Instead, she took his hand and led him to her bed. He stood silently, passively, as she stripped him of his remaining clothes—although his cock was far from passive. Then she pushed him onto the bed and climbed in beside him. She propped herself up on an elbow next to him and drew her free hand down over his chest. She felt grateful that she had this man, at least for this time, for herself. Here, now, she could do with him as she wished.
It was a gift. A glorious gift.
So she leaned down and trailed soft, wet kisses along his side, licking the ridge of his ribs, nipping at the jut of his hip bone. Above her, he rumbled something, a warning perhaps, or maybe encouragement. She wasn’t sure, and she didn’t care. In front of her was her goal: his penis, bold and thick and hard. She touched it with just a fingertip, running along its length. Then she leaned down and softly, gently, kissed him on the weeping eye.
His hips arched, and he grabbed her hair, pulling her face up. “Don’t. You don’t have to. I don’t deserve it.”
There were beads of sweat on his upper lip, and his eyes were wild and sorrowful.
Deserve was an interesting choice of word, and she stored it away so that she could bring it out and examine it later.
Right now, though, she deliberately licked her lips, tasting his seed, and said, “I want to.” She wanted to bring him peace if she could.
His grip relaxed, perhaps in surprise, but she took advantage by dipping her head and taking his cock into her mouth. Then his hands tightened again, but she hardly thought it was to stop her now.
She sucked on the tip, a salty plum in her mouth, and ran her hand dreamily down the length. She hadn’t a lot of practice at this, and if there was a proper way of doing it, she wasn’t aware, but he didn’t seem to mind. He muttered something unintelligible and bucked his hips. She smiled secretly and let his cock pull out of her mouth with a soft pop. She tested her teeth against the meaty head, stroking faster below. There was no give in his shaft. He was hard and ready and—
He jackknifed up and flipped her beneath him. And then he was looming large and menacing over her, his face dark as he growled, “Do you think me a plaything, my lady?”
She opened her legs wide, planted her feet, and arched her hips off the bed. She rubbed her sex against his length, watching as his eyelids fell in reaction.
“Perhaps I do,” she whispered. “Perhaps your cock is my favorite toy. Perhaps I want my toy in my—”
But he thrust fast and hard, making her lose her words on a gasp of pleasure.
“Wanton,” he gritted. “My wanton.”
And she could only laugh in sheer erotic frenzy. She bucked her hips up, making him thrust harder just to stay on top. She laughed aloud as she rotated and ground against him, the sweat from his exertions dripping onto her bare breasts. He gripped her hips and held her firmly still as he thudded into her, galloping at an impossible pace. Stars lit behind her open eyes, and she threw her head back and gasped in ecstasy. She held on to his slippery shoulders, feeling the heat spread from her center, conscious dimly that she still laughed aloud even as she crested in glory.
It wasn’t until he shuddered in her arms, swearing steadily under his breath, that her vision cleared and she saw that above her his face was a mask of tragedy.
Chapter Eleven
All of the suitors set off after the ring of bronze, and Princess Surcease sighed and went back into the castle. But Jack found a quiet corner and opened his little tin snuffbox. And what should be inside but exactly what he needed: a suit of armor made of night and wind and the sharpest sword in the world. Jack put the suit on his stumpy body and grasped the sword. Then whoosh! Whist! he stood before a lake. Jack was just wondering if this was the right lake, when an enormous serpent rose up out of the water. What a mighty battle commenced! The serpent was very large and Jack very small, but he did have the sharpest sword in the world, and that suit certainly helped. In the end, the serpent lay dead and the ring lay in Jack’s hand. . . .
—from LAUGHING JACK
He’d apparently married a wanton, Jasper reflected late the next morning. A shameless, sensual wanton, and he couldn’t believe his luck. While sitting in that church vestry, listening to her proposal with his head ringing from a hangover, he’d never once thought that the marriage bed would be so wonderfully intense with her.
Of course, all that wonderfulness didn’t quite explain why he was riding away from his town house this morning, having once again eaten breakfast without his wife. This came perilously close to cowardice. But while his body was enthralled by her sensuality, his intellect coldly wondered where she’d gained her knowledge. She must’ve had at least one lover—possibly more—and he wasn’t sure he wanted to examine that thought too closely. The image of another man teaching her. Showing her how to take a cock into her sweet, warm mouth . . .
He growled. A passing chimney sweep shot him a startled glance and shied away.
Jasper pushed the thought from his mind. He hunched his shoulders and drew up his collar against the misty drizzle. The good weather had finally broken, and London was a gray, gloomy world this morning. His mind drifted back to last night. He remembered his wife reflected in the black window as she drew her chemise from her tall, slender body. She’d looked pale and otherworldly, her light brown hair swirling about her hips.
She probably thought him a coward or, worse, an imbecile. He’d left her after they’d made love, without so much as a good night, and spent the night on his pallet. He was an ass. But those eyes, watching him as she kissed his chest, watching him as she asked about Spinner’s Falls. God. She’d had no idea what she’d married. Perhaps it was best that he’d left so ungraciously. Better not to give her hope of something more when he didn’t have it in him to be anything more.
