Entangled (A Private Collection)

by Fresina, Jayne

  “And you’re not being sensible, Daisy,” her eldest brother, Thomas, had said. “None of us want to keep the place, and a woman can’t run a hotel alone. A young, attractive, unmarried woman. No one will take you seriously. Every tradesman will cheat you, and every guest will think you’re renting more than rooms.” Soft laughter had broken out following this last scornful comment, and it was apparent all six brothers considered the conversation over and done with.

  It was all right for them, they had lives to go back to. Families, careers, good posts. Only the two youngest boys, like her, had been forced into service when their parents died within a few months of each other leaving them all orphaned. The two eldest boys were fortunate to have apprenticeships at the time and were of an age to go out into the world and earn money. The third and fourth sons became soldiers. Their grandfather was much too busy running his hotel, so he claimed, to take any of them in, although he occasionally sent money on their birthdays. When he remembered. Daisy knew her brothers blamed their grandfather for the family splitting up, and they never forgave him for disowning their father because he married a woman deemed unworthy. But Daisy had a forgiving soul, didn’t believe in anyone owing her anything, and had seen enough of life to understand that people did what they had to do. Just as she would.

  “I’ll get married then,” she’d shouted over the low rumble of guffaws. “I’ll find a man to marry me and I’ll keep the hotel.”

  No one had believed her. They didn’t know she’d already handed in her notice to Lady Westerfield, her mind irretrievably set on this course. Finally, she’d have something of her own. She’d be the one making the decisions. She’d take control of Daisy Wellfleet’s life. She was a person with rights and feelings and ideas, same as anyone else. She’d show them.

  “Just give me six months,” she’d said, her resolute chin raised high, every word torn out of her with passion. “Give me six months to prove I can manage this place, even if none of you want to help me. If I fail, I’ll let you sell it. If I succeed, you’ll let me keep it.” She’d spat on her palm and held out her hand.

  Thomas Wellfleet, leader of the auburn-haired brood, had eventually accepted his sister’s solemn offer, but she knew he was mentally counting out his share of the sale with no expectation of seeing her win.

  Daisy, however, had already anticipated her brothers’ objections and taken steps to mitigate them. She had more than a firm hand-shake up her sleeve.

  Now, here he was; her ace in the pack, her rabbit in the hat. A husband in the flesh.

  Lawrence Bailey caught her watching him in the mirror. “What now, then?”

  “Don’t you want to go to bed?” She felt her cheeks flame and quickly walked to the window, opening the latch for some fresh, cooling air. “I thought you’d be tired after your journey. You should rest.”

  “I’m not tired.” He spoke quickly, firmly. Definitely not the sort of man to let her take control, she thought, annoyed again at Lizzie Jenkins for misleading her.

  Toying with the window latch, she tried to steady her nerves. It was good of him to come all that way, helping out a woman he’d never met. She ought to think of that and stop mentally undressing the man. “I suppose I could show you around the hotel. Not that there’s much to see.”

  He crossed the room toward her. Sunlight danced over his face, flickering under his lowered eyelashes like sunbeams shattering across the surface of a very deep, treacherous, black river.

  “I ought to have the doctor look at that,” she said, pointing at the bruise on his forehead.

  “That’s not necessary. It’s just a bump.”

  She shook her head, amazed he could treat it so lightly. The poor man was almost blown to pieces in a mine explosion, yet he tried to act as if it was nothing. Still, she knew all about men and their stupid pride.

  When he caught her hand in his hard fingers, she jumped.

  “Why are you doing this?” he demanded.

  “Doing what?” She had the awful feeling he’d read her filthy, inquiring mind.

  “Marrying a man you’ve never met.”

  Oh. That.

  “You know why,” she exclaimed, fraught, his closeness too much, his hand around hers a warning of danger. “I heard about you from your cousin Lizzie, and I knew you needed a place to stay for a while.”

