Demon's Bride

by Zoë Archer

  “I do not remember.”

  “This was ... before. During your ... other marriage.”

  Yet Rosalind merely shook her head. “I do not remember anything, really, before Edmund.” She smiled.

  Anne attempted to return the smile, but her efforts did not succeed. Fortunately, Rosalind did not notice. She merely returned to drinking her congou, placid.

  This, from a woman renowned for her wit? Again, Lord Whitney’s letter reverberated through her, its many assertions that she had been so quick to dismiss as the work of a faulty or devious mind. How could Anne possibly believe him? How could she trust him?

  Nearby candles guttered, the flames turning to smoke.

  Valeria Livia Corva. The name wove into her thoughts. A Roman woman’s name.

  Anne had burned Lord Whitney’s letter, but rather than destroying it, the contents of the missive became stronger, more potent. Like an offering to a dark god.

  How could Lord Whitney possibly know about Anne’s dream of the Roman woman?

  The parlor tilted as her head spun, the air thick and close. She needed fresh, cool wind. Outside, in the garden. Yes—to go outside, that would clear her head and help make sense of the morass in which she’d sunk.

  “Will you excuse me for a moment?”

  Rosalind merely smiled, and so Anne quickly left the chamber on unsteady legs. She tottered down the stairs, then moved through the darkened corridor that led to the garden. As she walked, she passed the closed door of the dining room, hearing the rumble of male voices. The Hellraisers in private discussion.

  She hesitated. No footmen stood in attendance in the hallway. Rosalind remained upstairs. Anne was alone.

  She pressed her ear to the door. Thick wood muted sound, and she had more a general sense of different men speaking than their actual words. The low rumble of Bram. Edmund’s measured pace. And Leo—his voice she knew now almost as well as her own. In the depths of night, she had heard him speak words both tender and demanding, had heard him hoarse with passion, and drowsy with satiation. In a room crowded with a hundred men’s voices, she would find his, unerring.

  He spoke now, and Anne pressed even closer, trying to divine his words.

  “... asked around ... no one ... as if Whit ... vanished.”

  Oh, God. They spoke of Lord Whitney. She wrapped her arms around herself, but did not move away from the door.

  “... certain?” That was John, cutting and precise.

  “... only Mr. Holliday ... yet he has been mute ...”

  It seemed as though Edmund spoke next. “... safe, then?”

  “Never safe,” said Bram.

  “... remain alert ... notify the others if ...”

  “Madam?”

  Anne whirled to face one of the footmen, a decanter in each of his hands. Bringing more wine for the gentlemen.

  Of a certain, news would spread amongst the servants that the lady of the house was caught listening at doors like a housemaid. The question remained whether Leo would hear this news, passed from the servants’ table to the valet, and from the valet to the master. Little help for it. Either Leo would know, or he would not. And then ... she did not know what then.

  Secrets. They kept building, widening a chasm between her and Leo.

  Anne stepped back from the door, and moved deeper into the shadows of the corridor. “Go on. Bring the gentlemen their wine.”

  She turned and walked out into the garden, out into the cold. She had no shawl, and shivered in her silk gown, yet she did not want to return inside. Not yet.

  Shells crunched beneath her delicate slippers, digging through the flimsy sole to stab into her feet. She could go nowhere on such fragile shoes. Within minutes, they would be torn to pieces on London’s rough streets. Yet she wanted to run, and run far. To a place where the sun shone and revealed everything. Where she could laugh at shadows, dismiss them, destroy them.

  Anne wrapped her arms around herself. She felt the burden of secrets along her shoulders, the heavy press of concealment and uncertainty. She longed for the comfort of maps and their defined borders—but even this solace was illusory. Maps could be drawn only when men took to the seas, facing uncertainty. How often did those sailors stand upon the deck of a ship and see the stain of an approaching storm? And how often did they have no choice but to sail into the teeth of that storm?

  Anne suddenly felt a kinship with those nameless sailors, for now she stood at the railing and saw the portentous black clouds of a storm nearing. She could not outpace its fury or circumnavigate around it. It must strike. She hoped she would not drown.

