Lord Savage

by Mia Gabriel

  “Oh, it’s happened, ma’am,” the maid said darkly. “Happened plenty o’ times, to plenty o’ ladies and gentlemen, too, I’m sure of it.”

  “Then I appreciate your concern, Simpson,” I said, closing my eyes. It was how lady’s maids demonstrated their loyalty, fussing about like this. Hamlin could be much the same, treating me as if I were made of the most fragile porcelain. “I wouldn’t wish to perish here in his lordship’s bath.”

  Simpson leaned closer, lowering her voice. “There’s others besides me thinking of you, ma’am. Lady Carleigh’s worried sick, and that’s the truth.”

  I frowned, and opened my eyes. “Why should Lady Carleigh be worrying over me?”

  “Because, ma’am,” Simpson said succinctly, “you’re like a prisoner in these rooms, ma’am. His lordship’s keeping you locked up tight as some poor traitor in the Tower, making you take your meals up here alone with him and not letting you out for anything. All the other guests, they’re speaking of nothing else.”

  “What I choose to do with Lord Savage is not anyone else’s affair, Simpson,” I said, a little testy. “Not Lady Carleigh’s, or the other guests’, or most especially yours. I can assure you, I’m hardly his lordship’s prisoner.”

  “No, ma’am?” Simpson asked, vigorously squeezing the shampoo through my hair. “Then why don’t he let you come down to dine with the other guests?”

  “It’s not that he doesn’t ‘let’ me, Simpson,” I said. “It’s no mystery. He and her ladyship agreed that after the unpleasantness between him and Lord Blackledge the other night, it would be best if he and I dined in private, apart from the others.”

  “Then that would be news to her ladyship, ma’am,” Simpson said. “She’s fearing for you, wondering why you’re keeping apart.”

  My frown deepened. This was becoming too much. “Forgive me, Simpson, but I doubt very much that her ladyship is confiding her fears in you.”

  “But her ladyship did, ma’am,” Simpson insisted, “on account of me being the only one his lordship lets see you. Excepting Mr. Barry, of course, not that he’s to be trusted, belonging all loyal to his lordship’s household as he does.”

  “Then I believe you’re mistaken, Simpson, or perhaps you misheard Lady Carleigh,” I said. Why would a viscountess like her ladyship make a maid like Simpson into her confidante? “She and Lord Savage agreed to it on Tuesday night. I assure you, Simpson, that his lordship has only my best interests in the matter.”

  “As you say, ma’am,” Simpson said, in a way that made it clear she thought that what I was saying was complete nonsense. “But while his lordship’s taking such fine care of you, ma’am, has he ever spoken to you of his poor wife, of what became of Lady Savage?”

  “Really, Simpson,” I said firmly. “Now you truly do presume on my good nature. Lord Savage is not a modern-day Bluebeard. The tragic details of his wife’s death should be of absolutely no concern to you at any time, and I doubt Lady Carleigh would approve of her servants gossiping about any of her guests in such a disgusting and lurid fashion.”

  But Simpson persisted. “It’s not lurid, ma’am, but the truth. Lady Savage was a young and beautiful lady in her prime—just like you, ma’am—with no ailments or illnesses to speak of, and a loving mother to his lordship’s little boy. Then all of a sudden, there she was one morning, dead as can be in her own fine house. What do you make of that, ma’am?”

  “That you are an inveterate tattle and slanderer, Simpson,” I said, disgusted. Like every mistress with a staff, I’d had to deal with gossiping servants, and I’d even sacked several for it. “My husband also died suddenly. Does that make you suspect me of foul play as well?”

  “No, ma’am,” Simpson said. “But you’re not—”

  “Is it your habit to warn every Innocent who has drawn Lord Savage as a Protector in Lady Carleigh’s game?”

  “No, ma’am,” Simpson said promptly. “Because he’s never behaved like this before when he’s come to Wrenton to play the Game, not with any other lady. You can ask her ladyship if you don’t believe me.”

