Then his hands slid back, over her bottom and down. His hot palm covered her dampest place. She felt the urge to press down upon that hand, but it moved on too quickly. As he brought his fingers drifting back from there, he stroked a fingertip over her anus.
Callie jerked in response, and heat flooded her face, shattering her bemused serenity with hot embarrassment. What? There?
My goodness.
Then his hands slid up once more, over her hips, moving up her sides, dipping beneath to pass quickly over her breasts, then rising up her arms and shoulders, and digging once more into her hair. This time he wrapped his fists in her long hair, pulling her back against him, pulling on the reins of her tangled hair.
“I wonder … so willing…”
Then, suddenly, his arms wrapped about her waist and she felt herself lifted up off the carpet. In less than a second, he had her flat on her back before the fire. She almost opened her eyes in surprise, but he covered them with his hand quickly.
“Keep them closed.”
He slid his hands over her once more, his touch less detached, more urgent.
Callie felt him watching her face, waiting for her to respond, to cringe away. So instead she lay open and relaxed, allowing his touch as he ran his hard rough palms over her belly, her thighs, her breasts and shoulders. He parted her thighs and looked at her. She turned her face away slightly, but she did not resist, although it was possible she blushed, and not just from the heat of the coals.
Ren pushed his bride until he thought he could bear no more and still she did not stiffen in resistance, she did not push his hands away, she did not fight him in the slightest.
One had to admire the purity of her determination. She truly wished to return to her family as soon as possible. Surely she must be relieved by the fact that he’d made sure she need not look upon him.
Was it someone else she pictured behind her closed lids? That would explain her dreamy compliance. He could hardly resent it if it were so. A man like him had no right to this tender sweet flesh.
The thought made him take his hands to her again, sweeping them over her, taking every inch of her into his memory for longer, colder nights ahead.
A man such as he with a woman such as she …
He’d thought her pretty in the dark last night. He’d thought her pleasing in the light of day. Now, spread out before him like a feast for his starved, aching eyes, she looked like a long-limbed ivory goddess, with her tawny curls spilling over the carpet and her long amber lashes lying on faintly freckled cheeks.
What would it be like to have a woman like this love him—willingly, without payment, without coercion, without her eyes closed?
He would never know.
“Good night, Mrs. Porter.”
Callie could not have been more astonished when she felt Mr. Porter leave her side, heard his footsteps stride away, heard her bedchamber door shut behind him … heard the silence of her chamber echoing in her ears.
She opened her eyes. He’d left her, trembling, thighs damp with unfulfilled longing, staring after him with fury and frustration.
He’d treated her like the untried virgin that she was.
Bastard.
* * *
Far southeast of the Cotswolds, a man sat in a London gambling hell, toying idly with a deck of cards. Afternoon sunlight slanted into the room through high rounded windows, turning the carpet from nighttime plush to daytime shabby and causing dust motes to glint and dance in the air.
Another man entered, just as tall and dignified as the first, if a bit less relaxed.
The first gentleman looked up. “You again.”
The second gentleman drew out a chair and sat. Permission was neither asked nor granted. “He has married.”
The first gentleman lifted a brow, arched over a silvery gray eye. “Married? I had no idea there was an engagement.”
The second gentleman, whose blue eyes warmed a room rather than chilled it, leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “No engagement. Met her, compromised her, dueled her brother, and then married her, in less than twenty-four hours.”
“Impulsive bloke.”
The second gentleman ran a hand through none-too-tidy black hair. His brow furrowed with worry. “No, he isn’t. Ever. He maintains a very low profile, is rarely seen about, and keeps no society whatsoever.”
“And this makes you suspicious.”
The second gentleman shot the first gentleman a wary look. “Of her? Entirely. Of him? Well…”
The moment of hesitation lasted a bit too long. “You swore he would cause no further problems.” The gentleman with the chilling eyes sent his cards out onto the crimson felt of the table in a perfect fan. Then he stood. “I don’t like alarming developments. We shall have to see about this strange departure from the norm. And this mysterious bride.”
The second gentleman moved as if to protest, then drew a long breath instead. “It is, of course, your call.”
The first gentleman began to walk away, then turned to look back over one broad shoulder. “How generous of you to state the obvious.”
The second gentleman shook his head. “Supercilious aristocrat,” he muttered under his breath.
“And you’re a chimney sweep with delusions of standing.” The first gentleman did not turn again. “Go home, Simon. This is my club now. My men. My cards. My game.”
“Dalton, this girl may not be a playing piece in the game. Sometimes a girl is just a girl.”
“Perhaps. And perhaps not.”
“What will you do, then?”
Dalton’s jaw tightened. “You of all people ask me that? You know perfectly well that we exist outside the boundaries of law. We exist so that the dear people of Britannia need not sully their hands with the dirty business of national security. You cannot tell me that you never ordered an assassination when you held my post.”
Simon looked down at his hands.
Dalton sighed. “I hardly ride about England ordering the deaths of young women, Simon. But we do all this so no one else has to.”
Simon nodded. “I know. Right now I’m ever so glad that it is you and not I.”
Dalton gave a resigned snort. “Thank you.”
