Chapter 3: Growing Closer

Once inside, the house, George stood back from Esther. “Can you stand?” he asked.

“Y-yes.” Her teeth were chattering and her frame was shaking. He dropped the lap robe on the floor pulled off her cloak and bonnet and dropped them as well.

“Deal with those,” he told the footman who had opened the door. “Have Ian attend me and Nicholas deal with the horses ... Come, dear,” He was speaking to Esther now. He helped her up the stairs. Before they had arrived at the top, Ian was above them offering a hand.

“Is there a fire in the parlor?” George asked him. “Stoke it up.” There had been a fire when he left, but not a terribly hot one. Ian ran off.

When they finally made it into the parlor, Ian was kneeling in front of the fire. He had a log of soft wood split into quarters already and a large lump of coal. He used the tongs to put two of the quarters on the still-burning logs.

George wrapped the shivering Esther in his arms and stood her facing what fire there was – and, thus, Ian’s back.

Ian used the back of the hatchet to smash the lump of coal. He brushed the fragments into the pan and used the pan to spread them evenly over the front quarter-log. He then applied himself to the bellows. Soon, the two pieces of wood were burning brightly. Ian stood and moved aside.

“That is as hot as I can get it right now, Milord. I can add the other two quarters later.”

“Good. Ring for a maid.” George stepped closer to the fire until Esther’s toes touched the hearth. “Then stoke up the fire in the dressing room and come back.”

Esther was still shivering in his arms, but steam was now coming off the front of her clothing. The odor showed that it had been exposed to the horse dung, as well.

“Milord?” a maid said from behind him.

“A large pot of hot tea as soon as possible. India for preference.” His hosts preferred delicate China tea for themselves, but delicacy was not what this situation demanded. “Then give orders for a hip bath in my dressing room. The gentlewoman will use it; so I shall need a maid to attend.”

“Milord,” Ian said soon after the maid had left.

“The gentlewoman shall need clothes after her bath. These will not do. Find my softest clean shirt and my warmest clean robe. Put them in the dressing room where the densest maid can see them. After you have done that, select a full set of clothes for me and bring them in here. The ones I am wearing are rather unpresentable.”

“Milord.” And Ian went on his way. He returned with the clothes before the maid brought the tea.

While Esther was still shivering, it seemed to him that she was doing so less. She suddenly stood straighter in his arms. He began to loosen his grip, but she pulled his arm back against her.

When the maid brought the tea, George directed Ian to pour an inch of brandy into the cup, add three spoons of sugar, and fill it with tea. He held the tea to Esther’s mouth despite the shivers and chattering teeth. She brought a hand up to hold his, and then managed to sip from the cup. Soon, it was empty, and he thought that most had gone into her, although some had been spilled.

“Another cup like the first,” he ordered Ian.

Esther had come back to life and warmth in Lord George’s arms. She felt that she could manage her own tea, though. She took the cup when it appeared before her face. It tasted somewhat odd and very sweet. It was, however, hot. Despite the fire before her and Lord George behind her, she felt cold inside.

When she had nearly drained the second cup, she started to turn. Lord George stepped back enough to allow that. She had the last swallow, and Lord George took the cup. He immediately offered her another. Other people were doing things in the room so tea appeared, but they were the only people in the world.

“You did come for me,” she said. For all the attraction of being held by him, the fire was warming her back more than he had. She sipped from the third cup. As its level stopped threatening a spill and her trembling lessened, she took deeper swallows.

“I was late. I thought of a sledge for the snow, and then...”

“You came for me. Would you have gone to the school if you had not found me?” It was not Esther’s custom to interrupt her elders, let alone a belted earl. This was a new Esther, and it somewhat surprised her. Well, she had thought the old Esther would die; perhaps she had.

“I went there first. I had no idea you would leave.”

“I should have depended on you.” She really should have, and he looked like he, too, thought she should have. They stood like that, she sipping tea and he merely looking at her, for the longest time.

“The bath is ready,” some woman said from outside the magic circle. Lord George guided her to a door, and she walked through it. When the door closed, she was in a room with two women dressed as maids to the aristocracy. There was a hip bath next to the hearth.

“We shall take those clothes,” one of the maids said.

Milord said to send them to be washed,” said the other.

She obviously could not get in the bath dressed, and it looked delightfully warm. As she stripped, her skin grew colder. But the water was hot against it when she got in. The second maid brought yet another cup of tea before going away with her clothes.

Esther could not remember being bathed, though she had seen Sammy bathed and could understand that she had been served so when she was that young. The remaining maid seemed intent on bathing her, and Esther could not summon the energy to resist.

