Had he pictured a happy marriage as something close to that but with warmer relations?
He supposed he had simply by lack of anything else to compare.
Certainly, he had not pictured two people consumed by fire each time they came within sight of each other. He did not know how he was going to handle such intense emotion on a daily, on-going basis.
But one thing was certain, the business must always come first no matter the dictates of his heart.
He must put logic above feeling always, or everything would be lost. Too many people depended on him. He didn’t have the luxury to wallow in passionate indulgence much longer.
But he would give Beth today.
* * * *
Beth opened her eyes. Grey’s pillow still bore the imprint of his head. She touched the hollow but it was cool.
Sleep still blurred her mind. She never slept this late. Never. She took several deep breaths, willing her sleep-fuzzed mind to clear. She glanced around the chamber. A thin line of light showed under the door that connected this bedchamber to the little dressing chamber next to it. She arose from the bed, padded to the door and opened it.
Sunlight streamed in the open windows and assaulted her eyes. She blinked.
“Good morning, Beth.”
She turned and focused on Grey, dressed in a black banyan, with his hair still damp and his face clean-shaven. He crushed out his cigar and the acrid scent of tobacco smoke grew stronger. He stood and walked to a tall, mahogany dresser and opened a drawer. He came to her, holding a folded garment.
“This is for you.”
She took the cool, pale blue satin and unfolded it. It was a wrapper, with no lace or trim to spoil its simple elegance. Her fingers glided over the cool, silken fabric.
“If you’d rather have something else—a different color or style—I shall get it for you.” His eyes were tender, with no trace of the possessive stranger who had savagely driven her to the heights hours before.
“Oh, no, it’s lovely.” She slipped it over her nakedness and tied the belt. She looked up and found his eyes on her, warm with appreciation. He reached out his arms and she went to stand in front of him. “Grey…”
He grasped her by the hips, pulled her closer. His eyes, dark and passionate, captivated hers. His lovemaking held an opiate-like quality for her—the more she had, the more she craved.
“Let’s go back to the bed,” he said.
She shook her head, as much for herself as for him. “No, we need to discuss something. Something serious.”
Almost instantly a front-parlor expression fell over his face and regret at the loss of intimacy pricked her heart. From the table by the chair, he picked up a glass with brandy in it and motioned to his recently vacated chair. “Have a seat, then, and tell me what’s on your mind.”
Heaviness settled into her belly as she sat. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to discuss this, but they had to—though she couldn’t look at him, coward that she was. She studied her sapphire ring. “Someone told me you turned your first wife out of your house.”
Silence.
She glanced up. He was leaning against the doorframe, staring into his drink as he swirled it.
“It’s not true, correct?” she asked, her heart hammering.
Please, oh please let him give the right answer.
“If you can believe I’d do something like that—good God, Beth, what were you doing here with me last night? What are you doing here with me now?”
“I don’t know what to believe. I wish you’d tell me.”
Outside the window, a carriage clattered by and that bad-mannered mutt began barking again in the silence. Her nerves stretched like violin strings. “Won’t you tell me?”
He sighed. “The whole business with Juliana was…complicated.”
“Complicated?” A dull ache settled between her eyes and she frowned. “How?”
“I have no wish to discuss this. Not this morning.”
“But I want to. I need to know your past.”
He glanced up and his sharp, silver stare cut into her. “Beth, you have quite a past yourself.”
His hard tone hit her with brutal force, almost like a blow knocking the wind out of her. She gasped. But what else could she say? “Yes, I have.”
“And you asked me specifically not to interrogate you over it, remember?”
Aware of the change in focus, the change in her role from accuser to accused, she nodded, slowly, almost afraid to move lest she bring even more unwelcome attention onto herself.
“And, since then, I haven’t trespassed where I am not welcome to pry, have I?”
Under his steady gaze, she pulled her legs up and curled them under herself.
“Have I?” he repeated, more firmly.
“No,” she said, her voice small.
“Well, then, kindly repay the courtesy.” His knuckles went white as he held the glass and raised it to his lips. Then he downed the contents in one swallow.
Shame burnt through her to have brought the matter up, to have pried into his past, and yet… And yet his logic seemed slightly off. Yes, her past included men—but they were unimportant men. Faithless Joshua and a handful of men with whom she’d lain once and who didn’t matter now. She’d owed them nothing. But they were discussing his first wife and a wife was…well, a wife.
“I never laid with a married man,” she blurted.
The skin stretched over his cheekbones. “We agreed not to speak of it, remember?”
“But I want you to know. I must say this.”
“All right, Beth, what must you say?”
“I think marriage is a sacrament. No matter how bad things become, one shouldn’t ever desert one’s spouse.”
“A fine sentiment. But that’s all it is.”
The smug certainty in his voice made her seethe and her spine went rigid. “Is it?”
“Yes, and the very sentiment of it shows how little you know of life or marriage.”
