“I must return to my chamber,” she said into the silence. “Theo will need me soon.”
He caught her hand and raised it to his lips, forcing her to meet his gaze when she would’ve retreated like a coward, refusing to look at him for fear of what she might see. “You can’t undo this, Helen.”
No, she could not. “The white flag was only temporary.” She reminded him as much as herself.
“No indeed, Mrs. Storm.” He tugged her to him for a lingering kiss that had her melting into him in spite of her determination to remain unmoved. “Tonight was your Appomattox Court House. This war between us is done.”
She rose from the bed. “We shall see about that, Mr. Storm.” Head held high, she retreated from his chamber, cold and nude, all too aware that he watched every step she took.
e thought she was ready to surrender. But lovemaking was not a panacea. Helen took breakfast in her chamber the next morning with Theo, determined to avoid Levi and give herself some time and space to think. Her heart was hopelessly confused, her mind in even more desperate straits. She’d spilled her tea, dropped her fork, upended a chair, and forgotten to fasten Theo’s nappy properly after changing him. With stains marring her dress from the tea, the leaking nappy, and the fork, she’d had to call her lady’s maid back and dress all over again. On a whim, she’d chosen one of the gowns Levi had bought for her.
It was fashioned of vibrant Ottoman silk, its kilted skirts pinned with small bows and a bouffant at the back, and she had to admit that it fit her surprisingly well. The fabric was fine, and she hadn’t worn a dress so dear since nearly the last time she’d seen him. Wearing it felt rather odd, yet also somehow right.
Oh, perhaps choosing the gown had not been a whim after all, she thought now as she hastened down the hall to his workshop. Perhaps it had been her heart telling her head what it ought to have realized by now. She would never stop loving him. Going to his bed may have been unwise, but it had proved to her in ways that nothing else could that the passion burning between them remained, as hot and consuming as any flame. She could not continue to ignore it.
Didn’t, in fact, wish to.
Where did that leave her? She didn’t know, but she stopped before the closed door separating her from him and knocked twice just the same. He hadn’t sought her out that morning as she’d thought he might. Initially, she’d been relieved. But as time had stretched, her mind wandering, her emotions spinning into painful knots, she’d decided she would wait no longer.
No answer. She knocked again. Only quiet from within. Perhaps he had gone to his office for the day. Somehow, she’d thought he might remain after all they’d shared. Disappointment wafted over her. Unless he was inside the chamber after all and merely too caught up in his task to hear her?
Helen turned the knob before thinking better of invading his domain. The door swung open, and she tentatively poked her head inside. The curtains had been tied back, allowing a generous, cheerful sunshine to pour forth and spill over the room’s intriguing contents. There was no sight of her husband, but she stepped inside anyway, leaving the door ajar.
This chamber, his private domain, was where she’d gotten her best glimpse of him. It was where he’d dropped his guard, allowing her to see inside his mind, where the walls she’d carefully built had begun their initial crumble. After last night, they lay in rubble at her feet. She paced the length of the spacious workshop, careful not to touch anything, her eyes drifting over dissected machines, parts and pieces, metal and wood, wires and tools, sheets of handwritten notes. His scrawl was tidy but bold, much like him. Slowly, she made her way through the room until she reached his desk. Unlike the scattered pieces of machines littering nearly every other available table, his desk was a meticulous presentation of order. And it was then that she accidentally caught sight of the journals he kept there in tidy stacks. The Telegraphic Journal & Electrical Review, Engineering, The Electrical World.
Nothing overly surprising about his reading material, she thought with a smile that faded when she noticed the corner of a newspaper jutting out from beneath the stack, the only source of disorder on an otherwise spartanly kept surface. It bore her name. Knowing a bit of guilt for prying in his personal effects but too curious to allow it to stop her, she slid the paper out of its hiding place.
