by Ingrid Hahn
From behind him came a hissing sound, and he turned to find the noise coming from Reeve. It didn’t sound human. With the wild look in the man’s eyes, he didn’t look fully human, either.
Max could hear his mother’s voice in his head. From the time he was a small boy, she’d told him that this was exactly the type of person who most needed protection and compassion. Max turned to catch Phoebe’s eye. She looked on at a careful distance, standing back and to the side.
He would do what he had to do here, of course, because it was the right thing to do. But then and there, with their gazes locked, his heart swelled with overpowering emotion. Fierce determination. Righteous dedication. And, hell—even love.
The thought of her was enough to imbue the situation with profound significance. She made him want to be better. Stronger. More principled. He wanted—no, needed—her to be proud of him.
The crowd had quieted but hadn’t dispersed. “There isn’t anything more here to see. Go home. All of you. Your wives will be waiting.”
A lewd remark came from Stephen Smith, the smithy, about what the wives might be getting up to in the absence of their husbands.
“Another such attempt at humor before my wife from you, Smith, and I’ll have you strung up by your…” He’d wanted to append bollocks to the statement, but caught himself before stumbling into hypocrisy.
The odd sound came from Reeve again, and Max refocused on the man. He was muttering something. It sounded like he was cursing Max.
“What’s that, my good fellow? Speak up.”
“Said don’t want no help from the likes o’ you.” And he spat.
Max had to hold up his handkerchief to have a reprieve from the noxious smell.
Reeve held out a skeletal finger. It was tipped with a long, yellow nail. And it was impossible to tell if he was sneering or if his face wore its natural expression. “Himself’s father were mad, he were. Took his own life, he did.” Reeve made a gesture like he was hanging himself, complete with sticking out his tongue.
“So like I says, yer lordship—” Reeve spat again. “Don’t want no help from the likes o’ you. Don’t need no son of the big madhouse helpin’ me, I don’t.”
Nausea rolled a sickly wave around Max’s gut. Cold sweat erupted on his brow.
Slowly—almost painfully—Max turned. The villagers eyed Max with looks that varied from wariness, to pity, to disgust.
His heart thudding mercilessly, his blood ringing in his ears, he forced himself to catch Phoebe’s gaze. She was ashen, her face stricken with anguish.
It was a nightmare come true.
But…if he crumbled now, he’d be no better than his father.
He remained where he stood—outwardly straight and solid and every bit in command, holding the torrent within him at bay in order to remain in control of the situation. He was still the lord and master here. And he wasn’t mad. “It’s time to go home. All of you.”
Some of the men’s faces hardened. Others looked away. More than one shifted his weight. Another—perhaps drunker than the others—stumbled as he did so.
The din had died down enough to hear that there was a general muttering, but it was indistinct enough that Max couldn’t catch what was said.
Max nodded to some of the women at the sidelines. “Come on then, get your men home.”
They came forward, collecting the members of the crowd one by one, and began to disperse.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Max stood before the window, watching the first glowing smudges of sunrise climb into the horizon. Haze veiled the world, thicker in the depressions of the earth and the low fields. A storm had rolled through during the night, ranting and raging well enough to give any upstanding parliamentarian a proper challenge. It’d gone now, passed through the sky and left the world altered.
A rustle sounded behind him. Phoebe stood at the threshold of his bedchamber in her night raiment, dark mass of hair pouring over her shoulders, shiny and sleek in the light of the candle she held.
“I’m almost surprised you’re still here.” He had half imagined she’d run away in the middle of the night, storm or no storm, like a heroine in a gothic novel fleeing terror.
“Where would I go?”
Her words pierced his soul. Ineffably troubled, he turned back to the window. “Of course.”
“You misunderstand me.” Phoebe’s hand slipped up his arm, and she linked it over the crook of his elbow, leaning her head on his shoulder. “Max, please.”
She slid the candleholder onto the window ledge.
“I’d hoped you’d never have to learn the truth. I never wanted anyone to know, least of all you. But it seems…it seems that the story has somehow made its way out of Sutterton Grange and all the way to London. I should have known…” His tightening throat choked off his thought.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was going to tell you. I didn’t…” He searched for an explanation, but now they all sounded like paltry excuses. “I wanted to give you a few days first. A few days of happiness before you had to live with the knowledge of who I am.”
She faced him, expression stark with concentration. “And who are you?”
“My father wasn’t only mad. He took his own life. That’s what I have for you.” He opened his hands to her, palms out to show they were empty. “Nothing else.”
“Oh, Max…”
Before he could react, Phoebe launched herself at him, tossing her arms around his neck, and burying her head against his chest.
She was warm against him, warm and soft. Her weight on him so real, so precious. Just as he’d begun to believe he was the most alone, the most isolated, she was the anchor pulling him back.
Slowly, he let his arms settle around her. “I have no right to this.”