Simon turned, draping an elbow over the back of the chair. “Oh, by the way, Dalton, Milady wanted me to tell you to tell your lady that she will take another kitten in any case.”
Dalton, his dignified exit now in ruins, shrugged and nodded. “I’ll let her know. I suppose we’re all dining together again tonight?”
Simon waved a surrendering hand. “I go where I’m told, most happily.”
Dalton pursed his lips. “Hmm.” However, he didn’t argue the statement. He, also, tended toward the slavish adoration of his bride. “Tonight, then.”
Simon nodded crisply. “Try not to murder any little girls before then.”
* * *
On the other side of the city, in a rambling, shabby house whose last shred of elegance hailed from another era—rather, several eras ago—a great deal of clamor and upset rang through the extensive network of halls.
Atalanta Worthington, last and smallest of the Worthington offspring, crawled beneath the easel that held her mother’s latest rendering of Shakespeare with Piglet and tried to inspire her physical body into invisibility while the argument raged above her head.
It wasn’t that she was banned from such “open forums” as her father called them. In fact, she’d been included since she was old enough to perform the thumbs-up or-down gesture of the Roman audience, which Lycurgus, or some such fellow, declared the original form of democracy. Archie Worthington was a great proponent of democracy. Even infancy had not excused little Attie from performing her family duty by voting.
It was only that family discussions seemed to be so much more intriguingly fervent when Attie wasn’t present. So she sat with her bent knees tucked up beneath her skirts and willed herself to look like a potted plant.
With ears.
“I should never have allowed it! You should never have allowed it!”
That was Dade. He looked very fine, striding back and forth over the paint-spattered sitting room carpet with a scowl on his face. In Attie’s opinion, Dade was the best-looking of her many brothers, although Castor and Pollux claimed that they, being identical twins, were twice as handsome as the rest.
“I can’t believe she married without me there! I am her sister!”
Attie scowled at lovely Elektra. Ellie made it sound as if she were Callie’s only sister! Ellie was just jealous that Callie wed before her. Everyone in the family had assumed that Ellie would be the first, because she was the prettiest and because she was so hell-bent on the notion.
Attie liked the term “hell-bent.” She was allowed to use all sorts of words that made other people—people not Worthingtons—gaze at her with startled alarm. She knew all the proper Latin terms for the human body, at least the female one. Mama—who preferred to be called “Iris” by her children, though none of them complied—had declared it perfectly obvious that a person ought to know their own parts. “’Tis your carriage, Atalanta. You ought to know how to drive it.”
Cas and Poll, never ones to let Ellie flail about in theatrics for long, decided to pester Dade about the duel itself.
“So you never pulled your own trigger?”
“Not even a little bit?”
“Not very brotherly of you.”
“Not at all. One would think—”
“—That you didn’t care a whit—”
“For your own sister’s well-being!”
“The fellow could be a madman!”
“He sounds like a madman to me.”
“Living in that dank, dark house—”
“God knows what he’s up to in there!”
“Enough!” Dade spun about to face the twins, his hands clenched in fists until his knuckles went white. “Callie made up her own mind, as she always does!”
Cas grunted, nodding. Poll smiled angelically. “We know. We just wanted to make sure you did.”
Iris raised a languid hand. As usual, a paint-smeared handkerchief trailed from the wristband of her sleeve. “Daedalus, darling! Just because he was a rather unusual fellow—one does wonder at the lack of candles, to be sure—is no reason to assume he isn’t perfectly wonderful in his own way.”
Archie nodded sagely. “True, true. The greatest minds of history were all a bit eccentric, in their way. I myself have been called ‘odd’ on occasion!” Archie smiled at that bit of nonsense.
Attie laid her cheek sideways upon her knees and contemplated her father with great fondness and no illusions. Papa was as mad as a hatter. Everyone knew it except for him. But he was an affectionate sort of papa, the kind who remembered that she was very fond of butterscotch drops and books about ancient queens and bloodthirsty chess matches that lasted for days.
Dade shook his head as if shaking off his parents’ delusions. “I cannot believe she knew what she was doing.”
“She knew precisely what she was doing. The only logical conclusion is that she acted to save you.”
That was Orion. Attie wiggled a bit in anticipation. Rion, who was in reality a genius, not just someone who thought he was a genius, like Papa, hardly ever spoke up in family discussions. In fact, unless he was lecturing on one of his scientific papers to the Babcock Scholars, he rarely spoke at all.
Dade turned to Rion in surprise. “Save me? From what?”
Rion put down the massive tome he was reading and pushed his spectacles up his nose to better regard Dade through them. Attie suspected that he didn’t really need his vision corrected. It was only that he was so very attractive—in a darkly sinister way—that he felt he would not be taken seriously if he didn’t wear the useless bits of wire and glass.
“Save you from yourself, of course.” Rion shook his head at Dade’s obtuseness. “The result of your ill-considered heroics would have been your own hanging on the charge of murder.”
Attie’s eyes widened. Oh. Oh, no. Callie would do it, too. Callie put everyone else first. She always had. The whole family knew it and accepted it as simply being Callie’s lot.
