When She Said I Do

by Celeste Bradley

  Well, that simply wouldn’t do. She’d always hated being cold.

  Questions about Mr. Porter filled her mind: questions about his present, his past, and his intentions. She would prefer that answers took their place, answers that were not to be had in the safety of her bedchamber.

  With a bit of luck, she managed to find a single glowing coal in the hearth with which to light her candle. She roamed the room, lighting every wax stub she could find. Light turned her bedchamber from a black cavern to a surprisingly graceful room. The lady’s chamber, obvious by the look of the pretty spindled chairs and the delicately inlaid vanity. The room where she’d met her … husband.

  The jewel casket was gone from its place on the vanity. Callie turned away, refusing to dwell on that fateful night and its alarming revelations.

  Shaking her head at the crockery pitcher sitting dry and useless on her washstand, she dressed without bathing. Pinning her hair up in a tight bun, donning the more workaday gown of the two salvaged from the river—for clearly she was going to have to do for herself in this servantless hall—she prepared herself for her new life.

  The richly carved oak door of her bedchamber had kept out her destiny for the night. Taking the largest of her candlesticks, she put her hand on the latch and pressed. Time to face her future.

  Nearly an hour later, she had to conclude that her future had gone out for the day. Mr. Porter was nowhere to be found, not even in the farthest reaches of the manor. He must have left before the dawn that now stretched rosy fingers across the eastern sky.

  Odd. He hadn’t seemed the out-and-about sort.

  Frustrated that her hard-won bravery had come to nothing and relieved, as well, she decided that the first order of her solitary day would be to supply her own needs. Water could be had in the kitchens. And food. She’d seen that the larder was fully equipped on her first pass of exploration that fateful night.

  On closer inspection, she noted the signs of past random rummaging through the hung meats and cheeses. Frowning, she couldn’t decide if such disregard for conventional household help was admirable or pathetic. Apparently Mr. Porter was prone to feeding himself rough-hewn chunks of this and that. In response, she carved herself thin, delicate slices. She also left a tray of them, attractively arranged, for Mr. Porter’s next foray.

  Humming, she carried her meal into the baking kitchen. Great ovens covered nearly the whole of one wall, ready to cook for dozens of staff and household and visitors. In the growing light through the large glazed windows, they looked dusty and desolate to Callie—simply crying out to be used, to be required, to be needed.

  Well, then, so be it. Stuffing the wood box of one of the giant beasts took most of the logs she found outside in the kitchen yard. Lighting it was no problem, for the wood was old and very dry. Soon the roaring flames warmed the kitchen, turning the sad, desolate room into a cheery haven.

  Eggs were to be had in the henhouse that resided out beyond a long-neglected kitchen garden, where it appeared that someone was lackadaisically tending a sparse flock. To be sure the eggs were recently laid, Callie sank her finds in a bowl of water. The ones that floated she discarded. The ones remaining, she beat into a rich batter with butter found in the larder and flour and sugar from the vast cavern of a pantry. Without a yeast starter, she could not make bread.

  “Let them eat cake,” she murmured to herself with a smile. Soon the kitchen wing was redolent with the sugary, light smell of sweets baking within.

  While the cake baked, she heated several pails of water on top of the stove. She found the copper bathing tubs stacked in a storeroom not far away and managed to wrest the smallest one down the hall. Grinning at the horrendous screeching sound of metal on the stone floor, she did her best to be as loud as possible in the matter. Something needed to fill this hollow shell of a house.

  By the time she’d wrangled the thing into the overly warm kitchen, she was rather warm herself. Pushing her falling hair back with one damp wrist, she promised herself the soak of a lifetime. All she lacked was some sweet-smelling soap or bath salts.

  Soap eluded her search. It must be kept somewhere else in the house, someplace that made sense to the staff of thirty that ought to be here. Asking thin air worked not at all.

  Terrible place. No staff, no occupants. Not even a decent ghost about!

  Callie satisfied herself with filling a small bowl with a handful of salt and dried herbs. Rosemary and mint scrubbed as well as anything. Just in case, she peered carefully up and down the hall of the kitchen wing before she stripped off her dress and underthings.

