by J. K. Coi
“Two for the price of one.” Black laughed. “That sounds good to me.”
“No. The deal was made with me, not with her.”
“I’d love to stand here and argue the point with you, but I believe I’ll take some rest. It’s been a long trip. The discussion is rather pointless after all, as Lady Carlisle herself has already agreed.”
“Agreed to what?” He looked at Callie, whose expression had turned cold and distant, just like before. All the progress he thought he’d made with her was suddenly gone. Disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Black threw up a mock salute and turned to Mrs. Campbell. “Thank you again for the hospitality, madam. Dinner is at the usual time, I assume?”
Just how often had Black been here? The idea that he had come behind Jasper’s back, poisoning Callie with his darkness, left Jasper cold.
“Yes, General. If you require anything at all, please let me know.”
“You’re too kind, but all I require at the moment is a soft warm bed to lay my head.”
When both Mrs. Campbell and the general had gone, he let out a deep breath and released Callie’s hand. She too turned from him without a word and made her way up the stairs. He didn’t want to let her go, but he needed some time to think.
“Where the hell is Murphy?” he asked.
Malcolm’s usually calm façade was cracking and he looked almost as angry and frustrated as Jasper felt. “I don’t know. He was around this morning, but he said he had to go out for some supplies and I haven’t seen him back. No doubt he’s trying to keep out of Mrs. Campbell’s way. She tore a strip off him late last night for wandering the halls and knocking over a vase or something.”
Truthfully, he didn’t much care what Murphy was up to. All he really cared about was Callie and finding a way to keep her out of Black’s clutches.
“So it’s true,” Malcolm said. “The War Office is staking a claim, and they’ve sent the infamous General Black to collect.”
Callie veered toward the sound of shouting coming from one of the rooms farther down the hallway, passing the door of her own room along the way. Normally, she wouldn’t have cared, and it didn’t escape her that this was the second or third time today she’d allowed real life to penetrate the shell she’d been living behind since the attack. It seemed her protective cocoon was all but gone. She’d barely been able to keep her composure when faced with the general, but even worse had been the look in Jasper’s eyes…
Shouting gave way to the familiar sound of breaking pottery. Since she’d done her fair share of smashing water pitchers and breaking mirrors in the last four months, she knew it was likely to represent an expression of someone’s frustrated rage and pain.
Without bothering to knock, she pushed open the door and immediately ducked to avoid getting clocked in the forehead with a flying stoneware goblet.
“Oh, my lady! I’m sorry. You probably shouldn’t be in here.”
Callie ignored the very young looking nurse, who had never attended her personally. If she had, she would have known that there were straps hanging from each side of the bed, for keeping the patient immobile in times of…upset.
That memory made her shudder as she looked at the boy. Under the coverlet, the bed past his knees was flat. He hadn’t yet been fitted with new legs. His wiry upper body hummed and thrashed with violence and he quickly drew back his hand to throw something else.
This time, Callie reached up and plucked it out of the air before it could hit her or the wall. She glanced dispassionately at the hairbrush, thinking the raging bull in the bed should consider using it to tame the wild mop of hair sticking out from all sides of his head. She let it drop gently onto the dresser beside her.
“Have you thought about removing the objects he might be able to reach, so that they can’t be tossed about the room while he indulges in childish tantrums?” she asked the overtaxed nurse.
The girl gasped and sputtered at Callie’s callousness, obviously offended on her patient’s behalf. He howled, yelling obscenities that the most hardened sailor would have found vulgar.
“My lady,” the nurse started, darting glances between the two people causing her so much trouble. “I really think that you should—”
“Leave.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Leave us. Now.”
The nurse blanched. Her fingers twined together but then she rushed to do exactly as she’d been told, proving just how new and inexperienced she really was. Callie wondered if she would run to the doctor, but doubted it. From firsthand experience, she knew he was notoriously unavailable for patient tantrums.
She turned her attention back to the youth, who glared at her as if the devil herself had strolled into his room. “What do you want?” he snarled.
“I don’t want anything. Except, perhaps, for a little peace and quiet,” she said, taking a few steps closer. For some reason this child—who couldn’t be older than sixteen years, despite the lines of anger in his face—didn’t make her feel what she thought she would feel.
She didn’t feel pity for him. His pain didn’t magnify and reflect back the desolation and hopelessness that had plagued her own recovery.
“I’m sorry if my bloody dismemberment has inconvenienced you, my lady.” He sneered. Ugly. Angry. But although he was looking at her, she didn’t think he was really seeing her. “Perhaps you should shove off then and leave me the hell alone,” he grumbled.
At least he’d given up throwing things, for the moment.
Callie let out a small smile. She couldn’t help it. Even broken and terrified—she could see it in the slight tremble in his chin that he tried to hide—this young man was a fighter. The kind of fighter she wished she’d been. And she felt the urge to try and help him, although he wouldn’t trust her and would try not to let her.
“Do you have a name, sir hellion?”
