As Wicked as You Want: Forever Ours Book 1

by Nia Farrell

  “Not much of a drinker?” He chuckled, finding this amusing.

  “Not much,” I said stiffly.

  “Come now. Drink up. It will put hair on your chest. The ladies will love it.”

  “I cannot fathom why that should matter to me,” I groused. Taking a deep breath, I huffed out, snatched up the jigger, and slammed back the shot. God in heaven, it burned. I choked, coughing as my body attempted to reject it.

  “Young pup like yourself?” Professor Wainwright finished his drink and motioned for refills. “Of course it should matter. Unless you already have a girlfriend? Perhaps the one whose portrait hangs upstairs?”

  “No!” I said a bit sharply. I had no girlfriend, and I certainly wasn’t going to discuss Masey with him. She was the family secret. If Mother had kept her hidden in England, hidden she would remain.

  “No inamorata. Hmm.” He angled his fair head, squinting slightly, his thick brush of lashes framing those brilliant turquoise eyes. “Do you want a sweetheart?” he asked, his voice a low, intimate, leonine rumble, like the purr of a big cat.

  I stared into my drink.

  “A girlfriend?”

  A girl who’d want hair on my chest? I’d rather see the hair on his chest. His abdomen. His legs and thighs and secret places.

  He leaned closer, so close that his whisper barely reached my ear. “A boyfriend?”

  My head snapped up; our noses narrowly missed. He was looking at me, staring with an intensity that was beyond fathoming. Surely he didn’t think…couldn’t know….

  Suddenly, he stiffened and abruptly backed away, breaking the connection being forged between us. “What is it?” he barked, looking over my shoulder. I was certain that my annoyance nowhere matched his, but I was ready to add my weight to shove off whomever had dared to interrupt us.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  Recognizing Daniel’s voice, I spun around, heart in my throat, wondering wildly what had happened to make him abandon the studio and seek me out. The pleading, helpless look he wore did absolutely nothing to calm my fraying nerves.

  “Please, sir.” He addressed my companion in a hushed whisper. There was no mistaking the urgency in his voice, the near panic in his green glass eyes. “I need to speak to both of ye in private, like. Now would be good.”

  “Across the street, second floor, room eleven,” Wainwright murmured.

  Daniel looked at me. “Wear yer hat and keep yer head down as ye go. I’ll make sure I wasn’t followed and come as soon as I can. Keep him there, sir. The streets ain’t safe right now.”

  Somehow we made it across the boulevard, into the hotel and up the stairs. Professor Wainwright fished the key from his pocket and unlocked the door, ushering me inside and securing it behind us. It was a comfortable room, with quality furnishings—a small table flanked by two wooden chairs, a washstand and mirror, a wardrobe that doubtless held his clothes, a small chest of drawers serving as a bedside table, and an ornately carved double bed.

  He motioned me to have a seat. I collapsed into it, my legs too weak to stand a moment longer.

  One minute stretched to ten, then twenty. Wainwright tossed a book onto the table and mimicked the flipping of a page with his fingers, indicating that I should read it. Welcoming the distraction, I started at the beginning, exploring the history of piracy in the Americas. I had stumbled into the story of Anne Bonny when knuckles rapped on the door.

  “Please, sir. Please be here.”

  Wainwright opened the door. Daniel flew in, nearly slamming it shut behind him. “It’s the Pinkertons,” he spurted. “They came with a warrant for yer arrest, Lane. Ye’re charged with desertion. Christ almighty, tell me ye didn’t hightail it home without mustering out!”

  “I served out my term!” I cried, shaken to the core. “The war was over. I was sick.” I saw the skepticism on Wainwright’s face. “I was sick,” I insisted. “Truly sick. Don’t you remember, Daniel? They were watching me for typhus or cholera or something. I was too ill to travel when the company moved out. I got left behind. As soon as I was strong enough, I went home,” I croaked, unable to fathom the trouble I was in, all because of eating some bad meat.

  I had served for three long, terrible years. Three more had passed since I hobbled onto a train headed to Richmond.

  I wasn’t a deserter. I wasn’t. Not in the truest sense of the word.