  Chapter 10

  “I received a letter from Lord Whitney.”

  Leo paused in the act of pulling off his coat. He stood in the middle of the bedchamber, the candles extinguished, only the fire in the grate illuminating the room. Anne hovered near the foot of the bed, still in her gown of heavy green silk, her hair up, her eyes wide.

  “What?” He could not have heard correctly.

  Anne wrapped her hands around a bedpost, like a woman clinging to a treetop as floodwaters rose around her. “Lord Whitney. He put a letter for me in the carriage.”

  “When?”

  “Several days ago.”

  Leo went very still. “Why have you said nothing until now?”

  Her hands tightened around the bedpost. “I wanted to forget.”

  “Show it to me.”

  “I burned it.”

  He strode to her, and though she did not shrink away, he saw the smallest wince in her face. “Tell me what it said.”

  At this, her wide gaze slid away. “I cannot remember.”

  Leo knew a lie when it was spoken. He witnessed many of them on the Exchange. Never did he expect to see the same prevarication from his own wife. Something in his chest hurt, and he spoke around its cutting edges. “Anne.”

  She was no hardened man of commerce, no gamester. Of everyone he knew, including himself, she was the most truthful. And falsehood could not last long within her. Firelight gleamed in her eyes as she returned her gaze to him.

  “Mad allegations,” she finally admitted. “Too outlandish to be believed.”

  “Tell me.”

  “He said ... that you and the other Hellraisers had made a bargain with the Devil. That you each gained powers in exchange for your souls, and ... you’ve unleashed a terrible evil upon the world. A growing danger. But that is all ludicrous. A Bedlamite’s ravings.” She forced out a laugh, hollow as a husk.

  Fire coursed through Leo. His heart slammed inside his chest, and every inch of him tensed, ready for battle. A momentary paralysis. It did not last, for he had to act.

  He strode to the bedchamber door and threw it open. “Munslow,” he bellowed, calling for the head footman. The hour was late, the remains of the dinner already cleared away, the house put to rights. Leo shouted again for the footman.

  The servant appeared a moment later, buttoning his waistcoat and smoothing his wig. “Sir?”

  “Have you seen Lord Whitney?”

  “No, sir. Not recently, sir.”

  “Or a Gypsy woman?”

  “Not her neither.”

  Leo could not feel any sense of relief. Simply because Whit had not been seen did not mean his threat was any less present. He’d put a damned letter in Leo’s carriage. For Leo’s wife to find. Fury tore through him, his body shaking with it. Leo’s fears were coming to pass. No. No. Whit would take nothing from him, especially Anne.

  “He isn’t welcome in my home,” Leo said. “If any servant sees Lord Whitney, even a glimpse, they must tell me immediately. I want at least three footmen to accompany Mrs. Bailey whenever she goes out. The biggest and strongest we have. Hire more, if necessary. I can apply to my boxing salon. I want bruisers, brutes. If I am not present, they must be with her at all times when she leaves the house.”

  From behind him, Anne spoke. “Leo, I—”

  “And if Lord Whitney should attempt to approach her, he must
be stopped. You understand. There is to be no communication between him and Mrs. Bailey. None. Do whatever is necessary to keep him from talking with her.”

  The head footman nodded. Like most footmen, Munslow was young, tall, and strong, and the ready shine in his gaze showed that he welcomed the chance to brawl.

  “Tell the rest of the servants to keep a watchful eye. Housemaids, coachmen. All of them. And if anyone sees anything, I am to be notified at once.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Leo sent Munslow off with a jerk of his head. It did not matter to Leo what the head footman told the rest of the servants. If they thought him mad, or wondered at his reasoning. All that mattered was keeping Whit away. From Anne, above all.

  Turning back to her, Leo shut the door behind him. Locked it. The protection offered by the lock was minimal, but he would seize any means of warding off the man Leo once considered one of his closest friends.

  Leo advanced on Anne. She continued to hold fast to the bedpost, her features drawn tight.