  Gasping at the heat as she slid into the water, she exhaled in a moan of exquisite pleasure as she sank up to her chin.

  Although she adored being clean, bathing was always a challenge in the Worthington household. One did with lukewarm water so as not to tax the elderly staff. Baths were usually brief due to constant interruptions by her sisters and sometimes canceled altogether due to abrupt spikes in the usual level of chaos. Callie would be called out dripping and fuming to put out fires—sometimes literal fires, in fact. Orion’s recent experiments tended toward the combustible and Atalanta’s fascination with flame had kept them all on edge in her early years.

  So was it any wonder that she now soaked until her skin turned red and her fingers pruned? The cakes cooling on their racks filled the air with sweetness and the herbs in her bath lent a spicy undertone. The quiet reverberated in her ears until she dunked her head to escape the exquisite disturbance it caused in her chest. Silence such as she had only dreamed of, peace so deep she felt as if she were the only survivor of the human race—should it not be pleasurable? Yet she found it unsettling. It seemed a tense sort of silence, as if the entire house held its breath, waiting … waiting for what?

  Rising from the water, she shook off that silly fancy as she shook back her dripping hair. Using the coarse cleanser she’d created, she lifted one leg onto the side of the tub and began to bathe.

  The scrubbing salt did a marvelous job and the herbs left a delicious tingle on her skin. The only disadvantage to her solitary luxury was that she had no housemaid or sister to scrub her back. Twisting, she reached as far as possible but there was still that one spot between her shoulder blades—

  A large male hand, with muscled forearm exposed by a rolled-up sleeve, reached past her to delve into the bowl of salt and herbs. Callie squeaked in alarm, quickly curling up around her nudity, then froze as that hand began to move in slow gentle circles over her back, smoothing the gritty scrub into her skin.

  Swallowing the sudden dryness in her mouth, she cleared her throat. “Mr. Porter, I am quite capable of—”

  “Hold out your hand.”

  She obeyed unthinkingly, her thoughts still consumed by the large warm hand moving over her naked skin. Into her wet palm dropped a single pearl. Ah. The terms. Callie slowly closed her hand over the pearl, then closed her eyes and dropped her chin to her chest. Permission granted.

  Although only a small portion of her back had needed assistance, Mr. Porter now used both hands to stroke the salt scrub over her entire back, from her shoulders down to where the water met the middle of her back. In the silence, the single drops of water falling from his hands sounded through the room like the ringing of a bell. Callie tried to breathe evenly, but her nakedness and this strange man—her husband!—looming over her made her heart beat at a panicked speed. Her breathing soon matched it.

  Behind her closed lids, she could not help but replay last night’s erotic scene. Naked in the candlelight, the dark sinister shape of him looming over her, the feeling of his large hands on her chilled skin …

  Her nipples turned to diamonds, and without realizing it, she began to lean into his touch. His hands slid to cup her shoulders, then stroked slowly down her arms. Callie let her head fall to one side, inviting him onward.

  Cleansed of salt by the water, his hot palms slid back up her arms to travel over her shoulders to her neck. For several long mom
ents, his fingers moved in delicious massaging circles over the tension there, tension that had lived there since she turned sixteen and took on the running of Worthington House. Surprisingly, her eyes dampened in gratitude for that small attention and she let out a long, sighing breath as her body surrendered to his touch.

  How wonderful. When had she last felt tended, cosseted? As a child perhaps? Sometime before Castor and Pollux were born, surely. Twins were bound to upset any family, and her brothers, darling wicked charmers that they were, had continued to cause havoc ever since.

  Havoc that now had nothing to do with her. The distance from her family regained a little of its glory at that thought. This manor in the Cotswolds was a place of quiet and possibly even serenity—

  All thoughts of serenity abruptly vanished when Mr. Porter’s hot hands slid down to cover her breasts.

