Wild, Wicked and Wanton: A Hot Historical Romance Bundle

by Natasha Blackthorne

  She turned and gaped at him. “That’s a horrid thing to say.”

  “You understand the world and the people in it so poorly. You are a danger to yourself. The only reason Congress were moved to do anything about the Barbary issue is because it hurts them in their profits. Slavery here in the States is different. People in high places still take huge profits from it. They have slaves as servants in their homes. They have slave women warming their beds. They won’t let go of all that power easily. For some people, power trumps love. It is all they have.”

  He couldn’t possibly believe that. He seemed to care for other people so much, he understood them so well. But now he was speaking about humanity with contempt.

  She shook her head. “You’re wrong, so very wrong. People are not that cold. They are merely suffering from narrow vision. They’ve become so involved with their own lives they can no longer see what goes on around them. They need someone to show them the way the world really is.”

  A small, tolerant smile curved his lips.

  His smiles couldn’t warm her now. She would never be warm again. She turned away, opened a drawer and plunged her hands into the silks and fine linens.

  “You are so young, so untried. You have no idea how cold and callous this world can be. How cold so many people truly are.”

  She paused, holding a handful of lacy petticoats. “I had no idea you held such pessimistic views.”

  “Emily, you think I want to prevent you from having free expression. That’s just not true. The truth is I know you’re going to come up against all this callousness and evil in the world and you are going to get hurt and disillusioned. Why do you need to do that? Why can’t you just let me take care of you and love you? Focus on our life, our home, and our children. That is all we can really control in this world.”

  “Oh, now this is about me and my need to be sheltered. Just like my grandmother, you would lock me away from the world but for your own selfish reasons.”

  A muscle jumped in his cheek. “No, not like your grandmother. I am not locking you away from the adult world. I would make a wife and mother out of you. You will have a household of servants to manage. You can make a difference in the world in the way you choose to conduct that. If every shopkeeper swept his stoop, the whole city would be clean.”

  “That’s the most underhanded justification for burying one’s head that I have ever heard.” Heated anger surged through her blood. she threw the petticoats into her valise. “Emotional cowardice. That’s what you’re showing me. I never suspected you capable of being so selfish.”

  He came to her side and reached into the valise and scooped the petticoats out and spilled them onto the bed. “Will you stop packing and listen to me? We can talk things out, come to some understanding.”

  She stood back and studied him. He looked so tall, handsome, noble. He was always so kind, concerned for others. Yet it was all a façade. He was not noble; he was not truly concerned for humanity. She held onto her anger and glared at him. “You’ve said too much. It can’t be unsaid now.”

  Alex took in Emily’s curled lip and narrowed eyes. Her contempt smoldered between them.

  He crossed his arms over his chest and watched her slender form move about the chamber, gathering items then shoving them pell-mell into her valise. She was far too soft-hearted, too naïve, too idealistic. She was going to be hurt in this quest of hers. His chest tightened. There was nothing he could do to prevent it.

  “Where will you go?” he asked finally.

  She stopped and dropped her armload of gowns into an already overstuffed valise. She paled at his words. He wanted to go to her and take her in his arms and tell her none of it mattered. If she wanted so badly to write this book on slavery, he would allow it. He would find a way to shelter her against the worst of the disillusionment; he’d pay whatever he had to in order to get it printed. But things had moved too far beyond that issue. They had said far more now.

  He’d never forget the contempt on her face. He couldn’t abide living with a wife who held him in contempt.

  Their parting, which had been theoretical until this moment, was now real. Imminent. Irrevocable.

  “Your cousin, Mrs. Hazelwood, offered me a position as a companion.”

  “Did she? When?” he asked, as if such a trifle mattered now. But a niggling doubt ate into him. A suspicion that she’d contemplated leaving him before.

  She would have left eventually, no matter what. It was less painful this way. At least there were no children yet.

  “Recently. She was distressed to learn that I spent the weekend here with you alone. She thinks there will soon be talk if I do not leave.” She laughed, a nervous, catching sound.

  “You should go and live with her, yes, for now. But I do not like the idea of you working for her for wages. I’ll settle a bank account on you and you can take the art lessons still. You can eventually work as a portrait artist or something.”

  “No, I don’t need or want your money now.”

  Her words sideswiped him and nearly made him sway on his feet. He had not expected such a blanket rejection of his entire self from her. Not from Emily.

  Well, well, well. Hadn’t he known in his gut that it would end like this? Wasn’t this the real reason why he hadn’t been able to bring himself to set a date for their marriage? Even though he hadn’t told her the whole of his past, she still recognized his damaged soul. And her idealistic spirit couldn’t possibly understand his need to forget and put the past behind him.

  He felt a compelling urge to give in, to spill out the whole of his history. But even if she were capable of handling such a tale, he wasn’t capable of handling the contempt on her face change to pity. Better contempt than pity.

  Of course they must part. Nicolo had been correct. They must separate. For both their sakes. He wasn’t whole. It wasn’t fair that she didn’t know why. Yet she’d never be able to love him after he had told her. She would never be happy with him, knowing he was really half a broken man. Yet her pity would impel her to stand by him and he couldn’t ever bear that.

