by Kelly Bowen
“He has a daughter now,” Josiah said, draining a serving of brandy he’d poured hours before. “Poor little mite is cursed with your red hair, madam.”
He saluted with his glass. “Apologies for that remark. Ungentlemanly of me. Christmas approaches and I… am not at my best.”
Every year, Christmas came around, and Henrietta did too. Every year, Josiah found some excuse to lurk in the mercantile across from the inn at Amblebank, until he caught a glimpse of his tall, beautiful daughter.
Henrietta resembled her mother, but every feature that had been pretty on Katie was striking on Henrietta. Katie had had good posture, Henrietta was regal. Katie had been warm-hearted, Henrietta was unforgettably lovely. Katie had known her Book of Common Prayer, and Henrietta—according to her brothers—quoted Shakespeare.
Accurately.
“I kept her from the books,” he said, experimentally shifting forward in his chair. “Didn’t want her to end up a bluestocking old maid.”
Josiah pushed to his feet, though the movement sent discomfort echoing from his back to his hips, knees, and feet. Not gout, except possibly in one toe. Gout was for the elderly.
“Which I shall soon be, God willing.”
Katie remained over the dying fire, smiling with the benevolence of perpetual youth. Josiah was glad for the shadows, because his wife’s eyes reproached him for the whole business with Henrietta.
Girls fell from grace, Katie had once said, when a man came by intent on tripping them. Lately, Josiah had begun to suspect that Katie’s point was not without validity, from a mother’s perspective. Henrietta had been sixteen when she’d fled to London, and Josiah had been sure she’d come home within the week, chastened, repentant, and forever cured of her rebellious streak.
Instead, she’d shamed her family, set a bad example for her brothers, and broken her father’s heart.
“She made her bed,” Josiah said, blowing out the candles on the desk. “She can jolly well lie in it. And—with a damned aching hip—I shall lie in mine. Good night, madam.”
The portrait, as always, remained silent, smiling, and trapped in pretty youth, while Josiah steeled himself for the growing challenge of negotiating the main staircase at the end of the day.
* * *
In Michael’s wildest imaginings, he could not have anticipated the sheer joy of making love with Henrietta Whitlow. She was like a cat in a roomful of loose canaries, chasing this pleasure, then that one, then sitting fixed while fascinated with a third, until leaping after a fourth.
She wanted to spoon with Michael’s arms snug around her, then she demanded to lie face to face and touch every inch of his chest, arms, face, and shoulders. Just as he was having trouble drawing a steady breath—he’d not realized his ribs were ticklish—she’d rolled to her back.
“Now you touch me,” she said, and Michael had obliged with hands, mouth, and body.
She gave him the sense that she’d never before permitted herself an agenda in the bedroom other than: Please him. Accommodate him. Make him happy. Her own wishes and dreams hadn’t mattered enough to any of the men in her bed—or she’d been that skillful at hiding them—and thus those wishes hadn’t been allowed to matter to her.
They mattered to Michael. Henrietta mattered.
She liked the sensation of his breath on her nipples, he liked the ferocious grip she took of his hair. Then she wrapped her hand around another part of him, and Michael sat back, the better to watch her face by the firelight as she explored him.
“If women were as proud of their breasts as men are of their cocks…” she muttered, tracing a single fingernail up the length of his shaft.
“There would be more happy women, and happy men,” Michael said. “Perhaps more babies too. Would you please do that again?”
She obliged, more slowly. “You ask, you never demand.”
“I’ll be begging in a moment.”
Her mouth closed around him, and for long moments, Michael couldn’t even beg. He could only give silent thanks for these moments shared with Henrietta, while he tried to ignore the itch of guilt from his conscience.
Her valise sat at the foot of the bed, a reproach every time he opened his eyes. When Henrietta smiled up at him, he shifted over her, so she filled his vision.
“Now?” he asked.
She kissed him, framing his jaw with both hands, wrapping her legs around him. Her movements were languid and—he hoped—self-indulgent.
