Tears came to her eyes in the wonder of it all. This was a miracle. God’s creation. Now, she understood—they had become One.
Slowly, his body relaxed against hers. He rolled over, bringing her with him. She felt him leave her, spent. Her body cooled, and he must have felt the same because he pulled the bedspread up over them.
She lay on him as languid and supple as a cat. Her ear against his chest, she listened to the beat of his heart. Never had she felt so drowsy or pleasantly sated. He kissed the top of her head, his arms around her waist possessively. She smiled, watching the flickering flame of the candle on the table beside the bed.
“Is it always like that?” she finally managed to ask.
“It’s never been like that,” he answered.
A fierce pride rushed through her. She lifted her head, her hair creating a curtain around them. “Ever?” she demanded.
“No,” he promised. “Not ever.”
He kissed the spot where her neck met her shoulder. It was a particularly sensitive place.
Deep, newly discovered muscles clenched. “And can we do it again?” she asked, already knowing the answer. The proud head of his arousal was already moving against her.
“As many times as you like, Mrs. Severson,” he promised. He moved his hips.
“Are we going to do it now?” Her own voice now sounded breathless. Experimentally, she moved her own hips.
Her husband’s reaction was immediate and swift. “Dear God, yes,” he said—and so they did.
Michael didn’t ever want to leave their room at the inn.
Isabel was like opium. The more he had of her, the more he wanted.
They made love with a need he’d never experienced for another woman. There were no days and nights. Beyond the four walls of their room, the world could have ended, and he could have cared less. He had Isabel. She was enough.
He was so besotted with her that he’d lie awake watching her sleep. Strands of her hair would curl around her neck and cheek. She looked so young in those moments, so innocent and pure. His wife gave without pretense or expectation of return, and it humbled him. Her generosity encouraged him to play to his best impulses, to be the man she wanted to believe he was. Isabel didn’t trust easily. She trusted him.
Michael could have stayed in their room at the inn forever. Or so he thought.
Three days into their honeymoon, he woke in the middle of the night to find himself alone in the bed. He sat up, alarmed and didn’t relax until he saw Isabel sitting in a chair by the window, wearing his shirt and staring out into the night.
“What are you doing over there?” he asked.
She turned, her face in shadows. “You were restless. You must have been having a bad dream. At first I tried to wake you, then I decided to leave you alone.”
He didn’t remember dreaming. “Did I say anything?”
Isabel drew her legs up, wrapping her arms around them and hugging them to her chest.
“What did I say?” he insisted.
“You called out Aletta’s name.” She paused, then said, “When you were fighting fever, you spoke to her as if she were in the room with you.”
Michael put his feet over the side of the bed. “What did I say?”
“Nothing I could make out.” She rocked back and forth in the chair seat a moment before asking, “Do you think you could ever set it aside?”
He wasn’t certain he wanted this conversation now. “Set aside what?”
“Her death.”
Michael lowered his head into his hands, not answering. From across the room, Isabel said, “If you don’t ever learn who murdered this woman, will you ever be able to let it rest?”
“No.” He looked up at her, wishing it could be different or that she didn’t play a role in this.
He had set out to use her for his purposes and, in a bolt of insight, he realized this could be a wedge between them. She was too fine and good to be a piece in his game against Elswick.
And yet, what choice did he have? He’d already chosen his path. His only hope was that he could protect her.
Isabel studied him a moment before saying, “I didn’t believe you could.”
“If there was another way, I would take it,” he answered. “It will be all right. Everything will be fine.”
Isabel smiled at him then, the moonlight caught in her eyes. “Yes.” She lowered her feet to the floor to stand. “Tomorrow is the Sabbath. Mr. Oxley will expect us to be in church.”
Michael rarely set foot in a church. Michael wasn’t a praying man—especially since God knew what game he played, but he could give her this. “Of course,” he said.
Mr. and Mrs. Oxley were happy to see them at the Sunday service. Simon, the bell ringer and witness to their wedding, gave Michael a broad wink when he saw them. Michael winked back. Isabel looked back and forth between the two men, suspicious, but not offended.
Going to church, Michael decided, wasn’t such a bad thing. Mr. Oxley gave a competent sermon. The passages read from the Bible were fine enough. Everyone enthusiastically sang a hymn, albeit out of tune.
But Michael didn’t ever really connect to the worship and the prayers in the same way he sensed his wife did. No, instead, his mind chewed on other matters. His wound was healed, his mind clear, his resolve firm. It was time to return to London.
When he told Isabel, she didn’t offer protest. Instead, she placed her hand in his, in a gesture of trust. Michael promised himself he would let no harm come to her. They spent their last day in the inn in the same manner they had been spending it—making love.
Only this time, for him, the pleasure was bittersweet. He was a man who believed in a reckoning…and he knew the time would come.
He vowed he would protect her at all costs.
The next morning, they left for London.
Michael told Isabel they would make it a twoday trip. And while Haddon probably had a stack of papers he wanted to foist off on Michael, there was no urgency to arrive.
