Bound in Brass (All Steamed Up Series, Book Two)

by Abigail Barnette

  To become a virtuoso, one had to practice. It was evident enough from his knowledge of a woman’s pleasure that he had dedicated himself to his art. She was just another in a long line of women who had enjoyed his mastery of all things sensual. And she hadn’t come to that realization before she’d embarrassed herself trailing after him.

  Unexpected tears rose to her eyes and she swiped them angrily away. If only she could control her emotions more easily. Jimmy had always chided her for her inability to hold back tears. Reminding herself of her horrid marriage was an even bigger mistake than coming to the opera. With a muttered, “Excuse me,” she stood and fled the box. She knew she’d just made a scene, something even less accepted in London than it was at home, but she didn’t care. She didn’t intend to stay in this country a moment longer. She’d already made a big enough fool of herself.

  Spain was supposed to be lovely this time of year.

  And what will you do in Spain? She slowed her steps, her lower lip trembled as she sobbed. You’ll encounter some Lothario and find yourself in this exact same position. You cannot chase men expecting love.

  She’d made the same mistake with Jimmy, letting him get under her skirt in order to get that gold band she’d coveted, convincing herself that after the wedding he’d be sweeter, more attentive, as doting as father had been to mother. She could practically hear her mother’s admonishment: You have no sense, no sense at all, Tallulah.

  “Tallulah, wait!”

  She stopped, not daring to breathe for fear she had conjured the voice from her imagination. The hands that gripped her shoulders were certainly not imaginary, nor was the body that pressed against her when those hands spun her and pushed her against the wall. Soft, warm, all-too-familiar lips captured hers before she could protest.

  “Mister Sterling, please!” she pushed him back, panting, hating herself for growing so wet at even an unwanted touch. She braced herself with a hand against the satin-covered wall and squeezed her thighs together. “You can’t just…attack me!”

  “I’m sorry, you’re right. Of course.” He ran his fingers through his hair, the glossy waves burnished by the gaslights. Her mind jumped unbidden to visions of lying in the grass, idly combing his hair through her own fingers as they gazed up at a perfect cerulean sky.

  What on Earth is wrong with you? “Imagine if someone had seen? I have a reputation to uphold. I’m not a known…rogue.”

  His mouth twitched at that.

  Now, the flush that crept up her neck was not the result of embarrassment or sexual response. How dare he laugh at her, after he’d hurt her so! Whether he realized he’d hurt her or not didn’t matter. “I sent you a letter of the most profound urgency, which you ignored. I even sought you out to inform you of the dire position I was in, and still you persisted in avoiding me!”

  “Because I don’t see the appeal in romantic entanglements with married women,” he snapped. “Or liars.”

  She stared at him, open mouthed, while he raked his fingers through his hair. With a muttered curse, he pulled a cigarette case from his pocket and extricated one. “You told me you were a widow. I came to your hotel hoping to talk you out of leaving England altogether, only to find an angry husband waiting for me.”

  “I am not a liar!” She hurriedly dropped her voice. “I thought I was a widow. When he didn’t return with his company, I thought him dead. His commander even told me ‘Jimmy is no longer with us’. I didn’t realize he meant because he’d deserted.”

  Horace’s expression softened. He looked up from lighting his cigarette and shook the two matches he’d used to extinguish them. “You didn’t know he was alive?”

  “No, I didn’t. And I must be frank, I was much happier when I thought him dead.” She closed her eyes in shame.

  A gentle hand lifted her chin, and she faced Horace’s gaze reluctantly. He looked into her eyes, as though trying to delve into some inner truth. To see if she lied. “And now, you’re…separated?”

  She nodded. “Marrying Jimmy was a youthful mistake, one I’ve paid for time and again. But it’s finally over. I’m going to stay here, in London, and he’s…well, he’s going home and probably to the inside of a Yankee jail.”

