by Gaelen Foley
With a deepening uneasiness gnawing at him, he told himself he would just have to be careful to keep the two main strands of his life from becoming tangled.
He could do this. He had lived this way for years, had he not? An expert liar, he had never had any trouble separating the truth of his inner self as an agent of the Order from his external mask as the drunken Grand Tourist.
Yet for the first time in his career, Max found himself beginning to resent his duty. Deeply.
It wasn’t fair to have to live this way. And worse, in his gut, he was beginning to fear that he could be either a true husband or a solid agent, but not both.
He could not see himself ever shirking his duty for the Order. It was too deeply ingrained in him. Which meant that it was only a matter of time before his marriage, the newer claim on him, ran into serious trouble.
Maybe he shouldn’t have hounded her so relentlessly to marry him, he thought. Maybe he should’ve spared her all this and chosen some other woman he could not love. Then again, he could not imagine his life without his darling Daphne. She was the most important person in the world to him. God, he would drive himself mad with all this. Best not to dwell on it. He had no choice but to lie, and besides, he did not want her dragged into all the Order’s intrigue.
With a slight prompting, at last he managed to shepherd his male guests into the drawing room to rejoin their ladies. Before long, the whole company removed into the music room, where the ladies each began to entertain them, in turn, with their various musical talents.
Recalling what his father-in-law had told him about Daphne’s love of playing the pianoforte with her mother years ago, he went out on a limb to suggest in front of all their guests that she take a turn and play for them.
She stared at him for a long moment, and then bowed her head like the model wife. “As you wish, my lord,” she murmured, but as she brushed past him on her way to the instrument, he thought he detected a hint of frost in her blue eyes.
She opened the hinged lid of the piano seat and took out some printed music, which she duly leaned above the keyboard. Taking her place at the pianoforte, she tentatively touched a few keys, as though becoming reacquainted with a long-lost friend.
With a deep breath, she began to play.
It was a simple, soulful piece full of expression; Max recognized it as a pianoforte arrangement of a famous piece by Albinoni.
The haunting adagio filled the chamber with its sorrowful beauty, slow, but building in passion to a vaguely ominous crescendo.
Max furrowed his brow. What a bizarre choice for a dinner party, he mused. Maybe it was the only piece she knew. But, surely, after all the pains she had taken to create a pleasant atmosphere for their guests, this music changed the mood, to say the least.
It did not take Max long to realize this could be some sort of message. To him.
He stared at his wife as she played, feeling as though, in a way, he was seeing her for the first time.
Not in a thousand years could he have guessed at the depth of the feeling bottled up inside her. And it began to dawn on him that for all his careful research beforehand, there were perhaps still parts of Daphne he did not know.
Either he had finally asked the right question by requesting that she play, or she was merely ready now to share this part of herself, for reasons of her own.
The adagio and her unimagined passion in the playing left them all agog. After about eight minutes, her performance came to its resonating end.
The guests were silent for a few seconds, carried away in reverie, then Max began applauding for her as he held her in his stare, and everyone else followed suit.
“Oh, I say!”
“Quite affecting,” the guests exclaimed.
With her music ended, she looked up slowly from the piano as though she had just come through an ordeal. She met Max’s gaze, and as the others continued to applaud and praise her unheralded talent, he walked over to her, offering his hand to help her rise.
On one hand, he was bursting with husbandly pride in her talent, but on the other, he was wondering what the hell was going on.
“You are full of surprises, my lady,” he murmured as he assisted her up from the piano seat. “Any other secrets I should know about?”
“Not from me, my lord. And you?” She did not wait for his answer, but released his hand and glided away, returning to her guests like the perfect hostess.
Max was flummoxed.
It was curious that he could read strangers, but only now began to see that his beloved was just a few degrees shy of ignoring him.
Had he done something wrong? Perhaps she was merely concentrating on their guests. He had no doubt this night had been a nerve-racking experience for her. He knew it had been weeks in preparation.
Still, the revelation of her soulful performance put him in mind of one of the trapdoors inside Dante House—the turning bookcase in the drawing room, which could only be opened by playing a precise series of notes on the dusty old harpsichord in the middle of the room.
She stood a few feet away charming the local vicar and his wife. Max studied her with renewed fascination, though perhaps he should have been worried. All he knew was that the longer she kept him at arm’s length, the more everything in him clamored for her.
She seemed to have erected some kind of invisible barrier between them, and though Max knew he had no room whatsoever to complain, he was not at all used to this, and did not like it.
For the briefest instant, he wondered if there was any chance she had seen something she ought not to see. Might she have stumbled across some stray detail of his role in the Order?
Oh, but that was impossible. He knew he had grown very comfortable with her, true, which Virgil had warned him to be wary of, but he was too experienced an agent to have done something careless.
He could not imagine that he had blown his cover with his own wife. It had to be something else. Whatever the cause of her almost imperceptible alteration in her demeanor, he wanted his usual Daphne back.
Immediately.
