The collective masses gasped and began to murmur again, as this man’s words proved that there were still surprises in store.
“Greg,” Mary quietly prodded again. “What’s going on? Who are those men?”
“Bow Street Runners. Shhh. Just watch,” he whispered with a satisfied grin.
Mary looked back to Brad, whose face was now so red that she thought smoke might spout out of his ears. “Matter of debate? Explain yoursel—”
The tall man grasped Brad’s right arm with a tight fist while the bearded man clutched his left arm.
“Unhand me! I am a Viscount! You cannot—”
“Bradley Barnes, we are taking you to the magistrate for questioning where you will answer to the charges of the murder of the previous Viscount Hampton and his successors.”
The murmured voices in the room became a chaotic frenzy as Brad turned white as a sheet.
“No. No! This is not right. It is not fair!” Brad was grasping and kicking and struggling and spitting. “You—all of you!—you think you are so special, so important. Better than people like me who were not born to this life or role! You all take it for granted. I deserved it just as much as you—so I took it—I took it!—I—”
Brad’s voice faded until at long last, he could no longer be heard and it was as if he had never even been there at all.
Mary’s eyes twinkled. “How did you know?”
“It was something he said to me when he told me the truth at the engagement party. He said that I destroyed his chance of honestly elevating his status, so he decided to take it. And when I mentioned what luck it was that he inherited the title just in time to fulfill this plan of his, he became very uncomfortable. At the time it didn’t mean much to me. It wasn’t until I started looking into how to free you from the contract—”
“There’s a contract?” The priest piped in again, his face suddenly twisted in concern. He had apparently missed the earlier explanation.
“No!” Mary and Greg responded forcefully in unison.
That was enough for the priest who went back to his guileless and patient silence as Greg continued his story.
“I was looking for anything and everything that might help and would cause an impediment to the marriage. Perhaps he had a secret wife or a prior marriage commitment that had not been properly dispensed. It was then that I began to uncover rumors about the death of the previous Viscount and how Brad had been involved. I don’t think it would come as a surprise to tell you that we are not the only people in this world who hold such bitterness for him. Others were more than ready to see him properly investigated for these accusations. But they needed more resources and some bit of incriminating evidence against him. I was able to provide both.”
“Please tell me this is real.”
“Which part?” Greg teased.
“All of this. You, me—these charges against Brad…”
“I assure you, this is all very real.”
“Pinch me,” she suddenly spurted. “Please. Please pinch me. Or else I will be forced to believe this is a dream.”
“Mary, I’m not going to—”
“Yes. You must!”
“I’m not going—”
“Gregory!”
“Mary?”
“Do it! You must pinch me!”
Greg sighed heavily. “You. Not a bloody word,” he commanded the priest.
Then he reached for Mary, but instead of pinching her arm he wrapped her up and kissed her lips. Slowly and surely he worked at her mouth until she submitted to him and parted her lips, and then he continued to flick his tongue against hers and nibble at her mouth until her lips were ripe and red and she shivered against him.
Someone cleared their throat and Greg was reminded that they were not alone. He softly pulled away from Mary whose eyes were wide and euphoric.
“What was that for?” she pondered dreamily.
“Do I need to have a reason to kiss you?”
“Well, of course not but—”
“Do you still think you’re dreaming?”
“Most definitely not!”
“Well then, that was much better than a pinch now, wasn’t it?”
“Oh yes. Much, much better.”
“Kiss her again!” came Priscilla’s teasing voice from the group. All formality and decorum had long since been cast aside and Greg saw even the primmest lady among the guests stifle a chuckle.
“I do believe I will!” Greg playfully answered. “But not before I first make her my wife!”
The wedding guests cheered.
“Are you ready, my dear?”
“Oh yes. I have never been more ready.”
Greg turned to the priest and nodded. “If you would, my good sir, I believe we are finally ready.”
“Should I expect any more interruptions? I can speak more quickly if you wish…” The priest offered with a pleasant smile.
“No, there will be no more interruptions. And that will not be necessary, regardless. We would like to savor this moment.”
With that Greg took Mary’s hands in his own and they finally became husband and wife.
***
Sometime later after the last vow was spoken and the last bite of the feast was eaten and the last guest had excitedly congratulated the couple and thanked them for such a memorable day, Mary and Greg sat together and reminisced.
“I still can’t believe it all!” Mary chuckled. “I was furious at you for being late and for forcing me to resort to fainting! But the way you burst in and stirred everything up with your protests and your appearance… And the Bow Street Runners and Brad being dragged away like that! … It was just delicious and better than anything I ever could have hoped for or imagined. And I just couldn’t be mad anymore, if I ever even was—not even with you smelling of a sewer and looking like something a cat dragged in from an alley way!”
“I did not look that bad… did I?”