“Does he read?” she asked. Haddon had taken the phaeton back, and the burled coach was spacious but cozy since her husband took up most of the room.
Isabel didn’t mind.
“Of course,” Michael answered, frowning at the card she had just discarded. They played to while away the time. “He just doesn’t like details and he hates haggling. He claims Indians aren’t good at negotiating against anyone but themselves, and he may have a point.”
“Does he think of himself as an Indian?” she wondered. She didn’t.
“He thinks of himself as a Shawnee, but he is also very conscious that he is half-white.” Michael looked over his cards at her. “You must understand, the Shawnee believe there are Indians and then there are the Shawnee. They are quite elitist.”
“But his father raised him, didn’t he?”
Michael laid down his suit of cards, neatly winning the hand. “He lived with his father until the man turned traitor. Then Alex returned to his mother’s people. Isabel, let me warn you, he doesn’t talk about his father much. In his mind the man is dead.”
“I wish I could be the same.” Isabel gathered the cards, the game forgotten. “Every turn of the wheel reminds me we are on our way to London. My path could cross his. I should be more like Haddon.”
Michael rested his hand on her leg. “I don’t believe you could, any more than I believe Haddon has. I know what preachers say, but I don’t believe man was meant to forget. I certainly haven’t.”
“No, Michael, we were meant to forgive,” she corrected him.
“Have you forgiven your father?”
Isabel leaned back in the corner. “I just want him to acknowledge my existence. Is that too much to ask?”
“For some men.” He put the cards into a wooden case and tucked it into the coach’s pocket for storing such things. “On the other hand, I want it all…and I think you do, too.”
“No, I’ve thought on this. I don’t want very much from him.”
&n
bsp; “Good. You probably won’t receive much.”
He passed his verdict with absolute confidence, and a thought struck her. “Do you know the marquis of Elswick?”
For one fleeting second, she sensed him hedge, but then he said easily, “Everyone does. He is a man of great influence.”
Of course. Isabel nodded, hearing something else in his words. “I shall have to make my peace with that, won’t I?” she said thoughtfully. “I will have to forgive. The irony, of course, is that his son was also linked to that actress they accused you of murdering. He would be my half brother. You don’t think he was involved, do you, Michael?”
“You think too hard on it, Isabel.” He pulled her into his arms. “Forget Elswick. The man you consider your father is the one who raised you. That’s my thought.”
Her stepfather? She shook her head. “He never cared for me.”
“He had the keeping of you. He did more than Elswick.”
That was true, but still something in Isabel rebelled at the thought of giving her stepfather credit. It was her real father she wanted acknowledgment from. Her real father whom she must see—
Her husband pulled her up into his lap. “Don’t think on it now, Isabel,” he told. “Don’t make yourself angry.”
“It’s important to me—”
He interrupted her with a long, leisurely kiss. But Isabel wasn’t ready to let go. “Michael, you will introduce me to the marquis of Elswick, won’t you?”
Michael looked at her as if he weighed something in his mind, then he shrugged. “Isabel, I have other things to think on.”
“Like what?”
He moved her to straddle his hips, and she could feel his arousal. He wanted to make love. His fingers tucked at the lacing in the back of her dress.
Her initial thought was shock…then interest. “The coachmen will know,” she whispered.
“That I’m making love to my beautiful wife? If they are men at all, they will hope I am.” He pulled her lacings free.
Isabel felt herself blush furiously, and yet, she didn’t offer protest as he pulled down the shades over the windows. It all seemed so wicked—and exciting. Michael had swept into her life and changed everything.
She found the buttons of his breeches and undid them with an expert’s ease. Her husband kissed his way from her throat to her ear, knowing what she liked, covering her breast with his hand.
They didn’t fully undress. There was no need to. Sitting astride, Isabel took her husband deep within her. The sway of the coach added to the pleasure of their coupling. He pushed her dress down, his mouth finding her breasts, and their movements took on more intensity.
Isabel no longer thought of the coachmen. Her husband had the power to make her think of nothing but him. Their passion overwhelmed all other concerns.
And when they were done, when they held each other in their arms, Isabel thought she was the luckiest of women.
Michael hugged his sleepy, well-loved wife close and didn’t want to think of Elswick.
As he brushed his lips across the top of her head, drinking in the heady scent of her hair, he ignored the pang of conscience and promised himself it would all be fine. He would protect Isabel, and heaven help Henry and Elswick if they had killed Aletta Calendri.
They stayed in an excellent inn that evening and left midmorning the next day. Their coach rolled into London late in the afternoon.
When Isabel had last left London, she had been in disgrace. Now she returned in far more style than even the duchess had known.
“You’ll need to purchase a wardrobe,” Michael said.
She frowned at her brown day dress, so aware of her inadequacies. Michael read her mind. “You are beautiful,” he said in her ear. “Besides, I prefer you naked.”
“That would make it awkward when I went out to do the marketing.”
He laughed. “You don’t have to do any of those tasks,” he informed her. “Although my household hasn’t been set up for a woman. Bolling, my butler, serves most of my needs. The two of you can talk, and you may do whatever you wish.”
