Grace gasped then gave in to her better humor. “Honestly, I wasn’t—I’m not nervous.” Even as she said the words, she realized they were far from the truth. She’d been dreading so much of the day, it had never occurred to her to dread the night. She’d expected things to unravel long before then…
But it was Mr. Rutherford, after all; Mr. Rutherford whose kisses invoked a fire in her that she’d never known and separated her from reason with a single touch; Mr. Rutherford who was kind and who had liberated her from her brother’s prison.
Grace kept hold of her veil. “I want to wait for Mr. Rutherford.”
“Oh! Of course!” Mrs. Clay stood up, and cheerfully retreated. “I’ll leave you to it and if you need a thing, pull the bell.”
“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Clay.”
The quiet of the room enveloped her as the landlady’s footsteps faded. To pass the time, she mentally inventoried what she’d carried from the house including a slightly uncomfortable sixpence the maid had put in her shoe for luck. The coin didn’t feel particularly felicitous as it slid back and forth under the arch of her foot as she nervously shifted her ankle back and forth.
Who ever thought of a lucky coin? Other than the poor soul who might think any found wealth—even a penny—could change your fate? My sixpence could just as readily be cursed…
A story about a cursed piece of eight unwound slowly in her head though she shied away from drawing in obvious pirates and decided that the poor soul whose fate could be changed should be a self-righteous man with more money than heart. He would be cruel and greedy and find it in the mud a few feet away from some orphan child, its eyes sunken and little hands like a bird’s claws. He would pick it up, flash the gold at the waif and pocket it with a smile—and unknowingly unleash a torrent of evil retribution on his own head that would make the plagues of Egypt look like a—
“Grace.”
She jumped up with a startled cry as Mr. Rutherford spoke. She hadn’t heard his footsteps but there he was, solid and substantial in his wedding finery standing a few feet away. “Mr. Rutherford!”
“Michael.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s a small thing, I know and selfish to ask, but if you would use my Christian name; if I could hear you say my name…”
“Michael.” Grace put her fingertips to her lips. The name was hardly foreign but on her tongue it was as sweet and strange as any exotic spice.
He glanced over at his apartment’s open door, ajar a few inches. “You didn’t go in.”
“I didn’t know if you’d want me to. I thought I would give you the chance to choose.”
“I thought I already had,” Michael gestured back toward the pair of chairs near the fireplace. “Sit with me, then. Talk to me, Grace.”
She sat back down and he joined her. Grace marveled that they were in the exact same position from her last visit to the Grove and at almost the same time of day—but nothing was the same. “Why aren’t you furious? Sterling…bullied us both but it was my fault that you were in such a terrible position. You wanted to return to the house and I…I was the one who was weak and…” Grace’s breath caught in her throat. “I wasn’t thinking past the moment and I’ve robbed you of your life, Mr. Rutherford. How can you not be angry with me?”
“Michael,” he supplied.
“If you aren’t angry, I am.” Grace sighed. “And you will be…
“I will?” He sat up a little straighter, a man bracing himself for the worst and Grace plunged ahead.
“I know I said once that I wished I was strong enough to refuse you…”
“And then you said I make you weak,” he countered gently.
“I am not weak! And I am not some piece of chattel to be wed against my will! A lifetime of subjecting myself to my father’s will and then my brother’s and—I won’t mince about and lose myself! Not even to you!”
“You mean especially to me?”
“I mean, not even to you, a man I have come to—care for deeply and so quickly it robs me of logic.” Grace pressed a hand against her pounding heart. “It terrifies me how appealing you are, Mr. Rutherford! How—distracting! But I am not fit to be a wife, Mr. Rutherford! And if either you or my brother had bothered to ask, I’d have told you so and spared you the heartache! I’m—scattered and…”
“And you have plans,” he finished for her.
“Didn’t you?” she asked then winced at the harsh sound of the question in her ears.