  He leaned over her, considering her face as if she was a painting in an exhibit. “And what about you?” he demanded. “What do you get out of it?”

  “A husband. In name only.” She shook her head, irritable. “But you know all this and you agreed to it.” Perhaps she’d been wrong, trusting a man she only knew through a short correspondence. Unfortunately, she was desperate and there was no other man in town she would consider marrying. By choosing a man she didn’t know, she was sure there’d be no chance of an attachment or complication. And her lover, Guy Westerfield, wouldn’t have allowed it had she not assured him the man in question was sickly and not at all interested in sharing her bed.

  It was all very simple. If only Lawrence Bailey wasn’t trying to complicate things already.

  “Shall I show you the hotel or not?” she asked pertly. “You ought to become acquainted with the place.”

  “I ought to become acquainted with you,” he corrected her. “Since tomorrow you’ll be my wife.”

  Until he said that, she hadn’t thought of it as being someone’s wife. She’d only thought of this plan as acquiring a husband for her own purposes. The other side of the equation had never occurred to her. When caught up in one of her plans, she had a tendency to forget everything but her purpose. A childhood of grazed knees, bee stings, and ripped stockings was proof enough of that. “But we’ll have separate beds,” she reminded him, using her other hand to pry his fingers loose from hers. “There’ll be none of that, Lawrence Bailey.”

  A slow, lazy grin warned her he had other plans now that he’d met her.

  “This is a temporary arrangement until you get back on your feet,” she added. It sounded foolish even to her ears. The man was already on his feet and apparently over-brimming with health and vitality.

  It was all going desperately wrong already. According to Lizzie Jenkins, her cousin was impotent. Now Daisy concluded her friend must have misunderstood his condition. Lizzie, after all, wasn’t the brightest button in the box, and she had limited knowledge of men and their “naughty bits”, as she would say with a giggle. Daisy, on the other hand, knew all about that sort of thing, or thought she did until this man walked into her foyer and her world, filling both with his presence.

  He was interesting when he wasn’t supposed to be. And he was definitely interested when he wasn’t supposed to be.

  “About those separate beds,” he said suddenly.

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t agree with it. Separate beds are bad for a marriage.”

  She frowned. “I can see you’re going to be difficult. Your cousin didn’t warn me about that. Now, do go to bed and get some rest. You’re obviously suffering a fever on the brain if you think you can change my mind. Stronger men than you have tried and failed, Lawrence Bailey. If I didn’t have to get married for the sake of this hotel, I wouldn’t bother. I don’t want a husband to play master over me. I want a nice, clean, respectable, well-behaved man who’ll do as he’s told. How am I going to look after you while you’re here if you don’t do as I say?”

  For a moment she thought he would laugh, but he curbed it, pressing his lips together until they were so thin they almost vanished. She’d observed the same expression several times already since he arrived.

  “I see we might have a small problem,” he said, hiding behind his black lashes. “I may be quieter, but I’m just as opinionated as you, and I don’t take well to bossy women.”

  Perhaps he didn’t, but something did, she mused with another sly glance downward.

  “You’re much bigger than I expected,” she murmured, only to blush immediately at her own slip. “I mean all ov
er. Not just—” Oops, the more she chattered, the deeper the hole she dug.

  His left eyebrow wriggled, the same corner of his mouth following suit. “I thought you said those matters don’t bother you at all?”

  Yes, but there were those matters and then there were matters like those.

  “I’m not going to bite,” he added.

  “No, but I might.”

  He took a step back, his fingers going to his waistcoat buttons and working them speedily open. Clearly he was accustomed to disrobing on a moment’s snap decision.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Going to bed, as you commanded.” Waistcoat tossed aside, he began with the shirt buttons.

  “You might wait until I’m out of the room.”

  “Why? You’re going to be my wife. I’ve nothing to hide.”