  Better she left now with a valid reason to hate him. Hating him, she would forget him quickly.

  “I think that you had better have this back.” He could hear how unemotional she was attempting to be. She seemed to be holding herself so rigidly.

  “What?”

  She ran to her night table and opened a small wooden box there. She ran back to him. “Here, take this back.”

  He looked down at her palm. The ruby engagement ring he’d given her lay there, glittering in gold and blood-red.

  And as he accepted the ring, he could feel her hand shaking.

  He knew he would never recover from losing her.

  ****

  It was evening of Emily’s first day at Mrs. Hazelwood’s house. She was tired. Elizabeth had attached herself to her and spent the day trailing at her skirts. Emily liked the girl but she was unaccustomed to caring for children.

  Now she had hidden herself in the schoolroom, taking some moments alone.

  She needed time alone so she could continue to sort out her thoughts and feelings. Twenty-four hours had passed since her quarrel with Alex and yet the words echoed with finality in her mind. She had not known him. That hurt most of all. She’d been in love with an illusion.

  Sitting through supper with Mrs. Hazelwood and Peter at once had been torture. She’d feared the whole time that she or Peter would give their previous intimacy away with a glance or a misspoken word. She hadn’t expected to dine with the family. She had expected to take her meals with the other servants. And she’d thought Peter would spend most nights out. But he had been kind and considerate to her through the whole meal. And had kept his sister from continuing to pry into Emily’s family’s past. She owed him for his kindness.

  Hinges squeaked as the door came open.

  She looked up and saw Peter entering, smiling at her with warm familiarity in his startling blue eyes.

 
Her heart sped up and her mouth dried. Oh, heavens, he wasn’t going to make some sort of an advance, was he? Hastily, she reached for her sketchpad and turned her attention to it, taking her pencil and retracing lines needlessly.

  He sat down beside her on the window seat cushion. She stiffened all over, preparing to resist him if he tried to touch her. But he merely leant back against the window. He smelt of cigars and whisky and bay rum. She remained too aware of his masculinity. Her very awareness felt disloyal to Alex.

  But she couldn’t love Alex any longer…

  Save for the scratching of her charcoal on the page, silence hung between them for a long time.

  “So Alex said or did something asinine and now you can’t forgive him?” Peter said at last.

  Her pencil lead broke as a cold lump settled in her chest. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Oh, come, can’t you forgive him, just this once?”

  “Alex and I are very different after all. I had not realized just how different.”

  “Alex is a very complex man. A troubled man for all his glib charm.”

  “Was he always this way?”

  “No.”

  The breathless need to know made her heart race away and she dropped the sketchpad and looked up at Peter. “What changed him?”

  “I wish I could tell you, sweeting, but I can’t. The only person who might have known was Green, and, of course, he shan’t be telling secrets now.”

  Green, who had served with Alex on the Pollyanna, a privateer ship during the war for independence from the King. Alex had been an adolescent and Green had been a man. Their ship had wrecked and, while Green had returned within three years, Alex had been declared dead. Until the day he’d shown up, hale and hearty, after five years’ silence. He refused to speak about that time.

  Images swirled in her mind, of shipwrecks and the tossing sea, of pirates and unspeakable brutality. She tried to force her trembling lips to return his smile but she failed.

  “So Alex really did or said something unforgivable?”

  “The decision to part ways was shared.”

  “I doubt it was your fault.” He inhaled deeply and shook his head slowly. “Ah, poor Alex, I didn’t think he would fumble this so soon—I care for him deeply but I see him as he is. Charmingly aloof, moving through life giving generously yet somehow giving nothing real of himself. He is an enigma.” He touched her cheek. “Think about this separation business. About what you want. If you want him, don’t let too much time go by. Forgive him whatever it is he has done or said.”

  He bent and laid the lightest of kisses on her forehead. Then he left.

  His words echoed in her mind for a long time after as she lay in bed. Yes, Alex was an enigma. But maybe somewhat less so to her now. Something had happened to Alex during those missing years. Something so horrific he would not tell her and yet it affected him constantly and in every part of his life. Even intimately. A terrifying suspicion tugged at her consciousness about what this experience might have been. It made her stomach turn sick. No, she couldn’t bear to think it. She pushed the awareness out of her mind along with the swirling, speculative images it provoked.

  ****

  “I didn’t think you could dance.”

  Maggie Johnson’s blue eyes laughed at Emily as she fanned herself. Each slow, languid motion stirred the stray, strategically placed strawberry-blonde corkscrew curls on either side of her flawless face. With a button nose and a rosebud mouth, she was almost frighteningly beautiful. She was also one of Alex’s former lovers.

  But that should no longer matter to Emily. It could no longer matter to her.

  “I can dance a little now,” Emily said. She didn’t want to be here but Peter had insisted on bringing her tonight to this ball at the house of someone she didn’t even know. Of course, she had come only to avoid being rude and hurting his feelings. It had nothing to do with the chance that Alex would be here. He wasn’t, and, of course, she was relived. She was.

  “I have been teaching her,” Peter said.

