by Carrie Lomax
Edward looked thoughtful. “It’s possible that he might help us, if he thinks it would convince Father to have me imprisoned.”
“We can but ask.”
“So, within the next four days, Gran and Richard will help Edward to obtain a common marriage license. We all need to speak with Rupert Alwin and convince him that Mary in fact loves him, whatever doubts we may harbor on that score,” Harper said.
“I will speak with Alwin. Can we locate him?”
“That task has thankfully been accomplished. He’s with Lord Dalton.”
“I’ll go there directly,” Edward said, standing, and Harper felt all her hopes rise with him. She was comforted by the power limned in the lines and movements of his body, by his determination to have her at his side.
“And I’ll work on finding out more wedding details from Mary,” Harper said, determinedly.
“I could inquire about cottages for Mary and Rupert,” offered Viola.
“And if all else fails, Edward can simply refuse Mary at the altar,” added the businesslike baroness. In the space of half an hour, the mood had shifted from glum to optimistic, each person moving with purpose toward their shared goal.
Harper shadowed Edward to the front door. He accepted his greatcoat and muffler from the footman. She took the soft wool in her hands and arranged it neatly over his chest.
“Your father wouldn’t really lock you up, would he? He knows what that would do to you.”
Edward rumbled a low laugh.
“There are more ways to keep someone from going where he pleases than by using crude keys and locks. Eyes and voices are infinitely more effective.” He kissed her, the warm press of his lips igniting a slow flame of warmth within Harper’s belly.
“I’ll come back for you tonight.”
Harper pulled back to gaze at him searchingly. “We discussed that. I won’t run away with you.”
Edward laughed again. Harper felt it reverberate throughout her body. “Not for that, darling. For this.”
He kissed her so thoroughly that when he pulled away, Harper’s knees buckled. Edward propped her up with one strong arm. His mouth crooked up knowingly.
“Leave your window ajar. No locks in the world could deny me tonight.”
With that devilish promise of more to come, Edward swept out the door. Harper’s fingers touched her lips. She could still feel his breath on her, in her lungs. She held it there for a long beat and sighed. The air whooshed out, taking Edward with it.
* * *
Edward bounded up the steps of Dalton’s townhouse. The butler beckoned Dalton from the library where he and Alwin were sitting together. In the dim hallway outside the library, the two strangers sized one another up.
“I understand you’re helping us. Why?” Edward asked. Dalton had abandoned his jacket, and he carried a snifter of brandy in one hand. Edward regarded him with reserve, but he detected nothing but curiosity from the man.
“You were a year ahead of me at Eton. Probably you don’t remember now, but you were always a good sort, Northcote. You were friendly after what happened…with my family.” He paused, and then said flatly, “Others weren’t.”
Edward was quiet a moment, trying to remember. “Richard. He and his mates called you something horrible. I won’t repeat it.”
Piers laughed humorlessly. “I had any number of names. Fever boy, the Scarlet Orphan. There were others. How much of England do you remember?” asked Dalton.
Edward ran a hand through his hair.
“Fragments. Feelings, mostly. Experiences that seem like dreams. I don’t trust any of them to be real.” He leaned against the wall with feigned laziness, mimicking Dalton’s posture. “Though now, with each passing day, my years away seem like the dream. In the jungle, there were spiders large enough to eat birds. There are plants that eat insects. Fish that can strip an entire cow to the bone in minutes.”
“Sounds not unlike your average London ballroom.” Dalton smirked.
Edward chuckled.
“Without Harper to help me decide which memories to trust, I would have given up and gone mad. I had long ago given up hope of ever seeing home. I was not happy to come back. Everything seems like a faded, fantastic version of my memories.”
“The rope around your throat couldn’t have helped,” observed Dalton. The thick pink line of scar tissue peeked out above Edward’s loosened cravat.
“No, it did not.”
He ran a finger along his collar, feeling the raised flesh. An extended silence fell between them.
