by Mia Vincy
Sir Walter threw up his hands. “Clear case of arson. And clear who started the fire.”
Sir Gordon barely spared him a glance. “Lord Sculthorpe was a frequent smoker of cigars. Furthermore, the grooms had brought him whiskey and he was drinking. The most likely scenario is that he fell asleep while smoking and dropped his cigar on the hay.”
“But how did he light the cigar? Hm?” Sir Walter said. “I never saw him light a cigar himself.”
To be fair, Guy had never seen Sculthorpe light a cigar either.
“He liked having people serve him.” Arabella did not try to conceal her impatience. “Lord Sculthorpe picked up the habit when fighting in Spain. It is impossible that a soldier could not light his own cigar.”
“You would say that, wouldn’t you?” Sir Walter’s hand was shaking as he pointed an accusing finger. “When I said it’s clear who started that fire, I mean it’s clear it was she. Miss Larke.”
Stunned silence fell, all wide eyes and dropped jaws. Arabella looked so startled, Guy had to laugh.
Sir Walter turned on him. “Find this amusing, do you? You won’t want to marry her now.”
“The shock has addled your senses, old friend,” Guy said.
Sir Gordon looked uninterested. “That’s quite an accusation, Sir Walter.”
“An innocent man has died!” Sir Walter seemed truly distraught. “If you had witnessed her appalling behavior, sir! She meant to strike him. We all saw the violence in her face. It was shocking! Horrific! Unnatural!”
“Enough of this nonsense,” Mr. Larke snapped. “My daughter is a harridan, but I’ll not suffer you to accuse her of murder. It’s impossible. She was in her bedchamber with Lord Hardbury at the time. I was in the corridor when Hardbury came tearing out of her room, yelling up a storm. Followed by the girl.”
“They were in her bedchamber? Alone?” Lady Treadgold’s scandalized tones flew across the room, her words tumbling through air that crackled with embarrassment. Everyone’s eyes hastened to study something—anything—that wasn’t Guy or Arabella.
“No one else came out after them,” Mr. Larke said thoughtlessly.
Well done, Larke. Nice touch that, completely ruining your daughter’s reputation.
Lady Treadgold kept fulminating about disgrace and scandal and corrupting influences on young ladies, but she might as well have sung an aria for all Guy heard.
All he knew was Arabella, framed like a portrait against the backdrop of blue velvet curtains. Like a painting, she was completely motionless. Even her gaze was unwavering as it met his.
It was over.
The knowledge flared between them, like a thread of lightning connecting them across the room. No hope for discretion, not from Sir Walter and Lady Treadgold. Not from anyone. Word would spread.
Before this, Arabella might have managed to end their engagement with her reputation intact; a trifle tattered, perhaps, but wealth, connections, and demeanor could paper over a multitude of sins. But not with this fresh evidence of their intimacy. Not with her engagement to Guy so soon after Sculthorpe’s hasty departure. Not after Sculthorpe’s accusations, after her violence, after Guy had beaten him. Not with Sculthorpe lying dead somewhere on her father’s estate.
Only two options remained to her: marry Guy or experience complete ruin.
Mr. Larke remained unbothered. “Enough with that nonsense,” he grumbled at Lady Treadgold. “They’ll be married shortly. Won’t you, Hardbury?” he added sharply.
Guy’s eyes did not leave his betrothed. Sweet peace flooded through him, for the first time in years.
“No need to clean your guns, Larke,” he said. “I have every intention of marrying your daughter as planned.”
Almost immediately, Lady Belinda took control and herded everyone out. Everyone but Arabella and Guy, neither of whom had moved. In the doorway, she paused. “Five minutes,” she said, “and the door stays open.”
“Stable door,” Arabella muttered. “Horse bolted.”
“The door stays open,” Lady Belinda repeated.
“Yes, my lady,” Guy said, and closed the door as soon as she was gone.
He lounged back against it to study Arabella.
“This was never my intention,” she said.
