The Bargain

by Jane Ashford

  Silence fell over the room. The candle sputtered, and the scent of wax floated through the room. The tension that had been buzzing between them as they flung words back and forth receded, but in its place came not peace but a thickening of the air, a hyperawareness. Looking up, Ariel saw that Alan was staring at her as if he had just noticed where she sat and what she wore. The intensity of his gaze was almost too much. She shifted on the pillows, and one strap of her nightgown slipped off her shoulder like a glancing caress. She shivered.

  “Ariel,” said Alan.

  She crossed her arms over the folds of her silk nightdress. His auburn hair was gleaming in the golden candlelight. He looked very large, and very serious. Another shiver ran through her.

  Alan moved. Slowly, like a man moving through water—or a dream—he came toward the bed. He was still staring at her, and Ariel flushed, suddenly far more conscious of her hair tumbled around her shoulders, and her nakedness under the thin silk.

  He loomed over her. The light was behind him now, leaving his face in shadow. She wanted more than anything to read his expression, to try to understand what he was feeling, but his broad shoulders cut off the glow of the candle and made him a dark outline haloed in gold. She waited for him to speak or give some sign, but he simply put a hand on either side of her on the bed and bent to take her lips with his.

  His mouth was warm and confiding. It seemed to offer all the reassurance she had been hoping for, the certainty that his feelings were as deep as hers. She let herself relax a little, following the enticing lead of his mouth on hers.

  His kiss grew stronger; it coaxed and insisted, pleaded and demanded. Ariel’s flush deepened with a different kind of heat. She put her arms around his neck and clung as he pressed her back against the head of the bed, filling all her senses.

  When she felt as if she were drowning, his hands moved. She felt them first on her hips, warmly caressing. Then they moved up to her waist and along her ribs, his touch sure and very intimate. When he cupped her breasts and let his thumbs rove over them, she had to gasp. This was much more deliberate than the first time they had been together—slower, more tantalizing. Her whole body was trembling.

  He kissed her throat and her shoulder and then took her lips again as his hands slid down under the coverlet, pushing it aside, to find the hem of her nightdress. His fingers heated every inch of her as he very, very slowly eased the garment up over her knees and thighs and higher, slipping it from under her and then suddenly up and off as Ariel raised her arms to let it go.

  He was looking at her again, with that devouring inexorable gaze. But she didn’t mind it now. She even arched her back, wanting him to go on touching her.

  “You are so beautiful,” he whispered, encircling her waist with his hands and kissing her again.

  Then he stepped back and stripped off his coat and shirt. Ariel reached for him, and ran her fingertips along the muscles of his back. With a low sound, he drew a little away again to shed the rest of his clothes, and she saw him before her in the candlelight—the sculpted strength of his arms, the russet hair sprinkled across his chest, and more. “Oh,” she said, fascinated at her first sight of a man. Irresistibly drawn, she reached out and touched his tautly aroused manhood.

  Alan groaned, and she pulled her hand quickly back. “Isn’t that right?” she said.

  “Very right,” he answered. Pushing her gently backward, he joined her on the bed, capturing her lips again and parting her knees with one of his. Ariel forgot her questions in his kiss and his hands running over her. She needed his touch now, and as if he knew, his fingers moved to the center of the ache and made her cry out with pleasure. She murmured his name as his lips moved to her shoulder, her breasts, and then her mouth again.

  He was taking her out of herself, as he had that other day when she had clung to him and begged him not to leave her. He wouldn’t leave her now, Ariel thought. He was her husband.

  Then she couldn’t think anymore. The sensations were too amazing, his lips and hands too distracting. She was gripped by a delicious tension that seemed likely to overwhelm her.

  Alan drew a little away. She pulled him back, protesting softly.

  “A moment,” he murmured. And then she felt him enter her, and the pleasure mounted as he moved, rising unbearably until every muscle in her body was taut with it, and she clung to him as tight as she could as it went on, and on. And then it burst and spread through her whole body in wild, tempestuous waves. It was as if she were drowning indeed, but in pleasure instead of water.

  Alan cried out softly and gripped her hard, making it impossible to breathe for a few moments. Then his arms slackened, and he rested against her, his breath hard and rapid.

  She held him, their hearts pounding in unison, their breath ragged. He was closer to her than anyone else had ever been. “I love you,” murmured Ariel, the words unstoppable, inevitable. She couldn’t have decided not to say them. They were so much a part of everything else she had felt that she had no control over them. But as soon as the phrase was out, her mouth went dry.

  Alan raised his head and looked down at her. “What?”

  Had he not heard? She didn’t know if she wished that or not. He looked startled, at a loss. “Nothing,” whispered Ariel. “Nothing.”

  He hesitated, as if he might speak, but instead he dropped a gentle kiss on her lips, and then a whole series of quick kisses, like the caress of a butterfly’s wing, like the embodiment of tenderness. Ariel trembled again under his touch—hopeful, uncertain—wondering whether this was enough of an answer.

