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Marguerite, surprisingly, is the first to step across the bedroom’s threshold.
How strange it is, she thinks, that she would have to do so, that he would not draw or carry her through the door himself. Percy led the dance of their courtship, after all: he sought her out, he teased and flirted and drew her along, and all Marguerite had ever had to do was smile back, follow where he led her and match his ardour with her own. She’d never had to be the first to step forward, to break and bend for him, to show him how to do the same. When she’d tried, that horrid night which now feels so very long ago, she found herself pushed away, hard enough to send her reeling.
She had said, then, that there was something else beneath what he shows the world: the sneering, prancing dandy who, even when betraying his own intelligence in speech and manner, is judged in every sense as shallow and flighty. She had known that for a lie, and that their very relationship was proof of such. Now, it seems, she has been proven right.
Not all of her assumptions, however, were correct. She had thought that the Percy who existed beneath that foppish mask would be strong, quiet and sleek, predatory as a wolf in the night and just as controlled. Her husband, be he bright and careless or sober and thoughtful, is still unimaginable without that constant sense of control.
But here he stands, in the entrance to their bedroom in one of his many friends’ homes in Dover, and his strong hands, resting in her own, tremble. He is shaking, and when she leans up to kiss him, slowly and tenderly, he does not lean in to snatch her breath away, to plunder her mouth and silence her mind. Indeed, he does nothing but stand, hands clasped hard in hers, and allow himself to be kissed. The contrast is pleasing to say the least.
And how, possibly, could she stop? Today’s safety does not negate the horror and fear of the past few days, cunning plan or no, lucky escape or no. That they are alive and free to kiss at all adds fervour to her lips.
She draws him by his shoulders over the threshold of the bedroom, and half expects for him to slam the door behind them and throw her against it, to ravish her. That would be the Percy she knows, always ready with a plan, always in control. But then, that same man had known her as the ornament of his greatest enemy, and then as an actress with dubious connections to the revolutionaries, no matter how much he cared for or desired her. Worst of all, after their marriage, he had seen her as an out and out traitor.
The Percy she knew before had never quite trusted her, and despite how deeply that still hurts, Marguerite still cannot blame him.
So she pulls away from him, surrendering his mouth, and leans around his broad shoulders to close the door behind them herself. Her breath catches in her throat when she returns to his embrace, and looks up into his eyes.
She’s never seen such depth of emotion, such love and such trust. Perhaps she will never know what she did to earn this kind of devotion, but she promises, here and now, to do all she can to be worthy of it from now on.
This time he does kiss her, however tentatively, and when she deepens it, slides her tongue between his warm lips and her arms around his neck, he follows with gusto. Their kissing this time has none of the controlled finesse of their first kisses, of the days of his seduction of her or of the brief moments of contrived affection achieved since their wedding day, when he was trying not to arouse her suspicions. Now, everything is emotion and enthusiasm, passion and something deeper, something like love and trust and forever, precious things that cannot be earned with clever twists of words and sly smiles across the dinner table.
This time, when they part, she is breathless and he is smiling. Her hands are already tugging at his cravat, and she only stops when she realises something that should have been obvious from the beginning, but was not. The rush of escape, of rescuing the dauphin successfully and of defeating every enemy they’ve thus far known, had apparently clouded her mind.
They have never been alone in their bedchamber before, not like this. It would have been, of course, entirely impossible before their marriage. And although she offered – would have begged and pleaded with him, shameful as it would have been, would it have done any good – to share his bed after that, he had, of course, refused her.
This is their first moment truly alone since every secret was revealed. Since she learned his true identity, saw him as nothing more or less than everything he could be, and knew he saw her the same way.
Her hands stall on his cravat, and she raises her right hand, palm open, to cup his cheek. He leans into her touch with a little sigh, eyes fluttering closed for just a moment, and she finds herself blushing. How quickly would she have been seduced, how hard and fast might she have fallen in love with him, had this sincerity shown itself earlier?
It is all the better, though, for the rarity. For the knowledge that she alone has met this man, that she alone loves and is loved by him.
“My husband,” she sighs. They are the only words she can say, she feels, and still preserve the warm silence of their bedroom.
“Dearest wife,” he returns, with a small smile that is all the wickedness she has come to expect of him, but with a kind of boyish playfulness beneath that is more open, more innocent and free, than she has ever known him to be. It is a smile made of nothing more than genuine happiness, without forethought or pretence. His studied masks can be seductive in the extreme, but they’re nothing to the beauty of his sincerity. “Are you quite well?”