  “Should Whit attempt to contact you again,” he said, “tell me. If I am not here, send a running footman to Exchange Alley. Swear that you will do it.”

  Her eyes were round, her cheeks pale, even in the hot gleam of the firelight. “He speaks nonsense, doesn’t he? There is no Devil. Not truly.”

  “Swear it.” He stepped closer.

  She released her death’s grip on the bedpost, and though he could see the furious beat of her pulse in her neck, and heard her agitated breathing, she did not shrink away. “This is not what we have built together.” She tipped her chin up. “All this time. We’ve made more, you and I, than a husband who threatens and a wife who meekly obeys.”

  “Whit is dangerous, Anne. Understand? He is a threat to everyone. You and I, especially.”

  “Why?” she cried. “What is it that he threatens?”

  Leo’s jaw tightened. “Everything.”

  He would not allow it. He refused. Leo had built his entire life with his own hands. From the foundations laid by his father, he had constructed an existence, borne the weight upon his own shoulders, his hands scraped raw and bloody. Whatever he possessed belonged to him on the strength of his will. A foolish, lazy man would have squandered the Devil’s gifts on ephemeral pleasures, but not Leo. He took the granted power and became even stronger, more ruthless, more determined.

  Like hell would he sit idly by as Whit tried to steal from him.

  Anne. His own wife. The woman he had come to know almost as well as his own heartbeat. By revealing the truth, Whit wanted to take her away.

  Leo’s rage knew no limitation. Never.

  “Nothing,” he amended, his voice barely more than a growl, “and no one will take you from me.”

  “I am not leaving.”

  To keep her, he would commit any crime, destroy anyone who sought to tear them apart. For now that she was in his life, he could not imagine it without her. He would bind her to him, as he was bound to her.

  “I cannot ...” He struggled to speak. “No one means more to me than you do.”

  The wariness in her gaze sifted away. “Leo—”

  Words were not enough. He was a man who spoke plainly, and had no interest or skill in constructing artful webs of words. There was nothing he could say that could equal what he felt within the innermost reaches of himself. So he had to use his body to do what his words could not.

  He closed the remaining distance between them. Their bodies pressed close, and against his abdomen he felt the swift contraction of her own stomach as she drew in a sharp breath. He threaded his fingers into her hair, cradling the back of her head, and tipped her chin up. Her lips parted. For a moment, they only stared at each other, gazes locked. Her eyes were the shifting hues of forest shadows, holding depths few ever realized.

  But he knew. He saw and he understood.

  On a groan, he brought his mouth down onto hers. Fear of losing her sharpened everything, and he wanted all he could take. He was ravenous, his hunger sudden and unchecked. She tasted of almonds and sweet woman. And she met his kiss with her own need. Their tongues stroked as their mouths opened. Each velvet touch spread desire through him.

  She had lost her tentativeness. They both had. Over the course of the week, they had gained knowledge and confidence. How to touch each other. How to make demands and how to satisfy those demands.

  She gripped his shoulders, rising up on her toes to press tight against the aching length of his body. They swallowed each other’s breath as the kiss went even deeper. A desperation in both of them, straining toward something, as if by the heat of their desire, they could burn away doubt.

  Needing more, wanting all of her, he walked her backward until her legs met the edge of the bed. One hand he slid from her hair, down her neck, feeling the softness of her flesh and the thrum of blood beneath. He urged her down to sit on the edge of the mattress, though his mouth never left hers as he bent over her and she leaned up into him.

  Pins and ties lined the front of her gown. His hands became huge and clumsy as he fumbled with these tiny, feminine fastenings. They seemed deliberately designed to bewilder and confound a man. Yet he had an ally. Anne also worked at her gown, her fingers making quicker labor of the fastenings. Until, with a sigh, the green silk came open, the stomacher peeled back like a fruit ready to be savored.

  Beneath were her stays and chemise. He growled at these impediments, wanting the touch of her bare skin. He took his lips from hers and trailed hungry kisses down her throat, over the bows of her collarbone, and along the floral, lush flesh of her breasts, rising in silken curves above the stiff stays. She gasped into his hair as he touched her with his mouth and hands, dipping below the top edge of the stays to find, like treasure, the tight points of her nipples.