* * * *
Beth pretended to sip her tea but the cold, hard mass lodged in the pit of her stomach wouldn’t allow her to take on much of the fragrant brew. Across from her, Grey wore that front-parlor expression, his voice kind as he asked her what she wanted him to order for her. Even though they’d already been here a few times, to Gray’s Ferry, located near the Schuylkill, Beth still felt like a fraud. Goodness—proper and polite table talk with Grey. She always grew self-conscious, a shy, shrinking creature unable to do more than nod and smile.
She felt so stupid and insipid. This was no bedchamber, where she could seduce and pleasure and satisfy. This was the real world—Grey’s world—where she was expected to be witty and intellectually interesting. How could she possibly be intellectually interesting? Her studies had bored her to insanity. He’d graduated from Harvard with honors. She’d been nowhere and done nothing. He’d been all over the world as a young man, as a supercargo on his father’s ships.
Her quietness in these public and more formal settings never seemed to bother or bore him. He filled the silence with tales from Russia, India, England, France and the Caribbean. But today he seemed as reluctant to speak as she. The discord from that morning hung between them. She picked at her food, trying not to take too many glances at him. She wanted to ask him about the duel, but his distant expression and jutting, stiffly held jaw discouraged her.
What the devil was on his mind?
“I am going home for a few weeks.”
His words fell over her like cold rain. Her mouth dropped open and she jerked her head up to meet his silver gaze. “But we’re getting married in a few weeks.”
An iciness gripped her heart and held it firm, squeezing. He was returning to New York. In a week or two, maybe longer, there would come a letter—a letter explaining that he was crying off, because he’d discovered how dull and unsophisticated she really was. He knew she’d never fit into his life. The hand that held her fork began to shake slightly.
“Beth.”
He spoke sharply.
She flinched and dropped her fork. It landed on her plate with a clatter. “What?”
“Are you unwell?”
“I am fine.” Acid lurched up into her throat. She swallowed it back. Oh God, don’t let her make a scene over this. Please.
“You’ve gone so suddenly pale.”
“I am fine.” She stiffened her spine and squared her shoulders to manage some dignity. She tried to smile but her trembling lips wouldn’t stretch.
He drew his black brows together and his forehead wrinkled. “Beth, have some faith in me. I shall return for our wedding.”
“Take me with you.”
The words slipped out before she could stop them. She cringed. What a weak, pathetic thing to say. Love was turning her into a shrinking ninny. She picked up her teacup, tossed her head and tried to act as if she really didn’t care what his response was.
But it didn’t work.
The smile froze on his thin, well-shaped lips and he looked stunned, as if her coming with him hadn’t occurred to him. He opened his mouth but hesitated, in the way of a person who struggles for the softest way to say a hard truth.
She stared down at the teacup in her hands. “Of course you can’t.”
“For the sake of your reputation, Beth, I dare not.”
“Of course,” she repeated. Oh, but she didn’t believe his reason for a moment. The truth was that he didn’t wish to be troubled with her. She sensed it in her bones.
“I shall miss you, Beth, you know I shall.”
The careful, gentle note in his voice made her throat burn. It was the tone of a man who wants only to be gone and doesn’t wish to deal with a tedious emotional scene. She nodded.
He smiled, his relief evident in the way the skin relaxed over his cheekbones. “We shall be wed soon enough. And then we shall live together all of the time.”
His words should have soothed her. They didn’t.
* * * *
Grey stared out over the Schuylkill River but really, inwardly, he was only aware of Beth’s hand in his. He could sense the tension in her body. Could sense her pain. She appeared to take no pleasure in the brightly colored flowers as they walked amid the garden at Gray’s Ferry.
His earlier words to her still replayed in his mind. They carried an echo of his father, speaking politely yet coldly to his mother. That echo sent waves of tension through Grey’s stomach.
That wasn’t how he had intended today to go at all.
Yet, he could hear that echo nonetheless. As it played over and over in his mind, he winced. He’d sounded like a man who had coldly dismissed his wife.
Yet, at the thought of his impending departure from Philadelphia, his chest tightened.
He did not want to return to New York alone.
He did not want to leave her.
But he must leave her. And he couldn’t take her with him. It might cause talk.
Even more than that, he did need time alone, away from her to regain his focus on business.
He glanced her way. She was staring out over where the sun sparkled like diamonds on the softly rippling water. A small number of row boats ventured out on the river.
A romantic man would suggest that they do the same.
Grey could play the romantic man, for one afternoon. Surely, he could…
He gave her hand a squeeze. She looked up, her eyes full of sadness, giving him a sudden feeling of being jerked back to that poignant moment when he had first seen her.
First met her eyes.
Those blue, blue eyes.
He had fallen in love with her in that moment, though he had not known it, had not suspected it. He had not believed in love then.
Now love for her consumed his being, so much that his chest tightened with it. “Why don’t we rent a boat?” he said.
He had escorted her to the fitting early that morning, as he supposed a good affianced man ought. And the dressmaker had given her a new day dress. The white muslin billowed softly and the pale blue sash under her breasts ripped gently in the wind. Sunlight played upon a wayward silver-blond curl.