“Carte blanche?” she asked archly.
He caught the double meaning of her words. “Of course,” he murmured indulgently.
The coach then turned onto one of Mayfair’s most fashionable streets. The homes were new, their limestone facades untouched by the elements.
The coach stopped in front of a hunter green door with brass trimmings. It was a magnificent doorway.
His arm around her waist, Michael gave her a little squeeze. “Welcome to your home, Madam Severson.”
Never in Isabel’s wildest dreams had she imagined this moment. It was as if she had become a queen.
The coachman opened the door. As they climbed out of the coach, the front door opened. Bolling was a tall, lean man with a hooked nose and that weary air of knowledge all good butlers should have. He was dressed in black as befitted his station.
“Hello, Bolling,” Michael said.
“Hello, sir. Welcome home.”
“It’s good to be here,” Michael said, escorting her into the house. The hallway was a round room with a huge bronze chandelier covered in prisms hanging from the ceiling. The white marble floor didn’t have a rug to protect it, and the wall alcoves were empty. The only furniture was a chair by the door and a table for hats and candles.
“This is my wife,” Michael said, introducing her.
Bolling made a bow. “Mr. Haddon informed us you would not be returning alone. It is a pleasure to welcome you, Mrs. Severson.”
Isabel nodded, very conscious of her new responsibilities and anxious to explore her new home.
However, Bolling was not finished. “You have a visitor, sir. Someone you particularly wished to see.”
Michael frowned. “Who knew I was coming?”
At that moment, the doors opened. A man stood there. He was of average height, and yet there was an air about him that made him seem larger than life. The man’s sharp gaze flicked over Isabel with a rudeness that stole her breath.
Her husband’s whole manner changed. He stepped between Isabel and the visitor, his manner definitely combative.
The two men took each other’s measure, then the visitor demanded, “What in bloody hell do you think you are doing?”
“Gaining your attention.”
“You’ve done it. Let’s talk.” Their visitor turned on his heel and went back into the sitting room.
Michael didn’t hesitate. “Bolling, take Mrs. Severson upstairs to my bedroom. I’ll be there momentarily.” But she knew he’d already dismissed her from his mind.
He entered the sitting room and shut the doors behind him.
All of Isabel’s earlier contentment vanished.
“This way, ma’am,” Bolling said, starting up the stairs.
She didn’t move. “Who is that gentleman?” she asked.
Bolling hesitated. He glanced at the door.
Isabel could put authority in her voice. “Who is he?” she repeated.
“The marquis of Elswick.”
If the hand of God had come down from the sky, Isabel could not have been more stunned. That rude man was her father?
What astonished her even more was that she had not recognized him. She’d always thought she would know, that there would have been some bond between them that would have informed her.
He’d been a stranger.
“Mrs. Severson, this way please,” Bolling said, reminding her of her husband’s instruction.
But Isabel had no intention of going upstairs. She had waited most of her life for that moment, and at last the hour had come.
She walked over to the sitting room and threw open the doors.
Ten
The two men were so involved in their conversation that they didn’t even turn at Isabel’s entrance. They stood in front of a carved marble fireplace that appeared never to have seen a fire in its grate.
The marquis was speaking in a low, angry voice, “Of c
ourse I’m here. I heard of your marriage and whom you married. You won’t stop at anything in your attempt to get close enough to destroy me, will you? You are mad!”
“Sometimes I think I am,” Michael answered. “You did your best to see me hang. If you weren’t protecting Henry, why would you even care?”
She interrupted, wanting to make herself known. “So this is my father?”
Her quiet words were like a gunshot going off in the room. Both men looked up, startled. Her father’s scowl grew deeper, and he muttered something to Michael that Isabel didn’t catch.
Bolling came up behind her, apologizing, “I’m sorry, sir. Didn’t realize she was going to do this and couldn’t stop her in time.”
Her husband waved him away, and said, “Isabel, I’ll explain all in good time; but for now, go upstairs with Bolling.”
“Explain all in good time?” She slammed the door, the butler having the intelligence to move back and save his nose. “The time is now, Michael. Now.”
Her father surveyed her with dispassionate interest, his irritation plain. She shared his thick black hair and determined chin. He, too, had flecks of gold in his eyes; but there was a harshness to his expression, an overall sense of disappointment with the world that she prayed would never imprint itself upon her.
“What did my mother see in you?” She’d not meant to speak the words aloud, but they came out all the same.
His brows rose. “I can’t even remember what your mother looked like.”
His words sucked the air out of the room.
Isabel struggled for breath—in her temper she found it. She wanted to rip his tongue out of his head. She charged forward, but Michael stepped into her path, catching her by the arms.
She whipped around to glare at him, seeing not her husband but a stranger. She jerked away from him. She didn’t fully grasp the depth of his betrayal—it was too new—but she knew she had to put distance between them.
And then the marquis made a mistake. He smiled, the expression self-satisfied and grim.
Isabel raised her chin. “Go on with your questions, Michael. Ask him if he was the one who attempted to have you murdered?”
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