Work Text:
You gasp, “Mister Ren!” and cast your gaze quickly away.
Alas, it is too late for you to attempt not to see him. The Master of Pemberley is come through the arboretum from the pond, his thin linen undershirt soaked and stuck to his upper body like a second skin. His wettened hair falls loosely about his face, and his dark eyes squint and furrow in the late afternoon sun.
“My lady,” he greets you stiffly. Caught out, his tone of voice is tinged with startlement.
“I—we.” You don’t know where to look—certainly not at him, by any means. “The household did not expect your return until—,”
“My apologies, I—returned a day early.” Mr Ren’s words are stilted and guarded, but he draws himself up even taller than usual, in a far less vulnerable stance that doesn’t quite ring true, given his state of undress.
“Oh—,”
“Excuse me, I did not mean to startle you by my arrival.”
A change in the Master’s travel plans is the least of your current concerns—and his insistence on labouring to explain it is ludicrous, given he stands before you in next to nakedness. You wish he would excuse himself—or dismiss you—and promptly.
But then again…
You catch his eye, and for the long length of a heartbeat find yourself unable to look away.
There’s a tense, bubbling silence before Mr Ren speaks.
“I trust Georgiana’s conjugations are improved today?” He glances towards his sister. Some distance away, Miss Georgiana Ren is poised idyllically before an easel, sketching a scene of oak trees that you will, tomorrow, instruct her in painting in the Romantic style. After history, geography, and piano, of course.
“Quite,” you answer too quickly, jumping eagerly on the change of topic before stopping yourself. “Her verbs are developing eloquently, Mister Ren, as is her subjonctif. Miss Ren will soon delight the ladies of London’s tea rooms.”
“I would expect nothing less, under your expert tutelage,” says Mr Ren.
You glance and find him swallowing, the knot of cartilage in the long column of his throat bobbing. After a beat, you reply, “thank you, Mister Ren,” and through your ongoing, heated mortification, you attempt a smile.
As does he, for a brief moment. “Excuse me, Miss,” he addresses you by your surname to conclude the conversation, and grants you a slight nod before he takes his leave—leaving you warm and breathless.
XXXX
Mr Ren’s return from London coincided neatly with the anniversary of one year of your employment as governess at Pemberley, and the Master had announced a picnic by the lake at Hope Valley to mark the occasion in lieu of Miss Ren’s afternoon lessons.
The morning broke gloriously; the day promised sunshine—and delivered.
“Fair weather, my lord Ren,” you greet the Master courteously as you tie your bonnet by the open front door. He had sauntered with vigour down the staircase, buttoning his riding coat, as his freshly blackened riding boots shone in the noontime light.
“Pleasant indeed, my lady,” mirrors Mr Ren in reply, with something of a youthful liveliness animating his features. “I have asked Lucas to prepare the chaise for yourself and Georgiana. The cabriolet will spoil the splendour, would you agree?”
His eyes sparkle, captivating your senses, and you hesitate for a moment longer than propriety allows before answering him. “I would indeed, Mister Ren. You have my thanks. I venture you will be joining us on horseback?”
“I will ride alongside Lucas,” Mr Ren nods.
Mercy, how you wish he hadn’t.
Sitting in the chaise beside Miss Ren, your every thought is occupied by the Master of Pemberley. Astride his thoroughbred Mister Ren cuts an impressive figure: broad shouldered, his typically black hair shining a rich chestnut brown in the midday sun—but it’s the way his body rocks with the cantering pace of his horse that is absurdly lewd to behold. You try to look away. You cannot.
Every now and then he breaks into a gallop for a mile or so, racing off into the distance with speed and deft agility before finding his path back to the chaise: his thick locks bouncing magnificently and his lips and cheeks flushed from the exercise.
When the party arrives at the lake, Mr Ren offers you his hand to assist you to alight from the chaise. “My lady,” says he, arm outstretched, reaching for you with a leather-gloved hand.
Impossibly, notwithstanding the travelling gloves on your own hands, heat sparks when your fingers touch—like steel struck against flint.
XXXX
Miss Ren, the lady Georgiana, takes ill one afternoon.
After you’d seen her safely to her room, and ensured one of the house girls would remain with her for her comfort, your time became your own.
The library at Pemberley boasted a substantive collection of literature, poetry, histories, legislative tomes, and specimens of natural curiosities.
On occasion—with the Master having granted you permission to access the room before the end of your very first week—you would find yourself wandering the book-lined walls, admiring the many shelved cases and lacquered tables and glass cabinets, before selecting a volume and settling on the chaise longue to lose yourself in the language of the classics.