“Oh, my dear. I’m sorry to tell you but you did. If I had not been expecting you I may have mistaken you for a deranged criminal who just escaped from a mad house…”
“I will admit that I felt like a deranged criminal for a moment there. The way everyone looked at me when I first burst in is something I will never forget. But I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
“And neither would I. I didn’t give a damn anymore. At that moment all I cared about was that you were there. I was so happy that you were there. And that was all that mattered. You could have arrived without a stitch of clothes on at all and I would have married you still—”
“You would have just married me? That would have been the first thought to cross your mind?” A crooked smile framed his face.
She pressed her lips together in a tight, small smile. “Perhaps. Perhaps not…”
“Just perhaps not?” He ran his fingers down the back of her neck and felt the soft, tiny hairs stand up in response.
“In any situation I believe that my heart would have taken over. That’s what happened today when you finally arrived. My heart just took control of me. I was overwhelmed with love and I was absolutely bursting knowing that I was yours and you were mine…even though you stopped for a romp in the mud and kept me waiting!”
She flashed him a smile, the one that he loved so much: sweetness and attitude and something wicked.
“I already told you. The wheels of my curricle broke. You worked me too hard, kept me so busy during the last few days that it was inevitable.” With his hand under her chin he gently brought the side of her face to his and he began nibbling softly on her ear. “I will have to find some way to get back at your for it. Some way to work you hard and keep you busy too…”
“Oh, will you?”
He circled his tongue around the edges of her ear. She shivered.
“Oh, yes. I will. It’s only fair.”
“I very much agree. I’m sure you will think of something…” she said.
He was working on her neck now so she purred her fina
l observations.
“This journey we’ve been on together… everything we’ve been through in our whole lives… What a way for it to end…”
“No, my girl.” Greg stole her into his arms. “What a way for it to begin.”
###
About the Author
Olivia Fuller began writing at the age of 4. She self-published her books using folded paper and a stapler, and gave a new story to her kindergarten teacher every day. She no longer writes about baby dinosaurs, now preferring to write romances instead. In her spare time she watches too much Netflix, laughs with her husband, and playfully narrates the lives of her cats, Cher and Rocket Kitty.
The Wicked Game Series
The Wicked Game
Something Wicked
Love and Other Wicked Games
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Read a sample of Love and Other Wicked Games, book 3 of The Wicked Game Series. Coming November 2013. Now Available!
Manchester, summer 1840
When Ellie imagined her first kiss, she always pictured it happening shortly after the words “I love you,” not shortly before the words “who are you.”
But it was a minor point to know the person she was kissing.
Wasn’t it?
Ellie didn’t know this man from Cain but maybe he knew her. Perhaps he was an old friend of the family, a distant cousin, or a secret promised fiancé from her parents’ long forgotten days in high society.
It was probably something like that, wasn’t it?
And kissing, it was just the touching of lips. Skin really. It was pressing together skin. People did it every day. They touched when they exchanged goods in the marketplace as coin and product changed hands, or when they worked their way through the crowded Manchester streets sometimes having to push and shove, or when they sat by each other in a carriage that bumped along over the cobblestones, swaying to and fro. Sometimes the touches were avoidable and sometimes they were not. But that was of no matter. It was all the same in the end.
Just person touching person. Just skin touching skin. Just an everyday occurrence.
Except this time, that everyday occurrence left Ellie all warm and sweaty and confused.
Maybe this happened to other people—all people. Maybe touching skin always caused this rush of feelings. Or maybe it was supposed to and Ellie had just never noticed it.
She thought to her day-to-day life. The connections she made and the people she connected with. The brush of a knuckle while looking over fabric choices with the patrons, a light touch on the arm as they spoke. But none of that stood out. No rush of feelings. Nothing exciting or special. It was all perfectly ordinary. And normal.
But no one had ever accused Ellie of being normal, after all. It was Ellie the Flustered, Ellie the Anxious, Ellie the Eccentric—not Ellie the Average. So maybe what she’d always felt was the exception, and maybe what she felt now—this euphoria and lightness—was the rule. Maybe this was something that people were supposed to experience when they connected.
Or maybe she was wrong entirely and kissing had rules all its own…
But there was something more pressing to consider than whether or not these feelings were normal. There was a question literally lingering on her lips.
With great effort Ellie pushed away from him, breaking their kiss, and breathed out the words, “Who are you?”
His lashes fluttered and his emerald eyes darted around frantically from left to right. “Well, bloody hell… It didn’t work…”
“It didn’t?” Ellie inhaled sharply and pressed her hand against her breastbone as she too looked around and tried to center herself.
The sights and smells around her hadn’t been part of her first kiss fantasy either. Mud and smoke and people shoving past, vendors pushing nearly rotten produce. She scrunched her nose and covered her face with her hand. She couldn’t pinpoint the source, almost as if it was hidden somewhere just out of sight, but everything smelled like decay. These acrid fumes and filthy, city surroundings were enough to make her momentarily forget the handsome stranger who had just kissed her.