  Maggie’s mouth gaped for a moment then she laughed softly and gave Peter a sideways glance. “Have you? Well, well, well. Isn’t that interesting?”

  Emily blushed at the insinuation. A totally undeserved shame, for Peter had been a perfect gentleman in every way in the two weeks since she’d come to live with Mrs. Hazelwood. “He has sacrificed his afternoons to teach me,” she said, to remove any false images of herself alone with Peter in the more intimate hours of the night.

  Maggie’s sharp eyes focused on her again and narrowed to feline slits. “I hear you have taken a position as companion to Mrs. Hazelwood.”

  “Yes.”

  “And how do you like it?”

  “I like it fine.”

  Maggie shrugged and smiled. “I suppose it doesn’t pay as well as being Mr. Dalton’s personal propagandist.” Her eyes danced with mischief.

  The insinuation was clear. Emily turned her back and walked away. There was no use trying to be polite. She would never be accepted here. She ought not to have let herself be drawn into coming tonight. She didn’t belong to this world.

  A touch on her arm halted her. She turned.

  Peter’s face was kind and concerned. “What is it?”

  “I want to go home now.”

  “You should stay. He should see you enjoying yourself without him. He should think about what his decision will mean.”

  She frowned. “Why does it matter to you?”

  “Because I want him to have the power of choice.”

  His answer seemed needlessly cryptic but she was too edgy to give it much thought. “Well, he isn’t here.”

  “He’ll show.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because I told him I was bringing you here. Believe me, he’ll show.”

  Did she want him to show?

  Peter took her hand. “Never mind women like Maggie Johnson. They are spoiled cats who have been given everything they ever wanted since birth. They think the world is theirs by right—they never like being forced to compete with those they deem commoners.”

  Was that what she was? A commoner? Of course she was. The true pain of it all had been that she had forgotten that fact for a time and dared hope to have the prince and the happily-ever-after life with him. But she’d been born to a middling sort of family. And her father had dirtied his hands in the slave trade.

  Peter tugged on her hand. “Come, let’s dance and enjoy ourselves and forget about all this.”

  ****

  Alex watched Emily with Peter. This evening, when Peter had informed him that he was bringing Emily here, Alex had sworn he wasn’t coming. He’d even removed his evening clothes and contemplated getting half-seas over.

  Yet here he was, tormenting himself with the sight of Emily dancing with Peter. Touching his hand and laughing into his face. The present image of them together kept getting mixed in his mind with images of them in his study, kissing each other as if they had hungered all their lives for the taste of each other’s mouth.

  At the time, it had simply struck him as lustful frolicking between two people he cared about deeply. A close friend whom he knew would play by his rules. It had been so harmless. Now all that had changed. Emily was no longer his. She was free and available for any man to pay court to. Even Peter.

  “If you don’t mend your break with her, and soon, I shall take her away from you.”

  Peter’s words echoed with galling effect.

  Yes, Alex wanted Emily to have her chance at happiness and motherhood. A home and hearth of her own. And, yes, Peter could be kind and generous. He was hard-working and made an excellent living. Women found him irresistibly handsome. On the surface he appeared to have everything a woman could want in a husband. But, in the full analysis of the matter, Peter fell far short of being an ideal husband. Certainly not the type of husband that Alex would want Emily to have.

  He could have handed her over to a young
man like Dr. John Abbott but never to a man like Peter.

  “Alex, aren’t you going to ask me to dance?”

  Maggie’s drawling, peevish voice cut into Alex’s thoughts. He turned to her. In the past, her blonde beauty had taken his breath away; now it seemed cold. Too perfect.

  Her tongue stole out and traced along her strawberry-pink lips. Then she tilted her head and gave him a slow, seductive smile. “Not just one little dance?”

  Her blue eyes twinkled with sexual promise.

  He couldn’t help but think how practiced her sensuality was. She was more about the hunt than the actual act. In bed, she tended to exude a lot less carnal decadence than her wiles would suggest. Yet she’d amused him once.

  “Why don’t we go elsewhere? Neither of us really likes to dance.”

  There it was. The invitation he’d originally planned to coax out of her this evening. And it turned his blood to ice.

  “Not tonight.”

  Her eyes widened. She fluttered her lashes and gasped with dramatic effect. “Are you unwell?”

  “Yes, maybe.” A smile tugged at his lips.

  “Aww, so you’re feeling low and under the weather.” She studied him and reached up and leant forward, her heavy, full breasts brushing over his chest as she did.

  Her signature lemon and carnation scent threatened to overwhelm him as she laid her gloved hand on his forehead.

  “You don’t feel feverish.” Her delicately etched red-gold eyebrows drew together. “Is this because your little artist has absconded with your devilishly handsome cousin?” She shook her head and clicked her tongue. “Where’s the loyalty these days in these nubile young chits?”

  He removed her hand from his forehead. “Don’t,” he replied tersely.

  She stepped back, her eyes flashing with ire. But she hid it quickly with another small smile. “Ah, you think she might see us together—you don’t want to hurt her. How…” She laughed low. “Sweet.”

  “Don’t be a bitch, Maggie.”