He looked at her calmly, a man weathering the storm. “A few.” He put his hands on his knees. “I’m not going to hold you against your will, Grace. I don’t have any intentions of robbing you of your self-determination and you must know how much I admire your spirit. Then again, I should confess that if your brother hadn’t demanded that I marry you—I might have resorted to kidnapping to get you out of his hands.”
She gasped, heat flooding her cheeks. “How dramatic!”
He smiled. “It never fails to amaze me the things that delight you, Grace.”
Tantalizing pleasure curled around her at his response and then something in her clamored in alarm. Because he wouldn’t want to keep her once he knew the truth…and he deserved to know everything.
“I’m no wife,” she said again, standing abruptly.
He stood more slowly, holding up his hands defensively as if he feared she was about to flee. “Because of your plans?” he asked.
She nodded. “I’m…” She looked up into Michael Rutherford’s grey-blue eyes and then it all tumbled out in a desperate scattered rambling confession. “I’m a writer! I know it’s a bit beyond the pale—I’ve never told anyone! Never. Not that anyone ever asked. But it’s scandalous, isn’t it? Because I published them! I…crossed some invisible line and if Sterling ever found out—not that it matters anymore if I’m out of his care. I always thought to go on my own steam. I have saved over three hundred pounds, you see, and—I can make my own way!”
“Grace—“
“What a terrible wife I’d make you! You see, I’m writing all the time. Well, whenever I can…but it’s not a secret I could keep from a husband. You’d have found out eventually and I don’t think I could compound my sins by ever lying to you. I don’t cook, I clean well enough but beyond running a very small house and planting ornamental gardens, I’m hardly the wife you deserve, sir.”
“Grace—“ he tried again but she couldn’t bear to hear him end it.
She bolted for the doorway to his apartment to grab her smallest valise, the one that held her papers and her life savings sewn into the lining. Grace seized the handle and stood only to freeze on the threshold.
She dropped the suitcase, her hands numb.
Michael came up slowly, unsure of what held her so still.
Grace began to walk, like a person sleepwalking toward the rough stone fireplace and Michael’s gaze narrowed to study his room with new eyes. And then spotted the penny novels.
Damn it!
“I can explain!” he stepped forward. “I think I mentioned at the horse fair that I enjoy them. But if they offend, Grace, I will put them away. I know it’s not the most respectable library for a home where a lady is present and…” Michael stopped himself as she reached the mantle and took down one of the serials he’d had bound together. “A favorite of mine, Grace, but not anything you’d ever…”
Oh, god. I’m losing my edge, aren’t I? How didn’t I piece this together before this moment?
“You’re a writer.”
“I’m a writer,” she repeated breathlessly and pressed the bound serial to her chest like it was a holy tome.
“That’s brilliant!” he said then watched the strange fierce pride in her eyes as she clutched the work of A.R. Crimson. “Grace? Are you…?”
“I told them I was a secretary and personal assistant to the Mr. A.R. Crimson and left a manuscript for their review. It was the worst kind of theatrical bravado but they believed me. I invented him. His entire portfolio and a f
ew ridiculous letters he’s supposedly dictated on travels in Spain to convince them. I’ve never been to Spain, sir. But I…never thought it would sell and—I can’t give it up, Michael.”
Michael ran a hand through his hair doing his best to absorb what she was saying. “You wrote that?”
She nodded. “It’s...fanciful, I know. They’re silly bits. Pirates and mermaids, centaurs and my favorite part, the floating cloud cities. Though I confess I added that part in at the last after I saw a man on a ladder painting a neighbor’s house and started to think about ladders hanging down from the sky…”
Michael reached out to gently pull the book from her hands, turning it over as if it were made of glass. “You! You are A.R. Crimson? You wrote “The Black Staircase” and the “Isles of Thunder” series?”
She nodded solemnly. “I did.”