“Well,” Edward finally broke it. “You’ve been in there with him for some time. What’s the best tack to take?”
“Alwin needs encouragement. A little fear might go a long way,” Dalton advised, before padding away and leaving Edward to his task.
* * *
Low voices from the hall were muffled by the high ceilings and thick rugs of the library, dampened by paper and leather stacked high in heavy bookcases. Rupert didn’t care who Dalton was conversing with.
“Alwin.”
Rupert grunted and drank his brandy.
“So, I am,” he answered indifferently. Apparently, his host had tired of him long ago and sent for someone to retrieve him. Too bad. He had been enjoying a finer brandy than his own liquor stock usually included. It went down all too easily.
A large, hulking shadow blocked his light from the fire. Squinting, Rupert tried to glare up at the intruder. His skin began to crawl as cold blue eyes, the color of blue mountain flowers frozen in ice, glowed out of that huge man’s shadow. Rupert startled despite himself.
“I have something of yours,” an unearthly voice declared. While identifiably human and male, the voice had an underlying burr to it that made it seem both feral and ancient at the same time. “I’d like to give it back.”
“What?” Rupert asked, half-starting out of his seat. Dalton, that wretch, looked on in bemusement.
“Mary Whitney. Your bride. Not mine. You must claim her.”
“I don’t want that betraying witch.” Even to Rupert’s own ears, he sounded like a sulky adolescent.
“She never betrayed you. You abandoned her. Now she’s mine, but I won’t have her.” The glowing eyes came closer. “She carries your child.”
“I know.”
“You know, yet you do nothing.” The feral voice was ripe with contempt. Rupert swallowed.
“I tried to speak with her father—”
Two great hands attached to strong arms and broad shoulders slammed down onto the arms of his chair, trapping Rupert in his seat. He swallowed.
“Try harder,” the apparition before him growled.
All Rupert could hear was his own heart thudding in his chest. “She won’t have me! I’ve no money to keep her in the style she prefers.”
“Then gain it, you fool. There is no excuse for failing to provide your family with a living.”
“A living I can manage. A townhouse and an army of servants I cannot. She will never accept such a lowering of status,” Rupert spat bitterly.
“Mary should have thought of that before she gave you her innocence,” interjected Edward.
“Mary did consider it and said she could live on air, so long as it was with me!” Rupert thrust himself out of the chair. “You insult a woman who never did anyone harm. I sullied her. I would make it right if I knew how.”
“It’s time to hold her to her word. You won’t be the last to sully her if I marry her,” taunted the dark, hulking form as he moved away, deeper into shadow.
“Touch her and I will hunt you mercilessly,” Rupert threatened.
Without warning, Northcote’s face was inches from Rupert’s eyes. Every shadowed plane was a hard line. “If you fail, Mary will bear her child alone. I will not save you. I am no cuckoo’s fool to unwittingly raise a chick not my own.”
Rupert’s heart pounded with terror and anger, and his head swam with the effects of prolonged alcohol consumption. Yet the terror of seeing Mary married to a m
an such as this…animal. The Beast of Briarcliff.
“You shan’t see her at the altar,” he declared. “She’ll be mine by then. Mary is mine. She would betray a monster like you in a heartbeat to be with me. Marry her, and you are destined for unhappiness.”
“If I marry your love, you’ll never touch her again, Alwin. Be sure of that,” the beast growled. With a split second of warning, a pillow smacked Rupert in the face. “Get some rest. Sober up. Then go and find your woman and make this right.”
The beast was gone, as silent as a wraith.
Chapter 25
Edward appeared at Harper’s window as he’d promised. At the sound of a scratch at her windowsill, Harper shuffled out from the warm nest of her bedclothes and raised one finger to her lips before opening the casement.
“Shh,” he said, gesturing to the trellis sagging beneath his weight.
“Back to climbing the walls, are we?” Harper chided.
“Not at all. This time, I used the vines.” He kissed her through the window. “Come. I’ll help you down.”