How young and virginal she appeared. It was good for people to see her with him like this. It was good for her reputation, for her eventual acceptance by his world, for people to see him as a man head-over-heels in love with a young, exquisitely beautiful woman.
He squeezed her hand again. “Shall we?”
She lifted one shoulder slightly then let it drop. “If you wish.”
He led her down the dock and then procured a boat for them.
As he rowed, she remained quiet. He watched her dip her hand over the side and dip her fingers into the water. She was listless, pale, unhappy.
This was not the memory he wanted to carry with him back to New York.
Something was required of him. He wasn’t exactly sure what. “I did not sleep well in Baltimore,” he admitted, finally deciding on what might suffice to reach her.
“Didn’t you?” she asked.
“No.”
“You should try warmed wine with honey.”
Her falsely sweet, helpful tone made a smile tweaked at his lips. “I am trying to tell you that I missed you, vixen.”
She glanced up. Sunlight glinted on her pale silver-gold lashes. Her eyes sparkled to rival the light on the water. The tiniest of smiles curved her soft pink mouth.
He’d take that.
“You must be patient with me.” He moved a little closer to her and took her gloved hand. “Beth, I have never been in love before.”
In the last moments, he’d formulated a grand speech for her, he planned to make her several promises. But as her smile widened, her eyes warmed.
Something wholly mawkish escaped him then. He wasn’t exactly sure what, nor could he think adequately to remember for in the next instant, his mouth was on hers.
He caught himself. Too late for propriety, of course.
It took all his willpower and self-control to pull his lips from hers. He held onto her hand.
She was smiling up at him.
“Now you have to marry me, vixen,” he said, softly.
She laughed, a girlish, carefree sort of laugh, so different from her customary worldly, slightly cynical one.
He’d never heard a more lovely sound. It warmed him, head to foot. And he couldn’t help but wonder if he ought to chuck his worry over propriety and appearances.
No need for sad partings. He would pay whatever official he had to in order to obtain a marriage license today. Then he would delay his trip a day and marry her tomorrow. Then he could take her home to New York immediately.
* * * *
The heat inside the closed carriage rose, causing sweat to trickle between her shoulder blades. But Beth was barely aware of. She focused more on how Grey’s cock throbbed within her grasp. She closed her fist tighter then thrilled at how his flesh strained against her hold. How he leaked against her hand, heated proof of his desire. She laughed and glanced up at his face.
He winced then took her wrist. “That’s enough of that, vixen.”
“Wha—”
He laughed softly, hoarsely, and pulled her hand away from himself.
“Why—don’t you want to…”
He laughed again, whilst pressing her palm to his thigh. “We have plenty of time for this later.”
She never understood his self-denying moods. Her own mouth felt bruised from the many fierce, hungry kisses he’d given to her once they had returned here from Gray’s Ferry and carriage door had closed and the vehicle had begun to move. Her body still pulsed and throbbed from the orgasm he’d given to her with his hand.
That was one constant in her life when he was around. He was beyond generous with his body, giving her as much pleasure as she could stand.
But he did often deny himself, as though he had something to prove.
She leaned closer and pressed her lips to his ear. “I wish you’d let me—”
“Not here. Not now.”
>
“Well…” She let her tongue snake teasingly along the curve of his ear. “We could always return to Cherry Street.”
She took his earlobe in her mouth and sucked, slow, steady pressure.
The catch in his breath made her smile.
He released her hand and her smile widened.
But it froze as he began to re-button his fall. “I have a better idea,” he said.
She leaned away and gave him an arch glance. “Oh, yes?”
He grinned at her. “Aye, vixen, I do.”
There was something about the way he looked at her then. His face was wholly boyish.
Relaxed.
Happy.
It struck her that possibly for the first time, except for perhaps in those moments at the height of their passion, he seemed completely carefree.
Completely hers.
Something within her let go, too. Lightness filled her being.
Love for him consumed her.
Hope leapt in her chest. She had a suspicion what he meant. She leaned closer again and trailed her fingertip down his cheek. “What surprise is that?”
He took her hand and brought it to his chest and pressed it there. “You’ll soon see.”
* * * *
Grey had said that he had a surprise for her. Now Beth followed him along Main Street, anticipatory excitement causing flutters to form in her stomach.
“Sexton! Hold up.” The male voice came from behind them.
Grey tightened his hand on hers as he stopped and turned around to face the man who had spoken. Beth followed and hung behind his large frame. She’d had enough meetings and curious eyes for the week—maybe the whole month.
“Have you heard my good news?” Beth could hear the grin in Grey’s voice and it warmed her.
“What good news?” the man said.
“I am engaged to be married.” Grey turned, put his hand to her waist and pulled her in front of his body.
A tall, lean, tawny-haired gentleman, his face so hard-boned he seemed petrified, stared back at her with amber eyes. Shocked amber eyes.
Wild, Wicked and Wanton: A Hot Historical Romance Bundle Page 23