Silent Surrender (16 page)

Honoria frowned at him and he realized then that he’d spoken too fast and forgotten to sign. Quickly, he strode toward her, pressed the money into her hands and signed out what he’d said.

“So she’s free then?” Esau asked cautiously. “She doesn’t have to deal with him again?”

“Only if she decides to uphold her end of the bargain and work with him. But then the only contact they’ll have is in letters.” Jude still didn’t like the idea of that. “And I’ll deal with those. She needn’t concern herself.”

Honoria still stared down at the money in her open palm. Slowly she looked up, tears coursing down her cheeks in defiance of her wide smile. And then she let out a whoop much like the one Jude had, and Esau lifted her in his arms, kissing her, and Jude didn’t care one whit that the man was still naked as the day he was born, he embraced them both, all three doing an awkward little jig of joy as they clung to each other.

“But this means something else,” Esau said when their excitement drifted down a little. “We need to figure out a story, something we can tell people. We’re two men living with an unmarried woman we’re not related to. Even in America, people will talk.”

Jude translated his words quickly and Honoria waved her hand, signing and saying, “I don’t care.”

“You may not care, but you’ll find many a door closed to you if you fall out of people’s good graces,” Jude said, signing along for her benefit. “Esau is right.”

To Jude’s amusement, he watched as Esau tried to inconspicuously mimic the spelling of his name on his fingers. Jude would teach him that first off, he decided. Now, though, he needed to say his piece before his ego got the better of his courage. “I think you should marry Esau, Honoria.”

Both of them went as still as if he’d told them there was a venomous snake in the room. Esau said, as easy as breathing, “I’ll do it,” as Honoria shook her head in vehement denial.

“It’s the best way,” Jude argued, so that both could understand him. “It would make sense for me to be with you. I’m your tutor and a long-time family friend. My presence can be explained easily enough. Him, though? Why would you have a dock worker from Plymouth traveling with you? When he can’t even speak with you? Why would you trust him with your business?”

Still, Honoria shook her head. She turned to Esau. “It’s not that I couldn’t be your wife, Esau. I can’t be any man’s wife.”

Jude watched the man’s face, wondering if he would grow angry, if he would storm off as he’d done before. Then, he’d been fleeing her devotion. Now, she was rejecting him.

“My father controlled my life before he died. After that, he left my keeping to Poole. I love you, Esau. And I love Jude. But I will not belong to you.” She reached up one hand to cup Esau’s stubbled cheek, and Jude breathed a small sigh of relief when the man’s expression softened.

“No, that I can endure,” Esau said, kissing her palm. “I left here before because I didn’t want to belong to anyone, I can’t ask you the same. And I love you. I don’t want you to doubt that for a minute.”

A joyful laugh bubbled up her throat and she leaned against him, her forehead bent to his chin as she threaded their fingers together.

What a strange thing was love, Jude mused, watching them. He had loved Honoria for years, building his esteem from afar. Esau had known her only days, and yet the emotion on his face was as true and tender as anything Jude felt. And that didn’t make him sad, as it once might have. Knowing that Honoria returned his love, after all these long years, gave him a security that allowed him to share in her joy, just to see her in love.

Chapter Twelve

Though they would rise early to go to the ship, the ship that would take them to their new lives, none of them could sleep.

Honoria felt this was particularly to her benefit. Though she had spent countless hours in both of their arms, she was a greedy creature. She wanted them like parched soil wanted rain, and to have them both, finally, she thought she might slake that wanting. But every touch made her crave them more.

Could she starve to death waiting for this fulfillment? As she sat astride Jude’s hips, she no longer cared.

They had spent long hours lying in her bed, her men about her, talking about the new world they would venture into. With enough money to buy a ship, at least in part, the finances were easy. Making connections, securing them, that would be more difficult, but Jude had eased her mind with tales of a place where hearing and deaf lived together as equals, and people would not think to look down on her. She hoped the place was as he said. But something had happened before he had been able to reassure her. Some touch or glance, and then they’d fallen upon her, playful at first, then all quiet seriousness as Esau had settled his face between her thighs and Jude’s mouth closed over the peak of one breast, and she had surrendered all her worries for the moment.