  “How will you survive?” Horace tossed the cheroot aside and scuffed it out with his heel, right on the carpet. She opened her mouth to protest his poor manners, but he didn’t give her a chance. “You sold your farm, yes, but the money is bound to run out, sooner or later. Don’t you have family, anyone you could go to for help?”

  So, he didn’t want her, then. She tried not to let her dismay show on her face. “There’s no one. My family all but disowned me for leaving after Jimmy died. They thought the proper thing to do was wear black and weep for the edification of the gawkers.”

  Horace raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s the name I gave to all those gleeful ghouls who came by under the pretense of comforting the widow. Gawkers. They only wanted to stare at me and make sure I was mourning appropriately for their tastes. When I wouldn’t, my father told me to never expect another dime from him.”

  Horace said nothing, as though waiting for her to fill the gap.

  “I just need a job. Something to keep me here, away from Jimmy and my family, so they can’t drag me back. I thought…since you had connections…” she faltered. Did she have the right to ask such a favor? Her cheeks burned cherry red, she was sure. “I know we don’t know each other well, but—”

  He lunged for her, his lips covering hers over her squeal of protest. That faded a moment later, when his tongue did a wicked dance over hers. When he broke their mouth apart, breathing hard, he whispered fiercely, “Do you think I would let him take you away? Or let you starve on the street? Tallulah, I love you.”

  “You do?” Tears flooded her eyes. “I thought I was just a good time.”

  “You are a good time,” Horace agreed. “One I’d like to keep going. Ever since you walked into the club, I’ve wanted no other. And when I found out that your husband was alive, I thought you’d played me for a fool. And it made me realize that…I…”

  Her face fairly ached at being stretched to accommodate her ever-widening eyes. “Yes, Horace?”

  “I…” He looked as though he might sneeze. Or vomit. But all at once, his expression changed. He looked more like himself than he’d ever looked, no cocky grins, no comical feigned horror. No actual horror, thankfully. He took her into his arms and crushed her tight to his chest, whispering into her ear, “I love you.”

  Tallulah wasn’t certain how they made it to the street or how many people they’d horrified as they’d pawed each other desperately through the opera house. They could all get stuffed, as far as she was concerned. Horace’s declaration of love had unleashed a veritable torrent of desire in her, and she would not be satisfied until she had him, all of him, until neither of them could move.

  In the Hansom cab, she suggested they go to the club. He silenced her with a kiss and then called an address to the driver. Their lips never parted, it seemed, for all of the ride, and it reminded her of the night they’d first met outside of the club. Their reckless flight from Permilia’s party had been about control. Tonight, they had none.

  They pulled up in front of an elegant white brick townhouse, in a line with other, identical homes. Tallulah couldn’t help but gape. “I had no idea you were so rich.”

  “I’m not,” he announced cheerfully. “It’s my mother’s house.”

  He swept her from the cab and up the steps, his lips on her throat, her ear, her cheek. She practically swooned in his arms waiting for the front door to open. “You live with your mother?”

  “I hope you don’t mind,” he said as a startled looking butler answered the door.

  Horace didn’t say anything further, but boosted her up in his arms and carried her toward the stairs, much to the consternation of the butler, who closed the door behind them and shouted his protestations up the stairs. The words “irregular” and “scandalized�
�� were among them.

  Tallulah didn’t care. She didn’t care if half the town knew, if half the world knew. She didn’t care if this was Horace’s house or his mother’s house or the Pope of the Church of Rome’s house. All that mattered was that she was with Horace, and he wanted her, not just as a fling in the club. He loved her, and of that she had no doubt, for she had never seen him so flustered.

  Well, she had. But in a different circumstance.

  For the entire, interminable ride over, Horace had fumbled with the buttons down the back of her gown. Small, padded, satin-covered things that they were, he’d only managed to pop two free. At the top of the stairs he set her on her feet again, to press her against the wall with a knee between her thighs, his mouth to her throat, and his fingers dug into the material of her dress, ripping the back apart and scattering buttons all over the Persian-inspired hall runner.