And now he didn’t even make sense in his own mind. He looked up to see Matthew Horn’s town house, glad that he could escape these maudlin musings.
Jasper dismounted Belle and handed the reins to a boy, then leapt up the front steps. A minute later, he was prowling Horn’s library, waiting for him to come down from wherever he was.
He’d just bent to peer at a large and dusty volume when Horn’s voice came from the door. “Looking for some light reading?”
“Just wondering why anyone would want a history of copper mining.” Jasper straightened and grinned.
Horn made a wry face. “My pater’s. Not that it did him any good. The mine he picked to invest in failed.” He strolled into the room and flung himself into a large chair, looping his leg over the arm. “The Horns are not exactly known for their financial sense.”
Jasper grimaced sympathetically. “Bad luck, that.”
Horn shrugged. “Want some tea? Seems early for whiskey.”
“No. Thank you.” Jasper wandered to a framed map of the world and tried to make out where Italy was.
“Come about Spinner’s Falls again, have you?” Horn asked.
“Mmm-hmm,” Jasper agreed without turning. Was it possible Italy wasn’t on the map at all? “Have you heard about what happened to Hasselthorpe?”
“Shot in Hyde Park. They’re calling it an assassination attempt.”
“Yes. And right after Hasselthorpe agreed to think about helping me.”
There was a brief silence, broken by Horn’s incredulous laugh. “You can’t think the two are related?”
Jasper shrugged. He wasn’t sure, of course, but the whole thing was a very strange coincidence.
“I still think you ought let Spinner’s Falls go,” Horn said quietly.
Jasper didn’t reply. If he was capable of letting this go, he would.
Horn sighed. “Well, I’ve been thinking about it.”
Jasper turned and glanced at Horn. “Have you?”
Horn waved a vague hand. “Here and there. What I don’t understand is why someone would betray the regiment. What would be the point? Especially if it was one of us who was captured. Seems like a good way to get yourself killed.”
“Every one of us that was captured fought and fought well.”
“Aye, you’re right.” Jasper turned back to the map.
“Then what possible reason to betray the regiment and get us all killed? I think you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick, old man. There wasn’t any traitor. Spinner’s Falls was just bad luck, plain and simple.”
“Perhaps.” Jasper leaned so close to the map that his nose nearly touched the parchment. “But I can think of one very good reason someone might betray us.”
“What?”
“Money.” Jasper gave up on the map entirely. “The French had made it known that they’d pay good money for information.”
“A spy?” Matthew’s dark eyebrows shot up. He didn’t look particularly convinced.
“Why not?”
“Because I and anyone else who was there would tear the bloody bastard limb from limb, that’s why,” Matthew replied. He jumped up from his chair as if he couldn’t stay still anymore.
“All the more reason to make sure no one found out,” Jasper said softly.
Matthew was looking out the window now and merely shrugged.
“Look, I have no more love of the idea than you,” Jasper said. “But if we were betrayed, if they all died from one man’s greed, if we marched through that forest and endured . . .” He stopped, unable to say the rest.
Jasper closed his eyes, but in the blackness, he still saw the glowing stick pressing into flesh, still smelled the stench of burned human skin. He opened his eyes. Matthew was watching him without expression.
“We need—I need—to find him and bring him to justice. Make him pay for his sins,” Jasper said.
“What about Hasselthorpe? Have you seen him since the shooting?”
“He refuses to see me. I sent a message this morning asking for an interview, and he sent it back saying he intends to retire to his country estate to recover.”
“Damn.”
“Quite.” Jasper brooded over the map again.
“You need to speak to Alistair Munroe,” Horn said from behind him.
Jasper turned. “You think he’s the traitor?”
“No.” Matthew shook his head. “But he was there. He might remember something we haven’t.”
“I’ve tried writing him.” Jasper grimaced in frustration. “He doesn’t write back.”
Matthew looked at him steadily. “Then you’ll just have to travel to Scotland, won’t you?”
MELISANDE SAW HER husband for the first time that day at dinner. She’d actually begun to wonder if he was avoiding her, if something was the matter, but he seemed perfectly normal now as he forked up peas and joked with the footmen.
“How was your day?” Vale asked her carelessly.
Really, he could be a most aggravating man at times. “I took luncheon with your mother.”
“Did you?” He gestured to the footman for more wine.
“Mmm-hmm. She served stuffed artichokes and cold sliced ham.”
He shuddered. “Artichokes. I never know how to eat them.”
“You scrape the leaf against your teeth. Quite easy.”
“And leaves. Who thinks to eat leaves?” he asked, apparently rhetorically. “I wouldn’t. Probably some woman discovered artichokes.”
“The Romans ate them.”
“A Roman woman, then. She probably served up a plate of leaves to her husband and said, ‘Here you are, dear, eat hearty.’”
Melisande found herself smiling at Vale’s depiction of the fictional Roman wife and her unfortunate husband. “In any case, the artichokes your mother served were very good.”
“Huh.” Vale grunted skeptically. “I expect she told you all about my misspent youth.”
Melisande ate a pea. “You expect correctly.”
He winced. “Anything particularly egregious?”
“Apparently you spat up a lot as a baby.”