“Hang that. Oh!” She pulled back, her eyes wide, hand covering her mouth. “Poor choice of words. I apologize.” Her brows crossed in determination. “I’m your wife. I belong with you.”
If only that could be. His body ached to be close to her like this each and every day for all of time. He opened his mouth and forced himself to speak, the words clawing at his throat. “I release you.”
There was a stony silence. When finally she replied, her words came out with lethal precision. “We spoke vows to each other.”
“I don’t want you to stay with me because of a vow. Keeping you would be selfish.”
Coming close, she took his hand and linked their fingers together. Her large eyes were full of compassion, softening his heart. Max reached out to stroke her hair. A few locks hung free about her face.
Staring into his eyes, she traced her fingers down his face. “It’s not a matter of keeping me or not keeping me. We’re married. You don’t have a choice in the matter. You’re mine. I’m yours. Isn’t that how it works?”
His. The thought made him go warm and tight in his chest with equal parts delirious happiness and wretched fear.
Phoebe took his hand, fingers linking in his. Under the faint scents of expensive soap and laundry fresh from the line was the scent of her, the one he’d learned so well in the nights since their marriage. The one that never failed to stir his male appetites.
“Come.”
He blinked, a thousand things going through his mind, none of them decent. “What?”
Fingers locked in his, she tugged at his arm, pulling him toward—good God, she was pulling him toward the bed.
The bed.
“Phoebe, my sweet, what are you doing?”
“It’s time, Max. In fact, it’s well past time.”
The words needed no translation. “I can’t—I mean…” His erection took umbrage at his claim that he couldn’t. Damn prick was long and hard and ready to prove how very much it could.
“No, you don’t understand—Phoebe…no.”
“You have to step out of the shadow of fear.” She stripped away her shift and pulled off his shirt. “And you have to trust—me, yourself, others… It
’s time to let go of the past.”
Her words snaked through his brain and, with insidious precision, hit on all the points that had previously held him back. There were reasons for doing this, those things she’d named—good reasons. Reasons he wanted to cling to and believe.
Corbeau had told Max that he’d met his match in Phoebe. At the time, he’d imagined the sentiment all too literally, thinking of arguments and hostility.
It was, in fact, an entirely different thing. This woman was opening a door in his world and coaxing him to step through, leaving all he thought he knew behind for a whole new existence.
They fell back on the bed together, a tangle of limbs.
Devil take him, but he needed her—and with no small amount of desperation. His abdominal muscles clenched for want of touching her.
And more.
He leaned down for an abrupt kiss, his hands grabbing at her greedily. “I have a black heart. You want no part of me, my lady, of that I am certain.”
“Of all the hearts I’ve ever known, yours is the one most worth having.”
There she was wrong. Hers was the most worth having—the one he’d coveted for far longer than he cared to admit.
The buttons of his falls were a damned awful nuisance. He tugged and pulled and fumbled but at last freed himself, stripping away the breeches entirely and reveling in the skin-on-skin touch.
He’d known her body before. They’d spent many long, happy hours pleasuring each other and then lying naked in each other’s arms.
This was so different. This was leading up to what he’d vowed never to do.
With this body, I thee worship… He’d spoken those words before God and everybody. And heaven help him now, what he was about to do was unlikely to be much in the way of worshiping.
Everyone started somewhere.
Her legs parted. Her body cradled his. His fingers locked with hers as he pinned her to the mattress, devouring her mouth with his. Kissing. Tasting. Dominating.
Moving.
His cock had never been harder. “I’m sorry.”
“Please, Max, don’t say that.”
“Will you forgive me?”
“You’ve done nothing that needs forgiveness.”
“I mean—” Need far greater than himself was burning through his being. “It needs to be for me this time. I’m sorry, it’s not right, not for our first time, but—”
She placed a hand over his mouth and hushed him. “It’s all right.”
“Next time it will be about you, I promise.”
He positioned himself in the one place he sought a moment’s solace—right at her entrance. She was so warm, so wet against his blunt tip, that it was difficult not to come before even beginning penetration.
She pulled at him, urging him onward. “Don’t stop.”
Stop? How on earth did one stop when in the arms of the most beautiful, most passionate, most willing woman in the world?
They were going to take their marriage to a place he never should have avoided.
Oh, what sweet heaven is this?
Apparently brushing his tip against her was nothing—nothing—like being fully inside her.
His facility for language vanished. Max’s entire existence fell to nothing but his sensory experience. Having had his fingers inside her in no way prepared him for pressing his cock into her—hot, sweet, and oh-so-snug.
He might have been able to stand it had he not also been atop her. He’d never had a woman below him before—not like this. He’d taken no chances.
It was far more intimate than he could have imagined. And there was nobody more perfectly suited to him, to doing this with him for the first time, than Phoebe.
With that, his bollocks pulled up against his body. Instinct drove him deeper into her. And his orgasm broke, hard pulsing throbs the likes of which he’d never dreamed possible.