Now, rocking on Jude’s hips, she waited nervously for what would come next. Esau had mentioned it to her that morning as he’d braided her hair. His eyes had been cast down but he’d made particularly certain that she could see his lips in the looking glass, so she would not misunderstand him. When he’d told her there was a way a woman could take two men into her at the same time, he’d looked up, straight into her eyes, to gauge her reaction. The way his mouth had gone grim and his face had flushed, she guessed that he must have been relieved to have the task of her hair to keep him occupied.

She’d asked him how, and when he’d told her, a part of her had been disgusted. Another, greater part of her had been curious, and it was that curiosity that thrilled through her now. Curiosity and bit of trepidation, for he had warned her that it might hurt, that she might not like it.

She wanted to do it, though, for Esau. His shyness at asking had been her clue that he too was curious about the act.

Now he moved behind her, between Jude’s outspread legs, and with one large hand on her back, leaned her forward. She heard Jude’s voice in his chest as she leaned her ear against his skin, and though she could not make out the words, she supposed he was asking Esau what he was doing. She leaned up and kissed Jude, to silence him, her breath catching in her throat as one of Esau’s thick fingers smeared something cool and sticky in the cleft of her bottom.

She turned her head to look back at him, still uncertain, though the throb of Jude’s cock inside her drove her wild with desire. Her skin prickled with gooseflesh, and Esau gave her a smile that would have been reassuring if he hadn’t looked so serious.

“There’s a good girl,” he said, still working the unguent around, probing at the tight aperture with his fingertip.

She took a shaking breath and lowered her head, squirming against his touch and the hard shaft inside her. She bit her lip, remember Esau’s words in the looking glass. “Your cunny is so sweet, I want to know if the rest of you is.”

He wouldn’t be disappointed in her, she had made up her mind. She had wanted to learn all the sordid ways men and women could be together and she had asked Esau to teach her. She wouldn’t balk from her lessons now.

The tip of his finger pushed in, and the sensation was so strange and at once shamefully familiar that she gasped. Jude lifted her chin and quickly signed, “Hurt?”

She shook her head. No, it didn’t hurt, but it did feel odd, and full. She wondered how it would feel to have them both in her at the same time, if she could endure it. Her cunny clenched on Jude and she rolled her hips with a shuddering sigh.

Though she could not see Esau’s face, she knew he would talk to her. He always did, even when he thought she might not see. His finger retreated and then a more insistent pressure pushed against her. He was as slippery as she, and she realized he must have greased himself as well. There was a bit of resistance and then a stinging pop as the head of him slipped in.

An “Ah!” of surprise escaped her mouth. It hurt, as much as that first time he’d taken her, but this pain did not fade as quickly. Her body broke out in a cold sweat and she saw that her fingers were claws where she supported herself against Jude’s shoulders.

Jude studied her with a strange stillness, then his eyes grew wider as Esau sank deeper inside. Honoria cried out, not certain if she felt pleasure or a worse pain at the sudden fullness. She looked into Jude’s eyes and asked, “Can you feel him?”

Jude nodded, his eyes rolling back as they closed while Esau slowly withdrew. That was a more pleasant sensation, though disturbingly familiar to another bodily act, and she almost asked him to stop. Then he pushed forward again and the pain abated some, dulling with his gentle motions. She breathed cautiously, terrified to move, pinioned as she was between the two of them.

Then Jude lifted his hips and began to thrust, withdrawing as Esau entered. And Honoria was lost, with Esau at her back and Jude beneath her. Lost to the power of their bodies, Jude easily picking up the rhythm and Esau carefully holding back. Lost to the dual sensation of pain and pleasure as she ground against Jude, her juices slick over his skin, sticking their thighs together, running down to the bed as she screamed and panted and arched between them.

