More than that. Virginia was no passive participant. As he laid kisses all the way down her throat, unfastening buttons as he went, she delved under the fine silk of his waistcoat. She frantically tugged at his shirt. Men’s shirts were voluminous. The fabric pulled up and up. She gasped as he pulled her fichu free and kissed the upper slopes of her breasts, his breath heating her skin to fever pitch.
And they were still standing. The sofa in this room wouldn’t take their combined weight. There was only the sturdy table.
She barely had time to think before he had her on her back against the polished mahogany.
“Virginia, Virginia,” he muttered, straightening, impatiently tugging at his neckcloth then tossing it to the floor, discarding his coat at the same time.
“You’ll be the death of me.”
But not yet.
She hadn’t been aware of speaking the words aloud until he cupped her chin gently, smiling down at her. That open, loving look seared through Virginia, right to her heart.
“We were always going to end here. With this.”
Before her shocked mind could absorb what he’d said, he kissed her again. Curling her hand around the back of his neck, she flipped his wig aside, to reveal his gorgeous thick, dark hair. The strands threaded through her fingers, the texture adding to the bombardment of sensations rioting through her body.
Her hoops, being of the new design, collapsed as he pushed the right place, the clever little hinges giving way, and then, oh then, he dragged up her skirts and slid his hand up her thigh, heading toward the center of passion, the place where he could make her his.
A triple knock jarred her from paradise. “My lady? I have your tea here.”
Wolverley lifted off her, cool air sweeping over her. Internal heat scorched her with horror. What had she done? What had she been about to do?
She cleared her throat. “Leave it in the front parlor, please.”
“Yes, my lady.” Retreating footsteps, perhaps a touch too loud, moved away.
“Oh God, they heard us.” Using her elbows, Virginia levered herself off the table and reached for her jacket with shaking hands.
Wolverley ran his fingers through his hair, turning away from her. “Will they tell anyone?”
She shook her head. “Only a few servants are here right now. I can trust them.” Or handle them somehow. By now she was certain Butler, Winston, and Hurst would keep their counsel, but the other two, Mrs. Coble and the housemaid, not so much.
“This is impossible.”
When she lifted her head from fastening the buttons, she found him watching her. Apart from his coat, he had restored himself to respectability, but he’d changed. He watched her, his eyes bearing a fond expression she had never thought him capable of.
“I want more, Virginia. I want to court you, and I’m willing to make what lies between us respectable. I want to marry you.”
For the first time she felt trapped, not freed, by the conditions of her husband’s will. She had to tell him, but how, when Ralph had expressly forbidden her to tell anyone? When he’d imposed penalties on her telling anyone?
“I cannot marry you.”
He raised a brow. “It didn’t feel like that a moment ago. May I ask why?”
His hands warmed her chilled ones as realization hit her. Desperately she cast about for a solution.
He tucked his shirt back in his breeches, then found his wig.
“No.” She could not.
“I see.” His tone had tightened, but he was keeping control of himself.
“Can you wait for a while?” She should not ask him, but she wanted him so badly, she would tell him that much. Would he do this little thing for her?
“How long?” The lines around his mouth relaxed.
It would be unfair not to tell him. “Would you object to a six-year courtship?”
“What?” Dropping her hands, he flung himself across the room and dislodged his wig all over again, by shoving his hands through his hair. “Six years? God, Virginia, why?”
She turned away. “I can’t tell you.”
She’d signed papers; she was legally bound. “I truly can’t.” She ventured a small piece of what she had to tell him.
“You can, and you will. You want me, I know that now, so there has to be another reason why you won’t marry me. Tell me, Virginia.”
She should. He would not leave her if she didn’t tell him at least some of it. Although she had avoided his presence, she knew about him. Wolverley had never reneged on a promise, never broken an oath, and always kept his word.
He had developed a fortune on those principles. His partners in business knew he would not let them down. If she did not tell him, he would keep coming back. Either that, or he would leave, and the bad blood between them would worsen. After today, she couldn’t bear him to think so ill of her.
She had to tell him. Legal requirements or not. “It’s part of Ralph’s will.”
Wolverley watched her, his intent gaze never leaving her face. He stood completely still. “Go on.”
“In six years I will have control over the inheritance he left me. Until then I have full use of it, but I do not own it.” She bit her lip. “If I marry before then, I will lose it all.”
He breathed out, a great puff of air. “Do you think I need your inheritance? No, Virginia. I do not.” He picked up his coat, shrugged into it. “If we pursue this, then I am happy to take you with your dowry and widow’s portion.”
She stamped her foot in exasperation. “You don’t understand. I have to wait for ten years after his death. If I don’t, I get nothing.”
“Does your cousin know?” he asked sharply.
“God, no!” She gave a shaky laugh. “At least I don’t think so. I can’t tell him, either. If anyone discovers I have told you, then I lose it all.”
“The bastard!” He growled. “A dead man is holding you to ransom! There must be a way out of this for you.”
She shook her head. “No, there is not.”
“Will you come to me anyway?”
