“You disguise it well.” He let out a hiss of breath. “Maybe I do the same?”
She gasped and dropped her head back, her breasts quivering above the top of her leather corset. He fit his hands into the groove of her nipped-in waist and held her while she squirmed. She canted her hips forward, giving him an incredible view of swollen pink flesh slick with desire. The sight of her, splayed open shamelessly before him, was enough to change the direction of his torment entirely, for now he was no longer past the point of arousal, but aching with want once more. Her panting breaths became sharp cries then louder exclamations, culminating in a howl as her body went rigid above his.
He lifted her off him and threw her to the bed, face down, pinning one arm behind her back as he turned off the device and freed himself from it. She moaned and pressed her hips to the mattress. He knelt between her legs and gripped her thighs, pulling her up roughly to meet him. He slid inside of her wet, eager body, wondering how he could ever have thought something artificial could compare.
Beneath him, she whimpered, “I thought I was supposed to be tormenting you.”
“I think you might still.” He stroked in and out of her body, already straining for control. “Let’s just see where the evening takes us.”
Chapter Eight
By the time the cab pulled up outside of the hotel, Tallulah had regained some strength in her legs. Still, she feared she looked like a drunk or worse when she stumbled in and asked for her key at the desk. The innkeeper mumbled something to her about the quality of guests that were welcome at the establishment, but she didn’t have the energy or disposition to be offended or embarrassed. All she wanted was to reach her room and fall face-first into her pillow.
When she reached the doors to her suite, she found they were slightly ajar. On any other night, she would have hesitated, but if someone lurked inside to murder her, at least she would be able to lie down. She clung to the door and let it swing her inside.
And then she stopped. Sitting in one of the delicate winged armchairs, his ratty boots propped on the low, round table, was Jimmy.
Her heart lurched. She knew she should run to him, weeping, and throw her arms about him, as she’d seen so many wives do when their husband’s regiment trooped into town.
As she’d seen so many wives do when Jimmy’s regiment had come home. She’d waited, only to meet the grim face of his commander, who’d informed her that Jimmy was “no longer with us.”
“Surprised to see me?” Jimmy kicked his feet down and stood in the same intense motion, violence coiled beneath the surface of his anger, ready to spring out and strike.
“I—I supposed I am.” The slow, languorous feeling that had clung to her all the way from the club vanished in an instant, replaced by the sickeningly familiar defenses of her marriage. “They told me you were dead.”
“Nope,” he proudly stated the obvious. “I came home. If you would have waited a minute before flyin’ off to Paris, you would have known that.”
She drew herself up straight, despite her exhaustion. “I wasn’t going to sit at home and wait for the Yankees to come burn down the farm. I fled for my life.”
“Same as me.” He grinned, his once white teeth tobacco stained. “I knew we weren’t gonna last the winter out there, and we damn sure weren’t gonna win the war.”
“You deserted,” she whispered. She didn’t know why it surprised her so. Jimmy was always looking out for himself, damn everyone else. But she’d never pegged him for a coward.
Anger twisted his features, less handsome than they had been that summer long ago, when they’d been young. “You’re one to talk. Find out I’m dead and you take off for Europe, like you’re somebody. How much of the money from the sale of the farm is left?”
Unbidden, her eyes flicked to the clock on the mantle, where her bankroll lay nestled among the delicate gears and weights.
Jimmy followed her gaze. “Someplace you plan on bein’? Am I interrupting your social schedule?”
She said nothing, but closed the door quietly behind her. “I’ve had a very late evening. I’m going to bed.”
“Without your husband?” he shrugged his suspenders down. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen my wife, I expected more of a welcome.”
Taking a deep breath, she forced herself into the role she’d played for six long years. “I know, and I’m sorry. You know with my weak constitution, I can’t handle sudden shocks. This is altogether too much for me.”
She reached into her reticule and pulled out a handful of notes. She made sure her hands trembled when she held them out, though it was not a difficult task, as she already shook from fear. “There are some wonderful establishments for gentlemen. You’ll need to put on a coat, of course, and comb your hair. You’ll enjoy a night out, I think, after your long journey.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” he grumbled, snatching the money. “I should tan your hide for taking off like that, Yankees or no. But seeing as I don’t want to wind up in any jail, Yankee or Rebel, maybe I better get comfortable here.”
She shuddered.
He stalked out the door and let out a whoop that was like to wake the entire hotel. “Time to show these puffed up peacocks how a real man does!”
The door slammed shut behind him, like a cell door locking her in. She waited, almost holding her breath, terrified to move in case he returned. He would be out drinking until the money ran out, or until he could no longer find a reputable—she scratched the adjective from her mind—any establishment that would let him come inside.
Maybe he’ll run afoul of a murderer, she thought with shameful hope. She’d thought herself free of Jimmy, and since the moment she’d learned of his death she’d felt nothing but relief. During their marriage, she would never have thought of living on her own. The prospect would have been too terrifying, regardless of how he treated her. The devil you know, her momma had always said, beat the devil you didn’t. Now that she’d been out on her own, Tallulah knew both devils, and now she saw that Jimmy was far worse.