Today happened to be one of those occasions.
On entering the room, you are first greeted by precious warmth. The day was dreary; miserably cold and windy, but the fire blazes heartily, for which you are thankful.
Strangely, however… the library does not appear occupied.
Nevertheless, you make your way into the room, winding through the vast, invaluable collection, towards the classical mythologies. The smell of this room is transcendent—paper, ink, leather, wood. With delight, you fill your lungs with it.
You round a large, mahogany bookcase and are surprised by the sight of the back of—
“Mister Ren.”
He whirls around suddenly, snapping a leather-bound book closed in a single palm and holding it in front of himself. In reciprocal greeting he stumbles over your surname, then, “my lady,” correcting himself, “you are not with Georgiana this afternoon? Is my sister in good health?”
There’s a hint of breathlessness about the Master of Pemberley—and it is something quite unusual, the like of which you have not seen before. You say, “not so, my lord, I am afraid. Miss Ren complained of a headache and I believe she is fatigued. She is resting now, and Alice with her.”
“Fine, good,” replies Mr Ren, then thinking better of it, changes his expression and rushes over his words. “Very well, then. I am pleased you have seen after her, and I wish Miss Ren a swift recovery such that she may join me at supper. You have my thanks, my lady.”
You nod your head in acknowledgement, before gesturing at the book the Master clutches in his hand. “May I ask what so intrigued your attention, Mister Ren?”
Mr Ren clears his throat. “Oh,” he begins, and quickly thrusts the book back to its home, “I was merely, skimming for—it appears, the collection is lacking—precisely what I… need.” He stops, his eyes furtive, not able to hold your gaze. “Excuse me, Miss,” he says your surname more confidently this time, “I must write to Foyles and request a new title immediately.” With that—the Master of Pemberley strides past you, and leaves the room.
But he had not been completely truthful with you, for Mr Ren had been reading—and looking—and intently so.
At a book Bingley had once slipped him, back in their university days. A book from London, Holywell Street, wrapped in brown paper and tied with a length of twine.
A book featuring the most lascivious portraiture, the most vellicating pictures, the most vulgar language and descriptions—by God, the descriptions! Somehow, were even more scandalous and erotic than the imagery could be.
And with each word, letter, line, and colour: all Mr Ren saw, was you.
XXXX
What started as a pleasant morning had, by mid-afternoon, become drawn with grey clouds and a crisp chill. The smell of impending rain wafted on the cool autumnal air, and you had just sent Miss Ren back to the drawing room from the greenhouse—to complete her artistic botanical studies on another, finer day, lest you are caught in the downpour that loomed overhead.
You collect the remaining items—card stock, pencils, et cetera—and pack them away, relishing the wet warmth within the greenhouse, the rich, damp scent of earth, and bracing for the cold without.
Before you can close the tin carrying case, the door to the greenhouse opens and shuts quickly, followed by a deep, commanding baritone that calls you by your title.
You whirl around to face him, your heart fluttering from the suddenness of the noise in the relative silence. “Mister Ren,” your voice is breathless, “how may I—,”
“My sister is gone to the house?” he utters with urgency.
“Yes, Mister Ren.”
“Mercy,” he mutters under his breath, his chest deflating with a relieved sigh. He approaches you with quick, sure strides. “You must allow me a moment of your time, my dear lady.”
The familiarity of his address takes you by surprise, but its meaning is not lost on you. “Mister Ren—,”
“I refuse to go on like this,” says the Master of Pemberley. “You must allow me to tell you how ardently, how fervently—despite all rationality…” His eyes search yours, dark as midnight and unable to contain the frenetic desperation that swirls within them.
His body is close to yours, so close you see the small rain drops that sporadically dot his coat shoulders, and his chest rising and falling with uncontrolled breaths. It draws you closer to him, in the humid heat of Pemberley’s greenhouse.
“I cannot rest, my lady, until I make my heart plain to your ears,” Mister Ren says. “In vain I have struggled to subdue my desire for you. You know not how your beauty and your wit and your very presence here has tortured me. Your happiness is the core of my every concern. Visions of you visit me in my dreams. For months you have filled my every waking thought—and when I am not with you—when I am away—by God I yearn to be near you. I long for you in the dead of night. I crave the scent of you and the sound of your voice and the sight of your face in the middle of the day. My lady, my dearest darling, it’s maddening.”
Your eyes flit between his as your insides flutter and lurch. You attempt to ground yourself to reality, though your heart hammers in your chest. Could this, truly, be unfolding before you?