  Ren’s eyes closed in pleasure at the feel of her full breasts in his hands. God, she was sweet, so soft and silken. He was charmed by the tiny damp curls behind her ears, by the delicate point of her shoulder, by the line of her spine as it led his gaze to the deliciously curved buttocks beneath the water—water that, without soap, hid not a single womanly thing.

  But mostly, he was fascinated by her delicious breasts.

  He’d always thought he had a preference for short brunettes with large eyes, not tawny-haired busty goddesses. Apparently he was more flexible in his preferences than he’d thought.

  When he’d been tantalized out of hiding and into the kitchens by the mouthwatering scent of baking, he’d not been prepared for the astounding tub of sweets that awaited his gaze.

  Calliope. His wife.

  His wife, naked and soaking wet, her pale skin shimmering like polished opal in the daylight that poured into the kitchen. Long pale legs extended into the air as elegant hands rubbed them pink with vigor. Her hair, neither blond nor quite brown, ran in wet rivers down a lean, graceful naked back.

  And, oh, yes, best of all—firm, full breasts, sweetly rounded, wet and glistening, capped in tender points as pink as rosebuds.

  Now, her rigid nipples pressed into his palms, begging for his attention. Could that be? Did she enjoy his touch? It seemed an outrageous notion, yet bent close over her as he was, he could hear the uneven pace of her breathing. He lifted her breasts above the level of the water just to watch the ruby tips crinkle further in the cooler air.

  As if watching someone else’s hands, he saw his fingertips wrap gently around her erect nipples. He tenderly squeezed. She inhaled sharply. Her back arched. He softly twisted. Her hands fisted on the rolled copper edge of the tub. He plucked delicately, pulling the sweet pink tips longer and harder yet. Then he combined all three motions until her breath came fast and her thighs began to scissor together beneath the surface of the water.

  It seemed it had not solely been a drunken delusion that first night. In defiance of her serene performance the night before, it seemed his pretty virginal wife did enjoy his touch.

  She let out a small, broken cry of pleasure. The pearl, forgotten, slipped from her hand to sink to the bottom of the tub. When her head dropped back to roll upon his thigh, her eyes closed and her pink lips parted in quick, panting breaths. Ren could see the flush of arousal on her cheeks and down her throat and chest. His own aching lust rose like a dormant volcano kept too long beneath the fractured earth.

  His want was sudden, as fierce and molten as lava breaking free. His mouth went dry and his head pounded with a rhythm matching the throbbing in his groin. To take her, to plunge hard into her sweet wet heat, to drive himself deep while he ravaged her mouth with his, swallowing her cries—

  It was only with the most powerful restraint he had ever forced upon himself that he kept from stripping off his clothes and joining her there in the bath, from slipping down beneath her, lifting her astride him to impale her beneath the water, to fucking her hard and fast until he burst inside her and the bathwater ran across the floor from the great waves he created with his lust.

  That would be a lovely way to treat a virgin. Rape her in the kitchen.

  His lust rose in argument. She was his wife. A man could do as he liked with his own wife.

  Sorry, mate. That is not how we conduct matters here. Be on your way.

  Ren’s lust retreated, sullenly and with many a threatening glare, but it retreated. He allowed his pretty wife’s luscious breasts to slip out of his shaking hands. Her confused, breathy sigh cut directly through him. Then, drawing deeply upon every last scrap of his gentlemanly restraint, he stood and turned his back on her.

  “Enjoy the remainder of your bath, Calliope. I shall see you tonight.”

  Her swallow was quite audible. “Tonight? But—”

  She clearly thought this interlude had bought her a reprieve. “Tonight.” No reprieve. It was all he could manage to wait that long to touch her again.

  Gentlemen did not assault their wives. They did not pull them naked and dripping from the bath to bend them over kitchen worktables and take them vigorously from behind.

  Bounder. Cad.

  Beast.

  God, how he wanted to take her vigorously from behind.

  * * *

  Callie slid down in the chilling water, covering her breasts with her hands and listening to Mr. Porter’s uneven stride fade away down the stone-paved hallway. Then, remembering, she scrabbled on the floor of the tub for the pearl.