“My God!” he spoke without thinking. “These stories are chilling and grim! But you! No offense, Grace, but you are the most cheerful person I have ever encountered. It doesn’t seem possible.” He turned the book over in his hands. “But all those clever things you say, so original and unexpected…”
“I won’t give it up!”
Michael stared at her as if she’d grown horns. “I would never demand such a thing!”
It was Grace’s turn to experience a shocked delay in comprehension. ‘“I would rather die than—what? What did you say?”
“It never occurred to me to ask you to cease writing! What kind of man do you think I am?” Michael asked.
“You’re my husband… If it were improper before, it is most certainly more scandalous after I’m wed, is it not? For a married woman to pose as a man writing those kinds of books, it’s unthinkable!”
He crossed his arms. “I don’t see what difference it makes and frankly, since we are already up to our necks in scandal, I for one, can’t see what you have to lose. I like—No! I love the notion that you keep your independence, Grace. You light up when you speak of your stories and I don’t want to be the cause of seeing that end. I know marriage to me has destroyed much of your happiness but let me salvage what I can.”
“Not destroyed!” she turned to him, touching his upper arm while her right hand still cradled “Isles of Thunder”. “I was so fearful that you would seek to stop me or think less of me or—I dreaded disappointing you, Mr. Rutherford, more than I dreaded anything else in this world.”
“Michael,” he said again as he covered her hand with his and guided her to the large sofa in the middle of the room. “Grace, look again. I live in an inn. I have brought my bride to a very unconventional home. It is a small apartment of two rooms and we share our sitting room, dining room and the water closet with the other apartment on the same floor.” Michael gestured around them, his tone changing. “But there is no cooking or cleaning to be done. Mrs. Clay and the staff would be mortified to think of you not pulling that bell and I should warn you that when the weather turns cool, Tally will make it his personal quest to keep this room so toasty you will never wear wool again.”
“You make it sound so perfect,” she smiled up at him.
“You’ll write. You’ll write to your heart’s content and I will keep the world at bay. What say you?”
“I’m not sure what to say.”
“There is a price for all of this, Grace. So you’re wise not to jump quickly.”
“What price?” she asked warily, the bright pink in her cheeks fading fast.
“You must vow to let me read all your new stories before you send them off to your publisher.”
She laughed, the last tendril of fear in her eyes fading. “Consider it my wedding gift.” She retrieved her valise and opened it to retrieve a few loose pages. “Here.”
Michael took them and read quickly, secretly delighted beyond words at the notion that A.R. Crimson had handed him a hand-written excerpt of a story that no one else had seen.
“The opiate was derived from the blackest inky blood of the Kraken that swam in the deepest depths of icy ocean imaginable. It was rumored to first come to them as a “gift” from a sea witch to their King. No one was sure of its origins. But the residents of Atlantis had come to prize it above all other things. One small dose transported the subject into a state of euphoria like no other, warming their skin and reminding them of what it had been to stand in the sun and walk as men—but the temporary side effects were a nightmare to behold! The black ink coursed through their veins and showed through the pale glove of their skin, pulsing in branches of gothic feathery dark veins across their bodies and proclaiming their immorality.
But the true horror was that over time, the addictive opium permanently stripped them of the white marble like beauty they possessed, a beauty that had inspired the Greeks and Romans to believe in Gods—and transformed them into tentacled monsters with gaping maws where their mouths had been and serpent shaped spines.”
“Well?” Grace asked tentatively. “Grim enough for you?”
“It’s the best present I have ever received.” He handed the pages back to her. “Thank you, Grace.” God, how had it come to this? He was married to a woman he’d already thought clever and beautiful but now, she was…so much more. Inside that golden head of hers were all the worlds he’d always escaped to; the epic stories that entertained and chilled. His Grace was the author he’d most admired.
And was still the woman whose beauty made his hands ache to touch her, to hold her and explore every inch of her body.