Again, she shook her head, and for the first time, she used his given name. “Six years, Francis.”
He framed the name, his mouth silently following her use of it.
“At last,” he murmured, as if he understood the barrier she had just let fall.
He caressed her cheek, so lightly she hardly felt it, except she was sensitive to his every touch. Where there had been untrammeled passion, now there was tenderness—and love.
He stared at her, the lines bracketing his mouth graven deep, his neck muscles taut cords. “I’ve waited for you for ten years. I left the country and stayed away because I wanted you so much. But then, if we’d indulged ourselves, it could have led to disaster. I refused to bring that to you.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “Francis, yes. I tried, I really did, but I never forgot you. And when you came back…” She bit her lip. “It was worse.”
“Much worse,” he agreed. “Then your husband died, and I thought I could leave it a year before I proposed.” He smiled wryly. “I tore through Europe in an effort to forget you, but nothing worked. It’s been four years, Virginia. I swear, I’ll settle whatever you want on you. I can put the sum in trust, so I can’t touch it. I want you, not your money.”
She swallowed, stared at him. Was it possible she could do this?
“Do you trust me to take care of you, sweetheart?”
Virginia couldn’t answer. The idea of having nothing, of relying on another person for her existence, filled her with terror, even if that person was Francis.
After her parents, after Ralph, how could she trust anyone again? She opened her mouth, and closed it again. Her heart beat so hard she could barely breathe.
When he spoke next, his tones were level, utterly controlled.
“I can’t wa
it that long. It was all I could do to stop myself taking you on that table, and you were not far behind me. We cannot go on like this, trying to rip each other’s clothes off the minute we’re alone together. How can I stay close to you and not make love to you? No, it’s now or never.”
“I understand why you cannot wait. You need heirs.” And society considered her barren, a calumny encouraged by her husband. For all she knew, she could be.
“You understand nothing!” His lips were still reddened from their kisses, but his eyes spat fire. “Virginia, we can’t keep doing this. If you can’t trust me, can’t come to me, then I don’t want anything else. I won’t ask you to be my mistress. You don’t deserve that, and neither do I.”
“I…” He was right. She couldn’t keep doing this, either. “I know.”
Although her eyes glistened with tears, she faced him proudly. “If you can’t accept my terms, then you had better leave now. I only beg you to keep my secret.”
Already she regretted telling him. She should have simply said no. That had never proved a problem before.
“Naturally I will do so. I swear it. But I will not come back. We had best keep our distance from now on.”
He broke her heart when he left.
Chapter 8
Fighting her tears, Virginia wandered into the front parlor where the maid had left the tea. She didn’t want it, but the ritual of pouring and drinking would stave off her grief for a while. Despair hollowed her out. She knew what she had done. He wouldn’t come back. If not for that terrible bequest, she could have accepted his suit, allowed him to court her, and she had no doubt, marry her.
Being left destitute terrified Virginia. To have nothing, or to depend totally on the whim of her father or her husband—not again, never again. To be dependent on a man again—any man, even one who loved her—filled her with unreasoning terror.
A rumble of wheels outside heralded the phaeton passing her window. Standing to one side of the window, so he would not see her, Virginia watched him pass out of her life. Oh, she’d see him again, but only at a distance, and never with the intimacy she still craved.
Francis—Wolverley—held the whip just so, but he had not yet urged the horses to a showy trot. He was so close she saw his tight expression. Then the shoulders of his brown coat moved as he shrugged, and he turned back to his horses, lifting his gloved hand, ready to urge them on.
An urchin stood on the pavement in front of the rails of her house, watching the carriage pass. She’d seen that child before, but beggars often had spots they claimed as their own. Dressed in a torn and worn scarlet coat that could have once belonged to a soldier, he could be a thief, perhaps a cutpurse. He held a piece of leather. A sling, the kind boys in the countryside used to scare crows off the crops.
As Francis’s carriage passed by, he lifted it. Whipping it around expertly, he flicked, and a small missile sped from the sling, high in the air. A dark spot shot across the blue sky.
A sharp cry and a rattle followed in short order. Francis jerked back as if shot, veering sideways. He tumbled off the phaeton, plummeting to the ground headfirst.
Virginia raced out of the parlor, straight to the front door. Butler stared at her, his mouth open in astonishment, but Virginia did not hesitate, fumbling at the door before wrenching it open.
She took the shallow steps to the street in two bounds and hurried to the spot where Francis lay, his body sprawled at an unnatural angle.
The horses bolted, the rattle of the carriage punctuated by galloping hooves and the shouts of the tiger. She could do nothing about that. Francis was all her concern.
Butler was not far behind. “Get him inside,” he snapped, glancing up at someone behind her. Hurst wasted no time hurrying around the prone body and tucking his arms under him.
Virginia got to her feet. Although the day was fine, her hands were cold with shock, her face numb with fear. No thought other than terror that the urchin had killed him filled her mind and urged her body into action.
Francis was not an easy burden. It took Hurst and Butler, both substantial men, to heave him up. He left a patch of blood behind. She swallowed down her nausea.