  ***

  Much later, Alan slipped back into his bedchamber after a quick tour of the perimeter of guards he had set about Carlton House. Ariel was still sleeping, he saw, going straight to her to make certain all was well. He had hated to leave her here alone, locked in, while he made his rounds, but the tenor of the haunting had become profoundly disturbing. He had even begun to worry that someone intended to assassinate the prince; the incidents had an almost murderous quality. He would get Ariel out of here at first light, and make her promise not to return.

  Standing beside the bed, he watched her sleep. Her lashes made dark crescents on her glowing cheeks. Her tumbled curls smelled of flowers, and the rise and fall of her breasts was enthralling.

  He had heard her say she loved him. It had roused a kind of triumph in his breast, which was silly because he didn’t believe in what people called love. He had seen a score of friends succumb to it, and in nearly every case, it was a simple matter of attraction. A few of his acquaintances had been fortunate enough to be friends with the ladies of their choice, and this had made for more lasting bonds. He put himself in their ranks. But this supposed metaphysical ideal that poets praised and youngsters mooned over—it was a fantasy, he told himself as he gazed at her. It was a daze of chemical responses designed to encourage the propagation of the race.

  And yet… Lately so many of his thoughts seemed to end in “and yet.” When he looked at Ariel, when she turned unexpectedly and smiled at him, when he held her in his arms, he felt something that he had never felt for another human being. There was plenty of desire in it, along with protectiveness and pride and admiration.

  The more he tried to analyze his state, the harder it was to define. Probably it was the newness of the thing, he decided. And the fact that he wanted her so fiercely no doubt distorted his reasoning processes. After they had been married a few months, he would understand the connection in all respects, and find it had a much more rational basis than so-called “love.”

  Satisfied, he removed his shirt and breeches and slipped into bed again, reveling in the brush of Ariel’s silken skin and her warmth. He tried to be sorry when she opened her eyes and murmured sleepily, but he wasn’t. He gathered her to him and ran his hands down the delicious curve of her back.

  “Where have you been?” she murmured.

 
“Did you hear me go? I tried to be quiet.”

  When she said nothing, he added, “I had to check on the house.”

  “Oh.” She drew a little away from him. “Is all well?”

  “Yes.” He reached for her again, but she sat up.

  “You should get the actors to help you. They must know all the ways in and out of Carlton House and the best hiding places.”

  He gazed at her, much struck. “That is a good idea. I should have thought of it.”

  “Astonishing.”

  “We suspect someone is hiding inside,” he told her. “They might well be able to show us where. Excellent.”

  “You admit that I have had a good idea?” said Ariel.

  “Of course.”

  “Even though I am a female?”

  “What?”

  “And females are unable to think rationally?”

  “You are a unique female,” Alan replied. “I acknowledged that long ago, as you know very well.”

  “I do?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Didn’t I admit your contributions to our investigation?”

  “No.”

  “Of course I did. And I have certainly mentioned the revolution you seem to have initiated in my family.”

  “Would you call it a—”

  “I believe I have given you full credit for your unusual abilities almost from the beginning.”

  Ariel gave him a glinting look. “Do you indeed?”

  “Why else would I have married you?”

  She gave a little gasp. “I am not unique, you know,” she said. “There are a great many females who could have done the same.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Flora Jennings, for example. Look what she has accomplished with the poor children. And you have told me that your mother’s educational schemes are—”

  “These are exceptions that prove the rule,” insisted Alan.

  “Or one of those rules that has more exceptions than examples,” Ariel muttered.

  “What?”

  She merely looked down at him. He didn’t understand what they were talking about, or why they were bothering to discuss it just now. “I have an idea,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  Reaching out, he pulled her down onto the pillows and then knelt above her, running his hands over her shoulders and breasts and down all the way to her knees before starting back up.

  “Oh,” said Ariel, looking up at him in the dimness and taking in his aroused state.

  “A better idea,” he said and bent to the honey of her lips.

  Twenty

  Alan and Ariel were wakened early the next morning by one of the prince’s servants, agitated by some new outrage by the haunters in the kitchens. This limited their farewells to a disappointing few minutes, amid a flurry of dressing and preparing for the day. “Promise me that you will not come to Carlton House again until this invasion is stopped,” Alan said when they were ready to go. “This house has become a dangerous place. I don’t want you exposed.”

  She wanted to make him admit that last night had meant a great deal to him. But the concern in his face stopped her. “Very well. But it will be over soon, won’t it?”

  He nodded grimly. “If I have to take the place apart piece by piece.”

  He escorted her to the front door and squeezed her hand in a last good-bye before hurrying off to deal with the latest problem. Ariel sighed as he disappeared through a doorway, then turned to the footman stationed there. “Can you find me a hack?”

  “Of course, my lady.” With a small bow, he opened the door, and then took a surprised step backward. Lord Robert Gresham stood on the doorstep, his hand raised to knock. Behind him, one step down, was Flora Jennings.

  The moment Miss Jennings spotted Ariel, she surged forward. “I must speak to you.”

  Ariel blinked at the urgency of her tone.

  “We called at your house, and they said you were here.”