  He’d never known greed like this. Not for a person. It filled him with dizzy madness, his body hard and aching in its hunger. And he needed her pleasure, too, with a voracity that outpaced his own demands for sensation.

  Whit would not steal her from him. Leo would ensure it, branding her with his body.

  They pulled at each other’s clothes. Her hands were quick and clever as she shoved his coat to the floor, as she plucked at the silk-covered buttons that ran down the length of his waistcoat. Each brush of her fingers against the tight muscles of his torso sent knives of pleasure through him.

  He found the ties of her stays. Loosened them just enough to tug the stays down, so her breasts were free and luxuriant beneath the tissue-thin cotton of her chemise. He broke the narrow ribbon threading through the chemise’s neck, and pulled this down, as well. Baring her breasts.

  She still wore her gown, her stays, yet with a small, vital core of nudity, her breasts exposed to him, her nipples succulent. As though he, and only he, could ever know her like this, the prize of her body beneath her clothing. She gazed up at him, eyes heavy-lidded. Her hands had been tugging on his shirt, pulling it from the waistband of his breeches, but they stopped now. She reached for his hands. Then placed them onto her breasts, his hands covering her. She arched up into his touch.

  Leo sank to his knees. He seized her mouth again with his as he stroked her breasts. He circled her nipples, teasing them into even harder points. Then took them between his fingers, rolling, lightly pinching. Her gasp drew his own breath.

  “Leo, yes.”

  Nothing in the world felt like her. Nothing matched her as she writhed and moaned, a silken tempest. And when he licked her nipples, one and then the other, drawing them into his mouth, she clutched at his head.

  Her skirts rustled as her legs eased open. He felt the press of her knees against his sides, her feet attempting to hook around his calves, yet hindered by the swaths of silk. Against the front of his breeches, his cock strained.

  Hell. He couldn’t have enough. He needed more.

  “I want you,” he rasped against her skin. “Let me have you.”

  He urged her back, until she rested on her elbows, her legs drap
ed over the edge of the bed. He continued to kneel between her legs. With shaking hands, he gathered up her skirts. They filled his hands with silk the color of spring, whispering a woman’s secrets, layer upon layer, her body restless beneath. Until he uncovered her legs.

  He plucked her slippers from her feet and dropped them to the carpet. Stroking up her legs, he untied her garters and drew down her stockings. These, too, he let slip to the carpet, and they lay like discarded reveries, bearing the echoed shape of her legs. Such delicious legs, smooth and pale. He had to touch them. He did, gliding over her flesh, feeling her tremble and tense.

  “I love your hands on me,” she whispered. “Their size. Their feel. Just a little rough.” She shivered.

  “I love to touch you.” And he did. He stroked her legs with hot possession. Then peeled away her drawers.

  He hissed in a breath. All around her were rivers of silk, yet here, here she was bared to him. He allowed himself a moment to admire her, the soft golden curls, the rosy flesh, ripe and ready. But it took far more control than he possessed to simply look. His thumb rubbed along her folds, and she gasped as he discovered sleek wetness.

  “Give me everything, Anne.”

  In response, she spread her legs wider.

  With an animal sound, he bent down and put his mouth on her. Her taste flooded him, rich and sweetly musky, and the feel of her against his lips and tongue engulfed him in sensation.

  This. This private joy, this secret pleasure. It belonged to them alone. No one and nothing would take that from him.

  He teased, he delved. Hands spread over her thighs, he kissed her intimately, sucking and licking. She dug her heels into the small of his back. Her elbows gave out as she splayed across the bed, fingers woven into his hair. And when he drew her clit between his lips, she pulled him tight against her. He sank his fingers deep.

  She bowed up and cried out her release, a long, liquid sound that filled him with wild pleasure. Yet he was not satisfied, not until he brought her to the edge and over again, and again.

  At last, she fell back, gasping, arms outflung, legs spread.

  “More,” she panted. “I want more of you.”