Virginia picked up a few items that had fallen from his pockets as the men carried him up the stairs and into the house. She hurried after them and kicked the door closed with her foot, just as Francis had done when he’d called less than an hour earlier.
The housemaid stood on the landing staring down at the scene.
“Take him upstairs to my room,” Virginia snapped. She was sleeping in the only bed that could receive him. “Get water and cloths,” she told the maid. Her mind raced with horrific possibilities.
Only one thing was twisting her insides, turning her heart and mind inside out. He could be dying, if he wasn’t dead already. That tore her apart. Rather than that, she would have kept him with her, accepted him. What had she let slip out of her fingers? What had she done, sending him away like that?
Picking up her skirts, she raced upstairs.
Butler and Hurst bent over the body laid out on the bed. Butler had dispensed with his own coat, and they were in the process of removing Francis’s.
“He’s alive,” Butler said tersely. “Breathing, but he’s out cold. He must have hit that road hard.”
Winston stood to the side, her face a picture of shock. “My lady, you cannot have him here….”
“Quiet,” Virginia ordered her. “His lordship has been in an accident. He needs our help.” Although from what she’d seen, “accident” was not the best way to describe what had happened.
“He was driving his phaeton,” she told Hurst. “He fell about five feet.”
Damn all sporting vehicles. Most of all, damn the urchin. She would happily murder him if she ever got a hand on his scrawny hide.
Virginia turned as the housemaid scurried in, a can of hot water in her hands, and cloths and towels slung over her arms. “I thought they might come in handy,” the woman said. “My lady,” she added, giving a scared glance in Winston’s direction.
Virginia waved away her insistence on her title. “You did well, Fowler.”
Hurst held out his hand. “I could do with one of them cloths.” His polite tones were stripped away in the face of disaster, replaced by the voice of the authentic Londoner.
Grabbing one from the maid, Virginia slapped it in his hand. After roughly stuffing her lace ruffles up her sleeves so they wouldn’t get in her way, she took another cloth and went to stand at Hurst’s side, ready to render any help he needed.
Francis was so pale, but he was breathing shallowly. Butler was exposing his shoulder by the expedient of tearing and cutting the cloth away, revealing a strongly muscled arm and shoulder. He felt along it, while Virginia turned her attention to where Hurst was attending to Francis’s head wound. That was where all the blood had come from, since his shirt was not stained with it.
The footman gently turned Francis’s head so he faced Butler, who stood on the other side of the bed. Virginia barely recognized her own voice when she said, “Get a physician. Do it now.”
* * * *
Hurst had raced half a mile to find the man, who resided in Red Lion Square, or so his card said. The footman brought the physician straight up to the room, where Virginia and Butler were cradling Francis’s head, trying to stop the flow of blood. Winston stood to one side with an armful of bloody cloths.
They didn’t bother to correct the man’s assumption that Francis was Virginia’s husband. He did not know them, which was probably just as well.
She volunteered her name as Durban, the first name to come to mind, the artist who had painted the small landscape by her bed.
The physician had insisted that Virginia leave the room while he and the two men stripped and examined him. Virginia had protested, but the man had been adamant. “I need the space,” he’d said.
“Pray do not concern yourself. I will do everything I can. But I will do nothing if you remain in the room.”
“But I’m his wife!”
The lie had come easily, but it had no effect. The last thing she wanted to do was leave him, but faced with the medical man’s intransigence, she could do nothing but obey. Francis was terribly hurt, how much she didn’t know, and the uncertainty twisted her stomach into a tight knot.
Entering the dressing room, Winston helped her to strip out of her town finery and don the plainer gown set out for her planned quiet evening at home. What would happen now she had no idea, but if Francis was so ill, she would not be going anywhere on Monday.
Then she found her writing slope and scrawled a note for Francis’s mother. The phaeton had gone, so why had nobody called to discover where he was? Had his mother already left town? She’d get Hurst to deliver the note later. She needed the footman to help care for Francis now.
She was emerging from the room when Butler came out of her bedroom. “You may go in now, ma’am.”
She appreciated that he’d recalled her borrowed title, but wasted no time going back into her room.
Francis had been put to bed, wearing a borrowed clean nightshirt, presumably loaned by one of the men. His left wrist was wrapped in a clean bandage, and another was bound around his head. He was asleep, his chest moving gently with every breath. Virginia counted ten of them, breathing with him, before she turned back to the physician, Mr. Cunningham.
“Well, madam,” the physician said, turning away from the bed and rolling down his sleeves. “I’ve done all I can. Your husband will do.”
She breathed out in a long sigh.
“He must have a very tough hide, madam, because his head is not broken, although he has damaged it.”
Cunningham glanced up at her. “He has a gash to his head, which needs cleaning and dressing at least twice a day for the next week to ensure it does not take an infection. His arm is badly bruised where he fell, but nothing is broken. That should heal cleanly in less than two weeks. He is, however, unconscious and likely to remain so for some time. He has suffered a concussion. He needs watching, madam. All night. If there is any change, send for me immediately.”
Virginia And The Wolf Page 9