It was one of her articles. Passages had been underlined as though he’d given her words a great deal of thought. As though her words had interested him. Meant something to him. The paper bore the signs of having been re-read, its creases well worn. In fact, it looked quite as if it had traveled with him for some time. The date on the paper confirmed her suspicion. Why, it was nearly six months old.
That meant…dear heavens, it meant he had been reading her articles in New York City, before he’d ever known about Theo. He had brought her article with him to London. But why?
And why did the discovery make her heart give a great pang inside her chest? A pang of, what was it? Surprise? Longing? Hope? Perhaps all of those emotions simultaneously, tumbling over each other, each clamoring to be felt the most. Oh, but she dared not hope. Dared not long. Hoping and longing were dangerous pursuits indeed when it came to Levi Storm.
The workshop door slid softly over the thick carpet, and she spun, heart in her throat, to find him standing at the threshold. He wore his work clothes, a simple dark suit and white shirt, black waistcoat beneath devoid of ornamentation. No hat, his rich mahogany hair on full display. His whiskers had not been trimmed this morning, and the effect was quite maddening. He looked splendid, rugged, and handsome all at once.
“Mrs. Storm,” he said formally, surprise coloring his voice. “While I’m gratified to see you’re no longer disguising yourself as a washer woman, I do have one question. Would you care to explain what you’re doing riffling through my desk?”
Her cheeks went hot with embarrassment. Oh dear. Perhaps she had been trespassing where she had no right. “I was not riffling,” she rebutted, however.
He directed a pointed look at the newspaper in her hands. “One might argue that the evidence of your guilt is in your hands.”
Yes, there was that. She placed the newspaper back on his desk but her gaze remained fastened on him. “Will you bring the law upon me? Have me hauled off for my crimes?”
“I can think of better punishments.” His lips quirked into a smoldering smile, dimples appearing the better to taunt her.
Her heart thumped. “Indeed? What punishment is that, Mr. Storm?”
He closed the door at his back and stalked toward her with slow purpose. “It depends, Mrs. Storm, upon the nature of the crime. Tell me, what were you reading just now?”
He already knew, of course he did. But he wanted to hear her say it.
“One of my articles.” A warm sensation stole over her again, and this time embarrassment was most definitely not its source.
“Ah.” He stopped just short of her, saying nothing more.
“Did you read all of them?” she had to ask. Very much depended upon his answer, it seemed.
“You refused to publish your articles with the Beacon even though I wrote you to say that I hoped you would not abandon your cause for loathing of me. So I discovered the paper you’d chosen instead.”
He spoke as if it were of no greater import than buttoning his waistcoat. But Helen’s heart, so conflicted earlier, felt now as if it would burst. “Why?”
His smile turned self-deprecating. “You have a sharp mind, Helen, and the world could use more of your forward thinking.”
“Thank you, but you didn’t answer my question.” She knew that he too could be liberal in his ideas, but he was not the sort of man to carry reform journals about with him. The engineering and electrical journals she could well understand. The reform journal? Not really. And she needed to know why he’d read her articles, carried them with him. Her heart needed to know why.
His smile dissipated, his jaw tightening. “What do you want me to say? That it was because I wanted
to hear your voice, and I could not? Because I longed for you so badly this last year that I was willing to settle for typeset words? Or should I say that I missed your mind, your thoughts, and reading your articles was the closest I could get?”
She pressed her hand to her heart as if the action would stay its frantic beats. She wanted nothing more than to throw herself into his arms. “I would want you to say all that if it were true.”
“Of course it’s true, hang it.” His voice was as dark as his expression. He stepped forward before she could, hands clamping on her waist and dragging her into his chest. “Of course it’s all true, you stubborn, maddening woman. I wanted nothing more than to come back to you, but I was too proud to beg. Too stupid, maybe, to beg.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted you to beg.” She locked her arms around his neck, leaning into him for the first time since his return without thinking that she ought not, that she should keep her distance. He was so beautiful, so masculine and brash. She was fiercely glad in that moment that she had chosen to invade his territory and riffle through his desk, as he had mockingly phrased it.