“I thought we’d agreed not to sleep under hedgerows?” Harper protested with a shiver in her thin nightgown.
“We aren’t,” Edward chuckled. “I’ve found a place for us to be alone for a while.”
“Oh, have you, now?” Harper teased. “For what purpose?”
“To ensure our wedding can never be annulled. If you’re amenable.”
Harper met her beloved’s gaze. “I am. Edward, I would follow you to the ends of the earth, if necessary. I’d sleep under hedgerows, or forsake England for the jungle, to be with you. I’d lock myself in an asylum to be near you.”
“But would you brave becoming a countess, with all the attendant obligations?” he asked.
“I think I shall manage, if it comes to that,” Harper replied with a wide grin. “However, you must let me dress and come downstairs my own way.”
“I’ll never let you fall,” he replied, and Harper heard the promise in his words.
“I know. Still, I prefer to use the stairs.”
Harper quickly changed from her shift into a simple gown and cloak. She tiptoed down the stairway and out through the kitchen, neatly avoiding the butler in his pantry. Outside, the city street whispered danger. Harper started when Edward’s large palm landed on her shoulder.
“This way,” he beckoned. “You must remember where we’re going. Twenty‐four Downing. Six streets away from your grandmother’s townhouse and fourteen streets from my father’s. We can meet there in less than half an hour, if we need to.”
“At a moment’s notice. I like that idea.”
“Yes, in case we need to discuss Richard or our plans.”
Harper nodded once, all seriousness. They were silent for the few minutes it took to find Downing Street. Number twenty‐four seemed uninhabited. Approaching the dark house, Edward gestured for silence. Harper nodded.
They went in through an unlocked servant’s entrance beneath the front stairs. The room they entered was pitch black, so Edward held Harper’s hand firmly as he led the way. They picked their way through dust‐covered rooms filled with cloth‐draped furniture and rough wooden boxes.
“The family moved abroad recently and is giving up their tenancy,” he said in a normal voice.
Harper shrieked. “You scared me.”
“It’s all right to talk in here. The neighbors won’t hear us. Just avoid using a light. The rear windows are not boarded up, just the ones facing the street. The front stairs are dark as the devil but the stairway in the servant’s quarters has windows on each floor.”
Harper began to pant a bit with exertion. Edward slowed to accommodate her. She was so lost in her thoughts that their arrival at the top of the stairway in the drafty, sloping attic of the servants’ quarters felt both abrupt and as though it had taken forever. The large room was filled with well‐used, sturdy and inelegant furnishings draped in a layer each of cloth and dust. The room overlooked the rear half of the house; a doorway across the hall to the front housed servants of the opposite gender.
Edward made straight for the window. He yanked the covering off a bed, sending a dust cloud sparkling in the moonbeams. With one hand and a faint, knowing smile, she snapped free the laces of her bodice and let it fall to the floor. Beneath she wore nothing but her shift.
In a moment, the tapes holding up her skirt released their hold and let the ring of fabric puddle to the ground. Standing in the middle of her discarded clothing, Harper crumpled her shift in her hands until her legs were revealed to Edward’s hungry gaze. She watched his outline in the window, sensing the tension as he watched her strip her body bare to his sight.
The shift rose to her waist, then past her breasts as Harper tugged it over her head and flung it aside. Her hair unwound from its braid and teased over her breasts. Naked, Harper stepped forward. Edward’s expression warmed her skin against the chill of the night air.
Wordlessly he shrugged out of his jacket. With no apparent rush, he unbuttoned his shirt and tugged the hem from his trousers. The shirt and his undershirt followed to the floor. Bare from the waist up, he let Harper continue her slow approach as he deliberately loosened them around his hips.
Still silent, he captured her face in his large hands and kissed her deeply. Harper drank in the sensation of his lips sliding over hers, felt the tease of his tongue all the way down to her belly. In no rush, he slid one hand to her waist.