  “But I don’t need to see—” Words failed her for one of the few times in her life. Much as she silently begged them to move, her feet remained stuck to the carpet. He tossed his shirt at her and she caught it. Suddenly all she could think about was the door being unlocked. What if someone walked in?

  Apparently, the cheeky devil didn’t care two hoots.

  He dropped his trousers and then his drawers to stand stark naked, his arms at his sides.

  “Anything wrong?” he asked with all the innocence of a puppy just caught with a half-chewed slipper in his mouth.

  “I don’t see anything amiss,” she remarked dryly, wishing she could look away.

  “Afraid you might be tempted?” Another slow grin broke across his face. His eyes were very dark brown, his hair a dirty blond in places highlighted by the sun to a sandy shade, the same color hair that made a light pattern across the broad planes of his chest then became a thin line down his torso. His manhood was erect, stiff and upright as a damned flagpole.

  Impotent?

  Lizzie was definitely wrong about that.

  His thighs were thick with muscle, like his arms. He was sturdy as an oak, one of those lovely old trees in the countryside that gave shelter from sun or rain, standing tall, broad, and proud, with two hundred years of memories etched in its bark. Except Lawrence Bailey wasn’t two hundred years old, of course.

  And he was, possibly, one of the finest looking men she’d ever laid reluctant eyes upon. Almost as handsome as Guy Westerfield, when she hadn’t thought that possible until now. She finally consoled herself with the thought that God wouldn’t have sculpted this man so well if he wasn’t meant to be admired. How could she help looking?

  “Don’t feel guilty.” He chuckled. “I’ve seen you naked before. Now we’re even.”

  She gasped. “You certainly have not seen me…” Her cheeks were getting warmer by the minute. “Naked.”

  The tall, nude man stepped out of his clothes and came toward her. She backed up to the curtain, dropping his shirt.

  “You have two small moles on your right thigh,” he said, “and one high on your left breast.” His grin widened. “I believe they used to call them witches’ marks, Daisy.”

  Her heart had stopped, surely. As he advanced the last little distance, she put up her hands to stop him, but now they came to rest on the muscles of his upper chest. “How do you know that?” she demanded, her voice hoarse. It had to be some sort of parlor trick, or a lucky guess. He couldn’t possibly—

  “And the copper curls on your head perfectly match the copper curls on your—”

  “Stop it!” She pushed him back. “We’re not supposed to be doing this.”

  “Doing what?” His eyes gleamed wickedly as he moved forward again.

  “Look, Mr. Bailey.” She was trying to be very formal, hoping it might put up some sort of barrier, one more effective than her hands, which he now gathered up in his own and held tightly. “There’s something more you should know about me,” she squeaked.

  Oh, Guy would not like this. He would be furious if he knew. She’d promised him there would be nothing between her and her husband, not even a kiss. Guy Westerfield had been her lover for five years and it was an exclusive arrangement. They couldn’t marry, of course, because he was Lord Westerfield’s son and she was only his mother’s lady’s maid, but, as he said, nothing and no one could ever stop them being in love. Whenever he said that, she would smile and nod, but in all honesty she wasn’t sure about the love part. She kept waiting for something to happen and make her feel it like a flash of lightning breaking open the sky and an angel descending to inform her solemnly that she was in love.

  For Daisy Wellfleet to fall in love it would have to be a pretty spectacular vision. She sometimes thought she was simply too practical. Men frequently irritated her rather than made her swoon. She wasn’t the weepy sort. She never cooed over babies in perambulators. And as for flowers, in her opinion, a man who sent those was guilty of something and should instantly be distrusted. All men were a threat to a woman’s independence.

  Guy Westerfield would have set her up in a little house by now if she’d let him. But that would make her a kept woman, wouldn’t it? So she refused his offer, preferring to run the Wellfleet Hotel instead. Guy wasn’t happy about it at first, but she’d persuaded him it was for the best that she leave her post in his father’s house and live at the hotel. They could be together more often now and not risk being found out by his family or the other staff at the manor. Finally, he’d agreed to her solution, but with conditions, of course. All of which she’d approved, having no fear of forming an attachment to her husband.

