by Mia Marlowe
“The doctor did say he thought Mr. Deveridge would wake naturally, did he not?” Cuthbert said, his voice unusually bright as if he were putting the best face on a grim situation.
“Yes, but he made no promise of when.” Artemisia took the offered cup of chocolate and sipped slowly lest she burn her tongue.
Last night—had it only been last night?—she’d been on her knees, trying to separate Trevelyn and the ambassador when she was set upon by half a dozen armed men, led by none other than Naresh.
“Friends of Mr. Doverspike,” the Indian explained.
Trev’s reinforcements from The Blind Dog had arrived only in time to lift the ambassador’s body from his. To her relief, it turned out to be the ambassador’s blood filling in the cobbles on the bridge. Kharitonov had been rushed to hospital, but was not expected to recover from the round he’d taken from his own gun.
Trevelyn however was far from unscathed. In his scuffle with the big Russian, his head had been knocked against the stone of Westminster Bridge. Cuthbert had sent for a physician who pulled back Trev’s eyelids to examine the pinpoints of his pupils.
“It appears he’s taken more than one blow on the head. If only Your Grace would allow me to bleed the patient, perhaps that might speed the recovery,” the doctor had suggested.
Artemisia took a look at the stained condition of his lancet and bowl and ordered Cuthbert to show the good doctor out. She only hoped he was a better prognosticator than his medical equipment might indicate.
“Does Madam wish to send word to the Earl of Warre?” Cuthbert pressed a plate of scones into her hand.
She nodded, almost too tired to speak. Surely under these circumstances, the earl would shelve his differences with Trev.
“Might one suggest we also send this?” Cuthbert handed Artemisia a neatly pressed edition of The Tattler.
She ran her gaze over the copy beneath the blurry image of a woman kneeling beside a man’s prone form. She knew it was a picture of her and Trevelyn, but no one else would be able to guess their identities from the shadowy daguerreotype. The prose was execrable, but to Mr. Wigglesworth’s credit, the facts were essentially correct. The article detailed the exploits of a certain unnamed peeress and an intrepid son of a prominent member of the House of Lords in their quest to preserve national secrets from grasping foreign spies. The Russian menace on the Indian sub-continent, a favorite subject of war mongers in the Empire, was discussed with strong invective, if few facts.
Then the reporter went on to praise his own invention, a method of using ignited gun powder to illuminate an object to facilitate photography by night. The process still needed refining, Mr. Wigglesworth admitted, but with the proper financial backing . . . Artemisia let the paper slip through her fingers.
“The earl might wish to know that his son is a man of valor,” Cuthbert said approvingly.
“Yes, please do send word.” She sank back into the chair. Trevelyn was a hero. She hoped the earl would take note of his second son before it was too late.
“Then perhaps Madam would wish one to take over her vigil. If one may be forgiven for saying so, Your Grace looks fair done in.” Cuthbert’s eyes were ringed with dark circles as well, but his offer was genuine.
“No, Cuthbert, I’ll stay,” she said. “I want to be here when he wakes.”
“Very good, madam.” He inclined his head in deference. “Please ring if you require anything. Anything at all.”
“Thank you.” She took a last sip of chocolate and turned her attention back to Trevelyn, smoothing back the errant lock of hair that insisted upon hanging down on his forehead.
Cuthbert stopped at the door and cleared his throat.
“Is there something else?” she asked.
“Only this, madam,” he said, his old back ram-rod straight. “One has served Southwycke all one’s life, with not unwarranted pride, one might add. However, one has never been prouder to serve this house than one is at this moment, Your Grace. Your actions of late have been brilliant and courageous in the best traditions of English womanhood, if—ahem!—not strictly traditional, you understand.”
“Thank you, Cuthbert,” she said, deeply touched by his slightly qualified praise. It was rarely given and therefore precious.
He bowed once more and closed the door softly behind him.