“At least I’m over that,” he muttered.
“And you had a flirtation with a milkmaid at the age of sixteen.”
“I’d forgotten that,” Vale exclaimed. “Lovely girl. Agnes, or was it Alice? Perhaps Arabella—”
“I doubt Arabella,” Melisande murmured.
He ignored her. “She had lovely peaches-and-cream skin and the biggest . . .” He suddenly coughed.
“Feet?” Melisande asked sweetly.
“Amazing, really. Her feet.” His eyes gleamed wickedly at her.
“Humph,” Melisande said, but she had to repress a smile. “And what about your day?”
“Ah. Well.” Jasper stuck a large piece of beef in his mouth and chewed vigorously before swallowing. “I went ’round to Matthew Horn’s house. Remember him? Fellow from my mother’s garden party?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t believe it, but he has a map of the world that doesn’t have Italy on it.”
“Perhaps you weren’t looking in the right spot,” she said kindly.
“No. No.” He shook his head and drank some wine. “It’s this side of Russia and above Africa. I’m pretty sure I’d’ve noticed it.”
“Perhaps the map was made by someone who disliked Rome.”
“Do you think?” He seemed much struck by the thought. “Just decided to do away with Italy altogether?”
She shrugged.
“What an idea! I wouldn’t have had to study Latin all those years if Italy had disappeared.”
“But now you already have, and I’m sure you’re a better man for it.”
“Huh.” Jasper sounded unsure.
Melisande ate some boiled carrots. They were quite good. Cook had added something sweet—honey, perhaps. She’d have to remember to compliment the little woman. “And did you discuss anything more with Mr. Horn besides his defective map?”
“Yes, we talked about a fellow we know in Scotland.”
“Oh?” Vale was drinking more wine, and it was hard to read his expression. Melisande’s interest sharpened. “What is his name?”
“Sir Alistair Munroe. He was attached to my regiment, but he wasn’t a soldier. He was sent by the crown to record animals and plants in America.”
“Really? He sounds like a fascinating man.”
Vale frowned. “He is if you like talking about ferns for hours at a time.”
Melisande sipped her wine. “I quite like ferns.”
Vale frowned harder. “In any case, I’m thinking of making a trip up to jolly old Scotland to see him.”
There was a silence as Melisande contemplated her cooling peas and carrots. Was he running from her? She’d so enjoyed living in his house and knowing he was nearby. Even if he was away for large parts of the day or stayed out until all hours of the night, she knew he’d come home eventually. Just being in the same house as he soothed her soul. Now she wouldn’t have even that.
Vale cleared his throat. “Thing is, he lives north of Edinburgh. It’s a ways away, a trip of a week or more on bad roads in a carriage. There’ll be drafty inns and bad food and the possibility of highwaymen—probably be an awful trip altogether.”
He had transferred his scowl to his plate. He jabbed at his beef with the tines of his fork.
Melisande was silent, no longer eating because her throat seemed to have closed. He was going to see a man, whom, by his own admission, he didn’t particularly like or know well. Why?
“But, despite all that, I wonder if you’d like to accompany me, my lady wife.”
She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that for a minute his words didn’t make sense. She looked at him to find that he was watching her intently, his eyes bright blue-green. A blessed relief began spreading through her chest.
“When will you leave?” she asked.
“Tomorrow.”
Her eyes widened. “So soon?”
“I have something important to discuss with Mun
roe. Something that can’t wait.” He leaned forward. “You can take Mouse. We’ll have to bring his leash, of course, and make sure he doesn’t scare the horses at inns. It really won’t be comfortable, and you might be terribly bored, but—”
“Yes.”
He blinked. “What?”
“Yes.” Melisande smiled and resumed eating. “I’d like to come with you.”
“THEY’RE TRAVELING TO Scotland,” Bernie the footman said as he brought the dish of peas back into the kitchen.
Sally Suchlike nearly dropped her spoon into her bowl of soup. Scotland? That heathen land? They said the men grew beards so fierce you could hardly see their eyes. And it was a well-known fact that the Scots didn’t bathe.
Cook was obviously having similar thoughts. “And them only newly married,” she lamented as she set dishes of lemon curd tart on a tray. “It’s a pity, truly it is.”
She gestured for Bernie to take the tray in and then stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Have they said how long they’ll be gone?”
“He’s only now told my lady, but it’d have to be weeks, won’t it?” The footman shrugged, nearly upsetting the tray on his shoulder. “Months, even. An’ they leave right away. Tomorrow.”
One of the scullery maids burst into tears as Bernie left the kitchen.
Sally tried to swallow, but there didn’t seem to be any spit left in her mouth. She’d have to travel with Lady Vale to Scotland. That was what lady’s maids did. Suddenly her new position, with the lovely increase in wages—enough even to set some by—didn’t seem so grand. Sally shuddered. Scotland was the edge of the world.
“Here now, there’s no need to carry on like this.” Mr. Pynch’s deep voice came from beside the fireplace where he was smoking his nightly pipe.
At first Sally thought he was admonishing her, but he was clearly addressing Bitsy, the scullery maid.
“Scotland isn’t as bad as all that,” the valet said.
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