He huffed a rather tormented sigh and crossed his arms over his chest. That was fine, she thought. She could wait here with the doctor’s sullen patient the rest of the day if it meant avoiding Jasper and General Black.
He must have determined that she really wasn’t going to give up and leave, because after a long moment he dropped his gaze and said, “Name’s Patrick. And what do you care anyways?”
Callie lowered herself into a narrow chair at the foot of the bed. She took the opportunity while he was quiet and had stopped throwing things, to look at him. He was very thin. Black smudges lined his eyes, and deep hollows carved out his cheeks. It was obvious that every movement brought him pain.
She tried to let go of her own tension and wondered again at his true age. It was difficult to tell for certain. He wasn’t yet old enough to grow whiskers, but he had a long torso, and she imagined that with his legs, he’d have been quite tall. All the more reason for him to have been enlisted so early by the War Office. And if it saw nothing wrong about using children against Britain’s enemies, there was little chance it would relent when it came to the general’s plans for her.
Patrick finally glanced up and she knew the moment when he really saw her. His gaze flew over her, from the long leather jacket and breeches, to her short hair and last, but not least, the mechanical eye. She’d tried more than once to wear a patch and cover it like she did her legs and her hand, but the microscopic mechanical organisms that took signals to her brain didn’t like when she wasn’t able to see, and she’d always ended up with monstrous headaches that threatened to spill her brains out through her ears.
“What happened to your eye?” His question came out grudgingly, as if admitting to curiosity or showing any signs of life was a betrayal of his vow of sullenness—something she could relate to since she’d felt pretty much the same way right up until a few days ago.
What had changed? So little, but it was like a tiny pebble in a dark lake, rippling outward and touching everything.
Jasper.
She lifted her hands and tugged off the leather glove. “The same thing that happened t
o my hand.” She returned his wide look of surprise with a sad smile. “And both my legs.”
“Lordy,” he muttered and glanced down at the space where his own legs should have been pushing up the coverlet on the bed.
“Yes. Well. I was very angry about it for a very long time.” Her voice broke and she cleared her throat. She’d used her shattered voice more today than in the last four months put together.
He nodded his head. “I can’t breathe for the anger,” he admitted. “It feels like I would have been better off dead than forced to live like this.”
“You know, the doctor can truly work miracles.”
He gave her a disbelieving look, but when she purposely stood up with a smooth motion and took a step closer, his expression turned to one of uncertainty and fear. And thank goodness, there was a glimmer of hope too. She took a deep breath. “Would you believe me if I told you that despite feeling like an impossibility now, it does get better? And one day you’ll wake up and it will feel as if the sucking weight on your chest has eased? On that day, you’ll discover the reason why you were meant to live through this…and maybe it will even be worth it.”
He grumbled, but she thought she might have gotten through to him. Just a little.
As she turned to leave, he reached for her hand. “Would you…?”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Will you be here when I wake up from the surgery tomorrow? After the doc puts the metal legs on me? I mean, could you? Be here, that is?”
He sounded so scared. Suddenly all his adult bravado was gone and in its place was the soul-ripping terror of a little boy. “Of course I will. As long as you don’t throw anything at me.” She gently took back her hand, making a show of pulling on her glove so that he wouldn’t see the tears that had gathered in her eyes. “Although I’m sure we could find a few extra pillows to throw at the nurse.”
Jasper edged the door closed before Callie said goodbye to the boy. He didn’t want her to know how much of their conversation he had overheard.
When he’d returned to her room and found it empty, he’d panicked. But his pounding heart had expanded with such pride when he heard her teasing voice coming from this room and realized she’d come to offer Patrick the kind of support he could only get from someone who really understood what he was going through.
He thought of retreating to his own room and giving Callie some time to herself before the evening meal, but changed his mind. The only place he wanted to be was with her.
As he waited for her to take her leave of the boy, he paced the room like a caged tiger before stopping in front of the window. He stared out, but noticed nothing and couldn’t have said if it was snowing again or not.
His mind was on the fruitless conversation he’d had with Mrs. Campbell regarding the nature of General Black’s intentions, after which he’d finally tracked down the reclusive doctor in his basement laboratory. That discussion hadn’t gone well either. The man could barely be moved to speak of Callie. She didn’t concern him any longer, not now that her body was healed and of no further interest to him. He only cared for one thing: his increasingly darker and more esoteric research into the apparently limitless possibilities of biomechanical medicine. The government had promised him unlimited funding, and in return he only had to give up some of his patients to “the cause” once he’d put them back together.
Jasper’s arguments with both of them had only made him more aggravated when he finally retreated back up the stairs.
Callie entered the room. She raised a brow in silent question at seeing him in her room, but showed no real surprise that he’d been waiting for her. She looked so beautiful. Hard and soft. Strong and vulnerable. Damaged, but far from broken.