When the maid got to the hair, Esther could see the sense of it. Her hair had been thoroughly soaked, and some of that soaking had been the puddle which was none too clean. Undoing her hair from the braid, washing it out, rinsing it with the water from the pots on the hob, combing it, rinsing it again, and combing it again took longer than washing her entire body had. For the whole period, Esther had been mostly immersed in the bath.

When she rose from the bath, Esther discovered that she felt unsteady. She attributed that to her experience, which would unsteady anyone.

When the maid had dried her, she presented her with the clothes that were available. There was a man’s linen shirt that hung down to her knees and a rich wool dressing gown. The maid rolled up the sleeves of the shirt above Esther’s wrists. When the dressing gown was belted under her breasts, it did not reach the floor.

The clothes were obviously the earl’s. They even smelt of Lord George. The warmth of the wool all around her reminded her of the warmth of Lord George on her back as he held her facing the fire. Somehow, the linen caressing her skin – including the skin of her breasts – was almost as if Lord George were caressing her himself. She felt flustered; although she was finally warm, her nipples pressed against the fine linen as if she were cold.

“Are you warm, at last?” George asked as Esther came into the room wearing his dressing gown. The child was so small that dressing gown brushed the floor and was wound almost all the way around her.

“Yes, milord.” Esther felt warm and clean. She also felt dizzy.

“They are washing your clothes. First you should eat.” George took a small table and dragged it across in front of the hearth. He put a chair on the hearth. “Come, sit.”

“Ask the kitchen what they can send up for a gentlewoman who has taken a chill.” he told the maid.

Soon, a footman came up with two soup plates, the proper utensils, and a tureen of soup. “Cook said warm soup is good for the chills,” he said. “She had begun this when she heard.”

“Are the clothes washed?” George asked.

“She is starting on the cloak. The rest are sopping, milord.”

The footman served up the soup, poured the wine, and left them alone. George sat down, and gestured.

Esther tried the soup, and found that she was hungry after all.

“Eat more,” George said when she paused. “You have not touched your wine.

“My head is already spinning, milord.” Nevertheless, she took a healthy sip of the wine. It tasted good after the too-sweet tea.

“Are you warm enough?”

“I have quite recovered, milord,” Esther said. That was not quite true. She felt warm, indeed hot. She, however, felt as though she might fall over even though she was sitting down.

“It gave me quite a start, seeing you lying there crying. I had never thought to see you cry. You are such a beam of sunshine.”

“Well, when that lovely cloak was soaked in icy water, I cried. I suppose you never cry.”

“Seeing you lying there, I almost cried, myself. Then I realized that I should help rather than collapse. This was close, and it could be made warm.”

“It is very warm. And am I wearing your clothes?” She felt as though she were. She felt that the dressing gown was Lord George enfolding her in his own warmth.

“My dressing gown. One of my shirts. You were soaked in freezing water and horse droppings from the skin out.”

He suddenly had a vision of her in her skin. It aroused him, and he should not mention her skin.

Esther felt her face warm even more than her back which was to the fire. She was completely covered. A man could not even guess her shape from the many folds of the dressing gown around her. She was quite conscious, though, that she was naked under the clothes that Lord George had given her. She felt naked under his gaze as though his shirt were reporting to him. And, warm as she was now, her nipples firmed as they only did at the coldest times.

“My family will worry,” she said. “I should be going.”

“Your family will worry more if they see you wearing that. Your clothes are, as you heard reported, still very wet, and the weather out there is beastly cold. Why do you not send word that you fell and are being helped by a friend until your clothes are dry?”

“It they hear that you are the friend helping me and that I am not in my clothes, they shall worry the more.”

It had been spoken between them. She was unclad, and he knew that she was unclad. His eyes were like fire, and she could bear neither to look at them nor to look away.

“Do not mention that I am the friend,” George said. “That can be explained when you are safe at home. Merely say that a servant is washing your clothes which got wet and dirty. I have paper and ink here, if you have finished the soup.” She pushed the bowl away, and he brought the paper, a bottle of ink, and a quill.

She wrote what he had suggested. He sprinkled the sand himself, and then folded the note. She wrote the address, and he sprinkled the sand again. He pulled the bell almost viciously.

“Here,” he said to the maid who answered. “Give this note and this shilling to a footman. Have him run it to that address.”

“Do you want to rest in the bed until your clothes are dry?” he asked Esther when the maid had left.

“Please. I feel quite dizzy.”

He offered her a hand, and she clung to it when she rose. He had carried her – and gallons of water on her clothes – up the stairs. He swept her up into his arms only planning to carry her to the bed. Even walking with her in his arms through the next room, even when he started to kiss her, he was just going to put her to bed. Even when he swept the bedclothes back and dropped her on the bottom sheets, he was going to cover her more warmly in just a second.

Then he dropped down beside the bed, stretched out and kissed her, kissed her more deeply. He pushed the folds of the dressing gown aside, opened the shirt, and cupped her breast. The nipple was hard in his palm.