Artemisia looked back at Trev’s sleeping face, the strong bones beneath the planes of his cheeks and beard-stubbled chin. His chest rose and fell in a comforting rhythm. She moved the chair closer and laid a hand on him, just to feel the warmth of his skin. His bruised eye was still swollen, but beneath the thin skin of his other eyelid, she thought she detected slight movement.
The eye opened and looked at her. A smile curved his lips.
“I like Cuthbert well enough,” Trev said. “But is the old windbag always so pompous and condescending?”
“No, sometimes he’s worse.” She hugged him and found her feet leaving the floor as he swept her onto the bed with him. “Careful, you’ve been injured.”
“It’ll injure me more to let you go, Larla.”
His lips brushed hers and then as if a fire rose up in him, he claimed her mouth in a searing kiss. Her lips softened and she yielded to his thrusting tongue. When she did a little exploring of her own, he groaned into her. Despite her exhaustion, his kiss sent new vigor flooding her limbs. His hand stroked the length of her back.
Even though her skin screamed out for more of his touch, she settled beside him, pressing the length of her body against his, and rested her head in the crook of his shoulder. She ordered her rioting insides to be satisfied that Trev was on the mend. The last thing he needed now was a midmorning romp with a woman who couldn’t control the twitch in her own knickers.
“How do you feel?” She drew circles around his bare nipples. How thoughtful of Cuthbert to have undressed Trev before tucking him into bed. “You’ve taken a nasty knock on the head.”
He winced as he sat up to explore the swelling lump on the back of his skull. “Well, that explains the railway gang pounding away in my brain.”
“You really should be resting, you know.” She eased him back into the eiderdown pillows.
“I will, if you will,” he promised.
“Agreed,” she said.
He slipped a finger under her chin and tipped her face up to his. “One of us is not dressed for bed, Your Grace. Guess which one?”
She sat up. “Are you suggesting, sir, that I strip out of my clothes in broad daylight and climb naked under the covers with you?”
“I can think of nothing that will speed my recovery more,” he assured her as he fingered the buttons that ran down the front of her bodice.
“If you’ve a pounding headache, how can you think of lovemaking?”
“It’s not my head doing the thinking just now, Larla. You and I have had a splendid adventure and now we’re safe. It’s only right we should celebrate by refusing to be celibate.”
He narrowed his gaze at her, noting the smudges of blue beneath her eyes no doubt. “You’ve been up all night, haven’t you?”
She nodded, smothering a yawn with her hand.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“A guest room in my home,” she said.
He frowned. “Then you wouldn’t want to be found under the sheets with me here then, would you?”
There was no place else she’d rather be, but after Cuthbert just praised her stellar behavior, she did hate to chance losing his hard-won approval so quickly. “It would be considered shocking.”
“It’s all right, Larla.” He starting a teasing assault on her row of buttons once more. “If Cuthbert comes back, tell him I grabbed you in my sleep and wouldn’t let you go.”
“And you somehow managed to undress me while in a state of unconsciousness?”
“What can I say? I am a man of many talents.” He waggled a brow at her. “Care for a demonstration?”
She laughed. “You really did take a blow, didn
’t you? It seems to have removed all sense of propriety from your mind. Has it escaped you that if we were found nude in bed—“
“Naked,” he corrected as he pulled her close and delivered a string of feathery kisses down her neck.
“If we . . . “
Her eyes drifted shut when he took her earlobe between his teeth and bit down softly. Stars burst behind her closed lids.
“You were saying?” he transferred his attention to pulling the pins from her hair and running his fingers through the length of her tresses.
“If we are discovered . . .”
Somehow he managed to part the front of her bodice and his clever hands teased the tops of her breasts and made her bound nipples ache. One touch, just one flick of his fingertips and she might shatter altogether. The power of speech deserted her.
“Yes?” he prompted unhelpfully.
“If you and I are found naked in bed together we’d have to . . .”
