The Improper Bride (Sisters of Scandal)

by Lily Maxton

  “Anything,” she said.

  He imagined that response in another setting, and desire sparked low in his stomach. Good God, the woman could scrub pots and still make him want her. It was becoming frustrating. Particularly since she’d shown no inclination to kiss him.

  There’d been a moment in the snow when he’d hoped…but he’d been mistaken. She’d tumbled away from him with startling speed.

  If his brain wasn’t so muddled around her, he would have been thankful she’d saved him from doing something as idiotic as kissing one of his servants.

  But his brain must have been well and truly muddled because he was more disappointed than grateful.

  He went to the bookshelves and selected a slim volume, deciding to put something to the test. “Römische Elegien. It’s one of my favorite works by Goethe…particularly the seventh elegy.”

  “Will you read it in German first, and then the translation?” she asked, leaning forward toward him, her eyes bright.

  He suppressed a smile. He didn’t know many people who would sound so excited about the prospect of being read to in German, but he did as she requested. She sat in a nearby armchair, cradling her teacup between her hands, and he remained standing to have a clear view of her.

  He glanced at her between each line that he read—she didn’t understand every word, he could tell—but she cocked her head, as though listening to something far away, music in another room, and the wistful expression on her face made his heart clench.

  Then he read the English translation.

  Heeding ancient advice, I leaf through the works of the Ancients

  With an assiduous hand. Daily the pleasure’s renewed.

  Throughout the night, in a different way, I’m kept busy by Cupid—

  If erudition is halved, rapture is doubled that way.

  Do then I not become wise when I trace with my eye her sweet bosom’s

  Form, and the line of her hips stroke with my hand?

  He paused to glance at her over the top of the book. She wasn’t looking at his face, was staring instead at a point around his chest, her eyes wide. Her teeth dented her soft lower lip.

  His breath a little more uneven, he continued reading.

  While my beloved, I grant it, deprives me of moments of daylight,

  She in the nighttime hours gives compensation in full.

  And we do more than just kiss; We prosecute reasoned discussions

  (Should she succumb to sleep, that gives me time for my thoughts).

  In her embrace—it’s by no means unusual—I’ve composed poems

  And the hexameter’s beat gently tapped out on her back,

  Fingertips counting in time with the sweet rhythmic breath of her slumber.

  Air from deep in her breast penetrates mine and there burns.

  When he was done, he closed the book gently, set it aside, and looked down at her. She was motionless, as poised as ever.

  But her hands…

  He looked at her hands, which were clasped in her lap. They were holding onto one another so tightly her knuckles were white.

  “Cassandra,” he said softly.

  She glanced up, and when she met his gaze, her eyes were dark with desire.

  There. There it was. She desired him.

  He wanted to tip back his head and laugh with the sheer relief of it. His feelings weren’t one-sided, weren’t unreturned.

  She wanted him.

  He took an unconscious step toward her, and her eyes flicked away uncertainly.

  She might want him, but she clearly wasn’t about to throw herself into his arms and kiss him. He’d have to tread carefully. With another woman, he might have pressed his advantage. But he could sense Cassandra wouldn’t respond well to such tactics.

  He would have to wait. He would have to be patient. He would have to dig his fingernails into his palm to keep from reaching out to her and hauling her against him. Even if the waiting, the patience, and the denial nearly killed him.

  “Did you like it?” he asked.

  Perhaps he should have felt cruel for not warning her about the sensuality of the poem. But he didn’t. Not when it had told him exactly what he’d wanted to know.

  “It was very…beautiful.”

  He could tell she meant what she said. Even if the poem had unsettled her, she wasn’t about to deny its beauty. It took courage to be that honest.

  “Your teacup is empty,” he said as a strange feeling expanded in his chest. “Would you like more?”

  This time her glance was a little wry. “Just whisky, please.”

  He poured them each a finger, and they sipped from the teacups, keeping up the pretense. She drifted to the fireplace, stepping close to it for warmth, and after a moment, he set down the whisky decanter and followed her.

  She was silent at first, then took a large gulp of the whisky. “You asked me to tell Cook to make more ham.” She named the meat like it was a swear word.

  “I—” He broke off, startled. He had said that, but they’d actually needed more ham. Never mind that his annoyance at her complete lack of response over his flirtation with another woman had triggered him to say it. Besides, she was his housekeeper. It certainly wasn’t an out of the ordinary thing to ask of her.

  But now she was looking at him, her mouth pinched and tight, with patches of color in her cheeks. She looked upset. Hurt.

  He’d never meant to hurt her. Maybe it had been badly done.

  The surprising thing was, he cared that his behavior had hurt her. He cared deeply. And he hadn’t cared this much about another person’s feelings in a very long time. If ever.

  “Forgive me,” he said. The words felt awkward on his tongue and sounded even more awkward when they were spoken.

  She sucked in a breath. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you apologize to anyone.”

  “Mayhap because I never have,” he said dryly.

  She gave him a slight smile, and the tension in his chest eased. He poured them each another dram of whisky and raised his eyebrows at her. He wanted to see how long she could keep up with him.