“Oh, Esther,” he said, opening the buttons on his trousers.

“Oh, yes,” she said. She pulled his head down in another kiss. His tongue stabbed deeply into her mouth, and hers met it and welcomed it. He surrendered to his lust and shoved down his trousers. He pulled open the sash of the dressing gown. He swept the folds aside and thrust his hand between her legs. While he climbed out of the trousers and into the bed, he held her intimately.

“Oh,” she said, “your hand is fire.”

He pushed up the shirt and suckled on her lovely breasts. His hand was not fire, but he used it to bring fire to her. He licked and sucked at one nipple, and then at the other. She writhed, but his mouth and his finger kept their places.

“Do you want me?” he asked. He got between her legs and then returned his mouth to her breasts. “Do you want me?”

Esther wanted something. She wanted this torture to end; she wanted it to continue forever. She hung at a peak over an abyss. Then she soared, soared not fell, into the abyss. “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes!”

Then there was a tearing where no one touched her. She screamed. She felt full where she had not known she was empty, and blood was dripping down her buttocks at quite the wrong time of the month.

“The pain will diminish,” Lord George said. Even as he said it, the pain was going away. It had really hurt, though. And he was on top of her and holding her down. It felt as though he had her riveted to the bed.

“That hurt.”

:”I am very sorry that I hurt you. That hurt is unavoidable. There is pleasure as well if we continue to the end. Shall we? May I move?” The man was asking permission? Then she remembered that he had asked whether she wanted him. She had wanted him, or wanted something, but she did not think she had answered him. Well, this time he was waiting for an answer. Instead of speaking, she tried a tentative motion of her own.

George felt her shift under him, and thought that he -- as the one with experience – should be providing the motion. Besides, he had barely held control when she was still. He had none left for when she was moving. He drew back and started slow deep strokes within her. He soon reached his limit.

“Esther!” he called and drove into her. He throbbed and throbbed. Then he collapsed onto her softness.

“Sorry,” he said when he could move aside. Then he realized that he had delivered a greater wrong than merely not moving aside when he had his climax. “I am very sorry, Esther, and I shall try to make this up to you.”

She said nothing, and he got out of the bed and kissed her. He took his clothes into the next room and dressed there. Then he rang for Ian and carried a fresh pair of boots into the sitting room.

“Milord?” Ian asked. When George lifted the boots, Ian put them on. “And the young gentlewoman?”

“She is resting until her clothes are dry. Have them sent up when they are, will you.”

Apparently, either Ian or someone in the kitchen took that to mean a series of actions. The drawers, stockings and chemise were brought up together. The drawers and chemise, both linen, were still a little damp. The woolen hose were much wetter. After waiting long enough to see that nothing more was coming right then, he took them into the bedroom. Esther was completely covered. The long lump looked like she was feigning sleep. He spread her most intimate apparel on the backs of chairs he drew up close to the fire. Then he left her.

The next clothes he received were her gown and her blouse. He spread them close to the fire in the dressing room. When the cloak and boots appeared, he got the cloak to hang from the mantle in the parlor. It absorbed most of the heat of the fire, which would be required to deal with the water that still remained. He tipped the boots upside down, but nothing poured out. Putting leather next to the fire would crack it, not dry it.

He was dissatisfied with his company, which his schoolmaster had told him long ago meant that he should not inflict it on another. He had once promised to treat Miss Slater as a gentlewoman. He had treated her worse than a street doxy. That he had pretended to care for her only made it worse. Well, the only recourse was to offer for her. That seemed a tepid recourse. By now, marriage to her looked quite attractive. Marriage to her rapist might not appeal to her as much. Well, he would offer to her father. That would shield her from family punishment. Whatever she thought of the man, the merchant father would see the nobleman.

Esther had heard Lord George moving around the room, but she had not wanted to speak to him. Then she dozed. When she woke fully, she was overheated under the covers. She found her drawers and chemise dry and warm. The stockings were not absolutely dry, but she had worn them much damper on rainy days. They, too, were warm.

When she got to the next room, the tub was still in the room, and the water in it was cold. She found her blouse and dress. Thus, she was decently dressed, if terribly mussed, when she had donned them. She was ready to meet the world. What was she ready to tell the world?

The ache between her legs had practically healed. The ache in her head was much worse. She suspected that she had been inebriated. She had never really, truly, doubted her father. But she now believed him about the ways of the aristocracy and the evils of gin in a much more explicit sense. It had been a long time since he had switched her, but she fully expected a switching tonight. Perhaps, Earl George could lend her a cloak. Her fine, new one was indubitably ruined.

“We will take the coach,” the earl greeted her when she pushed herself into the next room. “It is still raining. Your cloak is still quite damp. Do you wish another?”