  For the first time, I paused, letting my doubts creep in. Savage had told me exactly that himself, over and over, saying that I was unlike any other woman he’d known. I’d taken it as the kind of pleasing but empty flattery that gentlemen whisper to ladies, especially ladies they wish to seduce. I’d never let myself seriously consider that, with Savage, it might be true.

  “Keeping you all to himself, ma’am, away from the others, being so possessive-like, picking that fight with Mr. Henery—that wasn’t like his lordship, not at all,” Simpson continued. “No one plays the Game like that.”

  “I wouldn’t know otherwise,” I said, striving to sound aloof. “I’ve found the way he has played it to be quite—quite enjoyable.”

  Simpson regarded me with a look that could only be described as pitying. Uneasily I remembered how the maid herself had been an Innocent before—perhaps even with Savage, for all that she’d denied it—and was far more knowledgeable about men and sex than I myself ever would likely be.

  “Forgive me, ma’am,” Simpson said, “but that’s because you are the most innocent Innocent that her ladyship’s ever invited here to play. Other ladies are more worldly-wise, if you understand. They would’ve noticed the difference in Lord Savage straightaway.”

  Abruptly I stood, scattering water drops, and Simpson hurried to wrap me in a towel. This conversation was making me increasingly uncomfortable, even insecure, and I felt that I was betraying Savage simply by having it. The sooner it ended, the better.

  “I will admit that I’m not the most experienced of ladies,” I said, “That is why I accepted Lady Carleigh’s invitation. I wished to, ah, to broaden my education, and with Lord Savage I have done exactly that.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Simpson said, blotting my arms. “Forgive me, ma’am, but these bruises on your wrists—”

  I jerked back my hands, tucking them inside the towel. I should have realized the maid would notice. My fair skin now wore wide bands of bruises like matching bracelets, black-and-blue and rubbed raw by the silk cords that Savage had used yesterday. My ankles were likewise marked, and there was a fresher mark on my shoulder from this morning, where Savage had nipped at me again in the heat of his fucking.

  I didn’t mind the bruises—in fact, in a way I’d become proud of them. I’d left my marks on him as well. They were all visible proof of how intense our passion for each other could become, and how, too, I became so abandoned to the pleasure he stirred in me that I hadn’t been able to tell the difference between that pleasure and pain. It was all vastly complicated, jumbled together into an intoxicating brew, and I didn’t want to change any of it.

  Except having the lady’s maid notice now.

  “You are being far too forward, Simpson,” I said. I stepped from the tub, wrapping the towel closely around me and tucking one end in to make it stay in place like a gown.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the maid said softly, wrapping another towel around my dripping hair. “You’ve lost flesh, too. Don’t he let you eat what Cook sends up, ma’am?”

  “Of course I’ve been eating,” I said. I did eat; I just hadn’t eaten much. I’d been so consumed with passion that my appetite for mere food had disappeared, but I hadn’t realized I’d lost weight, too. Not for the first time, I was thankful that Hamlin hadn’t accompanied me here. Hamlin would have spotted it in an instant, and likely tried to force-feed me as well. “I’m hardly starving, Simpson.”

  “No, ma’am,” Simpson said, hesitating. “I know there’s only two more days before the week’s done and the Game with it, but if his lordship dares go beyond pleasure, you need only to call for—”

  “How delectable you look, my dear Eve,” Savage said, joining us. “Venus rising from the sea would be envious of you in my bath.”

  I blushed, both from the compliment and from wondering if he’d overheard any of my conversation with Simpson. Immediately Simpson step
ped back, with her head bowed, dipping a quick curtsey to Savage as she made way for him to join me.

  “I trust I’ll smell more agreeable than if I’d landed at your feet in a scallop shell,” I said, smiling as I held my hand out to him.

  He was barefoot, wearing loose linen trousers and a V-neck sweater of soft blue lamb’s wool that was the exact color of his eyes. The fact that he wore the sweater without bothering with a shirt beneath it was thrillingly intimate to me—something that an earl would never ordinarily do, and something, too, that I guessed must pain Barry exceedingly. He’d dressed in careless haste and without the manservant’s help, going from being in bed with me directly to the pile of letters in his sitting room, and the results looked like it. He’d lingered so long with me, too, that he hadn’t left time to be shaved, which meant that his jaw remained darkened with ungentlemanly stubble.