“I want to be on top,” she said. “This time.”
Michael subsided to his back, and she straddled him. He used her braid to tug her closer. “Like this?”
With no further ado, Henrietta tied a sheath about him, then sank down over him and joined them intimately. “More like this.”
Michael struggled to locate a Shakespeare quote, a snippet, any words to remark the occasion. “Move, Henrietta. Move now.”
She smiled down at him. “He demands. At last he demands.”
“I’m begging you.”
Her smile became tender as she tucked close and moved.
Chapter Five
All good things must end, or at least be paid for, and Henrietta the Housemaid eventually realized that her station in life had changed. I had the sense she might slip back to the shires, given a chance. I was forever finding her in tears over some draft of a letter to her martinet of a papa. No matter how often she wrote to him, he apparently never answered.
Having no recourse, when I offered to put my arrangement with her on professional footing, she accepted, and thus the career of London’s greatest courtesan had its origins in my family parlor. Delicious irony, that, but for one small detail, which I must prevail upon you to tidy up…
Michael Brenner had needed a woman.
Or maybe—Henrietta wasn’t quite awake, so her thoughts wandered instead of galloped—he’d needed her? Somebody with whom to be passionate, tender, funny, and honest. Maybe he’d needed a lover, an intimate friend with whom to be himself, wholly and joyfully.
Henrietta had needed him too. Needed a man who wasn’t interested in tricks and feats of sexual athleticism, who wasn’t fascinated with the forbidden, or bored with it, but still fascinated with his own gratification. Making love with Michael had been so easy, and yet so precious.
She’d been needing him for the past ten years.
To join with Michael had felt intimate, invigorating, and sweet. Surely the Bard had put it better, but Henrietta couldn’t summon any literature to mind. The hour was late, and she was abed with a lover.
Her first lover.
She reached beneath the covers and found warmth but no Michael. Her ears told her he wasn’t stirring about behind the privacy screen, which meant…
Nothing for it, she must open her eyes.
A page turned, the sound distinctive even when Henrietta’s mind was fogged with sleep. Michael had pulled a chair near the hearth and lit a branch of candles. He sat reading a small book, his hair tousled, his dressing gown half open. His expression was beautifully somber, suggesting the prose on the page was serious.
Foreboding uncoiled where contentment had been.
“You’d rather read than cuddle?” Henrietta asked, sitting up. She kept the covers about her, and not because the room was chilly. Michael’s expression was anything but loverlike.
“I’d rather cuddle, but I couldn’t bear…”
“What?” Couldn’t bear to remain in bed with her?
He closed the book and stared at the fire. “I couldn’t bear to further deceive you. I have misrepresented myself to you, Miss Whitlow, in part. I’ve also been honest in part.”
Miss Whitlow? Miss Whitlow?
“You’ve been inside me, Michael. Several times. Don’t call me Miss Whitlow.” And don’t remain halfway across the room, looking like a fallen angel on the eve of banishment to the Pit.
“This book is the reason we met,” he said, holding up the little volume. “Lord Beltram wants it back, though legally it
is entirely your possession. He’s begun searching for a bride and realized what a weapon he’d given you.”
No flannel sheets, no cozy quilts, no secure embrace could have comforted Henrietta against the chill Michael’s words drove into her heart.
“You seduced me to get Beltram’s bloody book, and now you’re confessing your perfidy?”
“I hope we seduced each other, but yes, my original intention was to steal this book from you.” He thumbed through the most maudlin collection of bad verse and inferior artistry Henrietta had ever seen.
She rose from the warmth of the covers, shrugged into her night-robe—and yes, that made her breasts jiggle, and what of it?—and Michael looked away.
“Are you disgusted with the woman you seduced?” she asked, whipping her braid free of the night-robe. “Was bedding me a great imposition, my lord? What hold does Beltram have over you that you’d make a sacrifice of such magnitude with his cast-off mistress?”