She smiles, even around a small frown of confusion, and caresses his cheekbone absently with the side of her thumb. “Indeed, why would I not be?”
“You were beginning to undress me, m’dear,” he whispers, “and then you stopped.”
“I did,” she says. “But you, sir, have made no move to return the favor, and I believe my clothing is far more complicated than your own. Surely you should begin first?”
He swallows, hard, but he nods. “Turn about then, my love. Allow me to see the face of my enemy.”
She laughs, meaning it to sound light and instead achieving nothing less than a husky little giggle. She turns slowly, glad that her hair is gathered atop her head and not obscuring his view. “I thought you liked this dress, husband?” she asks, in an attempt to keep her composure as his fingertips skim so lightly, so gently over the nape of her neck, and down along the exposed top of her spine to where the dress is joined. “You called it beautiful before, and now it is your enemy?”
“Eyes, hooks and ribbons can be weapons too, m’dear,” he says, softly, and how his breath now brushes where his fingers did before she does not know, but it is hot and sends her shivers and sparks skittering across her skin. “And these keep your skin from my eyes. My enemy indeed.”
She flushes, from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes, and he laughs as his mouth finally meets the side of her neck. The vibration of his voice rumbles through her, chased by the sensation of his lips and his tongue kissing and lapping at her, and she nearly falls to the floor as her knees turn to water.
His hands, the hands of a clever man trained in all manner of talents, make short work of slipping the ribbon from its crisscross down her back, and he must work on her corset beneath at the same time, for soon enough his mouth at her neck is joined by his hands sliding beneath the fabric about her torso to span her ribs, thumbs meeting at her spine, fingertips dancing at the sides of her breasts, with naught but her chemise between his hot, strong hands and her bare skin.
She sighs in delight; her head falls back to rest on his shoulder, and she cranes her neck to meet him for another kiss. Passion has become ferocity, apparently, starting with her mouth plundering his, encouraging the same from him. She’d not want finesse now, she thinks, the tension of a man playing the part of a lover, no matter how well the part is acted, no matter how well executed the lie. This warm, real man wrapped around her, with such patient, tentative hands and such genuine passion in his kiss, this is better than anything that might have come before, anything he wisely denied them.
“You are always the victor over your enemies, aren’t you?” she whispers, and he laughs, surprised and delighted.
“Indeed, darling, where you are concerned, no villain shall ever stand in my way,” he swears, ardently. Marguerite feels another shiver, deeper and more thrilling, not of lust but of love, run through her. He is the Scarlet Pimpernel, the scourge of the revolution, the most ingenious, daring, and brilliant man in all England. When he says such a thing, whispered low into her ear and warm with promise, then she knows for certain that not a man nor an army nor even a dragon of old could defeat him. “Not even a demmed dress, with more undergarments to match than are known to man or beast.” He adds, in a lower mutter, and the tense moment is broken when she laughs.
“And you are known as such a connoisseur of fashion,” she chides. “What would London society think?”
“I promise you, darling,” he says, as he finishes untying the stays of her dress and begins to pull it down her arms, “that any man in London would understand my frustration at this moment. Fashion comes to naught when it keeps my wife from me.”
She wriggles, helping him to work the top of her dress down, and unties the ribbons at her hip herself, so the skirt slides from her hips within moments, and falls into a lake of silken fabric at her feet. The corset, too, falls from her torso as the dress goes, leaving her in naught but her chemise and stockings, and her now ridiculous heeled shoes.
Percy seems to have noticed this, too, for he gives a low sigh of pleasure at the sight of her, followed by a small chuckle when his eyes meet her feet.
“Perhaps stepping out of your shoes may be fitting now, love?”
“They too are tightly laced to my feet, husband,” she returns, and takes him by surprise at last, stepping forward and out of both his arms and her discarded gown, and walking as provocatively as she knows how to the bed. She can feel him watching her, eyes on her bare shoulders and swinging hips, and smiles to herself, hidden from his view by her turned back. “I shall need to sit to remove them.”
She seats herself primly on the bed, and begins to pluck at the laces of her shoes. Within a moment Percy seems to have shaken off the haze of desire that overtook him, as he comes quickly to her side, and kneels at her feet, taking her foot gently from her lap and placing it in his cupped hands.
“I am quite adept with knots, wife,” he says, gently, “the job will be faster completed by my hand.”