A cart wheel splashed through a small puddle near an alleyway, kicking up little bits of refuse and stale, brown water. A scraggly pig ran over and desperately drank from it, as another pig did his business nearby. Ellie’s stomach churned realizing that this pig wasn’t the first to make a contribution to the sewage and that it probably would not be the last.
She scrunched her nose again.
Sewage. That was the smell. Sewage and death. But that one puddle could not possibly be the only source of such putridness.
Was it just the old food? she wondered. This wasn’t a pleasant thought, but it stung less than the alternative: that the workers’ neighborhoods were worse the farther they sat from the main roads.
This area of the city and the way people lived here was difficult to stomach, even for someone like Ellie who held sympathies for the mill workers’ plight and knew some about their way of life. But it was always quite different to see it all with her own eyes. Ellie was feeling overwhelmed. Not only by the sights and the smells and the sounds, but by the very weight of the air. Yes, the air felt heavier here and the immense sadness was making its way deep inside of Ellie and taking root in her bones.
Everything felt so hopeless in this area of Manchester, as if every ounce of faith, hope, and happiness had long since been excised from both the people and their surroundings. Ellie watched one of the pigs wrestle a crust of bread away from the other as it snapped and snarled loudly. Even the animals here were desperate and hungry.
Ellie instinctively put her hand to her belly. She’d skipped breakfast this morning and now she felt guilty. She’d never eaten the most expensive cuisine, but she’d always eaten and she’d never had to go hungry. She was sure that many of the people from this area could not say the same.
She wished she could do something, anything, to improve their working and living conditions, but she was just a seamstress in a dress shop herself.
And now she would be late returning to work from her errand.
Oddly though, it was because of the mill workers that she was here, in this section of the city, in the first place. They were protesting in the streets again, for the second time in as many weeks, and as usual she’d been forced to take another road. But there was something else very unusual about today’s protest. The workers weren’t just blocking any old road—they were blocking portions of the main thoroughfare that cut through the city. This forced everyone to pass through the workers’ neighborhoods in the ring around the central commercial district where their plight and way off life was nearly impossible to ignore.
It was a brilliant plan, she’d thought, though sadly she was unsure how effective it would be. She’d noticed in life that most people had a keen ability to ignore even the most savage of truths so long as they didn’t have to face them. They were facing them now but Ellie feared—or rather she knew—that most people would put today’s events behind them the moment they left this portion of the city.
Ellie didn’t have that ability to forget or to stop feeling anything. And she wouldn’t have wanted it even if she could.
What she did want was to make her way back to the dress shop, away from this place and the helplessness that surrounded it, but for the second time today an obstacle was changing her plans. She looked back to the stranger and remembered.
If only she hadn’t stopped to smell those apples, or thank God she had—she couldn’t decide—because that was the moment when she laid eyes on him for the first time, half hidden in the shadows of an alley entrance, and found that his eyes were already resting on her.
&n
bsp; But that was alright. His eyes were like the soft grass she used to lay in as a child when she wanted to hide from the world. Forgiving, comforting, and true. She felt like she could fall right into them and wrap herself up in their warmth like she’d done in the fields. And the strangest part was that she wanted to. She wanted to lose herself in those eyes, fall in, and sink into their shimmering depths. Happy and comfortable forever.
Leisurely she bit into the apple she was holding, felt the crunch and sucked in her lips at the tartness. She wiped her mouth on the wrist of the hand that held the apple and then turned her body slightly away from him, but not before catching him smirk. Just a gentle twitch at the corner of his mouth where the raven hair peppered his skin—the smirk was amused, smart, and wicked. And it made her tingle. A quick glance over her shoulder told her that he was still looking at her—staring was a more appropriate description—and damn it all, he could tell she was staring as well.
She nervously bit the apple again, chewing quickly.
“That will be a halfpenny, miss.”
“Oh… oh my…” Ellie put her left hand into her pocket and found exactly what she suspected: an empty vessel. “Oh no.”
She ran her hand along her dress, searching for a forgotten coin hidden away for just such an instance, but all she found was disappointment. “Oh no…”
“Miss, that’ll be a penny.”
She dropped her hands to her side. “But you just said a halfpenny…”
“And you’ve already taken a bite of my produce…” The man looked her up and down in a way that made her skin crawl. “I’ll be getting my payment one way or another.”
“Oh no…” She patted her hand on her dress once more for good measure and darted her eyes to the side. The handsome man was no longer there.
Thank God. She was already nervous and embarrassed enough by her mistake. The last thing she needed was for someone else to witness it.
Ellie pushed her breath through her lips as her heartbeat quickened. “I’m sorry but I—”
Ah ha! Her hand met its mark. A solid coin hidden away in the folds of her concealed pocket. But as Ellie reached out her arm towards the vendor, another arm crossed in front of her from her right side and dropped two shiny coins in the vendor’s hand.
Wicked Game 02 - Something Wicked Page 26