Then, for the first time since the day you met him, Mister Ren says your first name, “my passion for you can be repressed no longer.” He cups your face and presses his mouth to yours in a desperate, deliberate kiss, full of raw aching need and hot all-consuming want.
Your very being melts into him—you hear somewhere off in the distance, the tin carton of pencils drops and spills onto the ground—and when he breaks your connexion for air, you sigh his name onto his lips.
He drinks it in, and it’s all as fast as a crack of lightning after that.
Mr Ren barrels you over to the nearest wall, pressing you into a clematis-covered panel of lattice. Between needy, desperate kisses and hot, panting breaths you work at each other’s undergarments, rushing to loosen ties and buttons with hasty fingers.
“Would you forgive me one more impropriety, my lady?” Mr Ren murmurs, quick and breathless.
Before you finish saying the word, ‘yes,’ – Mr Ren rips the crotch of your stockings.
You gasp, and pull him in close for more wet, hot, open-mouthed kisses, the pair of you breathing heavily, asynchronously, through your noses.
Mr Ren’s hand dips between your legs. He trails two fingers down your slit, finding you slick and ready, and the Master hums into your mouth.
You break the connexion to gasp and sigh, and Mr Ren douses your jaw and neck with kisses that match the interior of the greenhouse for heat and wetness.
When he reaches your ear, he murmurs lowly. “God forgive me, Miss,” he pants your surname as he strokes the lips of your cunt, “I have imagined your precious quim in every way possible and if I do not feel inside it now I shall run mad.”
“Mister Ren,” you gasp in protest, but your hips rise to meet his fingers.
Thunder cracks outside, and the Master devours your mouth hungrily, groaning as he slips two fingers inside your drooling cunt.
You release his lips and loose a moan, a strangled thing of pleasure as he rocks his fingers along your soft, slick insides. You clutch the luscious hair at his nape in your fist and murmur breathlessly, “give me everything, Mister Ren.”
In a sudden, singular movement he withdraws his fingers from your centre and hooks his arm under one of your knees, lifting and spreading your legs apart and shuffling you back against the climbing vines.
He groans when he is greeted by the sweet scent of your cunt.
You shift and lift your dress up over your hips, bundling it at your waist, as the crook of your knee rests in the crook of his elbow.
Panting, Mr Ren grips the edge of the lattice with one hand, and with the other—he grips his tumescent prick, guides it towards your centre, clumsily finds your slick opening, and hastily pushes in.
Grunts and groans of rapture ring out among the many leaves and flowers as Mr Ren bucks into the tight, wet, welcoming heat at the apex of your thighs.
You grab hold of his shoulder to steady yourself, standing on one tip-toe as he holds your other leg aft to plunge deep inside you with his cock.
“Uhgh, yes,” he pants into your neck as you clutch at him, and he rocks and jolts your body with every desperate thrust.
The drag of his thick, throbbing member renders you speechless: it’s all you can do to moan and groan breathy sounds of pleasure as he fills you full over and over again.
The air purls hot and thick and wet around you. Droplets of condensation skim down the glassed walls of the greenhouse as Mr Ren thrusts wildly into your pulsing core: longer, deeper grunts of ecstasy tumble from his lips as he rapidly nears his peak.
Rain begins to batter the glass structure, sprinkling lightly at first before pouring down, hammering at the windowed roof and walls.
“Touch me,” you gasp, tightening your grip on your crumpled dress and his sturdy shoulder, “Mister Ren, touch me.”
The Master groans, diving between your legs to tweak your swollen bud, rolling it between his fingers once, twice—
“Ren!”
—three times, murmuring, “let go, my dearest lady.” He grunts. “My darling, let me bring you off on my cock.”
His words send your pleasure bubbling over into a powerful orgasm that shudders through your whole body.
You cry out and clutch Mr Ren closer, and into your pulsing, spasming centre he shoots white, groaning as he unloads into the depths of your clenching cunt.
For a long moment, he holds you upright: your bodies locked in place, and he panting into your neck.
You swallow thickly, your breath not quite returned yet. “Mister Ren—,”
“Not yet,” he huffs, wrapping his arms tighter around your form. “Please, my dear.”
A thought occurs to you. “Perhaps we could explain, in our absence, we were stranded by the storm, my lord.”
The Master leans from your neck to look deeply into your eyes—with the movement, your bodies disconnect.
There’s mirth in Mr Ren’s gaze, a hint of glee. He brings one of your hands up to his lips. “My lady,” he murmurs onto your skin, “a clever deception.” He presses a kiss to your knuckles. “We should, in that case, make the most of our time here. Would you agree?”