“Indeed I had noticed,” she laughs, with a glance to her dress, crumpled and defeated on the floor. “For a sworn enemy, my gown seemed to put up little enough fight.”
Her first shoe is drawn from her foot, and he moves quickly to the other, removing it just as quickly, and placing a kiss to her instep, his lips scorching her even through the fabric of her stockings.
A second kiss he places to her calf, and then to the side of her knee, just below where her stockings are tied off with ribbon and her bare skin begins. But he stops at her knee, and rests his chin there, his eyes meeting hers with such naked adoration that she feels her heart may burst.
Gently, her hands on his shoulders, she draws him up and kisses him again, slowly and deeply. And once again, he does not fight her or try to return the favour, but simply allows her to kiss him, and to draw him to sit beside her, docile as ever she has felt him. That he trusts her so, that he follows where she leads without thought or question, makes her heart pound with affection for him.
At last, her hands are steady enough to draw the cravat from about his neck, and begin work on the buttons of his waistcoat as his own hands span her waist, drawing her closer until she is almost in his lap.
In the end, as in all things this strange and blessed night, she makes the final, decisive movement. She slips her legs up, bare but for stockings and the skirt of her chemise, and has them cover his, as if she would sit astride him, sidesaddle. With a pull of his hand on her hip, she is able to seat herself there properly, and he buries his lips in her neck, almost as if in gratitude.
She sighs, and tilts her head back, her hands still working the buttons of his waistcoat until it falls open, and he shakes it from his shoulders and casts it off impatiently, returning his hands to their stroking of her body. She smiles against his crown, and whimpers a little when he nibbles on the side of her throat, and soothes it with the flat of his tongue.
She will have marks in the morning, she thinks, as she works quickly to unfasten his shirt. Marks too high to cover with a collar; marks that will let the whole world know what liberties she allows her husband. The thought makes her shiver a little with excitement: anyone who sees them will know that she is loved and desired, and by the most brilliant man in England. Anyone who sees them will know.
She finaly gets the last of his shirt buttons undone, and once again he pulls it from his own arms, as she pushes the open collar down over his broad shoulders. She feels herself warm at the feel of strong, supple muscle shifting beneath her fingertips, the sight and feel of him making her skin suddenly far to hot and tight.
He does not allow her too much time to admire him, though, as he has his hands threaded in her hair, and her mouth brought back to his within moments. They kiss with wild abandon, and his hands on her hips shift her so that she is sat truly astride him, one leg on either side, her knees on the mattress. It is a shameful position, unladylike and provocative in the extreme, but she is a wife, alone in her bedroom with her husband. Nothing can be shameful here, and she sighs into his mouth when there is sudden pressure between her thighs, and the fires building down there are stoked further.
He grins at her, suddenly smug and far too controlled once more. She loves her husband in all faces, all masks, but the look he gives her when she takes that control, when he has to follow and do as bade for once, is her favourite of all.
It is wickedness, but she puts her hands on his shoulders, and unceremoniously throws herself to the bed beside them, drawing her on top of him so that they are suddenly horizontal, with her flat on her back and him looming over her. Their breath meets between them, bare inches of space between her lips and his, and the wonderful weight and heat of him, covering her like a blanket, makes everything suddenly far too warm. The place between her legs throbs insistently: it is as if now that she has properly recognised it, it cannot be ignored.
“Not to discourage your impatience, m’dear,” Percy says, “but our legs still hang off the edge. This could be demmed uncomfortable, if we remained this way.”
She blushes and shakes her head. Then she notices something else, a distinct bulge pressing against her, and her smile turns sly. She wriggles a little, bringing a little more of that delicious pressure to her own ache in the process, and he swallows hard, his muscles tensing and eyes falling closed.
“I am the impatient one, am I husband?” She teases, and with a low little growl his eyes slip open, and he thoroughly kisses the smirk from her lips.
Between them they shift so that Marguerite’s head rests on the soft pillows at the head of the bed, and Percy looms above her. He has removed his own footwear at some point in the proceedings, and it is something so intimate, and yet so strangely innocent, when her stocking feet entwine with his as he kisses her, over and over, until she is sure that her lips will be quite bruised come morning.
She has been told, and read, and thought for most of her life that such activities, loving husbands and wives in bedrooms, should be done without clothing. But somehow, when their slow, deep kissing finally ends, such things no longer matter. After all, with her chemise hiked around her lips, as his questing fingers have brought it, and the buttons of his breeches undone, why should time be wasted divesting them of the last pieces of clothing?