Esau came first, pushing into her almost too hard, his fingers digging into her hips. It was the throb of his cock and the hot, wet burst deep inside her that drove her over, and Jude too. He gaped up at her in disbelief as her surrendering body clutched at him while he surged hot pulses deep in her cunny.

She lay between them, her cheek pressed against Jude’s chest, Esau slumped over her back, all of them sweaty and spent. Esau eased from her body and rolled aside, reluctantly standing and going to the wash basin. Honoria could barely move, was dependent on Jude’s help to lie by his side. Her eyes closed, but she did not rest easy until Esau lay beside her as well.

* * * * *

Honoria woke comfortable and warm, with heated skin pressing to nearly every inch of her body. She registered that the curtains were still closed and she sat up in a panic, bolting from the bed. When she poked her head through the drapes, she saw the sky was only beginning to turn gray with the sunrise and she sighed in relief.

On the bed, Esau rose up on one elbow, frowning at her.

“I thought we had missed our sailing time,” she explained, hoping her voice was quiet enough not to disturb Jude.

Whatever Esau said was lost to the pillow his head was half covered with, but his arm extended out to her was enough of a hint as to what he wanted her to do. She came to the bed and climbed up, kneeling beside him. “I don’t want to go back to sleep. I’m afraid the ship will leave without us.”

He raised his head, then let it fall into the pillow again. What little she could see of his face did not look happy. He sat up, blinking and stretching his eyes open wide. Turning to her, he said slowly, “Fine. I’m up. We can get our things in order, but the boat won’t leave any quicker.”

They washed and dressed, and in the midst of their preparations Jude rose as well. When Esau had braided Honoria’s hair, Jude pulled him aside to explain figures drawn on a long sheet of paper. Honoria knew she should take an interest, as she had been so firm in her insistence that she run her business and maintain her independence, but the moment gave her time she would not have later to slip away. Slowly she walked through the house, stopping to remember the sights and smells, the fond memories of each room. She did not think of her parents’ illness or any bad memories, scarce though they were. She remembered only the good.

She was running her hands over the few remaining objects in her father’s study when Jude found her.

“Sad?” he asked, coming to stand beside her at her father’s desk.

“Little.” She put down the letter opener she’d hefted in her palm. “Everything here I want. Can’t take all.”

“No,” he agreed. After a pause, he signed, “You think your father he knew we love?”

That was a sobering thought. Had her father known, and sent her away to France anyway? “You think he not like…us?”

“No, I not mean. You not understand.” He frowned as he collected his thoughts. “Your father, he expect you not go France.”

She considered that. “Why he do that? Why not give his blessing?”

Jude shrugged. “He knew you brave. You take chance.”

That pierced her heart, deeper than she might have expected it to. For she knew her father couldn’t have foreseen such a quality in her. She’d always played the dutiful daughter with him.

“He want you learn American sign,” Jude continued. “He want American teacher. You not think—”

She waved her hands. “No.”

If Jude wished to believe that of her father, she didn’t suppose she could stop him. She knew the truth, painful as it was. Her father had gotten a teacher from America because he’d thought the schools in England, with their focus on learning to speak and discouraging signs, would not serve her as well. He simply hadn’t known there was a difference between the Americans and the British in signing. He had expected her to go to France all along, had thought it was the best option.

He had been wrong, she realized, and the realization freed her, made her feel like she could suck all the liberty in the world into her chest, expand her ribs and hoard it all inside herself. Her father had been wrong. He had been mortal and he’d made the wrong choices. Now she made the right choices for herself, without his guidance, and she trusted herself far more than she’d ever trusted her father.

After a small breakfast, Esau oversaw the loading of their trunks into the wagon that had come from the docks. There was a nervous animation about him this morning and Honoria wondered if his fears were enough to keep him from sailing. She remembered the story he’d told them of his horrible channel crossing.

When he came inside, smiling like a man pretending to be excited for the gallows, she took him by the arm and drew him aside.

“Are you afraid to sail?” she asked him, looking into his eyes so that he could not try to fool her.

“A bit,” he admitted. “It won’t stop me from going, if that’s what you’re after.”