Elektra smoothed her skirts primly. “I would like to know what Callie thought she was up to in the first place. I mean, we’re not truly swallowing this oops-I-accidently-ruined-myself story, are we?”
All heads swung toward her. Attie shrank down into her shoulders. Ellie could be a right cow sometimes.
At her family’s scowls, Elektra raised her chin. “Well, what was she doing wandering around a strange house in her shift, I ask you?”
Iris relaxed and waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, that! I imagine she was communing with the souls of the past and forgot she was in her underthings. That can happen, you know.”
Ellie grimaced. “To some of us more than others,” she muttered.
Archie took his wife’s hand and smiled. “And didn’t you look like a drunken sailor’s dream?”
Dade glared at their mooning parents. “She wasn’t communing with the spirits! She’d almost drowned, Ellie. Her things were drying by the fire and her chaperones fell asleep.”
Iris nodded helpfully. “Oh, yes. Archie and I drank our brandies and went straight out. I suppose the brandy didn’t help Callie at all.”
“I knew it.” Ellie narrowed her eyes. “She was in her cups! Drunk and consorting with strange men!”
Cas and Poll shook their heads.
“Drunk and consorting, yes—”
“But with a single strange man—”
“Not a platoon or anything.”
“Not that we know of, anyway.”
They turned as one to look at Dade.
“Was there a platoon?”
“You didn’t say. Details, man—”
“Details!”
Another time, Attie would have giggled at the way the twins made Dade twitch. Now, however, she simply scowled and worried about Callie.
If Ellie was right—which thought alone was alarming—and Callie had gotten herself in trouble with a stranger, why, that stranger could be any sort of rotter! Dade certainly seemed to think so, and he’d actually met the man.
Mr. Porter, who had formerly inhabited a rather swashbuckling fantasy form in Attie’s imagination, shrank and deformed into a monstrous hulk, a creature who assaulted innocent drunken maidens wandering about in their unmentionables!
“I’ve given you all the details!” Dade was nearly shouting now.
“Temper, temper, son,” Archie said mildly. “The lads were simply trying to help.”
“There’s nothing they can do. There’s nothing any of us can do to save her now.”
“That’s not strictly true.” That was Orion again. Attie craned her neck to see her third-eldest brother.
Orion was leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. The other Worthingtons assumed a respectful silence, even the twins, for this was Orion’s thinking pose. Many outstanding and dangerous moments had come from such a pose. Not all had involved fire, flood, or famine, either, despite the rumors.
Orion went on distractedly, as if he were speaking to himself. “The marriage will likely have been consummated by now, so annulment will be of no use…”
“Callie refused, anyway,” muttered Dade.
Orion blinked. “So, logically, there are two more possible solutions. Divorce—”
Ellie started. “No! Absolutely not! If there is a divorce in the family, I will never make a decent match!” When most of the brothers scowled at her, Ellie shrank a little. “Well, neither will Attie! And Callie would never want that!”
Orion hadn’t so much as glanced Ellie’s way during the interruption. “Or the last possibility—” He sat up and gazed benignly at them all. “Widowhood.”
“Ooh.” Iris brightened. “I could wear black. I look positively ethereal in black! And Callie would make a lovely widow, wouldn’t she, dearest?”
Archie beamed. “Stunning!”
“So, we’re all in—”
“For a spot of murder?”
“What shall it be? Poison?”
“Too girlish. Not enough blood.”
“True, true. I see your point.”
“A carriage accident?”
“Hmm. Might harm the horses.”
“We can’t have that. No, indeed—”
“There will be no murder!” Dade stood in the center of the room and pointed them all out in turn, one sibling for each word. He didn’t see Attie, who had been still as a stone during the twins’ dialogue.
Poison.
Heavens to Betsy … what an interesting idea.
Chapter 6
Callie woke early. Outside the tall windows of her bedchamber, the Cotswolds countryside was still dark, as the spring days had not lengthened enough to match her sleep patterns. Curling into a tight ball beneath the heavy coverlet, she tucked her clasped hands beneath her chin and breathed into the silent darkness.
Married.
Married to a strange man.
A flash of the night before crossed her thoughts and half-embarrassed, half-aroused heat washed over her body. A very, very strange man.
Callie had lived among strange people all her life. Her mother, Iris, who was no slouch in the realm of eccentricity, had two sisters, both odder than herself. Auntie Poppy cleaned everything she touched thrice. Every time she touched it. Auntie Clementine was prone to collecting small yapping dogs, which she sometimes carried in the drooping bodices of her gowns. Poppy expressed great disgust every time Clemmie kissed them on the mouth.
Therefore, strange was not so strange, not for Callie. However, nowhere in the crowded, cheerful penury that passed for existence in the Worthington household did dwell such darkness as flowed through every corner of this luxurious manor.
Realizing that there was no point in hiding away from her abrupt change in destiny—for cowering in bed changed nothing and never would—Callie threw back the covers and swung her feet to the icy floor. Was her husband a miser, to keep the place so cold? Or perhaps a spartan, who did not feel the chill the way she did?
When She Said I Do Page 5