaineering.

I took a sheet of hotel stationery and began copying out the message I planned to send to all five guides on my brother’s list, beginning with Arthur P. Warburton.

Monday
,
6
August
,
1866

Dear Mr.
Warburton
,

I
arrived today in Argentière with the intention of traveling on to Zermatt via the High-Level Route.
My brother
,
Thomas Cathcart-Ross
,
has recommended you as a guide for the journey.
I
would be most grateful if you could let me know if you are at liberty to accompany me and
,
if so
,
when you might be available to discuss provisioning
,
remuneration
,
etcetera.

Yours very truly
,

Alice Cathcart-Ross

I next wrote out identical messages to Tomas Mueller, Anders Rossi, E. P. Keating and Jean-Marie Valent. All five men lived in Argentière or La Rosière, a smaller village just to the south, so with any luck I might expect to hear back from one or more of them as early as tomorrow.

After ringing the bellpull, I handed my envelopes to the footman when he arrived at my door. I also asked him to send up some food, and to my relief it was delivered a scant quarter hour later. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I uncovered the dishes: cream of carrot soup, warm rolls with fresh butter, poached trout with parsley sauce and, for pudding, fresh raspberries with a little pitcher of cream.

I was yawning as I finished off the berries, huge, jaw-cracking yawns that brought tears to my eyes and made my every gesture feel as if lead weights were hanging from my limbs. Evidently a short rest was in order.

Wearing only my chemise, drawers and stockings, I climbed into bed, shivering a little when the cool linen sheets brushed against my skin. My mind was cluttered with unwanted images, sensations, even sounds. The tickle of Eli’s fingers as they traced the curve of my face. His tongue in my mouth. His growl of pleasure when I responded in kind. The weight and heat of his cock inside me.

What had occurred between us earlier had been a mistake, pure and simple.

If only I could believe it.

* * *

The sound of a sharp knock woke me from a deep and dreamless sleep. I lay still, waiting, but it wasn’t repeated. I slipped out of bed and went to the door of my bedchamber. All was silent. How odd, I thought, and then I saw an envelope on the floor in front of the door to the corridor. Presumably the servant who had delivered it had also knocked to alert me.

It was addressed to me, the writing in an unfamiliar hand. A man’s writing, by the look of it. I tore open the envelope and read the note inside.

Received your message.
Am available today from five o’clock onward.

E.P.
Keating

I glanced at the clock on the mantel: it was half past two already. I dashed off a reply to Mr. Keating, nearly as brief as his own, asking him to meet me in the hotel’s conservatory at five o’clock for tea. With that accomplished, I dressed and rang for a footman.

As before, he arrived at my suite in record time and promised to deliver my message to Mr. Keating straight away. Before he left, I asked that a lady’s maid be sent to me. I was keen to make a good impression on the renowned E. P. Keating, and for that I would need some assistance.

Of all the guides my brother had recommended, Mr. Keating was the only one I’d heard of before, for his fame far exceeded the rarefied world of mountaineering. I’d read an account of his early life not long ago, in one of the London newspapers, and had been thoroughly awed by his achievements.

A younger son of minor gentry, he’d grown up in the wilds of Derbyshire, had taken a double first in mathematics at Cambridge and, aged all of twenty, had embarked on the first of many voyages. He’d traveled the world, had been to the Holy Land and Arabia and Hindustan, and had ventured deep into the high mountains of the Himalaya.

That alone would have been enough for most men, but then—inspired, I supposed, by the mountains he had seen abroad—he’d returned to Europe and had become an alpinist.

He’d conquered every notable peak in the Alps, including the Eiger, the Jungfrau and Mont Blanc’s Grandes Jorasses. Not only had he climbed, walked and skied every slope, but he’d also pioneered new techniques, new approaches and new ways of thinking about mountains and men.

And he’d written about it all, first in a series of articles in the
Alpine Journal
, and then, as interest in his exploits grew, he’d published an honest, engaging and entirely captivating account of his most famous climbs. My own dog-eared copy of
Between Earth and Sky
was in my trunk even now, for I planned to read his descriptions of these mountains as I walked their lower slopes.

Although Tom had recommended him as a potential guide, he’d also warned me that Mr. Keating might be unable to oblige. Less than a year ago, while descending from the summit of the Aiguille d’Argentière, he and his closest friend had fallen hundreds of feet after the rope securing them had snapped. Peter Davies had been killed, and Mr. Keating had been badly injured. Tom had no idea if Mr. Keating was even able to walk, let alone undertake a lengthy journey along the High-Level Route.

Still, he
had
said he would meet with me, and that was a start. Even if he couldn’t guide me, he would likely know of someone else who might.

An hour later, a scratch at the door heralded the arrival of one of the hotel’s maids, together with my remaining luggage. I wouldn’t have to meet Mr. Keating in my travel-worn gown after all.

Agnès had an excellent command of English, and in short order she unpacked my trunk, divested me of my rumpled clothes and prosaic undergarments, and had me securely laced into the one good satin-covered corset I’d brought with me. Traveling on my own, I’d grown used to loosened laces, for there was no one available to tighten them after I’d fastened my corset busk. It soon became evident that Agnès disapproved strongly of such laxity on my part.

Feeling breathless and not at all certain that I’d be able to manage anything more than a sip of tea, I sat meekly at the dressing table while she arranged my hair and set a crescent of silk flowers just above the plaited oval of my chignon. Then it was time for my new afternoon gown, one of several I’d purchased while in Paris earlier in the summer. It was made of aquamarine silk taffeta trimmed with Alençon lace, it was prettier than anything I’d ever owned, and it had been shockingly expensive.

As I looked at my reflection in the mirror, I decided it was worth every single franc. In my ordinary day dresses, I was plain. Short and slight, I had no bosom to speak of, and my hips were unfashionably narrow. My complexion was even but had no color to it, and my hair was similarly insipid. Not dark enough to be brown, nor fair enough to be blond, it was an indeterminate shade of nothing. My eyes were a pleasant shade of hazel, but rather spoiled by too-dark brows.

The new gown had wrought nothing less than miracles with my appearance. Its pale blue-green silk made my hair shine, and my usually dull complexion had become radiant. And my bosom—I stared and stared. Where had it come from? I’d always assumed I had no curves, but this gown proved me wrong.

“You look very nice,
madame.
”

“Thank you, Agnès. I believe I do.”