She needed guidance, and in her desperation she could only imagine one person who could give it to her. She went to the wooden secretary and lowered the desk, then rummaged through the well-stocked drawers for pen and ink and paper. She gave little thought to what she was writing, except to decide not to mention Jimmy. She needed help establishing herself in London, and if she could do that without revealing such embarrassing details as mistaking her husband for dead, she would.
She went downstairs to the desk, which was vacant at the late hour, and laid the envelope in the basket for outgoing missives. It seemed unlikely that Jimmy would dig through private hotel business, but even so, she slipped the letter beneath the others rather than laying it on top.
You could never be too careful with Jimmy.
Though her mind raced and her heart pleaded for some certainty or conclusion to present itself immediately, rationally she knew she had done all she could for the night. She washed, resisting the urge to scrub all her skin away out of paranoia that Jimmy would somehow know that she’d been unfaithful. Then she put on her most sturdy nightgown, a cotton thing she’d brought from home, with a high neck and ugly ruffles, and turned down the bed.
Before she went to sleep, she locked the bedroom door.
* * * *
Horace was eating lunch when the letter came. His mother paused in her noiseless supping of cold soup to look up in alarm when the butler dropped the envelope at Horace’s elbow.
“My word,” she said, spoon hovering unladylike above the bowl, “Who would write you a letter?”
Masking his irritation with indifference, he replied mildly, “Your guess is better than mine, mother. Let’s see, shall we?”
Before he opened it, he knew exactly who’d written it. The delicate script could belong to none other. “If you don’t mind, I think I shall take my leave to read this.”
His mother’s eyebrows shot up at that. A hint of gossip to he
r was like a drop of blood to a shark, and she would no doubt circle until she had a clear attack. For now, though, she stirred her soup thoughtfully. “I do hope everything is all right.”
“Fine, I’m sure,” he rebuffed her, unwilling to give even a hint of what the letter might contain. He had no clue, himself. He’d had a wonderful evening with Tallulah, perhaps she was writing to thank him, even though it would have been against the club rules. Not that they hadn’t broken all or most of those already. By the time he reached the parlor, a grin that was positively juvenile stretched his face. He closed the doors and secured them by means of leaning against them before opening the letter.
As he read it, that juvenile grin relaxed by degrees.
I regret that I shall not be able to meet you this afternoon. A most dire calamity has befallen me. I need to book a passage back to the States as soon as possible, but the arrangements need to be made discretely. It pains me to ask this of you, but I doubt I’ll accomplish everything that needs to be done without your help.
Nothing remained but an apology and a signature.
A squeezing pain gripped his chest, startling him. He felt positively dyspeptic.
Passage back to the colonies? What could possibly have happened between late last night and early that morning to cause such a huge change in her disposition toward him? With a sinking clarity, he slumped against the doors. He had given up control to her, in a way he’d never dared with another woman. Had that been his downfall?
He forced himself to stand up straight. This was not set in stone, not yet. Unless she was on a steamship chugging across the Atlantic, he could change her mind.
He ran out the front doors without coat or hat. His phaeton and clockwork horse sat inanimate at the curb, but with a few vicious twists on the crank and some muttered curses, he brought it to shuddering life and steered recklessly into the empty morning street. He’d been expected at the hotel at half past noon. If she didn’t wish to see him, she probably wouldn’t stay where he could find her. But it was only ten o’clock now, so it was to the hotel that he headed.
After some heated words with the concierge, he was able to learn Tallulah’s room number, although he was declined a porter to show him the way. Horace found his own way as quickly and obnoxiously as possible, in a dead run through the halls, apologizing under his breath to the few patrons he passed. He arrived at the doors of her suite in utter dishabille and smoothed his unruly hair back from his face. He glanced down at his hands and saw smears of grease that had no doubt translated to his face. Nevertheless, he pounded on the doors with both fists. “Tallulah! Peach, open up. We must discuss this!”
To his edification, the doors did open. But it was not Tallulah who exited.
“Who the hell are you?”
Horace took a step back. “I should ask you quite the same. Where is Tallulah? Is she in there?”
“Why are you asking after her?” The man grabbed two fistfuls of Horace’s shirt and propelled him against the wall opposite. “You best tell me who the hell you are before I beat the starch out of your shirtwaist, friend.”
“Beat the starch out of—” Horace quickly revised his tactic, observing the tense rope of muscle down the man’s arm. Horace was most assuredly a lover, and this man looked as though he might be a fighter. “If I may, I am Horace Sterling. And you are?”
The man dropped him and stuck out his hand. “Jimmy Applewhite.”
“Tallulah’s name is Applewhite,” Horace mused aloud. “And her late husband, Jimmy…”
Mr. Applewhite looked as though he were staring at the most foolish man alive. At that moment, Horace certainly felt that way.
“Not so late, after all, I see,” he said, then, straightening his clothing, “Apologies. I must have the wrong room.”
“Yeah, you must.” Jimmy Applewhite, Tallulah’s husband, watched him from blue eyes made beady and bloodshot with alcohol, from the stink of him. “Move along, friend.”
Horace did just that, but he only got as far as the stairs before he had to slump against the wall in an ungentlemanly manner. That dyspeptic feeling had returned. He’d likely be dead in a month.