“Your father told me you used to love music, but I had no idea you could play so beautifully,” he said when they were in their room several hours later, taking off their formal clothes after the last guests had gone.
It was two hours after midnight.
“I am glad I can still surprise you, my lord.” She was sitting at her vanity, drawing off her long satin gloves, while he walked in from his adjoining chamber, untying his cravat.
Tugging it loose, he went over to her side and gazed down at her for a moment. “Daphne, are you all right?”
“Yes, why?”
“You seem…distracted,” he said warily as he moved behind her and took over the task of helping her unlatch the clasp of her necklace.
She dropped her gaze, holding up her hair so it would not catch on the strand of pearls. Max studied her in the mirror while he waited for her answer.
“Actually,” she said at length, “I’m worried about Carissa.”
“Carissa?” He frowned as he put the unfastened necklace in her hand. He had forgotten about her friend’s letter. “Why? Is something wrong?”
“Her cousins are being unkind again. I am thinking of going to London to give her some moral support. You wouldn’t mind, would you, darling?”
Max thought he detected a sharp undertone in her cool-toned question. “It’s rather late in the year for London. Why not just invite her here?”
“I can go to London if I want to. It’s not as though I am your prisoner here, am I?” She sent him an unflappable smile, but he read a different story in her blue eyes.
He gave her a chiding frown, concealing his deepening awareness of her tension. “Of course you’re not my prisoner, darling. Are you getting bored of country life? Or maybe you’re just getting bored of me.”
She eyed him askance, then set her earrings aside with a shrug. “Now that the dinner party’s done, I don’t know what I shall do with mysel
f.”
Behind her, Max leaned forward, bracing his hands on either side of her against her cherrywood vanity. “If you really want to go back to Town to see your friends, my love, I will take you there myself, if that would make you happy. However, you’ll have to wait a few days until I get back.”
“From where?” She looked at him in surprise in the mirror, clearly unsatisfied with his answer.
“I have to go up the Gorge to pay a visit to the ironworks. I think I told you I own a controlling share of the company.”
“Controlling, yes,” she murmured.
“Now that the war is over, there’s not much call for cannons. The men who run the factory want to show me some ideas for what can be manufactured there instead.”
“I see.”
“It won’t take more than a couple of days. I’ll be there and back before you even miss me. When I return, then we can go to London.”
She stared at him in the reflection. “Why don’t I come with you?”
“To an ironworks? And you think you’re bored here?”
“I didn’t say that I was bored.”
He held his easy smile in place by dint of will. “You will be if you come with me.” He backed away and began unbuttoning his waistcoat.
“I don’t think so. I’ve never seen an iron factory.”
“It is a dangerous place, Daphne, full of roaring fires and noxious fumes. If you are with child, especially, it’s best that you not breathe that tainted air.”
She dropped her gaze once more, as though she saw no point in even arguing with him. He was relieved, because of course he had no plans of visiting the ironworks.
“Very well, my lord. If that is your will.”
“Do you know what I think?” he murmured, returning to her after a moment. “I think you have been putting too much pressure on yourself of late. It’s over now.” He kissed her head. “You can finally relax. You did splendidly. A man couldn’t ask for a better wife. Even if he were to order her out of a catalogue.”
She succumbed to a reluctant trace of a smile.
It seemed to warm the room—and Max’s heart.
“There she is,” he whispered. “I know how to cheer you up. Shall I draw us both a nice hot bath?”
She sighed and looked away. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe not a bath, then. I think I know what you need.” He slipped his finger into the back of her gown, sliding it along her shoulder blade. “A good, thorough loving.”
Her blue eyes flicked to his in the mirror as he began to rub her lovely white shoulders, bared for his touch by the sweeping neckline of her gown.
The ironworks, eh? Daphne had her doubts, to say the least. The man had no idea that she despised him at the moment. Yet, it was the strangest thing. For, even so, his touch still aroused her instantly.
Oh, the devil. He had always had a talent for stirring her blood, even when she knew she should not want him. She refused to let the sigh that rose escape her when he bent and kissed her neck, ever so enticingly.
She almost offered up some dreary excuse—that she was too tired or she had a headache—but then she suddenly recalled how deeply her husband always slept after they made love.
What a wicked notion came into her mind just then. Dared she? Daphne went very still. As his slow, nibbling kisses moved to her earlobe, she thought abruptly of their battle over the sapphire necklace several weeks ago, and the extreme techniques he had employed to gain—he thought—her compliance.
That day he had shown up at her father’s house, he had overwhelmed her in the parlor, refusing to go away until he had conquered her senses in a flood of mindless pleasure.
Well, my darling, two can play that game. She closed her eyes, enjoying his sensual kisses. So far tonight, she had taken great satisfaction in knowing she had thrown her lord off balance with her music.
She had taken herself off guard, as well, but if he was going to throw down the gauntlet to her like that in front of their guests, she was not about to answer like a coward.
Seeing him look so surprised and slightly uneasy with her stormy playing had been a marvelous victory, well worth the risk she had taken of making a fool of herself, playing for guests when she was years out of practice. But it had gone well.