  “I’ll have it mended,” he promised her, both hands falling to cup her buttocks and drag her with him along the hall. They fell through a door, into a room, and onto the bed as she fought her way free from the shredded gown.

  Breathing heavily, she sat up to watch him kick off his shoes and struggle with his clothes. She reached down to shed her slippers, and he stopped her. “Leave them on. Them, and your stockings. But for the rest…take it all off. I want to kiss every inch of you.”

  Her pulse throbbed in her cunt as she unfastened her corset and slid down her drawers, leaving her opaque cream stockings and neatly tied garters. The thought of being entirely naked in front of him was one she hadn’t considered, and she felt a moment of panic reclining there on the bed.

  But then he looked up at her, still struggling to disentangle himself from his clothing, and he looked as half-starved as any soldier returning from the war. She almost laughed at him, he looked so comical shedding his pants and scrambling onto the bed.

  “Don’t smile like that,” he admonished. “You have no idea what I’ve been through, thinking I wouldn’t have you again.”

  She giggled as he lowered his body over hers, settling between her spread thighs easily, as though they’d done this a hundred times. And they hadn’t, not once, not in this way. Before, they’d had the safe intervention of technology, assuring that each coupling was about pleasure and pleasure alone. Now, skin to skin, Tallulah realized the import of this encounter. And when he looked into her eyes, their breath held as he pushed into her, opening her with a startling newness, she saw that he recognized it, as well.

  She locked her legs behind his back, trying to bring him deeper, though there was no place for him to fit another inch. He withdrew, hissing and gripping the duvet beside her head, then plunged again. His mouth found her throat, then her breast, his hand slid beneath her thigh to urge her leg higher. They moved together, straining against each other, struggling toward a place that was familiar, but entirely different. When she trembled beneath him, sighing her release, it was not the Ace of Hearts she surrendered to, but Horace Sterling, the man she loved, and who loved her in return.

  He followed quickly, growling against her shoulder as his body stiffened and his cock twitched inside her. After a moment, he leaned up on his elbows and smoothed her mussed hair from her forehead. “Ah, Tallulah. I love you.”

  She opened her mouth to reply in kind, and a horrific scream, followed by the muffled sound of a man’s voice and a loud crash interrupted her.

  Horace bolted from the bed and she followed close on his heels, wrapping herself in the duvet as he wound the sheet around his waist.

  From the top of the stairs all she saw was a pair of legs and a slender, white-haired woman in a black coat and elegant black hat with a long feather.

  “Mother!” Horace rushed down the stairs, holding the sheet in place with one hand as he pulled his mother away from the prone form on the floor.

  “Horace, really, where are your clothes?” Mrs. Sterling looked up, and her admonishment died on her lips at the sight of Tallulah. She raised one finger to shake at her son then promptly swooned.

  Tallulah hurried down to help Horace as he struggled with his arms full of his unconscious mother.

  “Go, get our butler, tell him to send for the constables. This man is quite dead.”

  Tallulah stepped over the body, avoiding the widening pool of blood and the shards of broken vase on the floor. She couldn’t help stealing a glance at his face.

  The room spun. She gasped, “Jimmy,” and everything went dark.

  Chapter Ten

  Respectably dressed once more, Horace lingered in the parlor doorway, half listening to his mother recounting the tale for the uniformed men who’d arrived and half listening for any indication that Tallulah had recovered upstairs.

  “He said he was looking for his wife, that he knew she was here,” Mother said, a tremor in her voice. She paused to take another gulp of gin from her delicate porcelain cup. “And then he took hold of me.”

  Horace’s gaze flicked to the draped form of the former Mr. Applewhite. What had he been thinking, barging into a stranger’s home and making threats?

  “Did he say anything else, ma’am?” one of the constables asked.

  “He had a revolver, and he said something to the effect that if I didn’t produce his wife immediately, he would shoot me.” She set the teacup against the saucer with a clank. “I won’t repeat his exact words, they were far too foul.”

  “And where were you, sir?”