  Tonight.

  He wanted more? More than having her naked and wet, writhing shamelessly for his pleasure?

  Of course he wants more. And so do you.

  Parts of her did. Parts of her yearned for a great deal more.

  Callie knew a little something about sexual congress. All the Worthington spawn did. They’d had open access to literature from around the world. She’d known the basic mechanics of intercourse since she’d turned twelve and her mother handed her a heavily bound medical text with an airy wave and a “Don’t mind the illustrations, darling. All those drawings were done from cadavers.”

  Callie had barely been able to look at the book after that. Still, her curiosity had compelled her to warily peek between the pages and glean enough facts to make her blush and shut the book with a gasp. Outrageous! Whose bright notion was that ridiculous scenario?

  Now, with her nipples tingling hot and hard from Mr. Porter’s … er, interference … the scenario seemed not quite so ridiculous. In fact, her body hummed with a hunger she’d never felt so intensely before. Her feminine parts throbbed with a sweet ache that made her squeeze her thighs together tightly and shudder at the jolt of pleasure that resulted.

  Mr. Porter wanted to do much more to her, she knew. By the way his hands had slid so reluctantly from her breasts, by his heavy, almost angry stride as he’d left her … oh, yes. More was definitely in store.

  Licking her lips, tasting the salt and herbs, Callie rolled the pearl across her open palm and pondered the notion that when she returned to her home in a few months, she might return a very different woman than when she’d left.

  And she pondered the earthshaking realization that she might just be rather comfortable with that outcome.

  Leaning back in the lukewarm water, Callie allowed that astonishing thought to settle and take root in her mind. Closing her eyes, she also allowed her hand to settle between her thighs. What fascinating texts might Mr. Porter have read? Perhaps it was her newly heightened erotic senses, or perhaps she was simply losing her mind, but the thought of doing such a thing outside the privacy of the bedchamber—why, the thought of doing such a thing at all!—sent a hot jolt of excitement through the center of her belly.

  I won’t. How silly. I would never.

  I wager I could be safely done before anyone knew.

  Anyone. You mean him.

  Yes, I mean him.

  He is nowhere near. Unless … unless he’s watching from the hall.

  I won’t.

  Even as she told herself that, her hand began to stroke softly.

&
nbsp; I have become more than wanton. I am decadent. When her fingertips slipped between her labia, she let her head fall back onto the high slope of the copper tub with a liquid moan. She stroked herself and thought of him … of his hard, hot hands and the way his breath caught when he touched her …

  My husband. My mystery lover. A man I have never truly seen.

  She thought of a way he could take her while retaining his mystery—as a stallion takes a mare. The image of that, of her on her hands and knees, naked before him, exposed—of being mounted like a wild creature—of rocking hard and fast into him, of him plunging into her again and again until their wild cries turned to animal howls …

  Chapter 7

  Once Callie had dressed and wrangled the heavy copper tub from the kitchen, she was relieved to feel her former exasperation welling up once more. She tracked Mr. Porter down in his study.

  “We … you need servants.”

  He’d turned quickly away when she’d entered and pulled his cowl over his face. “No.”

  If Callie had a sovereign for every time she’d planted her fists on her hips in the last two days, she wouldn’t need Mr. Blasted Porter’s Blasted Pearls. She’d practically worn sore spots on each side!

  Still, there they went, white-knuckled with frustration, digging into her hips again. I could count to ten. Perhaps one hundred.

  I could turn and walk away, stop trying to talk to the blasted man, stop trying to reach him—

  Worthingtons do not quit. Ever.

  “Who had the raising of you?”

  Ren turned from his pretense of gazing out the window at nothing, glad that he’d remembered to keep his hood on while still in the house. “Whatever are you talking about?”

  “I mean, were you raised in a house, by human parents, or perhaps in a cave, by a bear?”

  It sounded so very like something his mother would have said that Ren almost laughed aloud. Startled out of the urge by the urge itself, he turned back to the window. “I had human parents once, though perhaps they would not claim me if they could have lived to see me now.”