Until the door had opened and Jimmy Applewhite had appeared like some disastrous spectre, Horace had been unsure what he’d wanted from Tallulah. It had only taken that moment of horror, the moment when the realization hit his heart before his conscious mind could have possibly admitted to himself what he feared might be true, to realize that he loved her. He didn’t want to just walk in the park with her during the day and fuck her at the club at night. He wanted to possess her entirely, to spend every moment possible with her. He wanted to make love to her in his bed, in their home, to share all of the little intimacies that were the domain of couples alone. He wanted her.
And now, that was as impossible as a journey to the moon in a dirigible.
On his way through the lobby, he thought he caught sight of Tallulah’s golden curls beneath a flash of a lilac hat, but when he looked again she had gone.
Chapter Nine
Tallulah rested her hands on the padded velvet rail and looked out at the other balconies. Permilia Sterling had been quite clear that she and her husband would be in attendance at tonight’s concert. While that was no guarantee that Horace would also be there, it was enough to encourage her foolish hope that he would be.
And if he was there, what would she say? Have you been avoiding me? I’ve been pathetically waiting for you every night like a love-sick child, and you’ve never once come to the club. Yes, that would certainly impress him. Men did so love it when a woman fanatically pursued them.
Especially when those women had ridiculous, drunk husbands to avoid. Perhaps her letter had been what had frightened Horace off. At first, it might have only seemed a bit eccentric, but now that she had not left the country, it seemed positively vile, some test of his faithfulness or worth that he’d failed by not rushing to her rescue. She would put that right the very moment she next saw him, if she ever did again.
If he wanted to see you, he could have. She intensely disliked that voice of reason, but had to agree with herself. If he had wished to contact her, he would have simply asked his sister-in-law where Tallulah could be found. Or the hotel; though they had ceremoniously deposited her trunks on the sidewalk the afternoon following Jimmy’s arrival, they would at least have the manners to direct inquiries to the forwarding address she’d provided. Though her new lodgings weren’t exactly up to standards with the lush accommodations they’d just left, at least the staff at the Dog and Quince had better manners. They wouldn’t have failed to deliver her a message. Horace could have extended any number of invitations. But he hadn’t.
Throwing herself at him in full view of London’s upper crust wouldn’t change the fact that Horace Sterling was clearly uninterested in her.
Now what did she have? No husband, though she wasn’t a widow anymore. She’d convinced Jimmy that he deserved better than a fat, old wife of thirty when he could take up with a dancehall girl half that age in Paris. She’d even helped him book his passage on the next crossing, though he’d been far too drunk at the ticket office to realize that she’d booked him on a ship to Boston and not France. By the time the first notes of the opera played, Jimmy would be arriving at the harbor, and soon safely on his way across the sea, leaving her something worse than a widow: a divorced woman. Just the stroke of a pen stood between herself and horrible, terrible freedom. If Horace hadn’t wanted her before, he certainly would not want her now.
“Oh my, Wallace, dear, look at our neighbor!”
In the exact moment that Tallulah had resigned herself to give up on Horace Sterling, Permilia’s voice called sweetly from the next balcony. Tallulah squeezed her eyes shut tight for just a moment as though she could will away what she knew she would find when she looked into the next box.
“Missus Applewhite, are you ill?”
She forced an embarrassed smile, feigning only the mirth, and pressed a few fin
gers to her forehead. “A bit dizzy from looking down.”
She rose, knowing her cheeks burned as bright pink as her gown. Permilia Sterling, her face the very picture of polite concern, stood beside her husband, Wallace, looking as terrified to be in the company of others as he always did. Behind them, looking everywhere but where his brother and sister-in-law did, was Horace.
His body language alone answered the question Tallulah had not permitted herself to ponder. He so wished to avoid any contact with her that he was made profoundly uncomfortable by her presence, even in this innocuous public venue.
She might vomit over the balcony.
“I know, I had the same trouble myself when we first came here,” Permilia clucked with genuine concern. “I’m surprised more people don’t simply swoon and fall over. We must insist that you join us in our box, mustn’t we, Wallace?”
“Of course. Besides, what fun is a French opera if you don’t have an Englishman to mock it with,” Wallace said with a broad smile, though Permilia huffed in outrage.
With no polite reason to refuse, Tallulah nodded miserably and made her way out of the box and through the velvet drapes of the next, just in time to hear Permilia’s closing remarks on her husband’s misinformed opinion of the French cultural achievement. Her knees betrayed her, wobbling like a plated aspic as she took the empty chair behind Permilia’s. Without a word, his brooding stare focused on the curtained stage, Horace sat beside her.
The rumble of the crowd dropped to a murmur as the curtains parted and the first strains of the overture began. Though she tried to concentrate on the soaring melody, her attention was stolen by Horace’s every movement. He shifted in his chair, and the rustle of his clothing reminded her of their ride to the club, how he’d pressed against her and stroked her beneath his jacket. He drummed his fingers against his knee and she thought only of how those fingers had played her body like an instrument in the hands of a virtuoso.
Bound in Brass (All Steamed Up Series, Book Two) Page 5