The Lamplighter's Love, page 3
The Lamplighter, who was also set apart by the nature of his duties, seemed the only sympathetic ear at times. Over the years, she had come to think of him as a friend, and though it would have been easier to let an apprentice carry the tray for her, she relished her visits with Nicholas too much to share with anyone. So she still took the tray to the Lamplighter herself. She still let people think the task was a burden, lest anyone offer to take it upon themselves.
Amberherst kept doing the dinner trays now to cozy up, she suspected. Not that it would make a lick of difference. The guild had clearly already slated him as a potential successor, alongside Mary, and their relative aptitudes had long since been studied, quantified, evaluated. And now Nicholas was being phased out, it seemed. A formal announcement could not be too far away. And Mary had every reason to hope her future was already secured, because she had seen Amberherst more than once in the intimate company of a lithe young journeyman named Jocelyn. If they had any sort of connection beyond friendship the guild would know, because the guild always found out about that sort of thing. And it would be a strike against him as a would-be Lamplighter. It was hardly a job for a married man, or even a man who hoped to soon marry. Nor for a seducer, if that was all those two had between them.
“If he wants her, he’d better hurry,” Mary said to herself, knowing it was uncharitable in the extreme.
“Mary?” Nicholas spoke from behind the mirrors, and Mary flushed to realize she’d been speaking out loud.
“Nothing. I’m here, whenever you’re ready.”
“Good. It’s calm now, let’s get you strapped in.” He raised an eyebrow at her as she swung the screens aside. “I want to show you something new today.”
After their odd moments of connection yesterday, Mary was keenly aware of every touch, every brush of his skin against hers as he buckled her hands into place. Had he always taken such care, she wondered? Or was she just more sensitive to it now that she’d allowed these foolish notions to enter her head? His fingers seemed to leave trails of sensation behind them, pulling shivers from her that she tried desperately to resist.
With the mirrors back in place, she saw that things were indeed calm at the moment. The early traffic had abated, the ship channel was quiet and no disasters seemed imminent.
It was all running like the clockwork it mainly was, and she saw nothing that wasn’t familiar, long since mastered.
“You said there would be something new,” she said, puzzled.
From beyond the mirrors Nicholas spoke, his voice sounding closer than she’d expected. Mary squinted through the brass hinges between two panels, but could see nothing beyond the screens.
“There is, but it isn’t on the viewers. I want to talk to you today, to explain something. And I want to make sure you listen and think.”
She nodded. Then, realizing he couldn’t see her, she spoke her agreement. “All right. I’m a captive audience now anyway, I suppose.”
“About that. It has occurred to me that you’ve probably already deduced the guild’s plans for you. You’re nothing if not smart, Master Mary Cross.”
It was still a thrill to hear that title. “I have given it some consideration. I can’t quite believe it’s what I think.”
“I believe they’d like me gone with the New Year. And I have reason to believe the guild currently favors you for my replacement.”
“But Amberherst and I have only just started taking longer shifts. I thought you still had another year to go at least,” she protested.
“I’m almost thirty, Mary. I can’t keep the pace up much longer. No one could, the guild knows that all too well.” He sounded resigned, but Mary heard a note of bitterness as well. “It will be a splendid retirement, of course. Land, money, a title. A voice in Parliament if I care to exercise it.”
That was the well-known reward of the Lamplighter, to be showered with such benefits. In part this was recompense for the fact that, after their unique service, many Lamplighters suffered crippling arthritis and loss of vision before reaching even nominal old age. But the prize was still tremendous. And with the recent reforms, even a female Lamplighter could look forward to holding land and taking a title after retirement. At nineteen, this all seemed a goal too high to even be dreamed for Mary, whose parents were stolidly middle-class.
“Will you keep horses? I’ve always fancied having horses,” she admitted, though she knew it sounded childish next to the idea of a seat in Parliament.
Nicholas chuckled. “I expect so. I’ll be an earl, after all. But Mary, more important are the things I won’t have.”
He must be standing—no, kneeling, she realized—right before her knees. She felt a distinct warmth where his body blocked the chill from reaching her forelegs. Mary was hyperconscious of the bared skin of her neck and chest, the hint of cleavage she knew was on display right at Nicholas’ eye level. She was glad for the mirrors that blocked her blush from his view.
“Is the channel still clear, Mary? The storm yesterday threw the shipping schedule off.”
Wrenching her mind back to the information before her, Mary focused on the leftmost screen, a third of the way down. Arrivals and departures, via teletype from the port authority, and a descending column of potential differences indicating the precise times at which certain actions must be taken if event “x” occurred at moment “y”. All the possible futures calculated, then excluded one by one as the minutes ticked by.
“All clear.”
“Good. Keep an eye on that. But listen. Because of all the things I’ve told you over the years about this position, what I have to say now is undoubtedly the most important.”
“All right.”
“When I leave here, it’s true I will receive a great many things. And I’ll have the means to purchase anything else I might ever desire. Lamplighters are too well known by the guild rank and file to kill us all off, is the problem, but we know far too much about how the city works to risk our disgruntlement.”
“Kill you off? They would never!”