She walked to the dresser and dropped her gloves on top of it. Unable to stay away, he rose and came up behind her, pulling open the edges of her coat and sliding it down her arms. He draped it over the dresser with her gloves. She looked at him through the mirror. He wanted to take away the doubt that flickered across her face, but at least it wasn’t the dispassionate cold or the anger that had stripped him raw.
He placed his hands on her shoulders, stopping just short of wrapping his arms around her and pulling her back into him. Their kiss this afternoon came back to taunt him, but he didn’t want to push too far, too hard, too soon.
“What are we to each other now?” she asked, her voice sounding hoarse as she gazed into the mirror.
The question took him off guard. “We’re the same as we’ve ever been,” he said, even though he didn’t believe it. “Husband and wife.”
“Is that enough now, do you think?”
“Enough for what?”
“To have a future together.”
His chest contracted. “You tell me.”
With a sigh, she turned around to face him. “I don’t know. Yesterday I would have said no. I would have said there was nothing left for us. Nothing left of me to make a future even possible.”
“And now?” There was nothing in this world that could tarnish her beauty, nothing that could extinguish his love for her. He admired everything about her, treasured every inch of her—flesh, bone, blood and iron—and there was nothing that could make her less desirable to him.
But he couldn’t say any of that. He couldn’t tell her to give him another chance.
He waited, not certain what he would do if she insisted she felt nothing.
“Now.” She lifted her hand to his temple, across his cheek. The metal was cool against his skin, but her touch was careful. “Now, all I know is…I want to try.”
He breathed out, cupping her face in his hands and bringing his mouth to hers. This kiss was harder than the last, need cutting into the heart of him as he tasted her, breathed her in. And this time it was Callie who pushed for more. She curved her fingers around his neck and pushed closer.
He opened his mouth over hers again and again, and she matched him. When he slipped her his tongue she sucked on it, making him groan. His hands fell from her face to her shoulders and spread open to touch as much of her as he could. He dragged them down her back to her waist and clutched the white lawn tucked into her men’s breeches. He hesitated, but only for a moment, and then he pulled the tail of the shirt out and slid inside, under the bottom edge of her corset.
She gasped and arched into him.
“Oh God, Callie,” he moaned into the delicate curve of her throat. The small bit of skin was warm and smooth to touch, a feast for his starving senses. He wanted all of it to be accessible to his hands and mouth and moved to begin undoing the many buttons.
He’d never before been faced with the challenge of undressing his woman from the stuffiness of men’s clothing. It should have been easy, at least easier than the yards and yards of silks she had always been bundled into before, but in his nervousness and haste, the buttons slipped through his fingers.
“Hurry, Jasper.”
At her encouraging whisper, he grasped the shirt in both fists and pulled, popping each button in sequence slowly, all the way down. She shrugged her arms out of the wide sleeves, but her hands caught on the narrow, buttoned wrists and he helped her to undo those as well.
He removed his own shirt then, which was dealt with decidedly more quickly. He wanted to take her back into his arms right away, but instead he pulled her with him to the bed. He pushed her to sit on the edge and knelt on the floor at her feet.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Helping you with your boots.” He took her ankle and tried to lift her leg, but she resisted.
“I’m not an invalid.”
Gazing up at her, he let his hands slide up her calves, feeling the hard metal under her boots and breeches. He’d done his best, made no bones about the fact that he found her desirable as hell and stronger than ever, but he knew it would take time for her fears to fade completely. And he planned to be there every step of the way, supporting her however he could.
“You know I don’t
think you aren’t capable. I’m quite certain you could do anything you put your mind to…and do it better than anyone else.” He moved higher, over her knees. Slipped his hands between her thighs and gently pushed her legs apart.
Her mouth dropped open as she watched him slowly smoothing the way toward her center. “So let me do this. I’ve been waiting to touch you for months, Callie. It feels like years.”
She gave him a very small nod. His thumbs brushed the hidden seam between her legs and she shuddered beautifully.
He pulled back and carefully removed each of her boots before addressing her corset and breeches, until she was finally naked before him. As he looked at her, he was glad to know for certain that the iron didn’t faze him at all anymore. It was simply a part of her, like her bruised soul would continue to be a part of her, probably for the rest of their lives.
He didn’t deceive himself that she would ever return to the person she’d been before the attack, but neither would he, and that other life seemed like a dream now. It had belonged to two completely different people. In fact, he just might love the new Callie even more desperately for all that.
“Lie back.”
She was nervous, he could tell. But she did as he asked. As she moved to lie fully on the bed, he determined to make himself worthy of her trust.
He came down beside her and couldn’t stop himself from touching her. With his hands and his mouth he worshipped her until she shuddered and moaned, her body arching upward toward his every caress. He was careful, but driven to give her the most pleasure she’d ever experienced.
He moved over her, taking a nipple in his mouth, rolling it against his tongue and nipping lightly with his teeth. She gasped, squirming beneath him. Her hands clutched his shoulders. Her legs bent at the knees and her thighs opened to draw him closer. Jasper lowered himself and ground his hips into the bed sheets, even as he sucked harder on her breast.