“What would you have wanted then?” He pinned her with his gaze, searching, seeking. “Tell me, Helen, and I’ll give it to you. You have the world at your fingertips if you but ask.”
“I would have wanted to know how you felt,” she confessed softly, feeling unaccountably shy. They had shared the magic of each other’s bodies and yet somehow this seemed the most intimate act between them of all. “And I want to know how you feel, now.”
He cupped her face as if she were beloved. “How can you not see, Helen? I loved you then. I didn’t understand it for what it was, not well enough to treat you as you deserved, and for that I will have eternal regret. I’ve discovered that I know a great deal about business. I know how electricity works, how to harness it and make rooms and train stations light up. I know how to improve upon virtually any machine or invention there is. But I don’t know a goddamn thing about love other than that it can eat a man alive from the inside out. This isn’t the pretty speech you ought to get, and Lord knows you could’ve found a hundred men more worthy to be your husband than I, but all I know is that I loved you then, Helen, and I love you now.”
He loved her.
She stared at him, words failing her. The stern businessman who had once locked her out of his office, who had looked down his nose at her articles without reading them, who had been aloof and cold, perfect and unflappable, who had raged through her life like his surname, that same man loved her. Impossible. This was the man who cared only about his business, about furthering his own goals.
Or was he?
The man before her now, the man who held her as delicately as if she were their baby son, who had carried her article around with him for six months, who had kissed every part of her body and who had transformed everything she’d thought she’d known about herself…this man loved her.
And she loved him. She loved him enough to move beyond their past wounding of each other. Love was stronger than pain, she realized then, and forgiveness was the greatest healer of all.
“Levi.” Her fingers sank into his hair. “Tell me again.”
“I love you, Mrs. Helen Storm.” His mouth came down on hers, swift and hungry. “I love you, hang it.”
His last declaration was so utterly Levi that she couldn’t help but smile and kiss him once more. His tongue dipped inside to tease hers. All the pent-up emotion of the last year without him crashed over her and her hands fisted in his hair. She never wanted to let him go. She never would. Not ever.
He broke the kiss. “I wish to God I’d never hurt you, Helen. I hope that, in time, you may learn to trust me. That you may even enjoy my company outside the bedchamber. I’m willing to wait, my love. I’ll wait for however long it takes.” He kissed her again. “I need to go back to New York City soon. The lawsuit I told you about will be tried in court, and I need to be present for the case. My life’s work depends on winning it. But I don’t want to rush you. If you and Theo are more comfortable here, this is where you will remain. You will have all my funds at your disposal, to dispense with as you like, and this house is yours to run as you see fit.”
The thought of seeing his New York, surely a city as bold and as untamable as he, both daunted and thrilled her. But see it she would, for she wasn’t about to let him go anywhere without her.
“No,” she said. “We will go where you go. Theo and I are your family. If you’re in New York City, then we will be.”
“You needn’t feel obligated—”
She pressed a finger to his lips, stopping his words. “Hush. I want to be where you are. We’ve spent too much time apart, and I don’t want to lose another minute. I love you, Levi.”
He stilled, dragging her back to arm’s length so he could look at her. “What did you say?”
“I said that I love you.” She was smiling and crying happy tears all at once, but ever since she’d had Theo, her emotions had been rather uncontrollable. “I love you, you maddening man. I love that you know how machines work when they look like worthless lumps of wood and metal to me, how you’ve fashioned yourself into the man you are today by nothing but your own hard work and persistence. I love the father you are to Theo. I loved you then, and I love you now. I was too proud to accept that you’d made a mistake, and I pushed you away, and that will be my everlasting regret.”
He crushed her to him and kissed her. “No regrets between us. Not from this point forward.”
“None,” she agreed, and kissed him again.
