Chapter Ten
Mitch Carter wanted to strangle someone, and he didn’t much care who. He figured he could start with his mother-in-law, a vapid and utterly thoughtless woman who seemed to see nothing wrong with allowing the blame for her husband’s death to rest on her daughter’s shoulders.
Yeah, that would make a good start.
But Mitch didn’t suppose watching him murder her mother would do Tessa any good, and anyway he had far too much self-discipline. A man had to have control; otherwise virtually nobody would be left alive.
But he hated this house with its fusty, ruined grandeur, the spaces on the walls where paintings had been, the empty tables in the parlor where trinkets had once sat. Hugo Verdun had sold them all to pay his debts.
Right before he sold his daughter to him, Mitch Carter, for the same reason.
He couldn’t deny that, while sitting there watching her suffer. Seeing her curl up into a ball as her damned mother nattered on and on about what Hugo’s state of mind had been, his remorse and grief.
All because of him, Mitch Carter—a disease in matrimonial form.
The worst part was he didn’t know how to help, how to eliminate Tessa’s pain. And all the while he couldn’t keep from loving her so much it made him ache.
The doctor had been and gone, directed to the house on Bidwell Parkway by those back at Mitch’s household. He’d prescribed bed rest for Tessa, but she refused to go home. He’d also prescribed a draught to calm her and had taken Mitch aside to say, “You will need to keep an eye on her. She may also try to harm herself. If I were you, I would not leave her alone.”
Now, late in the afternoon, he didn’t know how to move forward. Relatives and acquaintances had begun arriving, many of them friends of Tessa’s—none of them male, not so far.
Yes, even at a time like this, he thought of that.
Mrs. Verdun wept, she wailed, she mourned and lamented. With every new arrival, she went over it all again—how her dear husband had sought forgiveness from his daughter for the dreadful position in which he’d placed her. How he had despaired and must have reached a point, during the night, of no return.
All the while Mitch, on his feet, paced and watched his wife shrink in upon herself.
At last he interrupted his mother-in-law, still in full spate. “Enough.”
“What?” Elise Verdun turned surprised eyes on him, precisely as if she’d forgotten he was there; perhaps she had.
“Stop with your ranting. Look at your daughter. Can’t you see what you’re doing to her?”
“My husband—”
“Was a selfish bounder who cost you everything. I’ll be damned if he’ll take my wife’s peace of mind too.”
“How dare you? My sainted Hugo is barely cold.”
“He can’t take responsibility for his actions. That’s convenient. But I won’t let you blame her.”
Everyone in the room now stared at him, their mouths agape.
One of the older gentlemen—an uncle, Mitch thought—stepped forward. “Now, look here. I won’t let you speak to Elise this way.”
“You think I’ll stand here silent while she destroys my wife? Go ahead and hit me if you want.”
The man withdrew fastidiously.
“Brute!” said one of the women. “Tess, you have my sympathies!”
Mitch looked at his wife. She stared at him with bruised, helpless eyes.
He went to her and hunkered down in front of her chair. “Come along, now. We’re going home.”
“I can’t leave.”
“You can, and you will.”
Very gently he took her hand and urged her up. She sagged as if boneless, and she made eye contact with no one as he led her out. Before they reached the door, indignant whispers started up behind them.
The long steamcar still waited at the curb. Marty stood alongside, smoking a cheroot. He stubbed it out and came to attention when he saw them.
“Where to, Boss?”
“Home.”
Mitch half lifted Tessa onto the seat. He couldn’t tell if she felt ill or numb. Inside the car she held tight to herself, utterly silent.
Not sure what to do, Mitch sought desperately for words. He could think of none. Mere minutes brought them home to the house on Prospect. He climbed out ahead of her and held out his hand. Ignoring him, she attempted to climb out on her own and stumbled.
He caught her up in his arms. She weighed virtually nothing, this woman who now made up the center of his world.
The same woman who hated him.
Inside, he carried her right up to her room, where he deposited her on the bed. Immediately, she once more curled up into a ball.
It was then the miracle occurred.
“Don’t leave me,” she said.
****
“Would you like me to bring back the doctor? Or send for one of your friends?”
Mitch’s voice again. It had become a kind of anchor in the midst of Tessa’s pain. Something about his calm reassured her. She shook her head.
“Maybe another of those drinks,” she suggested.
He rang the bell and, when the mechanical maid appeared, asked for scotch.
Tessa, still curled into a ball on her bed, didn’t look at him. She didn’t want to. For some curious reason, she just wanted him there.
If she didn’t look at him, she could pretend he wasn’t Mitch Carter, the husband who’d been forced on her, the man she was supposed to hate. Maybe she could pretend he was Richard instead. But he sounded nothing like Richard—felt nothing like him, either.
Mitch Carter had a surprisingly nice voice, soft and strong.
Maybe she didn’t hate him. Maybe she hated her father—a terrible thing to say, with him dead—and herself.
The scotch arrived. The bed moved as Mitch sat down on the edge of the mattress.
“Here.”
He helped her sit up and once more tipped the glass to her lips. She shuddered.
“Are you cold?”
“Yes, cold right through.”