  But in my eyes, Savage had never looked more irresistibly handsome, his sleeves shoved up over his forearms and the deep V of the sweater’s neck offering me a heady glimpse of his broad chest and the dark, curling hair upon it. Beside his properly dressed secretary in his stiff, starched collar and tailored suit, Savage didn’t looked like an earl at all. He looked like a pirate.

  As he took both my hands in his, his smile was roguishly piratical, too, his teeth white against his stubbled jaw.

  “Very well, then,” he said gallantly. “Not Venus rising from the sea, but my own Innocent rising from the sweetest of rose petals strewn across her bath.”

  I laughed, pulling the towel from my head and letting my hair fall over my shoulders in damp, unruly curls.

  “No rose petals, either,” I said. “Only some sinfully expensive French nonsense, poured into the water to scent it and me with it.”

  “Ever the American, literal to a fault,” he said, laughing with me as his fingers linked into mine. “Where’s the romance in your soul, Eve?”

  “You have more than enough romance in your soul for us both, and a dozen others besides,” I teased in return. It was true, too. He was the most romantic man I’d ever met, or perhaps the most romantic man who wasn’t afraid to let it show.

  “If I do, Eve,” he said, “then I’ll lavish my stock entirely upon you.”

  His laughter faded as he raised one of my hands to his lips. His blue eyes smoldered, white-hot, when he looked at me: I could express it no other way. With his gaze locked with mine, he kissed not my hand but the bruise circling my wrist. When he was done, he lifted my other hand and did the same, his lips tracing a protective ring around my wrist that reminded me all over again of everything we’d shared.

  I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until he finished. I sighed in a shuddering rush of delight, a sigh that blew away all the niggling little doubts that Simpson had planted, too.

  How could I ever doubt Savage when he’d do things like that? How could I ever suspect him of anything other than being his own darkly irresistible self?

  “Dismiss your maid,” he said, still holding my arched wrist before his mouth. “I want you alone.”

  I nodded, unable to look away from him. “Simpson, that will be all.”

  I was vaguely aware of the maid curtseying, seeing from the corner of my eye only the final dip of Simpson’s black-clad figure as she backed from the room.

  Savage didn’t wait until she’d closed the door before he slipped his hand inside my towel. He quickly found my bottom, spreading his fingers to caress the swell of one cheek.

  I swayed into him and rested my hands on his chest, loving the feel of his muscles beneath the soft wool sweater. I parted my lips and tipped my face up toward his, sure he’d kiss me now.

  He didn’t.

  “What was your maid saying to you?” he asked. He was smiling still, but the warmth was gone from his eyes.

  “Nothing of any importance,” I answered. That much was true, and I hoped it would be enough.

  “Really, Eve?” He turned his head slightly, cocking a single dark brow to show his incredulity. “Nothing?”

  I shook my head, drops of water flicking from my tangled hair. I’d no reason to be nervous with Savage, and yet I was. My gaze dropped from his eyes to his mouth.

  “That ‘nothing’ upset you,” he said. “I could hear it in your voice.”

  I sighed. “It was nothing but backstairs tattle, the kind of nonsense servants are always whispering among themselves about their betters. But—but you’re right. What Simpson said did upset me, because it was so preposterous.”

  “Then tell me.” He continued to caress my bottom beneath the towel, arousing yet comforting at the same time. “If you’re upset, I need to know, so that I can remedy the problem. I don’t want you to keep things to yourself. A trouble shared is a trouble halved.”

  I smiled nervously. “Didn’t Benjamin Franklin say that first? A wise American?”

  “You’re stalling, Eve,” he said. “Tell me what Simpson told you.”

  I sighed again, and at last relented. “She said that Lady Carleigh and the others are worried about us. About how we keep to ourselves and don’t join them.”

  “Ah,” he said. His expression didn’t change. “So they are worried about us being such hermits. Would you rather have played the Game with others?”