Those same fingers, content at last to leave the hem of her chemise at her hips, sweep lower once more. They dance along the seam of her thighs, and for the first time in all this evening, Marguerite has the urge to clamp her legs closed, to cover herself and regain her modesty. But she swallows that down as she would any other fear that may come to her in Percy’s arms: he will keep her safe, and he loves her as ardently as she loves him, and they are married. So she forces her legs to relax under his soothing ministrations, and tries not to fear what comes next.
When his fingers finally touch her, it is lighter and more tentative than she expected. Which of course was folly: nothing he has done first this evening has been anything left than soft and patient, asking for permission rather than simply taking. Before it had been endearing, this new side of her bold husband. Now it is comforting, and the control is returned to her gladly.
“Are you well, darling?” he asks, and this time he is in all seriousness.
“Yes, husband,” she sighs, and nods, and then his fingers stroke more firmly, against somewhere wonderful that sends lightning bolts of pleasure through her, and her voice becomes a breathless moan, “Indeed, yes.”
His own voice is breathy and rough when he murmurs, “Good.” Even verbosity seems to have left him as he strokes and strokes at her, turning the flames that had begun there to a roaring inferno, until she is whimpering with every exhale, and rocking her hips wantonly into his hand.
He presses harder again, hand coming to cup her entirely, the heel of his palm rubbing against the place that sends her head reeling, the pads of his fingers stroking lower, questing between her lips and down, to toy at the entrance to her body just lightly, just enough to add pressure to the wonders shooting through her.
“And now?” he asks, lowly into her ear, as he moves up slowly, his hand moving ever faster, building a rhythm that makes her buck and rock.
“Percy,” she moans, “well… is not fitting… not at all.”
He chuckles, “Are you ill, dearest wife?”
Her voice cuts into a whimper as he shifts his hand, thumb rising to join his palm, plucking at her until she feels she may break any moment.
“No, I think not,” he murmurs. “No woman could look so beautiful while struck by sickness, not even my wife,” he exhales, long and hard, as if he is the one losing his mind and not her. “You are ravishing, my dear. Now more than ever, and I love you so, more every minute.”
His words, and the shifting of his hand against her, and his lips playing at her ear, all of it becomes too much. With a quiet little cry, Marguerite breaks apart around his fingers, pleasure racing through her, her whole body a heartbeat as she rocks against him, needing nothing but more and more and more of him, the world narrowing to nothing but her trembling body and heat and pleasure and Percy braced beside her, crooning filthy, beautiful nonsense into her ear.
She finally comes down from her high, softer and more breathless than she feels she’s ever been in her life. She smiles to her husband, feeling as if she must be glowing, nothing in her heart but pleasure and happiness and the purest kind of love.
A laugh bubbles up out of her all of a sudden, a laugh of pure joy at him, and her, and how wonderful this single moment feels. A moment she'd once feared they could never have together, when her husband was cold and aloof, and darkness threatened to swallow them whole. She curls into him, his front to her side, and would sleep were it not for the pounding of his heart, the tension in his limbs, not yet released as hers has been. Even as he toys with her hair, removing little pins and uncoiling the intricate little curls, she can feel how his whole body shakes with the effort of remaining still for her.
"I believe that it would be my turn, now?" She asks, coyly, when the haze of contentment has passed enough to allow for such things. "Or would it count as yours, darling?"
He laughs, as strained as she is relaxed, and despite her recent loss of it, Marguerite knows that now, with him straining and her sated, she holds the control now.
She reaches down, all sense of shame now banished, and slides her hand into the open flap of his breeches. She is not at all shocked by what she finds therein. She refuses to be a blushing virgin, unable to understand the particulars of the bedroom: her husband's desire is obvious, in the hard weight resting in her hand, and he groans at the feel of her. He buries the sound in her neck, and she laughs, tightening her grip ever so slightly and reveling in the shudder that racks him. Sir Percy Blakeney, the great Pimpernel who has defeated Robespierre himself, who wins duels and rescues the innocent, and here he lies entirely undone by her own little hand. She loves him so much, in this moment, that she can hardly breathe.
"Shameless wife," he praises, his voice a low pant against her cheek."Will you have your way with me now?"
She laughs again, the gentle warmth that had overcome her after her breaking somehow rekindled into that blazing heat. The desire for him is less sharp now, less desperate, but no less real. She lifts her hand to his shoulder, the other still wrapped around his hardness, and encourages him to lie over her once more.