His kiss saved her. She wasn’t usually unable to finish a coherent sentence. One of his hands busily gathered up the yards of material in her skirt. Now he unbound her garters and pushed down her stockings. Then his hand moved up her leg, pausing to linger on the curve of her calf and dally in the dimple behind her knee.
“We’d have to what?” he asked.
“Well, propriety would dictate that . . .”
Her bloomers were an impediment, but even so, the warmth of his hand burned through the thin cotton on her thighs.
“If we are found in flagrante . . .”
His hand discovered the slit in her bloomers and exploited the breech in devastating fashion.
“Delicto,” he finished for her.
“Delicto,” she repeated as shudders of pleasure rolled over her. Her world narrowed to primal elements.
Heat. Pressure. Need.
She felt herself near that exquisite ‘little death’ when he pulled his hand away.
“No,” she moaned. Every fiber of her body cried out in dismay. “Why did you stop?“
“Hush, Larla.” His hands slid up and down her inner thighs. “I won’t leave you like this. But you’re right. We shouldn’t be found naked together. You offered me the position of your lover some time back.” His smile defined wickedness. “I’ve a mind to take up the post right now by showing you how inventive lovers get around little details like too much clothing.”
Chapter 33
She wanted to point out that if they were discovered, the pressure to marry would hammer them from all sides. Even though she loved Trevelyn, how could she submit to the semi-childlike state allotted to a married woman? She meant to explain it to him, but his hand was playing that maddeningly sinful game with the slit in her bloomers again.
Artemisia couldn’t form a complete thought to save her immortal soul.
“I mean to have you, Larla.” His voice was a husky whisper. “You may as well relax and enjoy it.”
She let her head fall back and surrendered to the waves of sensation. While he drove her to an aching fury with one hand, his other was on her hip, moving her into position so slowly, she wasn’t even aware of what he was doing until he withdrew his hand and the tip of him entered her through the slit in her bloomers in a long, slow thrust.
“There you go,” he said huskily. “As you requested, we’re not naked together. In fact, you’re dressed well enough for a tea party in the garden.”
“I don’t feel like a tea party,” she managed to stammer.
“Neither do I.”
He pressed her hips down and she hugged him inside her with tiny muscles she hadn’t realized she possessed before. His eyes glazed over and he groaned. A thrill of power washed over her because she was able to so sweetly subdue him. Then he pulled her down for a kiss and they slid into the madness of their joining.
She’d been so near that hot, dark place she knew as her ultimate destination, it didn’t take many of his deep thrusts to send her over the edge. Those same small muscles that she had tormented him with moments before, now contracted in a frenzy that cost her control of her limbs. Then just as her release subsided, Trev stiffened under her, pulsing into her, hot and deep.
She looked down at him. His eyes were still unfocused with pure animal pleasure. But then he seemed to return to himself, for he reached up a hand to stroke her cheek.
“I’d never have thought it,” he said softly.
“Thought what?”
“That I could lose myself so completely and never want to be found.”
“Ah, but it’s too late to hide, sir, for I have found you.”
“So you have, madam,” he said with a lazy grin. “And what do you intend to do with me? Now that the key is irretrievably gone, there’s no pressing need to go to India. I’ll talk to my commander and see about an assignment that will keep me here in London. If I have my way, I intend to spend my days making Father wish I was on another continent and my nights loving you. And perhaps I should warn you that I’m very set on having my way.”
The blasted key. She hadn’t had a chance to tell him.
“But if you had the key, you’d still leave?”
“I’d jolly well have to.” He stroked the length of her arm with his fingertips. “Lucky for me old Cuthbert tossed it in the Thames.” A frown creased his brow. “Just not so lucky for England.”
Artemisia bit her lip. There was nothing else for it. He had to know. She started to pull away.
“Where do you think you’re going?” He gripped her tighter.
“There’s something I must show you.”
“Not interested. I like what I’m seeing right now just fine,” he said with a wicked grin.
“Please, Trev. It’s hard enough for me to leave you. Don’t make it worse.”