Chapter Thirty
It’d been over almost before it’d begun. Whether they’d fully completed what was supposed to happen was still questionable. Presumably the act wasn’t always so…perfunctory.
And yet it had been wonderful—the most unexceptionably wonderful thing to ever happen to her. She and Max had formed a new bond, one she’d been despairing of having the chance to fashion.
In a glow of happiness, Phoebe took Max’s heavy body against hers and let him catch his breath.
He raised his head to gaze down at her. “Are you all right?”
“I could ask the same of you.”
“Are you prevaricating?”
She smiled. “I’ve wanted this since before we were married. You, on the other hand, have treated the idea like a devil told to swim through a lake of holy water…” Phoebe frowned. That hadn’t sounded as she’d intended for it to sound. “Not that I particularly want to liken you to a devil, mind.”
Max rolled to the other side and pulled her close. “It’s not that I haven’t wanted it, too, it’s just…we can’t allow that to happen again.”
His words melted into the darkness. They were both silent for an extended period of time. Somewhere beyond the window, a birdsong sounded—a trill. Sweet and bright, a stark contrast to the words he’d uttered.
Phoebe pieced together just enough courage to spit out the words, though the thought alone was enough to put a stranglehold upon her heart. “You don’t want a child.”
“No. It’s too great a risk.”
Absently, her hand went down to her belly. What would it be like to be a vessel for new life? She licked her lips. Before Max, the idea of children—her own children—had been abstract, at best. But to bear a child of his…
And he wanted one so little, he’d never made love before tonight.
She found the scar on his wrist. “Are you ever going to tell me about this?”
There was a long silence. Then, he spoke with a certain detached airiness, as if distancing himself from the words he spoke. “It was my father. Once, as a punishment, he put manacles on me. They were old and rusty and too tight and cut into the skin. The wound became putrid.”
“Oh, Max…”
With a sharp intake of air, he spoke abruptly. “I want you to promise me something.”
A sudden rush of tears stung her eyes. She blinked them away. She would not cry, she would not.
“If what happened to my father befalls me, I want you to put as much distance between yourself and me as possible. Take Thomas and go. I’ve made a provision for you—”
“No.”
“Phoebe, my sweet—”
“I’m never leaving you, Max. No matter what. That’s what marriage is. Love does not alter when it alteration finds.”
“I’m not sure that line was intended to be entirely rational.”
“I don’t care. It means something to me.”
“Believe me when I say I appreciate your feelings. But you also must believe that you don’t understand.” Max’s voice went raw. “You don’t know what my father was like.”
Despite the tenor of the conversation, she gave a little laugh. “I think I know a thing or two about difficult fathers.”
“I can’t even describe how he tormented us. What he did to my mother, right before our eyes. For most boys, school is a punishment. For me, it was an escape. But I felt so guilty for being away—being safe—when my mother and sister were left behind.” There was a drawn-out pause. “You don’t know how it tears me inside to think I might one day hurt you or Thomas.”
She propped herself up on her elbows. “Without disregarding your feelings, I would like to say that I wonder what reason you have to think that what befell him is to be your fate as well.”
“There are no certainties, to be sure.”
“Then why live in apprehension of what might never come to pass?”
“Phoebe, please, promise me, if I ever show any signs of descending into madness, you must take Thomas and go.”
Obstinacy made her dig in her heals. “I’ll make no such promise.”
&
nbsp; He righted himself, swinging his legs to the other side of the bed. “There’s no hope for me, Phoebe. I will never be able to give you what you want. This is the last promise to myself I’ll ever break.”
Subdued, she bit her lip. He was upset and overwrought, and all she could think about was herself, when what he really needed was time to think and space to breath. “Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“Max…”
“Let me alone. I’ve ruined everything. I’ll never forgive myself.”
And he left, his rage seeming to pour from his skin and his words an anchor pulling her heart to the bottom of a dark and silent sea.
…
It was only by the grace of providence that Max woke in time to dress for dinner and stumble downstairs.
He found his mother in the drawing room. Alone.
“Where’s Phoebe?”
The dowager looked taken aback, shaking her head as she blinked in surprise. “Well…she left.”
Left?
Max’s insides froze. “What?”
“She came back from her business in the village agitated, called the carriage, and…left.” The tips of her fingers touched her lips. “I thought you knew.”
He tried to take a breath, his lungs all at once seemingly unable to take enough air. It was what he’d expected, her leaving, though he hadn’t expected it to be so soon. His mind couldn’t quite accept the reality of his new situation. It felt too much like part of him had been stripped away. “Alone? She went…alone? No, she must have taken her maid.”
The way his mother looked suggested she didn’t comprehend the significance of what was happening. “I don’t believe so.”
A woman traveling alone—it wasn’t done. Only imagine how desperate Phoebe must have been to leave under such conditions.
What the devil was she thinking?
Max had been unwittingly thrust into a new kind of prison—a life without Phoebe. There could have been no other outcome. He’d expected this.