  Hell, he wanted to see what she was like when she was a bit foxed.

  Not because he had any wish to take advantage—he just wanted to see.

  The realization was startling. He’d never wanted to witness any of his mistresses foxed. He didn’t want to see Lady Emily or any of his other potential brides foxed. He would probably be disgusted, come to think of it.

  She put the cup to her lips and tipped her head back. And the little smirk that touched her mouth when she lowered the teacup didn’t disgust him at all. “You are a bad influence, my lord.”

  “Henry,” he said.

  “Henry,” she repeated softly.

  Four teacups, several minutes, and some increasingly random conversations later, they were lying on their backs on the carpet, looking up at the ceiling. Her shoulder brushed his as she lifted her arm to point. “There is an enormous crack in your ceiling!” she exclaimed, in a tone of wonder befitting the discovery of the Holy Grail.

  “It feels like there’s a crack in my head when you shout in my ear like that,” he said, but oddly enough, he wasn’t irritated. In fact, he rather suspected he was grinning broadly.

  She curled onto her side to face him, and he rolled his head to look at her. Their noses were only a few inches apart, and he could feel her warm, whisky-soaked breath fan against his mouth. “You have to fix it, Henry.”

  “I can’t reach that high,” he murmured.

  “Jump,” she said, and started to giggle.

  He imagined himself springing into the air, trying to seal a crack in the ceiling. He wanted to laugh. “Tomorrow. I’ll try tomorrow.”

  “Do you ever feel like there’s a crack in your heart?” she asked, sounding contemplative.

  “No.” He thought of his heart more as the center of a fortress—guarded, protected. There were no cracks in his walls. No slings and arrows bombarded his emotions. “Do
you?”

  She nodded, the side of her face brushing against the fibers of the rug.

  “Ah,” he said, and then, quietly, “Did you love him very much?”

  “He was my whole world,” she whispered.

  He stared into her eyes and felt a deep, hollow ache. “You shouldn’t make another person your whole world.”

  “Good advice,” she said. “But I’m not as hard as you.”

  “I’m not hard,” he protested.

  She giggled and jabbed her finger into his chest. “No,” she agreed. “There’s more give to you than you want people to think. But sometimes you’re hard.” She trailed her finger down his chest, her smile turning mischievous.

  “You’re going to make me hard,” he muttered.

  She clucked her tongue. “So vulgar. Whatever am I to do with you?”

  “I can think of a few things.” He paused. “Alas, they’re all related to my hardness.”

  She laughed and reached her hand up lazily to touch his jaw, on his good side. He stilled, barely breathing. In the snow their collision had been an accident. This was the first time she’d touched him like this of her own accord. The whole world stopped, and he waited, waited, poised on the edge of a cliff. Even the smallest movement would carry him over.

  Two of her fingers brushed over his lips, softly, barely a whisper of touch. But the contact sparked fire through his veins. He was dry tinder and she was all heat.

  “I like…your mouth,” she murmured.

  Her hand slowly swept across his cheekbone. He leaned into the caress like a dog seeking affection, like a damned beggar pleading for sustenance.

  “And I like this,” she continued. “And…”

  She let her hand slip lower, down over his throat and his chest. Her knuckles brushed against him, through the fabric of his clothes, as her hand drifted to his stomach. He breathed in sharply as she hovered there, as his mind willed her luscious hand to continue its journey.

  “And I absolutely love—”

  His breath caught.

  “—this waistcoat.”

  He went rigid. He sat up abruptly, the motion making his head spin. Or was that from looking down at her? Her eyes sparkled with mirth and her shoulders shook with suppressed laughter.

  He could tell himself she wasn’t beautiful as many times as he wanted, but God…when she looked like this, she dazzled him. He couldn’t resist tucking a loose tendril of hair behind her ear. “You little devil,” he said with reluctant amusement and more than a hint of awe. “Someday I’ll pay you back for that.”

  “It was worth it,” she said breathlessly. “Henry?” she asked after a moment.

  “Yes?”

  She ran her fingers absently over the rug. “This carpet is very comfortable.” She closed her eyes, and her long lashes shadowed her cheeks. “And I really do like your waistcoat,” was the last thing she muttered before her breathing grew steadier.

  She’d fallen asleep. As quickly as that.

  He extinguished the candles, all except one, which he used to light the way back to where she lay. He stared down at her for a moment. Should he wake her so she could sleep in her own bedchamber? But then she made a soft sound in her sleep, a quiet, murmuring exhale, and his whole body canted toward her like he was a compass and she, his true north.

  To hell with it.

  He lowered himself next to her. He wanted to put his arms around her more than he’d ever wanted anything. What harm would it do? The door was locked. No one would ever know. Sleeping next to her was far from lascivious. She could have no objection.

  So, he curled himself against her back, blew out the last candle, and did just that.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Henry woke with a stiff neck, a raging headache, and a woman who smelled like clean linen and lemons pressed against his body. The woman washed away the other considerations instantly.

  Cassandra.

  His arm tightened around her waist and she turned toward him in her sleep, turned in the circle of his arm as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She fit against him perfectly. His chest felt full, too full, as if it might crack.