Harper’s nipples brushed against his chest. She gasped. Edward didn’t pause as he nipped and licked his way down her jaw. His lips explored the contours of her throat. Harper heard little gasps and moans emanating from herself, as though from a stranger.
“Harper Forsythe, by all that is holy, I pledge my life to you. I am yours. You are mine, for all eternity.”
Harper sighed. “Edward Northcote, before no one and before all of London, I will stand with you. We are one soul, bound together. Come what may.”
He smiled in the darkness, a mere shadow. “I will hold you to that, my love. After tonight, it’s too late for cold feet. No backing out.”
“But my feet are freezing.” Except where Edward’s body touched hers, Harper’s skin was icy. “Could we continue this under the bedclothes?”
Edward laughed at her silly witticism, and a surge of adoration pulsed through her. Edward’s hand cupped her breast. One rough thumb rubbed against her nipple and he squeezed the fullness. Desire flooded Harper’s body.
“More,” she moaned.
“Feeling warmer now, my sweet?” He turned his attention to her other breast. The warmth from his skin was better than a fire, contrasting with the cold that was goosepimpling her backside.
“Only in the front.”
He laughed, a deep rumble reverberating through his body. Harper shivered at the sensation.
“That’s too bad. Abandoned houses are short on bedclothes, I’m afraid. I will have to work harder at keeping you warm.”
Harper felt him turn her to face the window. Now her backside was warm, but her breasts were cold. Edward partially rectified this by covering one with a large, rough palm. His other hand reached beneath her legs to her sex. She was still damp, and his fingers pushed easily into her folds.
“Put your hands on the sill,” he demanded roughly.
Harper did as she was told, leaning forward a few inches. This gave him better access to the vee between her legs.
“Do you like this?” he asked as he moved one hand from her breast to her hip. With the other hand, he stopped stroking her sex and moved it to his own. Placing himself at her entrance, he thrust.
“Ahhh....yes.”
“This is a terrible time to remind you that once you wanted me to put on clothing at the time.”
“Why would I ever have wanted you to put clothes on?” Harper gasped as he slid fully into her. His fullness expanded her, rubbing satisfyingly against the most secret part of her. Edward withdrew and thrust again. Harper cried out as his rhy
thm increased. His breathing was harsh with the effort of holding back. The knowledge that he held back for her pleasure, so that she would find hers before he finished, was intoxicating.
She wanted to grab him and hold him close, as though she could meld their bodies together permanently. To be always like this, with the incredible feeling of his body in hers making her limbs weak and strong at the same time. That would be heaven.
Only the rough wood beneath her hands grounded her in the moment.
Edward reached between them and slid his fingers over the bud of her womanhood. Harper screamed her pleasure.
“That’s it.” Triumphant, he thrust harder as the orgasm washed over her in waves of unyielding pleasure. As it began to recede, Edward thrust harder and faster, extending the sensation as pleasure tore through him.
At the end, they stood there framed in the window, bathed in cold moonlight, one and not one. Their future uncertain, their love the one certainty they could claim. They clung to it and to one another, knowing that they would be tested in the coming days, but not how.
Chapter 26
"I am proud of you, Mary."
Mary inclined her head but otherwise did not acknowledge her mother. There was only so far she could move before the tower of curls, pins, jewels and wedding veil began to slide toward the floor, so it was a slight acknowledgement indeed.
"I know I do not say that often. I am so happy that you are about to become a countess. This is a dream come true for your mother, and it sets an excellent precedent for your sisters."
Mary swallowed guiltily at that.
"I don't suppose we need to bother with the birds and bees discussion, as you are already well acquainted with the basics." Lady Fairwyck cleared her throat.
Mary was perfectly happy to avoid discussing embarrassing subjects with her mother. Though there were things she wished she could ask. How much would childbirth hurt? How did one care for an infant? Growing up, there had been nurses and governesses to care for Mary and her siblings. She had only the faintest notion of what to do with a baby. She supposed she would get a nursemaid for her baby as well—if they could afford it. Otherwise, she’d have to muddle through with Rupert.