Nicholas chuckled but Mary saw little humor in his eyes. “I hope not. Some of the guild’s historical records make me think it’s been considered from time to time over the years though. Especially after Bristol. The politics of the guild are not always as neutral and benevolent as they would have the public believe. Or perhaps I’ve just spent too long in the dark, and it’s made me tend toward dark thoughts. You’ll have to forgive me a touch of cynicism. The point, however, is that the Crown seeks to appease us this way, with money and a title to ensure our fidelity. They have for the past sixty years or so. What none of us ever get back, Mary, is the one truly important thing we’ve lost, and that is time.”
“Time? But you’re only twenty-nine, that’s not so old.”
“Old enough,” he snorted. “But it isn’t a question of starting a bit late, Mary. It’s all that I’ve missed during that time. I’ve spent most of the past ten years in this room. One hour off at noon and six each day, seven hours of rest and sleep just upstairs. Do you know I was your age, nineteen, the last time I saw the sun? The last time I shared a meal with my family. The last time . . .”
She waited for him to resume, but instead of words she felt a touch, featherlight against her knee. Through the heavy work skirt she felt it, and then a firmer tug on the fabric.
“Sir? Nicholas? What . . . what are you doing?”
“The guild leaders are old fools, Mary. They think they can change human nature by simply ignoring it. And they think if they appoint a young woman as Lamplighter, she won’t give them half the trouble of a man. Because if she’s been sheltered enough, she simply won’t know what she’s missing. But I don’t think that’s right. Or fair. You should know what you’re agreeing to give up. Amberherst already does, God knows.”
“Nicholas,” she repeated, now breathlessly, “what are you doing?”
She knew what he was doing. He was unbuttoning the front placket of her practical skirt, the better to sweep it aside. And now he was pushing her thin petticoat out of the way to look at her nearly bare legs. And now he was pushing his body between her knees, parting them and finishing the destruction of her modesty as the gusset in her drawers spread open.
She jerked at the restraints on her wrists, feeling for the first time in years a sense of claustrophobia in the confines of the Chair. But with her hands as good as shackled, and her head boxed in by the mirrored framework, she could not escape.
Nor was she quite sure she wanted to.
Nicholas was shushing her gently, stroking his hands along her calves in a manner clearly calculated to soothe. Mary stilled, but her internal struggle continued. The sense of propriety drilled into her from such an early age was swiftly losing a battle against every girlish daydream she had ever entertained about Nicholas the Lamplighter. And against the power of her own burgeoning desires, which she must not have been suppressing as well as she had thought.
“I’d been with a girl a few times before I started. But I was stupid. I thought it was love, and that she would wait and the time would fly by. She married someone else, of course. I wanted to go after her, to try and talk her out of it. But my contract wouldn’t allow that. I don’t blame her for it though. Ten years is a very long time, Mary.”
His hands lingered at her knees, rubbing softly, the tender pressure nudging her thighs even wider. A sudden draft struck her with an icy chill, and Mary realized she was mortifyingly wet between the legs. Her sex tingled, in fact, under what she imagined was Nicholas’ intense scrutiny. And she wanted more, wanted his touch on her, so badly she ached.
“My contract included a stipend for ‘needs of an intimate nature’. A medical expense, that was how it was listed. Money for prostitutes, or some doxy to keep about if I could find one who would tolerate my schedule.” Mary’s horror at this revelation was only intensified by the next one. “But your contract would not have that provision, of course, because you’re a woman. Despite all their vaunted policies of equality, the guild does not see sexual release as vital or even relevant to the well-being of a woman.”
“I . . . can’t imagine you using a pros— One of those women. Vital to my well- being?” She wasn’t sure what to be embarrassed about first, unless it was Nicholas’ laughter at her obvious consternation. Or his hands working in tandem, creeping higher to caress her thighs in careful strokes over the muslin of her drawers.
“Of course you couldn’t imagine that. You probably know precious little of the whole business. Guild girls are locked up tighter than Spanish gold until they marry, or until they become masters and move out. But you’re still two years away from majority. You can sign a contract for employment, but you can’t live alone or own property yet. Which is why they think they’ve found the perfect candidate. One who won’t know enough to make trouble, and who will cost them a good deal less.”
“And you think I need to know more?” She knew he wasn’t talking about the engines, but her fingers clutched within their restraints anyway, as if she could type in this strange assortment of data and generate a sensible explanation on one of the screens before her. As though being encased in wood, leather and brass should give her some sort of protection against her own rebellious urge to wrap her legs around Nicholas’ waist.
“I think it’s only fair for you to know what you would be signing away.”
“You can’t mean this. Proposing to teach me about . . . about pleasures of the flesh?”
Her attempt at indignant incredulity was short-lived. She gasped as he slid his hands boldly up to the tempting expanse of delicate flesh that extended from the top edge of her corset. It was a sturdy garment, but made to be fastened quickly and by the wearer.
For the Lamplighter’s nimble fingers, it was the work of seconds to unfasten the row of tiny hooks and push the boned cloth aside, then yank down Mary’s chemise to bare her breasts.
