“With you,” he said, simply.
She sat up and turned her head, her arms coming up on the edge of the bathtub, the silhouette of her shoulders soft and curved and perfect. “Besides me.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he replied, pulling his shirt over his head, letting it sail across the room.
“I think Jane’s then,” she said.
He’d missed eighteen years of Christmases with his sister. A decade of them with Peter. The promise of a family Christmas with them was wonderful. And of course, Sesily knew that.
But he did not want to talk about his sister. “Sesily …”
She shifted, the water around her making lush promises that he hoped his wife intended to keep.
“We can plan for Boxing Day at Highley,” she said.
“I honestly don’t care, love,” he said, running a hand across his bare chest, down to the buttons of his trousers. Lower, stroking over his straining length. “Tell me more about what you’ve been doing while you waited for me.”
A pause, and then she straightened, turning back to profile. Tilting her face up to the ceiling. Giving him more of a view. Her breasts, full and perfect. She stroked over them with her cloth, and he did not hold back his groan. “Are you sure you’d like me to tell you?”
She stood, the sound of the water sluicing off her body like sin as her full silhouette came into view, the curves and swells and dips and valleys. Her lush hips and round bottom. Her hands lifted to her hair, and she fiddled with the tower of it, pulling it down in heavy rich waves. “Or would you rather I show you?”
He was across the room and around the screen in seconds, pulling her to him as she squealed her delight. “Caleb! I am still wet!”
“And I’m going to make sure you stay that way,” he growled, lifting her out of the bath and up into his arms. “You’re a tease.”
She shook her head. “I’m not!”
“No? Then what was all this? Talk of The Place and my tavern and where we shall spend Christmas … with no awareness of how you were making me wild with need?”
Her blue eyes flashed with pleasure and her fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him down for a kiss. “A little awareness.”
He groaned, licking deep, sucking on her full bottom lip until she sighed with pleasure. “A lot of it.”
“Wild with need, are you?”
“Always, when it comes to you, wife.” He carried her around the screen, crossing the room in long strides, to drop her, nude on the edge of the bed.
She parted her thighs and he stepped between them, grateful that when she’d redecorated this particular room, she’d thought to raise the bed on a platform. When he pressed himself to her, her heat searing him through the rough fabric of his trousers, they both groaned their pleasure.
And then his magnificent wife pulled him down for a kiss, deep and lush and perfect, releasing him only to whisper, like sin, “Whatever will you do with me?”
“I have some ideas,” he promised, tipping her back onto the bed and following her down. “Would you like to hear the best one?”
“Please,” she sighed, arching up to him, making him ache.
“I’m going to love you, Sesily Talbot. Every day … for the rest of our lives.”
Her eyes met his, blue and beautiful. “Out loud?”
She was perfect. And his.
“Out loud.”
And he set about doing just that.
The joy of writing historical romance is this: while the stories are always about the way we experience the world and ourselves and love in present day, every book begins with a little truth from the past. Often, those truths are wilder than anything I could imagine on my own.
Several years ago, while staring at Twitter instead of working on what would become Brazen and the Beast, I stumbled upon a tweet referencing the Forty Elephants, the women’s branch of the Elephant and Castle Gang—the largest gang in Victorian London. While the Elephant Boys were into all the things gangs are usually into, the Forty Elephants were a less overtly violent bunch. The women worked as bookies and ran the largest shoplifting ring the United Kingdom had ever seen, wearing enormous skirts over specialty undergarments that could carry anything that wasn’t bolted down in the department stores of the late 1800s. The stories about the Forty Elephants are wild, and I became fascinated by this gang of women who ran their own network.
Let me say now, the Hell’s Belles are not the Forty Elephants. If the Hell’s Belles are a martini, the Forty Elephants are the bottle of vermouth waved over the glass. Without them, however, I would not have imagined this group of women, with them a far-reaching whisper network and specialty undergarments, who know their way around a locked prison cell, a tavern brawl, and a bottle of chloroform. So, here’s to Alice Diamond, aka Agnes Ross, aka Diamond Annie, and to her girls, for the inspiration. For the record, I think Alice would hate this book. It’s far too soft for a woman who falsified papers to find work in a munitions factory and secure a line to explosives. I firmly believe, however, that she would make a lewd comment about Caleb’s thighs, and I respect that. For more on the Forty Elephants, do not miss Brian McDonald’s terrific Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants.
Speaking of chloroform—the mixture that Imogen has invented in her own laboratory is the same mixture invented simultaneously in Germany and the United States in 1831. More on that in her book, I’m sure!
I also can’t say enough about London’s Foundling Museum, which has stayed with me for years, since my first visit. As always, I owe a tremendous debt to the Museum of London, the British Library, and the New York Public Library for endless rabbit holes of research … even during a global pandemic. Hug your closest research librarian.
By now, my friend Dan Medel is used to late-night texts asking strange questions like, “If someone gets choked to the point of passing out, what would happen to them?” Thanks to him, as always, for patient answers which now usually begin with, “If death isn’t an option, then …” The fact that he tolerated my nonsense this time while being a doctor during a pandemic … if that isn’t friendship, I don’t know what is.
I spent 2020 feeling immensely grateful for my own girl gang—a community of women who I honestly don’t think I could have survived endless 2020 without: my ride-or-dies Louisa Edwards and Sophie Jordan; my dear friends Jen Prokop and Kate Clayborn; everyone in the Writers Room text chain; and Kennedy Ryan and Meghan Tierney, for keeping me honest until the very end.
The Duchess’s soup tureen is inspired by a similar setup in the home of a long-ago friend of my mother’s. So thanks to Venturi—for the idea and for introducing my parents at one of your great parties.
To the amazing team at Avon Books, number fourteen is in the books! Thank you to: brilliant Carrie Feron, who never blinks when I pitch her a bananas idea; Asanté Simons, who never blinks when I ask her a silly question; Brittani DiMare, who makes me look so much better than I am; Brittani Hilles, who jumped into the pool with both feet; Jennifer Hart, Kristine Macrides, Christine Edwards, Ronnie Kutys, Andy LeCount, Josh Marwell, Carla Parker, Rachel Levenberg, Donna Waikus, Carolyn Bodkin, and the entire Sales team, who all come with big excitement; and Jeanne Reina and everyone in the art department, who saw what Bombshell could be and made sure it had a cover to match.
Rounding out this gang of very excellent girls are Holly Root, Kristin Dwyer, Alice Lawson, Eva Moore, and Linda Watson—I’m so grateful for each of you.
Thank you to my loves: V, who turned the tables and left her mom notes at the beginning of the day; Kahlo, for hours lying on my feet under my desk; and Eric, for everything you do, even when you think I’m mayhem.
And this is all before I get to you, dear reader! Thank you for waiting so patiently for Sesily and Caleb. I hope I made it worth the wait. I hope you see now why it took so long … I had plans! I can’t wait for you to see what I’ve got cooking for Adelaide, coming next year.
Sarah, Bombshell
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