Indeed, what an exquisite joy it was to know that, for once, she had rattled his supreme self-control.
Maybe she should continue in that vein, she mused, for his suave kisses traveling down her nape told her in no uncertain terms that her husband was still under the false impression that he was the one in control here, as usual.
We’ll see.
It was time to turn the tables on the Demon Marquess, and beat him at his own game.
“I want you,” he whispered, raising goose bumps of thrill on her skin.
She gave him a sultry smile in the mirror and said, “I want you, too.”
When Daphne rose and turned to him, the devilish gleam in her blue eyes made Max wonder if she was spending too much time with him. Maybe he was rather a bad influence on her, he mused as Lady Rotherstone laid her hand on his chest and began backing him toward the armchair.
He went willingly; holding his stare, she pushed him down into it.
Max awaited her pleasure, his heart pounding. Her unusual mood added to the excitement, for him. She was unpredictable tonight, as though they were tapping into some new side of Daphne he had not been privy to before.
Maybe it had something to do with her playing the music, but clearly something had unleashed the woman’s passion to a degree he had not seen before.
With that, she opened the placket of his trousers and lowered herself to her knees. She took him in hand and stroked him urgently, but Max was breathless when she lowered her head and took him into her mouth. Her moist, rouged lips cradled his cock; her tongue laved his length and played against his tip.
The restrained modest frill on the cuff of his shirtsleeve trailed over her golden hair as he petted her head, watching avidly. He caressed the beautiful face making love to his member.
After a moment, quite transported, he laid his head back with an anguished groan of pleasure, relishing her ministrations. With each determined squeeze of her hand and silken stroke of her mouth, she drove him ever closer to the edge. His legs tensed. When he was on the brink of climax, she halted, cruelly.
She looked up with wet lips and glittering eyes. “Get in my bed,” she whispered. “Take off your clothes.”
He gave her a hazy-eyed stare, but he liked these orders very much. True, they shocked him a bit coming from his good lady wife. Still, what sane man would question it?
He smiled warily at her and did as he was told.
Maybe she finally felt safe enough to flex her sexual power with him; of course, if Max did not know better, he would have guessed she was as angry as hell about something. But then again, if she was angry, why was she all over him this way? She was not a calculating female.
Women.
He did not want to question it. He liked this hot intensity from her. As much as he loved his darling Daphne, this harder, more intoxicating version of her seemed to answer something deep within his soul. A need he had never shared because he just assumed a man couldn’t ask that sort of thing from his wife.
From a mistress, maybe. But Max did not want anyone else ever again.
She sat back and watched him strip off his clothes and walk, buck naked, to her bed. As he lay back, she rose and came toward him, idly taking the ivory combs out of her hair, loosely shaking out her golden tresses. She did not remove her gown, but climbed onto the bed in a delicate rustle of taffeta. The fire’s glow slid over the rich fabric with a fluid sheen, like dancing fire.
“Tonight,” she said as she moved toward him on the mattress on all fours, “I’m going to use you for my pleasure, Rotherstone. I just thought you should know.”
“Go right ahead.” As naked as the day he was born, he lay back on his elbows in a pose of invitation, his proud erec
tion standing up tall in full salute at the lady’s approach. He was quite ready and willing to be used as she saw fit.
She fluffed her skirts across his waiting body as she moved her thigh across his hips and straddled him.
God, in that red dress, she looked like one of Satan’s minions, expert in seduction. Perhaps she had come to enslave him, Max thought. This was one temptation against which he knew he did not stand a chance.
He was trembling with anticipation for her as she leaned down slowly to kiss him. Reaching down between their bodies, she took his cock in hand, and with a frank lust equal to his own, guided him into her body, letting him stroke the source of her craving with the part of him made to satisfy it.
She moaned as his extraordinary size tonight proved just how much he liked this brazen side of her.
Once she had him deep inside her, she sat up and began to ride him. Watching the fierce pleasure on her face, Max wondered how he was going to last, especially after her attentions in the chair.
She rode him faster, baring her teeth, tossing her head and taking him in earnest now, just as she said she would. Max clutched her thighs; she braced her hands on his ribs, arching her back, having her way with him completely.
Overwhelmed with a crazed, sudden desperation for her breasts, he leaned up and fumbled with her bodice, got angry at it two seconds later, and tore the fabric open with a growl. He ripped away her stays, and as her plump young breasts bounced out to greet him, he feasted on her nipples like a starved man. “Mmm.”
She went still, reveling in his hands and his mouth all over her creamy bosoms. She clutched his head against her body, her erect nipples straining for his tongue.
Quavering groans escaped her, pure pleasure as he raked the taut bud gently with his teeth. “Oh, Max.” She pressed him back down onto the bed a moment later with a stare full of wild hunger.
And she then proceeded to drive him completely out of his mind, touching herself as she resumed his helpless ravishment. Max could feel his control coming apart at the seams like a ship rocked on stormy seas. She was kissing, teething his stubbly jaw with a feminine snarl of pleasure.