“Miss—Henrietta, it’s not like that.”
Henrietta had a temper, a raging, blazing, vitriolic temper that had sent her from her father’s house ten years ago and sustained her when it became apparent that Beltram was exactly the handsome scoundrel every girl was warned against.
She’d learned to marshal that temper in the interests of professional survival, but she was no longer a professional.
And she might not survive this insult. “It’s never like that,” she snapped. “Good God, I thought I knew better. Never again, I promised myself. Never again would a man get the better of me, no matter how handsome, how charming, how sincere…”
Michael rose, tossing the book onto the empty bed. “Henrietta Whitlow, I am not ashamed of you. I could never be ashamed of you. I am ashamed of myself.”
“For sleeping with me?” She would kill him if he said yes and then burn his house down, after she’d carted away all of his books.
“I am ashamed of myself,” he said, hands fisting at his sides, “for lying to you. For being an idiot.”
“Idiot is too kind a term, Michael Brenner. I am Henrietta Whitlow. I turned down the overtures of the sovereign himself and scoffed at carte blanche from countless others, then gave you what they’d have paid a fortune to enjoy. I swore I’d never again… Why am I explaining this to you? Get out and take the damned book with you.”
He stayed right where he was. “I should have asked you for the book, straight out. I apologize for not using common sense, but I was too long a thief, a spy, a manipulator of events. I could not simply steal from you, and I’ve left my honesty too late.”
“Which means now you’re a scoundrel,” Henrietta said, though he seemed to be a contrite scoundrel. “You have exceeded the bounds of my patience, sir. Be off with you.”
So she could cry, damn him. Henrietta hadn’t cried since her last cat had died two years ago.
“Why have you kept Beltram’s book all these years, Henrietta? Are you still in love with him?”
Through her rage, humiliation, and shock, Henrietta’s instincts stirred. Michael had what he’d come for—so to speak—and Henrietta’s feelings for Beltram ought to be of no interest to him.
At all.
“I kept his awful little book because I didn’t want him publishing it and making me the laughingstock of the press and public. Beltram is selfish, unscrupulous, mean, and not to be trusted.” And he had clammy hands. “Possession of that book was my only means of ensuring he’d not trouble me after he’d turned me from a housemaid to a whore.”
Still, Michael remained before the fire, his expression unreadable. “Why not destroy the book?”
She might have confided that to him an hour ago. How dare he ask for her confidences now? “I will join a nunnery, I swear it, rather than endure the arrogance of the male gender another day.”
“You kept that book for a reason. Were you intent on blackmailing him?”
With the room in shadows, Henrietta could believe Michael Brenner had been a spy and a thief. He hid his ruthlessness beneath fine tailoring and polite manners, but his expression suggested he’d do anything necessary to achieve his ends.
He made love with the same determination, and Henrietta had reveled in his passion.
Now, she’d do anything to get him out of her room, even confess further vulnerability.
“I kept the book because I wanted the reminder of what a gullible, arrogant idiot I’d been. Beltram laid out my downfall, page by page. He sketched me in my maid’s uniform, adoration and ignorance in my gaze. He sketched me the first night he’d taken down my hair—for artistic purposes only, he assured me. He sketched me after he’d kissed me for the first time. It’s all there, in execrable poetry and amateur sketches. My ruin, lest I forget a moment of it.”
Michael crossed to the bed, and Henrietta stood her ground. He snatched the book off the bed, and she thought she’d seen the last of him. A convent in Sweden, maybe, or Maryland. If Borneo had convents, she’d consider them, provided they had enough books.
“Henrietta, I am sorry.” Michael stood close enough that she could smell his lavender soap. “Beltram did, indeed, have a hold over me. I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain and removed the book as a blackmail threat. I have no excuse for insinuating myself into your affections. I’m sorry for deceiving you. My coach will take you to Amblebank in the morning.”
“You’ve insinuated yourself right back out of my affections, my lord. No harm done.”