“All right, love.” He let his arms fall to his sides. “But hurry back.”
She climbed off him, tucked the covers across his chest and smoothed his hair from his forehead.
“Why, thank you, Mummy,” he said.
“Cheeky devil.” She gave him a playful swat on the shoulder. Then she crossed to the dressing table and picked up the fussily decorated bandbox. She opened the box and pulled out the small intricate mechanism. “England’s luck is still intact. You didn’t really think I’d let Cuthbert throw something as important as Beddington’s key into the Thames, do you?”
Trev sat bolt upright. “You’re joking.”
“Not a bit,” she admitted. “You told me to make certain it didn’t fall into unfriendly hands. The only way I could think of to do that was to make a decoy, as you had suggested. If it came to choosing between you and the real key, well, I knew I couldn’t put the Crown’s interest before my own.” With a growing heaviness in her chest, she handed the cylinder to him. “So there it is.”
Tears pricked at her eyes and she turned away lest he see. “And there you go,” she whispered.
“No.” He caught her hand in his. “There we go.”
She looked back at him.
“I know this isn’t the way such things are normally done, Larla,” he said. “I should speak to your father, then arrange to be on bended knee in your wild garden with a ring in my hand, but the truth is, I don’t think I can wait.” He rose from the bed and stood before her, as heedless of his nakedness as Adam before the Fall. “I have no title or lands to offer you, Larla. There’s only myself, and if I’m to play the Great Game in Hind, there may be little enough of that. But I do love you as I never thought to love anybody. And I hope that you love me.” He brought her palm to his lips and planted a soft kiss in the center. “Be my wife and come with me.”
Joy leapt inside her. She’d never wanted to be a bride the first time. But now she was offered the chance at life with a man she loved beyond all expectation.
She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him fiercely. “Yes, yes, I’ll marry you.”
Trev kissed her deeply. Then he scooped her up and twirled her around, her long skirt draping around them like a banner
wrapped around a flagpole. She laughed for pure joy, too caught up in the moment to care if anyone heard her through the closed door.
“There’s just one thing,” she said, slightly dizzy from the twirling. “Well, two actually.”
“Name them, my heart.”
“Mr. Shipwash has learned a great deal, but he still needs some guidance. You won’t mind if I continue to be Mr. Beddington from time to time, will you?”
“You don’t intend to grow a beard and mutton-chop sideburns, do you?”
“Of course not,” she said.
“Then I’ll be pleased to have Mr. Beddington in my bed as long as you wish to play him.”
She stroked his jaw line, dark with the stubble of his heavy beard. “I’ll send Cuthbert in to shave you. Of the two of us, you’re the only one in danger of sprouting mutton chops at the moment.”
“Point taken,” he grinned. “What else do I need to agree to if I’m to become the luckiest man in the British Empire?”
“It’s so silly of me to worry about this. You’ll laugh when you hear.” Her heart fluttered in her chest like a caged bird. “You won’t have any objection if I continue painting?”
“I think you’re a splendid artist, Larla. Of course, you must keep painting.”
“Oh, I’m so glad.” She hugged his neck again. “I was afraid you might not understand how important it is to finish my work.”
“I’ve enjoyed posing for you so far. I can manage for a while longer, I suppose.”
“Good. You have such a natural bent for this sort of thing. After we’re finished with Mars, perhaps you could help me find the right model for Eros.”
His smile flattened. “You mean you intend to keep on painting other naked men?”
“Not naked. Nude. There’s a difference.”
“Damned if I can see it.” He set her back on her feet and crossed his arms over his chest. His scowl would have frightened most men, but it only served to stiffen Artemisia’s spine.
“Trevelyn, all major artists have used the human figure as subject matter for their greatest pieces. Our own Queen is having a bacchanalia painted on the walls of her boudoir. You can bet Pan and his nymphs will be scantily clad. Good Heavens, even the Vatican is filled with nudes,” she said heatedly. “There’s no cause for you to use rough language.”