  Daisy was ashamed of herself already for staring at Lawrence Bailey’s naked body and blurring her mind to the rules of this arrangement.

  He slowly moved her hands behind her back, keeping them trapped in his so they could no longer get in the way. She might have fought him, but the idea seemed too flimsy, a lot of energy for little point. Her body already betrayed the determination to remain disinterested. There was a raw power in his presence, a primal force that couldn’t be denied.

  “You want all the benefits of a husband and none of the inconvenience then,” he muttered, lips looming ever closer, challenging her with every word.

  She tried to scowl, but simply couldn’t. The heat from his body tickled her all over and his manhood brushed against the front of her gown.

  “You’re wrong,” he said. “It seems I’m here to change your mind.” He sounded amazed by his own conclusion.

  She did nothing to stop him. He lowered his lips to hers and further clarified his meaning. It was a surprisingly gentle kiss, considering his forward manner of taking it, his strong hands still gripping her wrists tightly behind her back. He leisurely tasted her mouth as if she was a new kind of fruit, something sweet and ripened just for him.

  Inside she was quaking, appalled with herself for allowing it. Since when had Daisy Wellfleet submitted to any man’s uninvited kiss? She’d known this one precisely half an hour, if that. How dare he make advances, and why did she let him?

  A moment later he released her wrists and his hands moved up her back, his fingers spread. He pressed her closer until there might as well be no clothing between them. She felt as naked as he was.

  Oh, lord. She could feel every inch of him and the kiss wasn’t stopping. His tongue delved into her mouth, firmer now and possessive. Her breasts were crushed to his bare chest and she was sure she felt his heartbeat through her gown. His hands swept downward, clasping her around the bustle, and lifting until her shape fit against his hard masculinity. If she, too, was naked, Lawrence Bailey would’ve had her then, mounted her easily.

  She couldn’t catch her breath. Belatedly, she remembered the window. They were directly in front of it. Anyone looking up would see her being kissed like this by a naked man. Gathering every ounce of her strength, physically and mentally, she finally raised her arms, pushed his shoulders back, and reclaimed her lips. They felt swollen, ravished, wet.

  Like the rest of her.

  “I think we made a mistake,” she managed finally. “This arrangement won’t
work. I’m sorry, Mr. Bailey, but you’ll have to—”

  His arms were still around her and now they tightened, drawing her close again. This time his mouth dampened the side of her neck where her pulse skipped and danced. She reached out to push him away, but her hands found his rounded biceps and stayed there, spread over the muscle, even, much to her shame, caressing it very slightly. She couldn’t help herself. This amount of man was totally unexpected.

  Through his few letters she’d formed a picture of Lawrence Bailey and there was nothing particularly attractive about that image. She’d thought herself perfectly safe and in no danger of being confused by her part, or his, in this arrangement. His writing was very poor and stiffly formal. His letter consisted of short sentences as if he barely had the strength to put pen to paper and only did so out of necessity. Almost like a boy writing a reluctant thank-you note to a distant relative for a gift he didn’t like and would never use.

  None of that matched what she had before her, under her hands and boldly pressed up against her body. Neither did her previous image of Lawrence Bailey conform with this man’s easy confidence or wonderfully warm smile he’d bestowed upon her when he caught her watching him in the mirror.

  “I’m not leaving,” he muttered, tongue teasing her earlobe, his breath and his words, like a lightning charge, searing her skin, marking her as his already. “What time is the wedding tomorrow?”

  “Eleven o’clock,” she gasped out, forgetting this was a mistake. “At St. Mark’s in the town square. I told the vicar you were in the hospital and too ill to travel before the wedding.” She stroked the sandy hairs against the nape of his neck even while her mind screamed at her to stop touching him, stop encouraging him.