  “Hardly.” I thought of how grateful I was not to have been forced into sex with Lord Blackledge, or Lord Carleigh, or any of the other men, really. I’d come here wanting only Savage, and nothing I’d seen downstairs had changed my mind even a little.

  “You’ve told me you left New York to find sexual adventure,” he said. “Perhaps Lady Carleigh is right to be worried. Perhaps I’ve narrowed your experience too far by playing the Game the way I’ve chosen.”

  “But you haven’t,” I declared without hesitation. “Not in the least. I wouldn’t trade this time in your company for all the world.”

  He smiled suddenly, like the sun coming out from behind gray clouds. “Nor would I, Eve. Was that all Simpson had to say?”

  I paused. I’d gone this far without a misstep. I might as well continue to speak the rest and not be burdened with a guilty conscience on account of the omission.

  “They are worried about us together,” I said, “but more specifically they worry about you. They believe you have changed since you’ve become my Protector.”

  He frowned. “Simpson dared say that to you?”

  “She did.” My smile was wistful. “Evidently Lord and Lady Carleigh and the rest of them miss the earlier version of Lord Savage. He must have been so very entertaining in company.”

  “Would you prefer to have him here as well, Eve?” he asked, a note of bitterness to his voice. “That other chap? You sound as if you would.”

  “I never said that, Savage,” I said defensively, surprised. “Not at all.”

  “You didn’t have to,” he said. “It was clear enough from your face alone. You’re a dreadful liar, Eve.”

  He tried to smile again, and failed. I glimpsed a flash of unexpected vulnerability in his eyes, a doubt that I’d never expected to see there.

  I reached up to cradle his jaw in my hands. “Then you’ll believe me when I say that I do not want any other man here with me now. Only you, Savage.”

  He pulled my hands away from his face, though he didn’t let them go.

  “I’m a different man with you, Eve,” he said, rubbing his thumbs lightly across my wrists. “I’ve told you that before. I’ve never been so—so reclusive with an Innocent here at Wrenton. I’ve always shared, and I’ve both given and taken, for the sheer sport of it. Some weeks I’ve fucked anything that was in my path, because that was just what I did. Good old Savage the satyr, insatiable to the last.”

  I didn’t want to hear that, and tried not to wince when I did. What kept me there was the turmoil I saw in his eyes, a confusion that he clearly understood no better than I did myself.

  He gave his head a rueful little toss, as if to shake away whatever demons were gnawing at him.
<
br />   “But I don’t want to give away a moment with you, Eve,” he said, “and even the thought of another man with you drives me mad. You saw what happened with Henery. You were there. I’ve never done that before, and it was all because he dared touch you.”

  “You defended me, Savage,” I said. “I’ll never fault you for that.”

  “No,” he said, his voice heavy. “But you see, that’s exactly it. You make me different, Eve, and I can’t begin to know why or how. It’s simply how it is.”

  But it wasn’t simple. His emotions were written raw all over his face, warring within him.

  “Which version of yourself do you prefer?” I asked gently. It was a risky question, but I had to learn the answer.

  “Which version?” He grimaced. “You say that as if I have a choice, Eve, as if I can change back and forth like some penny conjurer’s best trick.”

  “Are you happy the way you’ve been with me?” I asked, the same question in other words. “Or would you rather return to being that charming, lighthearted fellow who apparently hopped from bed to bed?”

  “Don’t, Eve,” he said sharply, taking several steps away from me to put both physical and emotional distance between us. “There’s no need for you to try to coax me into a better humor. You, of anyone, must know by now I’m not persuaded by empty words.”

  I hugged my arms around my breasts in the damp towel, suddenly chill without him to warm me. “Then why won’t you answer my question?”

  “Because it doesn’t matter,” he said curtly. “In two days the Game will be done, and we’ll go our own ways. If you are satisfied with this week, then so am I, and that will be an end to it.”

  His words cut me hard, exactly as he’d intended. “But what if I—we—don’t wish it to end?”

  “It will end, Eve,” he said, his dark brows drawn tightly together. “It must end. That’s the entire point of the Game—a week for amusement, experimentation, for doing things here that we must not do in the greater polite world. You knew that when you accepted Lady Carleigh’s invitation.”