  I looked at Wainwright, as if I expected a British citizen to know American law. “They can’t arrest me, can they, sir? Dear God…if I’m arrested, I’ll lose everything I’ve worked for. Everything I have. Tell me—please tell me what I can do!”

  He was silent for a moment, thinking furiously about my situation. “My mother was convinced that everything happens for a reason,” he said. “She believed that when one door closes, another opens. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps not. What matters is making the most of that which is presented. Given the circumstance, immediate relocation to England would seem preferable to the misery that awaits you, should you stay. I am fairly certain that I can smuggle you out, have you play my valet until you are safely on British soil. Once there, we shall get your next studio set up. I am close enough to the university, you will not lack for models, fresh faced or otherwise.”

  It took me a moment to grasp what he’d just offered. Not merely to take me to England, but to set me up and keep me with him.

  Perhaps…perhaps I wasn’t the only one longing for more.

  “You would do that?” I asked him, praying that he would have no cause for regrets. I didn’t know what I would do if he were made to suffer for my troubles. “Forgive me, sir, if I sound stunned. Only one other has ever risked so much to help me, and that was years ago.”

  “Pretend for a moment that we are still family and the situation were reversed. Would you not do everything in your power to see me safe, happy, and well?”

  I wanted that already. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “Well, then.” He looked from me to Daniel and back again. “For now, Lane, you will stay in this room,” he said. “O’Flaherty will handle tonight’s exhibition. Whatever does not sell can be shipped to England. It will be his choice whether or not to accompany it. You will need an assistant eventually. It may as well be someone you know and trust. What say you, O’Flaherty?”

  Daniel squared his shoulders and straightened his feet, bearing the weight of his responsibilities with the same confidence he had shown when we would load in nine, ripping and ramming cartridges, seating the percussion cap, awaiting the command for volley fire. He hadn’t run then. He would not desert me now.

  “Aye,” Daniel said firmly. “Aye. As ye say, sir. For now, I’ll take the long way back to the studio, stay there to open and secure everything that doesn’t sell. If ye would, sir, write yer address, or a way to contact ye. Lane here can give ye my information.”

  Wainwright fetched the lap desk that he traveled with, pulled the stopper from the inkwell, and dipped his pen. Bold black elegant letters flowed across the paper. He blew on them to speed their drying, then folded and handed the note to Daniel.

  “Good man,” he said. I felt a welcome warmth in my heart, that he found my assistant worthy of the daunting tasks before him. For some reason, it seemed important that these two men be on good terms with each other.

  My Irishman left, consigning me to Wainwright’s care. I could practically hear the gears turning in his mind as the professor considered how best to rescue me from my situation. His biggest concern was altering my appearance enough as to render me unrecognizable and slip me past the Pinkertons. His second consideration was getting me out of the country as quickly as possible.

  He rummaged through a stack of books and pulled out a copy of Travelers Official Railway Guide of the United States and Canada. It seemed that we had choices. There were a number of lines between here and New York. In the northernmost route, Pullman Palace Hotel Cars left Chicago daily, departing at 5:15 pm for Rochester, New York, by way of Detroit. Ferried to Canada’s Gr
eat Western Railway, the passenger train traversed Ontario until the suspension bridge at Niagara crossed back onto American soil.

  “The Pinkertons won’t follow you over the border,” Edward told me, ready to sacrifice his Pennsylvania route ticket for my sake. “Once there, we can disembark long enough to secure your passage to the coast and a berth on a British ship bound for England while I go on to New York. In Canada, at least, you’ll be safe.”

  “No, please, sir! I want to stay with you!” I begged him. “I’ll make sure I’m not recognized! I’ll wear a disguise. Keep to our room. I’ll be good, sir. Whatever you ask of me, I’ll do, sir, but please, please, don’t send me away!”

  Light flared in his eyes at my words. His gaze grew heated with a silent promise that he would hold me to them.

  I inhaled a tremulous breath, shaken to my core. The thought of submitting to his will made my loins pulse with a terrible, secret longing. My gaze fell on the bed, and all I could think about were the summer temperatures and what I would do if, for comfort, he slept nude.

