Wickedly Ever After

  “It’s the mortarboard I wore during my days at Oxford.” As she puzzled over this strange gift, he shifted uncertainly. “I know I haven’t been the most attentive husband to you. I can’t explain myself, except to say . . . I am an educated man, Hester, but some things were never taught to me. Nor, I fear, did I ever show an inclination to learn them. Women, for instance . . . I was brought up to believe that a wife was only slightly more than a beautiful ornament . . . a grown-up child that a husband was expected to indulge. But you have shown me these past few weeks what I had been too ignorant to see. That you are a woman of rarity. Your beauty is but the least of your qualities. I did not fathom the depths of your intelligence, your wisdom, your loyalty, your courage. Even though your name does not have half the alphabet after it as most scholars’ do, you have shown outwardly what you possess inwardly. This,” he said, holding up the cap, “is for all that you’ve taught me. My wife . . . and my love.”

  Hester looked at him with entirely new eyes. He had given her so much more than he realized. Each of his words was like a living seed planted in her fallow heart. Finally, she had more than a husband, more than a lover . . . she had an intimate.

  Hester brought her lips to Thomas’s mouth, and this time, there was more than physical passion in his kiss. Never before had she felt the connection. Finally, she felt joined together with her mate, thinking and feeling as one. Today would be more than Athena’s wedding day—it would be hers as well.

  Hester’s beautiful coif did not survive the consummation.

  THIRTY

  It was the best present she had ever been given.

  As she walked through the now vacant rooms at Tigh na Coille, she was flooded with happy memories. The familiar music of the creaky floors, the sight of the pear trees outside the kitchen window . . . even the smell of the Ayrshire earth seemed to welcome her home.

  Marshall walked beside her, enjoying the look on her face as she darted around the house, showing him each landmark of her childhood years.

  “How long can we stay?”

  “As long as you like. One month . . . maybe two each year. After that, I’m afraid duty beckons. Remember that you’re the new lady of Ashburnham Manor.”

  Athena studied him, so regal in his afternoon finery. His hair shone, as did the gold silk waistcoat and the buttons on his navy blue coat. There was no need for Kildairon. Here was the real gold mine.

  “Thank you for buying my old house for me. I can’t tell you what it means to be back here again. When I moved to England as a girl, it felt as if I were leaving the whole of me behind . . . as if I were starting someone else’s life. Now I feel as if the scattered pages of my life are finally being put together, bound into a single perfect volume.”

  He took her hand. “And how does your husband figure in this . . . book of your life?”

  She smiled. “You’re the best part.”

  He pulled her into his arms. “So when does the climax take place?”

  She rolled her eyes heavenward. “We just got here. Let’s put a bookmark in it, shall we?”

  He ignored her. “In all the years you lived here, I’ll bet there’s one thing you’ve never done in this house,” he whispered, nibbling on her ear. “What a fitting end to this chapter, eh?”

  He started to tug at the sleeve of her beautiful new pink dress, and she chided him for nearly tearing it. “Marshall! I bought this for you.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “No, I mean I wore it especially for you.”

  “Thank you. Take it off.”

  “What could a man have against this beautiful dress?”

  “You mean, apart from his hips?”

  His naughty words sparked a flame of arousal in her, just one degree short of dangerous. “Marshall, behave yourself. The servants are just in the other room. If we lock the sitting room door, they may not think us respectable.”

  His chest shook with laughter. “You establish a school to teach women how to arouse men—within the walls of a bordello, no less—and then go on to become the most notorious woman in London . . . and you’re worried about being thought respectable?”

  “That was London. This is Scotland.”

  His eyes crinkled in bemused desire. “Something tells me that before long, you’re going to set Scotland on fire too.”

  Her lips were captured beneath his. Once his heavy arms wrapped around her body and pressed it to his, her whole being thrummed in contentment. By degrees, her pleasure gave way to passion, and the erotic flow coursing through her body obliterated all thought of anyone but Marshall.

  Though her life had been filled with hardships and troubles, they were but stepping-stones paving the way to this one perfect man and their life together. It was those very events that had shaped her into the person that this man would fall in love with. And she wouldn’t have traded a single one of them if it meant losing them.

  His hand crept under her breast, and lifted it to his mouth. The mesmerizing kisses began to inflame her lust. Of its own volition, her leg rose around his hip. Maddened, he lifted her in his strong arms and carried her to the door. Then he turned the key.

  Now she was imprisoned between the hard door and his hardening body. There wasn’t an inch of her body that wasn’t on fire for him. Though the wooden door shook against the jamb with a guilty sound, and their heavy breathing was audible to everyone, there was no going back. The lady in her was subjugated by the woman in her.

  And with her last remaining coherent thoughts, just before their bodies became one as their hearts had done, she chuckled at the way their romance had turned out. It wasn’t at all like the fairy tales. But it was the way she and Marshall would prefer to live.

  Wickedly ever after.

  EPILOGUE

  The FOR SALE sign was nailed once more to her door—a familiar humiliation, an insulting disgrace.

  The ladies who came to learn the art of sex at her lap had graduated to discover the meaning of love. They left her not as courtesans, but as wives.

  So few of her denizens ever found the way to true love. It had eluded even her, as the sign so shamefully proclaimed.

  But London was a city full of lost women in search of something, they knew not what. There would be others to school, others to seduce. She was not called the Pleasure Emporium for nothing. Soon, someone else would come to gawk, poke around, and maybe purchase. She would let them look, let them touch, let them buy.

  A dark-clad figure approached the front door, the person’s dark clothes disappearing in the night. Something connected between her and the dark figure, a mutual desire that sprang not from love but from need. This person would do.

  The figure lifted a hand and removed the FOR SALE sign, tossing it onto the street. The dim light glinted on the barrel of a key as it penetrated her front door. With a satisfied thunk, the lock turned, and the Pleasure Emporium opened herself once more.