“In answer to your question, that is precisely my meaning.” She felt him leaning forward against her knees. Then his mouth covered one nipple, and she could think of nothing but his hot tongue swirling over the sensitive, puckered flesh, the exquisite suction that seemed to pull not just at her breast but also at the bundle of nerves between her legs. “And now I have a question. Are you going to tell me to stop, Mary? Because I will, if you tell me to. If you don’t want this.”
She wasn’t sure she even remembered the words to tell him what she wanted or otherwise. Something new, he had promised her, and she was lost in this wholly new sensation the Lamplighter was demonstrating. No words would come, although in the dim recesses of her mind she knew she was wrong to allow this, wicked to delight in it.
“That’s my good, clever girl,” he mumbled against her skin, and she could have sworn she felt his lips curving into a smile. “Just let me touch you. I’ve wanted to. Oh, how I’ve wanted this. I can remember doing this before. And this. But it’s so much sweeter now that it’s you.”
His fingers were trembling a little as he touched her quim, pulling a sympathetic vibration from her clitoris. Either too eager to wait, or too aware of her obvious arousal, Nicholas nudged one finger inside her tight, wet channel and groaned as he pushed the digit in to the hilt. His mouth returned to one of her breasts while his free hand moved to its mate, and Mary cried out as he worked her nipples in time with the gentle thrusts of his finger inside her. She tried again to free her hands, move closer to him, anything.
But the Chair was inexorable, and so was Nicholas in his patient tutelage.
Just as he had taught her the ways of the engine, he taught her the truth of her body’s own potential for pleasure. A touch here, a kiss there, until Mary’s need grew sharp and insistent. Her trepidation gave way under the onslaught of sensation. The steady pistoning of Nicholas’ finger inside her, the tap of his thumb against her clitoris and the increasingly enthusiastic attention to her breasts, overwhelmed her until she thought she must either swoon or combust. And yet, inexplicably, she craved more.
More of his touch, more of him inside her, more of the killing ecstasy that robbed her of her breath even as it made her feel she was coming alive for the first time.
It did not occur to Mary that the Lamplighter must also be affected, until he cursed gently against her stomach and jerked away. He tugged on her legs and she slid down in the Chair until her bottom was nearly over the edge and her head was free of the mirrored enclosure. With her arms still trapped and supporting her, the position was odd but not uncomfortable. But if Mary had felt exposed to the Lamplighter’s scrutiny before, she melted under his gaze when her eyes met his, and found fire and adoring desperation.
He looked young, unsure of himself. And so very needy. A fervent supplicant before the altar of her flesh.
“Nicholas,” she murmured, because the Lamplighter was nowhere to be seen.
“Mary, do you know what comes next?” As if she might not know what he meant, he tucked a finger back inside her cunt and pressed his other hand against the front of his trousers, where a sizeable protrusion marred the fall of the dun-colored cloth against his lean body.
“I . . . I think I know. They’ve explained it to us.” In clinical, mechanical terms, as inserting one component into another and initiating a process to arrive at a particular result. That lesson seemed in no way related to what she and Nicholas were doing. She knew what he wanted in theory, but the reality was proving so far beyond the realm of her expectation that she thought almost anything might happen if he joined with her. If kisses and caresses were resulting not in shameful regret, but bliss beyond reckoning, then who knew what wonders coitus itself might hold in store?
“Would you let me—do you want—” he attempted.
“Oh yes!” she blurted. Then, embarrassed at her own urgency, she cleared her throat and tried it again more quietly. “I do want that.”
“I won’t spend inside you.”
She had no idea what he meant, but as this was obviously meant to reassure her, she thanked him.
His trousers were undone in the blink of an eye. Past her lap, Mary could just see the blunt, pink tip of his member rising up as he took it in hand. A few short, sharp tugs and then he placed it at the entrance to her body, lining himself up. She expected a pain then, as he breached her, but instead of thrusting he petted her clitoris with his thumb until the wonderful feelings started to curl back into the realm of her awareness. More quickly this time, as though her body had only wanted prompting to learn this new, delightful behavior. Shivers of pleasurable need coursed through her, faster and brighter when he rubbed his fingers over her pussy. He lingered in the moisture he found there and gently spread her to accept his cock.
“It will hurt a bit this time, I think. I’m sorry, love.”
He leaned in, and Mary felt an unbearable pressure and then a bright pop of pain as he burst through the constriction of her hymen. She gasped and rolled her hips, trying to ease the sting, but Nicholas grabbed her thighs and held her steady as he pushed deeper with short, determined thrusts. By the time he reached her limit, the sting had faded to a mild burn. And when his pelvis fetched up hard against hers, she cried out and forgot the pain completely.
Nicholas thrust into her carefully despite his obvious tension, and the friction drove Mary’s pleasure to a fever pitch, to a bright pinnacle she thought must be the ultimate bliss. Except . . . except there, just there, as he bent his head to take her nipple in his mouth again, and the change in angle did something like magic.
The climax came fast and hard, raging through Mary like a fire, taking her breath and all reason with it. She reached with her feet, pulling Nicholas in, instinct driving her to grind against him, drawing her pleasure out. She heard him gasp, felt his lanky frame shudder as his own release began.