  The internal struggle revealed in my eyes was mirrored in his gaze. Rather than address the attraction between us, he broke eye contact and backed away. Evidently the professor was one to think on his feet. He paced the carpeted floor, all kinetic motion as he suggested alternatives and discarded my counterpoints. Finally, I put a hand on his forearm and stopped him in his tracks.

  “I have an idea,” I told him, dropping my hand rather than give in to the urge to feel the corded steel of his forearm. “I know that it will work. I just don’t know how you’ll like it.”

  “What? Why?” he demanded, the strain of the day etching lines on his handsome face.

  “For one thing, it will cost you. Forgive me. I know it’s impolite to ask, but is a wardrobe for first mourning something you can afford to buy me? I apologize for the imposition, but I’m just getting out of my starving artist stage, and, well, you seem…you seem…comfortable.”

  His mouth canted, the line of his lips underscoring his amusement at my choice of words. “I do not believe that anyone has ever described me as ‘comfortable,’” he said, “yet your observation is correct. I do live rather well, quite beyond the means of most university professors, thanks to my late mother. And yes, I can afford to see you clothed. Make a list of what you require, with sizes noted, and I’ll see if the hotel has someone in their employ who can find what you need.”

  I nearly sighed in relief when he slid a sheaf of papers, pen, and ink to me and ordered me to begin. There was no time to lose if we hoped to be gone by the morrow. The longer we stayed here, the greater the danger of discovery.

  “One more thing, I must beg you.”

  He cocked a brow, looking very much like a teacher hard pressed to accommodate a troublesome student with special requirements.

  “Trust a woman only to fill this list, and trust me enough to not look at it. I’ve only ordered the minimum, but it should be enough for now.”

  He sighed, capitulating far too easily. I lowered my gaze, afraid of what I’d see if I looked too deeply. Was he already counting costs? Thinking of everything that I would owe him, I could only speculate how soon he would demand repayment…and wonder what forms it might take.

  Rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and winnowing the other five fingers through his golden mane, he pulled himself up and cast me an imperious glance. “How much money will I need to send with her?”

  I’d done a rough calculation and told him my estimate. He added twenty dollars to the total and went downstairs to the front desk to find our shopper. After that, he was headed to the train station to secure our passage to the City of New York. He had already booked a hotel room there. He would wire Rochester for another.

  Professor Wainwright planned for us to share, starting now.

  I had not argued. There was no reason I could give to justify the expense of separate rooms, even if one had been available. Still, thoughts of tonight, and the days and nights to come, played havoc with my mind. I didn’t know how long I could keep my secret. Sharing his room, his berth, his cabin. Days and days of travel, forced into close proximity that allowed little to no privacy. Sooner or later, I was bound to reveal my hand. It was a matter of if, not when, yet I feared I had little choice in the matter.

  The sensation was eerily familiar, reminiscent of the time that I’d been too sick to leave with my unit. Then, as now, I felt almost like a pawn in the game of my life, forced to move in constricted one and two space increments while other men moved freely round about me.

  I had eyes for only one of them at the moment, of course. The man I wanted as my king.

  Edward Jamison Wainwright, Esquire. Author, historian, learned scholar, demanding teacher, he possessed the commanding qualities that I very much admired. Moreover, he promised the discipline that I missed and that I’d somehow come to crave. If only I could magically draw a line to keep him from crossing over, from demanding too much, from going too far, perhaps then I would survive our journey intact. But the problem with drawing a line is that it’s almost akin to a dare. Creating boundaries compels you to test them, to push them, to see just how far you can go. I’d felt that compulsion last evening when our eyes met in the mirror, and again—oh, God, again—when he challenged me in the tavern, demanding to know if I wanted a sweetheart of either gender.

  Which made me think that he did.

  Heat coiled low in my belly. Tongues of flame threatened to erupt. I tamped them down, not easily, but eventually, using techniques that I had learned over the years. Such is the life of a single soldier or a solitary artist, with no room for attachments that might otherwise distract. I’d risk it, though, for Wainwright. Risk the pull of intellect and emotion, the tug of physical desire. Risk suffering rejection and heartbreak and loss when he learned who I was.

  What I was.