If Ashe’s advice was true…
Michael shook himself to refocus on the moment at hand. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to impose himself on her, tonight or any night. “Welcome to your new home, Mrs. Rutherford.”
Grace took in the room. Where the current fashion in décor was all patterns and contrasting textures with ornate useless objects, there was nothing in her new husband’s rooms that didn’t have a purpose or seem created for comfort. There wasn’t a scrap of lace or feminine touches although she suspected that the flowers in a vase on the table by the windows were Mrs. Clay’s influence. The furniture in the sitting area was oversized and upholstered in beautiful dark leather that looked worn yet butter-soft and obviously sturdy enough to allow Michael to relax as he wished. A beige and yellow thick oriental style rug lay in the room’s center and the black walnut planked floors shone from years of wear and beeswax polish. She shyly noted that even his bed was larger to accommodate his height; the four-poster bed filled the entire alcove and jutted out two feet beyond.
The windows were diamond paned like the ones in the sitting room adding a certain charm as the oak trees outside filtered the light and gave his kingdom a magical touch. The noise of the city was muted and the haven of Mr. Rutherford’s rooms had an appeal all their own.
Michael cleared his throat. “Here is the wardrobe. Mrs. Clay…took most of my clothes, well frankly, I don’t know where she took them, but it seemed important that you have room to hang your things and to feel at home.”
“You’re very kind.”
“Here is your private parlor, study and,” his voice trailed off a bit as he pivoted in a circle without taking a single step. “Bedroom.”
“Yes, I see.” Grace nervously smoothed her palms on her skirts. “It’s enchanting.”
He gave her a wary look. “You’re being generous but I’m grateful for the gesture, madam.” Michael smiled and straightened his shoulders. “Are you hungry? I think Mrs. Clay will have dinner for us soon.”
“To be honest, I don’t think I can face all of them and a dinner…and cake and…I feel like a thief that’s stolen into your life, Michael. And Mrs. Clay—she is so…kind.” Grace twisted her hands, wishing she knew how to voice her fears. Everyone was being so accommodating and tender, she felt like she would fracture into a thousand pieces at the first touch. It was irrational but the new fierce happiness that had seized her was too raw and too impossible to absorb. “I’m sorry. It’s a dream and I don’t want to jostle myself awake and lose t
his. Can we stay here? Can we stop time?”
“Absolutely. Let’s hide then, like the conspirators we are, for a while longer.” Michael stood. “Stay here, settle in and unpack and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Do you trust me, Grace?”
She nodded, unable to answer him as her emotions surged and her heart clamored to tell him the truth. It’s more than trust, Michael.
My life is yours.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It decided to transform dinner into a decadent picnic as he returned with a tray piled high with a wedding feast for two. Mrs. Clay had even managed to make sure there was a healthy slice of wedding cake atop it all and Michael’s brow furrowed as he balanced his burden and closed the apartment door behind him.
“Was she terribly disappointed?” Grace asked cautiously.
He shook his head as he triumphantly landed the tray on the small table in the sitting area. “Not even a smidge of a fuss, I swear it.” He turned back and his chest tightened with the jolt of satisfaction at the sight of Grace Porter standing in the midst of his apartment still in her wedding finery.
Not Porter. She is Grace Rutherford from this day forward.
He prayed he looked more nonchalant than he felt. “I presented it as more of a romantic desire to spend time alone than…an aversion to hearing a dozens of speeches and impassioned toasts to our happiness.”
She smiled. “Good. I, um, took the liberty of unpacking as you suggested and I have to agree that wherever your clothes have gone, Mr. Rutherford, you may need them if the weather changes.”
He laughed. “They are a bell pull away, no fear!”
She moved to sit down and began to arrange their dinner. “I fear I’ve disrupted more than the arrangement of your wardrobe, Mr. Rutherford.”
“Michael,” he corrected her softly.
“Michael,” she repeated it like a gentle caress and Michael’s knees turned to rubber.
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