“Let me call the maid. She can get you into warmer clothes.”
“No. Don’t leave.”
“All right, I won’t.” He shifted her on the bed and tucked her, fully dressed, beneath the covers. It felt comforting. Even more so when he brushed the hair back from her face and said, “Listen to me, Tessa. What your father did isn’t your fault. He chose that act, and for selfish reasons. There isn’t a more selfish thing a man can do than commit suicide. Do you understand?”
“If I’d just gone to him—”
“He would have found some other reason.”
“Now I have to live with this. I don’t know if I can.”
“People can live with all kinds of things. You’d be surprised.”
She took the glass in her hands and drank from it. She gazed into his eyes. “Stay with me.”
“Eh?”
“Tonight. I don’t think I can stand to be alone.”
Chapter Eleven
They both lay fully clothed on the bed, Tessa beneath the covers and Mitch on top of them. Sometime during the night, the autumn chill touched him and he crawled beneath also. Still later, at some point, Tessa moved into his arms.
He woke from a fitful doze to find her cuddled into him, the scent of her beguiling his senses. Helpless against his feelings, he gathered her more closely in.
In slumber, she didn’t push him away. He lay there miles from sleep and fought his impulses. Right now—for reasons he didn’t completely understand—she needed him. Or perhaps she just needed someone who thought better of her than she did of herself.
The last thing he wanted to do was scare her away. Well, perhaps the second-last thing.
She breathed softly, exhausted, and her velvety cheek lay just beneath his lips. Through an act of sheer will he kept from brushing them against it, but he did run his fingers through her curls, tenderly.
Tenderness—an emotion foreign to him. He’d had no room for i
t in his life. No room for it amid the struggle for survival.
How? How did it find him now? Because, to his amazement, it seemed to come instinctively with this woman. He wanted to enfold her, protect her. He wanted to destroy anyone who might hurt her.
He’d happily kill her father all over again if he could bring him back from the dead for that purpose. He’d kill any man who touched her.
He wondered again about the fellow she loved. Who was he? How could he, Mitch, transfer her affections away from him?
Damned if he knew. But until he could figure it out, he’d live on this, this. He pulled her still nearer and closed his eyes.
****
Tessa woke to a sensation of deep warmth and complete safety. For several moments she failed to remember where she was. She opened her eyes and stared into darkness.
Someone held her in his arms. Richard? No; he didn’t smell like Richard, but like…
Recognition flooded upon her, and memory burned into her senses. Mitch Carter lying on top of her, his body hard and his mouth questing.
In this very bed.
She stiffened and stirred.
He whispered immediately, “Hush. Hush, it’s all right.”
Was it? Finding herself lying in the arms of her husband, the man she detested?
How did he come to be here in her bed, holding her so tightly?
The balance of memory fell on her then, like a brick wall: her father’s death, her failure to forgive him. Her fault.
She gasped and stiffened with pain, and began to weep.
“Here, here—no need for that.” Very gently Mitch swabbed the tears from her cheeks, using the edge of the sheet. She knew she should push him away. She wanted to. She did.
But it felt so damn comforting, having someone cradle her this way.
So instead of pushing him away, she lifted her face to his.
Could she blame him for what happened next? It began as the merest brush of lips on lips, tentative and inquiring. He asked a question; she did not refuse.
A sigh broke from her lips an instant before his mouth claimed hers. In the dark, she could not see him. And when he kissed her this way, she didn’t need to think.
If ever kisses were designed to numb a woman’s mind, these were. He blessed her lips with them, feathered them across her cheek and down her neck, setting her skin to quivering. When his mouth returned to hers, she opened to him, without conscious intention.
How long it went on so, she never knew. When at last he stopped kissing her and rested his forehead against hers, he sounded stunned.
“Tessa. I want you so much.”
“You mean…” She froze there, unable to conceive of it. Or could she? He would remove her clothing, continue to kiss her, making her warmer and warmer.
She understood the mechanics of the act but could not imagine such intimacy. Not with this man.
“I don’t want to ask anything of you that you’re not ready to give.”
That was good. She didn’t know if she felt ready. Yet being with him this way in the dark felt so reassuring.
She was a terrible person, one who’d failed to save her father from suicide. But Mitch Carter, so it was rumored, had been found in a gutter. Perhaps that made him just as terrible as she.
“Touch me,” she said.
“All right.”
He kissed her again, ran his hands through her hair, along the slope of her neck and inside her bodice. He smelled so good, and tasted better. And, sweet heaven, what a sensation when his fingers ventured where no other man’s had been.
He shifted his position so he lay on top of her, just like before, hard and heavy between her legs. When he spoke this time, he sounded drunk. “Touch me, too.”
He wore trousers and a thin linen shirt. She could feel the heat of his body right through the fabric—shoulders, arms, chest. Her fingers found their way inside the front of the garment and met coarse, rough hair, a flat stomach that rippled beneath her touch, the waistband of his trousers, and—
No, no, no. She couldn’t touch him there.
Panic reared its head. She gasped beneath his kiss and fought her way free.
He released her at once and rolled to one side. “Tessa?”