If she’d slapped him, he could not have looked more chagrined. “There’s been harm, Henrietta. I know that. I’ll do what I can to make it right.”
Not more decency, not now when he’d betrayed the trust Henrietta hadn’t realized she’d given.
“Comfort yourself with whatever platitudes you please, my lord, but leave me in peace. I’m tired and have earned my rest.”
He considered the book, Beltram’s exercise in lordly vanity and a testament to feminine vulnerability.
“This book means nothing to you?”
“It’s reproach for my folly,” Henrietta retorted. “I loathe the damned thing and the man who created it.”
Michael threw the book straight into the fireplace, landing it atop the flaming peat.
Henrietta watched her past burn, incredulity warring with loss. As long as that book had been in her hands, she’d had proof—for herself, anyway—that once upon a time, she’d been innocent.
“Did Beltram force you, Henrietta?”
Nobody had asked her that, but Henrietta had asked the question of herself. “He took advantage of my ignorance and inexperience—I’d been chaste before I met him—he misled, he betrayed, he lied and seduced. He did not force. His actions were dishonorable, not quite criminal.”
“Then I won’t kill him.”
Michael stood beside her until the book was a charred heap, its ashes drifting up the flue, and then he stalked from the room.
Henrietta gathered up the pile of fine tailoring Michael had draped over the chair, brought it into bed with her, and watched the flames in the hearth far into the night while her nose was buried in the scent of lavender.
* * *
Michael rose to a house made brilliant by sunshine on freshly fallen snow, though his mood could not have been blacker.
He’d committed two wrongs. First, he’d agreed to thievery to settle his account with Beltram. Stealing was wrong, and neither starvation nor the security of the realm provided Michael any room to forgive himself.
Second, he’d made love with Henrietta Whitlow. Not for all the baronies in Ireland would he regret the hours he’d spent in her bed, but he’d go to his grave regretting that he’d betrayed her trust.
“You will notify me if there are consequences, Henrietta.”
He stood with her by the library window, waiting for the coach to be brought around. His house now sported wreaths on the front windows, cloved oranges dangling from curtain rods, red ribbons wrapped about bannisters, and an abundance of strategically placed
mistletoe.
The holiday decorations Lucille had inspired were enough to restore Michael’s faith in a God of retribution.
“Last night, you called me Miss Whitlow, and I insist on that courtesy today, if you must annoy me with conversation.”
Last night, he’d called her his love. “I am annoying you with a demand. If taking me as your lover has consequences, you will inform me, and we will make appropriate accommodations.”
Had she grown taller overnight? She certainly seemed taller, while Michael felt once again like that grubby youth clawing his way up from the peat bogs.
She regarded him from blazing green eyes down a magnificent nose. “You must be one of those Irishmen who longs for death. I don’t fancy such melodrama myself, but I will cheerfully oblige you with a mortal blow to your cods if you don’t cease your nattering.”
He leaned closer. She smelled of neroli—orange blossoms—this morning rather than patch leaf, and he was daft for noticing.
“Kick me in the balls, Henrietta, if that will ease any of the hurt I’ve done you, but we shall marry if you’re carrying my child.”
She drew in a breath, as if filling her sails for another scathing retort, then her brows twitched down. “Not your child. Our child.”
The coach came jingling around the drive from the carriage house, for some fool had put harness bells on the conveyance.
“You’d marry me?” Henrietta asked as the vehicle halted at the bottom of the front steps.
“Of course I’d marry you.”
“Out of pity? Out of decency? Don’t think I’d ever allow you into my bed, Michael.”
“I’d marry you in hopes we might put the past behind us, Henrietta. I have wronged you, and I’m sorry for that, but I would not compound my error by also wronging my—our—child. If you closed your bedroom door to me, I’d respect that, for I respect you.”
“Perhaps you do,” she said, her gaze unbearably sad, “but your version of respect and mine differ significantly. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on my way.”