  She looked extremely agitated, Ariel thought—startlingly so for the composed Flora Jennings. “Shall we go back together?” she suggested.

  “I can’t wait any longer!”

  “What the deuce is going on?” demanded Lord Robert.

  “Please!” said Miss Jennings.

  Responding to the strain in her manner, Ariel asked the footman, “Is there somewhere we could talk?”

  The tall servant looked dubious. “I’ve been instructed not to admit callers,” he said.

  “This is not a morning call,” she replied. “Perhaps in here?” She opened the door on the left, and was assailed by the most dreadful smell she had ever encountered. It made her eyes water and her nose sting and drove her back coughing and sputtering into the hall.

  “Not there,” exclaimed the footman, who had sprung after her too late. He slammed the door shut again, looking exceedingly harried.

  “Good God,” said Lord Robert.

  “I am not supposed to—” began the servant.

  Ariel was still coughing. “Find the lady a place to sit down,” Lord Robert told him.

  The man dithered for a moment, then turned and led them along one corridor and into another. Everyone they passed in the usually bustling Carlton House looked furtive and worried today. Finally, the footman opened a paneled door, rather gingerly, and peered inside, then indicated that they should enter. “This should be… suitable,” he said, scanning the empty, inoffensive parlor with relief. “You’d best not… that is, I wouldn’t wander about.”

  “We won’t,” Lord Robert assured him.

  “Thank you, my lord,” replied the man, bowing and shutting the door behind him.

  Silence descended over the room. Although Flora Jennings had gotten what she wanted, she now looked hesitant. “Perhaps… perhaps you would wait outside, Lord Robert?” she said at last.

  “Dashed if I will,” he answered heatedly. “You roust me out of bed, drag me through London, force me to take you to Carlton House when Alan has forbidden all of us to enter, and now you think I’ll cool my heels in the hall while you tell Ariel why?” He shook his head. “Not bl… not likely.”

  “Even if it’s none of your affair?”

  This stopped him for a moment, and Ariel looked back and forth from one to the other.

  “Yes,” said Lord Robert defiantly then.

  “A gentleman would not—”

  “Oh, now I’m to be a gentleman, am I? One of those disgusting, overbred gentlemen you’re so ready to despise when you don’t need one?”

  “Lord Robert!”

  Ariel watched them contend silently, through burning gazes, for a time. Then, finally, Robert gave in, though with no good grace. “I’ll sit over there in the corner,” he grumbled. “I ain’t standing in the corridor.”

  Flora watched him stomp over to an armchair, turn it away from them, and sit, his arms crossed. After a further slight hesitation, she pulled Ariel as far from him as possible and said, “I must tell you something.”

  By this time, Ariel could hardly wait to hear what she would say.

  “I should have told you some time ago, but I…”

  What could it be? she wondered. Some scandalous secret, something about Bess?

  Flora took a deep breath, as if bracing herself. “I am the one behind the haunting of Carlton House,” she said in one swift rush.

  Ariel stared, transfixed. Whatever she had expected, it had not been this.

  “I was so… I was so angry when Bess died,” the other woman continued. “I wanted it to be marked somehow. I wanted there to be some great upheaval. And also…” She stopped and swallowed. “I know Bess never told you this. She said she didn’t want to burden you with her dark memories, that she was afraid they would blight your life as they did hers. But when she began visiting the children I care for, they starte
d to come out, you see, and she had to speak to someone.”

  Ariel waited, utterly alert.

  “When she was very young, Bess was taken from the streets by a nobleman who imprisoned her in a house he has and used her for his… pleasures.”

  “What?” Ariel sat bolt upright.

  “She was kept there until she began to… mature, and then she was thrown out into the streets again, to make her way as best she could.” Flora looked as if she had tasted something bitter. “Lord Royalton does not like women, only little girls—and boys.”

  “Lord Royalton!” Ariel’s head was reeling. “They said Bess had quarreled with him.”

  Flora gave a thin smile. “It was far more than a quarrel. Bess was trying to have him exposed and prosecuted, but he has too many powerful friends, and he blocked her at every turn. It was like a kind of game to him, I think. All she accomplished was to make him more… discreet.”

  “But how is that possible? How can he…?”

  “No one listens to children from the gutter,” was the acid reply. “They can accuse, but if he denies…” She shrugged. “He is a peer of the realm and a close friend of our glorious sovereign.” The last two words dripped with sarcasm.

  Ariel bent her head, trying to take all of this in. Each new vista that opened on her mother’s life brought fresh pain. “Poor Bess,” she murmured.

  Some of the fierceness faded from Flora Jennings’s eyes. “Poor Bess indeed,” she repeated. “I wanted some revenge for her, so I suggested the haunting to the younger actors. They never knew who sent them the plans, but they didn’t need much prodding. They were delighted with the idea.”

  “There’s more to this,” Ariel said. “They were caught.”

  Flora released another sigh. “That is why I’m here, and what I must tell you.” She looked down at her hands. “I should have been content with the actors’ tricks. The prince was humiliated; everyone was laughing at him. It was all I could expect. But I wanted… more.” She looked as if she had bitten into something bitter.