  I’d been hiding for so long, forced to essentially lose myself, I wondered if perhaps I’d overcompensated, had built myself up too much in my mind. Daniel’s good opinion and his never-ending praise for my work certainly bolstered my ego. Conceding that it might, perhaps, be artificially inflated, the facts were that I was intelligent and fairly well-read, versed in classical literature, fluent in French, and able to translate both Latin and Greek. I was pleasant enough looking, clean and fairly neat. My messmates had teased me about my curling lashes and the fine bones of my face, and when Daniel broke out his fiddle, I was invariably the one tying on an apron to dance the female’s part.

  My even features were by no means objectionable—except, perhaps, when crunched in frustration, driven mad with an artist’s angst, or when contorted with fear, whether triggered by loud noises or seized by night terrors. Surely he would not hold that against me.

  Surely.

  I’d like to believe that he would look past my defects and embrace my strengths. Possessed of no little artistic talent, I was finally beginning to garner the attention from critics that was so crucial to commercial success. I wanted others to appreciate my art, to laud it, to love it.

  More than that, I needed my work to matter.

  I thought of my darling, my La Belle de la Rosa. I dreamed of finding her a home where people would see beyond her beauty. They should know the love that went into her making, appreciate the vision that let me recognize the stone where she lay hidden, and value the talent that it took to excavate the treasure of her form.

  God save me, but I hoped she didn’t sell. I hoped to high heaven, at the end of the exhibition, my beauty remained unattached. I could not risk offering myself, yet I could give Wainwright this gift—this part of me: months of my life, years of training, the untold hours of sweat and tears, the blisters and blood that went into her making.

  If by some chance she did sell…well, I’d sculpt or paint him, or create something else especially for him, once we got to England.

  That is, if he still agreed to take me with him, once he learned what I had done.

  Chapter F
our

  Wainwright came back with good news all around. The hotelier’s wife had jumped at the chance to spend Edward’s money and had bustled off with my list. He had managed to secure us first class berths on the north-bound sleeper train, leaving tomorrow afternoon as planned. I felt no little remorse that he should bear this added burden and take responsibility for me. I was plagued with guilt, regretting the exorbitant cost of it all. However, he took everything in stride, a master of contingencies, and I consoled myself that he seemed to bear me no trace of ill will. If anything, since his return, his looks had remained patently neutral, as if I’d only imagined our tantalizing exchange in the tavern—the heated intensity in his eyes, the dark promise of his voice—before Daniel had interrupted us.

  At the top of my list were my new trunk and a carpet bag. They came together in mid-afternoon, thankfully before anything else had arrived. The trunk’s size had the professor raising an imperious brow, which dropped to a scowl long before the packages stopped coming in a succession of deliveries, outwardly anonymous, wrapped in plain brown paper per my instructions, neat bundles tied with twine and string. I put them, unopened, in the trunk, with plans to attend to them as soon as I was at liberty to do so.

  Wainwright burned with curiosity but said nothing. His self-mastery was commendable. His complete, quiet control was a testament to his character and something to be envied when my nerves were so on edge. We settled into an uneasy silence after I told him I feared that I was too rattled to engage in meaningful conversation. I stopped short of begging him to leave me alone.

  The professor buried his nose in a newspaper, seemingly oblivious to my need for privacy. I bit my lip and read a borrowed book (of which he had several, some hauled from home, a few purchased here), biding my time, knowing that, sooner or later, he would venture forth in search of sustenance. When the time came and I could not risk going out for supper, the professor went alone, leaving me to my treasures.

  I waited until I was certain that he’d gone and tore into the pile, judging by sight the fit of each garment, breathing a sigh of relief when everything was in order. It was a daring move, with the potential for epic success or disastrous failure. I’d done my best to ensure that no one would be the wiser when I went forth in my new clothes. I was feeling very much the emperor in that moment, and not in a good way. One misstep, and I would be exposed. Stripped bare and laid open, naked to the world. I was still convinced my plan was the surest way—perhaps the only way—to hide in plain sight, to be able to walk past a Pinkerton or any other officer of the law who might be looking for Lane Davenport. I knew that I could pull it off. It was just a matter of convincing my self-appointed guardian.