  He didn’t think of himself as a whimsical man, but as he squinted against the morning light and watched her sleep, as he took in the vulnerable red mark on her cheek where her face had been pressed to the rug, a line from one of the other elegies came to him.

  Had Ariadne lain thus, Theseus never had fled.

  Only a single kiss for these lips and then, O Theseus, leave her;

  Look at her eyes—she’s awake! Now you’re eternally bound.

  Cassandra must have held more power over him than Ariadne had over Theseus. She didn’t even have to look at him to make him feel bound, to wrap a strange, potent spell around him.

  She moved again in her sleep, muttered something, and smiled. A sleepy, contented smile that made him stretch toward her to catch what she said. When she spoke again, he heard it, and a terrible feeling swept over him, a sensation of falling, as the bottom dropped out of his stomach.

  He was tumbling in a dark abyss and there was no light. He’d only felt like this once before, when he’d first awoken after the fire. When he’d remembered the blank nothingness of his own death.

  He heard the name she sighed as clearly as if she’d screamed it.

  And it wasn’t his.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Cassandra was in that strange phantom place between sleep and waking. She was thinking about the first time she’d met Robert. It had been at a public ball she’d attended with her sisters, which they’d gone to even knowing their evening wear was several years out of style. The very raggedly genteel Morris sisters hadn’t received many offers to dance, so she’d been sitting in a chair along the wall, watching an older man who kept trodding on his partner’s toes, wincing in time with the poor woman. She’d glanced up to find dark, amused eyes watching her.

  There was something about his good-natured amusement that had warmed her and made her smile in return. He wasn’t husband material. She was seventeen and she couldn’t imagine he was much older. He probably didn’t have an income, and he wouldn’t be able to marry without his parents’ permission, anyway.

  All of these thoughts fled when he approached her, bowed over her hand, and asked her to dance. Then he danced with her sisters. And then he’d come back to ask her for another dance.

  During their second dance, they’d had to switch partners briefly and she’d ended up with the clumsy man, relieved when Robert swept her away again with a smirk.

  “Is it indelicate to ask if your toes are unharmed?” he whispered.

  “I thank you for your concern, sir,” she said playfully. “They are, though I did have to dance like this…” She stepped away from him, so only their fingertips touched, and he laughed.

  His laugh was sincere and perfect and made the whole room feel brighter, and she’d thought, in that instant, that she certainly wouldn’t mind hearing his laughter every day of her life.

  He slid his hand fully across her palm, exerting a gentle pressure to bring her back to him, and said, “I like where you were before.”

  And that was that. She’d loved him instantly. They’d met young, married young, and he’d died young.

  And she’d been left behind.

  But…

  A touch at her waist.

  Had she only dreamed that awful day when the letter arrived?

  “Robert,” she sighed.

  His strong presence behind her radiated heat, and she felt safe, once more.

  Then something jolted her fully awake, some new awareness. She turned and opened her eyes to find herself staring at an expensive silk cravat. She didn’t know where she was. She did know that her temples were throbbing and there was a man cradling her in his arms—a feeling she hadn’t woken to in quite some time.

  She tilted her head up and met Henry’s eyes, and memories from the night before flooded back. They’d fallen asleep in
the library, on the floor, at a scandalous hour. After talking for nearly two hours. After she’d teased him mercilessly, and touched his face and his lips and his chest. Heat rose in her cheeks.

  “Was Robert your husband?” he asked.

  Her stomach clenched—that name on Henry’s lips. It felt like two worlds colliding. Two worlds smashing into each other that were meant to stay separate.

  She scrambled to her feet, briefly pressing her hand to her forehead to stave off a rush of dizziness. He stood, too, unfolding himself from the rug more slowly. They faced each other in the same clothes they’d been wearing the night before, though now the clothes were rumpled and askew. She’d never seen Henry rumpled before. It should have made him look vulnerable.

  It didn’t.

  Her tongue stayed glued to the roof of her mouth. What had she been thinking? She shouldn’t have approached him last night. She most certainly shouldn’t have thrown a snowball at him. And by no means should she have accepted his invitation to the library.

  He was looking for a bride, for God’s sake. She couldn’t be sneaking around trying to catch his attention. She didn’t want to be a dog in the manger. She didn’t even want him.

  Yes, maybe she liked him, maybe she even desired him, but it was a very, very long step from desire to succumbing to temptation. And nothing good ever happened to servants who dallied with their employers. She knew, better than anyone, that life was no fairy tale. And she was certainly no Cinderella.

  She pressed her hands to her forehead, trying to clear it. “Yes. Robert was my husband.” Why did he ask? What could it possibly matter to him?

  “Tell me about him.”

  She faltered. That feeling swept through her again, like something in the world had irrevocably flipped. “He was just a sailor. Why?”

  “He was your husband.”

  She swallowed uncertainly. Henry wasn’t giving her much indication of his thoughts. His expression appeared calm, his stance nearly lazy. In fact, he had the outward appearance of a man who wasn’t too invested in her answer. But that begged the question of why he’d asked.