The nerves come to her once more, now that they're here, pressed so close, but only for a second, and less so than before. He lifts her hand from about him, and replaces it with his own, his other hand going to clasp her hip and hold her in place. Her palm once again cups his cheek, and he presses a kiss to the heel, a gesture so familiar, so intimate and wonderful, that all fear is banished. She is with her Percy, after all. No harm can come to her here, not anymore.
When he enters her it is gently, slowly, easing himself inside, and she forces herself to relax, even through the slight twinge of pain. Then he is sheathed in her, and she can feel his groan of pleasure against her palm. He covers her like a blanket, arms framing her head, pelvis flush with hers and his eyes, alight with love and happiness and something like utter awe, locked on hers. What is a little pain when compared to sheer heaven? When put next to being utterly surrounded by the man she loves beyond thought or reason?
He leans down to kiss her feverishly as he slides out slowly and then pushes back inside her. Her hand slides up his cheek to delve into the soft blonde mass of his hair, and his kisses are messy and desperate, stoking her desires further still. She finally unties the cloth that keeps it bound at his nape, and when she pulls back and breaks their kiss she thinks him glorious, his handsome face made wild by his blonde mane and the fever in his eyes. His thrusts become faster, harder, less controlled and more frantic, and she twines the backs of her legs around his, pulling him still deeper into her so they might never be parted again.
Percy's jaw is tight, and she can feel the strength of his powerful legs and shoulders as he tenses all over. With a trembling hand he reaches between them and repeats some of the movements of before, flicking his thumb hard and fast against the little spot that makes her eyes clench shut and her back arch in pleasure.
Marguerite feels as if she has been set alight, her whole body on fire wherever he is in contact with her, from the length of him pressing inside her to the thumb teasing above; from the backs of her stocking-covered knees wrapped tightly around his breeches, to the rub of his bare chest against her breasts through her chemise. Everything, even the small pain of his uncontrolled thrusts, seems to add to the fire in her now, and it is with a small and startled cry that she breaks again, her neck thrown back against the pillows and every muscle and limb working to pull him ever closer, to keep him there forever.
Percy lets out one last, long groan into the side of her arched neck, and goes still all over. This she was aware of, she thinks dimly, not the burning pleasure of it all, but the rushing moment when her husband’s satisfaction would take him, and all would be done. All the strength seems to leave him afterwards, and he collapses bonelessly on top of her, able only to roll them so that she lies with her back to his front, and his arms wrapped securely about her middle.
They lie in a deep, comfortable silence for a long while, before they manage to work their way under the heavy duvet and into the warmth of the bed. It is then, with her on her back once more and Percy comfortably on his side, that he plucks at her chemise with his thumb and forefinger. “Demmed shoddy work, that,” he says, but he’s smiling, a warmer and more comfortable smile than she’s ever seen on his face: the smile of a man at peace. “I finally manage to debauch you, wife, and still you remain clothed! You’d be almost modest if you were to stand!”
“You’re one to talk, Percy,” she counters, eyes narrowing. “You are terribly quick to complain, for a man still in his own breeches and stockings.”
He grimaces and glances down beneath the covers, and then back up at her. She raises an eyebrow, and she can see the challenge light in his eyes. He’s almost boyish, she thinks, with the weight of years of struggle and pretense lifted, and nothing left between them but sincerity and honest affection. The light in his eyes is more beautiful than anything she has ever seen, and she can’t help but beam at him, happiness threatening to engulf her every thought.
He puts his thumbs to his hips, and kicks his legs, divesting himself efficiently if gracelessly of his breeches, and using his toes to do the same to his stockings. “Happier now, m’dear?”
“Indeed,” she smiles, “but I am still modest, as you put it. Your job is only half completed, husband.”
He grins, sudden heat flashing in his eyes that makes her heart leap and her cheeks flush, her breath catching in her throat.
He dives beneath the covers, head and all, and she gasps to feel not his fingers at her stocking tops but his lips and teeth.
---
Come morning Marguerite has slept but a very few hours at dawn, and is quite covered in little bruises from her husband’s worship of her skin. When one of the members of the League, their host in fact, gathered for a debriefing in the drawing room of the house, asks if she is quite well, for there is quite a number of hive-like marks on her throat and collarbones, she finds herself blushing furiously, and Percy doing nothing at all to hide his smug amusement.
He does not hide anything, not in this house, not with her. And that is better even than a thousand of his kisses.