Levi was precisely where he wanted to be, in his bed, his naked wife pressed to him. Her breasts were against his chest, his hip thrown over hers as if to hold her to him forever. They’d made love twice. Once, with fierce abandon and then with tender slowness, a sense of wonderment. Damn it all, he’d thought he’d been fortunate to have her as his wife. But nothing compared to her love.
She loved him. Electricity was no enigma to him. There was nothing he could not comprehend, given time and patience. How he had earned this woman’s heart, though, would ever be a mystery. He buried his face in Helen’s gleaming tresses and inhaled. Bergamot and rose. His favorite scent.
“Levi.” She caressed his chest, watching her fingers work their path of fire across his skin. “There’s something that’s been troubling me. Your mother died when you were so young. How did you manage? A little boy, all alone?”
He tensed. This hadn’t been a topic he’d expected her to broach, not after they were spent with passion. His fingers sifted idly through her hair. “I managed.” His ma had been ill for days and she’d told him what to expect. She’d given him into the care of a fellow prostitute, who’d neither the money nor the disposition to take care of an unruly, motherless lad.
“Won’t you tell me?” She touched his jaw, stroked him. “Or is it too painful to speak of?”
“Yes,” he said, and it was his answer to both of her questions. He pulled her even closer as though he could absorb her love, wear it like a shield. “She left me in a woman’s charge, another whore. She was not kind or patient, this woman, and she didn’t want another mouth to feed. I found out she wanted to sell me to a man who liked to misuse children, and I ran away. For some time, I lived as a thief. When the war began, I enlisted with false papers because I was too young. I’d always been tall, and the war machine needed able-bodies. I was that, and no one asked questions.”
“My God, you went off to war as a boy?” Her exquisite face was stricken. For all that she was a reformer, a woman who didn’t shy from the ugliness of life, she was still the sheltered daughter of an earl.
But he loved the goodness in her, that it had not been ruined. “I survived, sweetheart.” He cupped her cheek, lowered his mouth to her already kiss-swollen lips for a moment. “While I was a soldier, I learned to read and write exceptionally well from some of my comrades, and when the war ended, I was a changed man. I’ve never broken the law since except for our
wedding day, but that I will not regret. I’d do anything to protect you and Theo.”
She pressed her forehead to his. “As I’d do anything to protect you. You will never be alone again in this world, Levi. Not as long as I’ve breath in my body.”
Her fervent words warmed him as nothing else could. Dredging up the specters of his past never failed to shake him, but she was real and sweet and soft in his arms. “I’ll hold you to that, my love. Don’t think I won’t.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
He kissed her again because he couldn’t not, especially not when she was looking at him as if he were an angel come down to walk among men. But he was no angel, and he had sinned too many times to count. “Thank you for loving me,” he said when at last the kiss had ended. “I don’t deserve it.”
“Yes,” she said with just as much vehemence, “you do.”
Levi thought then of the day they’d first met, when she had invaded his office, golden and beautiful and every inch a lady. And he’d been a boor, tossing her over his shoulder, carting her to the door. He’d wanted her even then, with a need that had only grown over time rather than lessening. It was like a river, cutting deeper into the earth with each passing year.
He was about to kiss her again when he remembered something else about the day she’d stormed his offices, wielding her article and her reticule like weapons. Gently, he disentangled himself from her, flipping back the bedclothes and rising to his feet.
“What in heaven’s name are you doing?” she demanded, sitting up and clutching the coverlet to her chest for modesty’s sake. Her hair was an untamed curtain about her shoulders, and he couldn’t wait to bury his face and his hands in it once more.
But there was something he needed to do first.
“I have something that belongs to you,” he said cryptically, and strode across the chamber without a thought for his nudity. He threw open his wardrobe and reached inside, extracting his memento of their first day together. Levi carried it to her like an offering, the hat she’d left behind. His albatross, the bit of frippery he’d carried with him ever since. The only piece of her he’d had left.
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