“I can’t. My God, I can’t!” She scrabbled away from him, sat on the edge of the mattress with her feet on the cold floor, and put her head in her hands. “My father’s just died. What kind of person am I?”
His voice came slowly out of the dark. “It’s comfort, Tessa. The sort a man gives a woman; the kind a husband gives his wife.”
“Is it?”
“Sure. Let me give it to you. Let me take care of you.”
Oh, what a seductive suggestion! At the moment, caught in self-loathing and need, Tessa could scarcely think of anything more tempting. Let him take care of her, protect her—and she had no doubt he could. She needed so badly to belong to someone.
Was it wrong that the someone should be him?
Yes. Yes, because he’d taken advantage of her father’s misfortune, won her through coercion and demand, and contributed to her father’s guilt, his ultimate downfall.
Not so much, though, as she.
That thought crept into her mind and set up the grief all over again. Maybe she deserved nothing better than to be Mitch Carter’s whore.
He touched her shoulder softly, gently. For an instant she felt sure he would pull her back underneath him and take what he wanted. Surprising, really, he hadn’t demanded it before now. It was part of marriage, so her friends said, and for men, a big part.
Yet Mitch Carter—feared throughout the city, the self-styled King of Prospect Avenue—did not drag her beneath him. He merely lay there with his hand warm on her skin.
At last he said, “Come back under the covers. You’ll be chilled.”
She was chilled. But in truth, she didn’t trust herself to crawl back into that bed with him.
He sighed, a gusty sound in the dark. “I’ll not do anything you don’t want.”
“No? You promise?”
“Tessa, I’ll never do anything to hurt you.”
Did she believe him? Believing—just like intimacy—would require trust. She wasn’t sure she dared trust this man.
“Here, come beneath the blankets. I’ll go to my own room.”
She turned her head and attempted to see him; the room remained too dark. “Will you?”
“Yes.”
She heard him get out of the bed. He moved immediately around the end of it, went to the door, and slipped out. The door closed with a soft thud.
Tessa drew her feet from the icy floor and crawled back beneath the covers, still warm.
But, she found, it didn’t seem such a refuge with him gone—not the same at all. She wrapped her arms around herself and lay sleepless till dawn.
Chapter Twelve
Mitch turned to his wife, who sat in the steamcab beside him, and eyed her face—dead white and pinched, tense with strain.
He felt worried about her. He didn’t think she would make it through today’s obligations, toward which they even now sped.
Her father’s funeral.
It would be a grand and public affair, despite the manner of Verdun’s death. Hugo had been well known in this city, and to Mitch’s certain knowledge his mother-in-law had commissioned a large service. Today would spare Tessa nothing.
If she made it through without collapsing, Mitch would be surprised. She’d taken nothing to eat since learning of her father’s passing; water had barely passed her lips. Yet she insisted on coming. He’d virtually demanded she stay at home, had begged her to let him summon her doctor and send word to her mother she was indisposed. The next thing he knew she’d got herself all rigged out in black and came down the stairs clinging to the banister—the only thing, he figured, keeping her upright.
And that damned mother of hers, when they’d swung by to pick her up from the house on Bidwell Parkway, never stopped talking. The woman squawked lik
e a magpie, anything that came into her foolish head.
Now she went on and on about her other children, all of whom were due to appear at the cathedral. Two of them there were—a son and a daughter, both older than Tessa and both married, living in their own households.
Mitch could barely wait to meet them.
“I tell you, Gerald wants a full investigation launched into your father’s death. He’s not convinced it was suicide.”
What else could it have been? The man had been found alone in his room, hanging by the neck. Did they suppose someone else strung him up?
“Quite apart from the disgrace of it,” Elise Verdun rattled on, “there’s the question of the insurance policy your father had on himself. They won’t pay out for suicide.”
Tessa’s fingers, clasped together in her lap, tightened till Mitch saw the white of the bone beneath the skin.
Shut up, he thought at her mother, but he did not say the words aloud.
His job, as he saw it, was to get Tessa through the day. Somehow.
The car pulled up in front of St. Joseph’s Cathedral, finding a spot miraculously at the curb. Other cars and cabs were there ahead of them, and a small crowd stood gathered outside the building in the weak sunlight.
Mitch climbed from the car and assisted the women out after him. A chill wind came off the river, and he wanted to put his arm around his wife to shelter her but didn’t suppose she’d appreciate such a display.
They’d barely reached the pavement before a man rushed up to them, wearing an intense look on his face.
“Oh, Gerald!” Elise threw herself into the fellow’s arms. “How am I to bear it. How?”
“I don’t know, Mother. But we all know who’s to blame.” Over Elise’s head, Gerald Verdun glared at Mitch. He drew himself up. “Sir, I will have you know,” he declared before all those gathered ’round, “this farce of a marriage you have forced upon my sister is over, with my father’s death. It was the source of my father’s great grief and the reason for his despair. I’ll have you know I blame you.”
Anger flushed through Mitch, though he held tight. “Your father’s debts were the cause of his grief—and guilt.”
“How dare you? You wanted my sister from the first time you saw her. Deny that!”
Tough Prospect Page 6