  Horace looked up, and without thinking, answered, “I was in bed with his wife.”

  “Horace!” Mother looked as though she would faint dead away. “Really, what will people think?”

  “People will think that an angry husband finally came after me,” he said with a shrug. “Though I don’t know why. The bastard was supposed to be on a ship headed for America.”

  “I did what I had to do, to defend myself,” his mother continued. “And ruined a very pretty vase in the process.”

  “Yes ma’am,” the other constable said with a nod. “We’ll send the undertaker to collect him. Shame about your vase.”

  The butler saw the gentlemen out, and Horace, rather than face the wrath of his mother, went to his room to check on Tallulah.

  She sat at the window, wrapped in his dressing gown, and did not look up when he opened the door. Her attention seemed focused entirely on the street outside, but Horace knew better.

  “The bobbies have left. They aren’t going to charge my mother with murder, thank heavens.” He came to stand beside her and put his hand on Tallulah’s shoulder. She covered it with her own and squeezed his fingers in reply. “Tallulah, I am sorry.”

  She turned, unshed tears standing in her eyes. “No. I’m sorry. I’m the reason Jimmy came here. I’m the reason your poor mother has been traumatized.”

  “It will give her something to talk about, though she’ll pretend she’s embarrassed to do so.” He looked out at the rain-slick street shining in the gaslight. Wallace and Permilia would arrive soon, having been alerted to Mother’s condition. Wallace always did have a way of calming her.

  She turned back to the window, as well. “I’ll be on the very first train in the morning, I assure you, and then straight home. I’ve caused too much fuss already.”

  Quite before he knew what he meant to do, he boosted her out of the chair and threw her over his shoulder. She made a noise like a shriek she’d thought better of halfway through uttering, and stared up at him with wide eyes when he dropped her on the bed.

  “Now see here!” he practically shouted, not caring if his mother overheard and it sent her into fits. “You aren’t going anywhere. Yes, there has been a fuss, and yes, you were the cause. But I was willing to live in sin with you, to send my poor mother to the grave with worry over what people would think of her son taking up with a married woman, and not one bit of that has changed now that your husband is dead!”

  Tallulah burst into tears.

  “Oh, damnation!” Horace sank to the bed beside her and to
ok her into his arms. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it so harshly.”

  “If it hadn’t been your mother, it would have been someone else.” she wiped her eyes and sniffled miserably. “I don’t love him. I haven’t for years. It was something of a relief when I thought he’d died in the war. But I did love him once, and seeing him like that…”

  Horace stroked her hair and held her as she sobbed, feeling a bit like crying, himself. “If you want to go back to America, I won’t stop you. But it would break my heart.”

  “I don’t want to go back and be a widow, expected to dress in black and cry tears I don’t feel for a man who never treated me with a shred of decency.” She wiped at her eyes as though angry at her own tears. “But if I stay, it will ruin your reputation.”

  “My reputation?” He could scarce believe what he heard. “Half of London knows how my brother and I made our fortunes, because they’re at the club, themselves.”

  “But no one would utter a word against you publicly, at risk of being outed themselves,” she pointed out. “They could happily shun you for taking up with me. You were having a good time with a married woman, whose husband died in your house.”

  “After breaking in,” he reminded her. “And accosting my mother.”

  “You’re making this all too simple.” She pushed him away and folded her arms.

  He sighed. “It is simple. I love you, Tallulah. I’ll marry you, if that’s what it takes to make this a respectable enough union for you. I’ll move to Bora-Bora and tattoo myself like a native, if that’s what it takes. I love you. I want to spend every moment of my life with you, if only to attempt to make up for the moments I’ve spent without you.”

  She opened her mouth as if to argue, then launched herself at him, peppering his face with kisses. “You’re a stupid, stupid man, Horace Sterling.”

  “And you’re a very foolish woman, Tallulah Applewhite.”

  She made a face. “No. Let’s not mention that name again. I think Tallulah Sterling sounds much better.”