“I know.”
She stood, her fingers steepled, her narrowed eyes boring a hole in the ceiling. The wheels of her brain were spinning; he could hear them whirring from across the room. She was still fighting. It was over, and still she fought.
“By the lake that day,” he ventured through his tight throat. “You said that marrying me would be the worst thing in the world.”
A terse shake of her head suggested she was irritated by his intrusion. “I cannot think of a way out of this. I have always prided myself on being able to solve any problem and being good at making plans. But I am bad at it.” The notion appeared to astound her. “I won’t even find a position as a governess after this.”
“Why the devil would you need to? You’ll be a marchioness.”
She blinked at him, as if that notion astounded her too. “You’re very sanguine, considering you’ve spent your entire life avoiding precisely this. Your wretched honor and sense of duty, I suppose. Admirable as they are, they have landed you in such a mess. I arrived here through terrible planning. You’re so impulsive you simply waded right in.”
Oh so help him, but she was struggling like an animal in a snare; if she kept this up, she might just chew off a limb. She had never wanted to marry him either. She still didn’t; only he had made that leap. He could tell her that— But no. Unbidden, Clare’s words clouded his brain: The more you told me you loved me, the more trapped I felt.
Arabella’s choices had been stolen too. And Arabella needed time and space to think. Rational thought would help calm her. Rational reasons would make her feel safe. He had to tread carefully, and not scare her away.
He navigated the furniture to reach her side and took one chilled hand in his.
“Don’t,” he said.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t hide behind your walls.”
How charming was her confusion, when he observed a truth about her. He knew such things now, knew them like he knew that tiny mole on her left cheek. He brushed it with a knuckle.
“All things considered,” he said softly, “I think you’ll find I’m not quite the worst thing that could happen to you.”
Mercifully, she did not retreat fully into her haughty aloofness, but neither was she melting in a puddle of smiles and sighs. A perfect future stretched out in front of them; Guy was indeed eager to wade right into it, but Arabella would need time to think.
He entwined his fingers with hers. “If this charade has taught us anything, it’s that we can rub along quite well,” he continued with a lightness he did not feel. “We’ll quarrel like two devils, of course, but we’re used to that now. You will help me navigate society and politics, and I’ll temper your more Machiavellian tendencies. And the marital bed will be satisfying, to say the least.”
She studied their joined hands. “You wanted to marry someone amiable, pleasant.”
“You were right: I’d be bored. You will never be boring.”
She looked back up at him. A triumph: Her bleakness was gone, her face aglow with humor.
“You’re saying I was right?” she said.
“That’s precisely what I’m saying. How insufferable do you intend to be?”
“I shall be exactly the right amount of insufferable.”
Laughing, he lifted her hand and pressed his mouth into her palm. She responded by feathering her fingertips over his eyebrow and down his cheek. He released her, rested his hands on her waist.
“You truly don’t mind?” she whispered. “About having to marry me?”
“I mind that our wedding is not for several days, and I shan’t be allowed to touch you before then.”
Her fingertips continued their feather-light dance over his cheek, to his
lips. He still didn’t know everything going on in that mind of hers, but finding out would be the most splendid, enduring adventure of his life.
Then she slipped away from him, escaping his hands to cross to the door. She reached out, as if she meant to open it and walk away from him forever.
Guy started to call her name, to stop her from opening that door.
But she didn’t open it.
She turned the key.
Locked.
And her expression when she faced him again: deliciously brazen and bold.
“Arabella, what are you doing?” he asked, though he and his happy body already knew.
She lifted one eyebrow, favored him with her most imperious stare. “Why, I’m seducing you, of course.”
The wooden door at Arabella’s back seemed to thud with the pounding of her heart.
Across the room, Guy didn’t move. A wickedly welcome smile teased his lips, and that familiar intensity smoldered in his gaze.
She launched herself toward him, her skirts swishing obstructively around her legs, the devious carpet threatening to trip her up.
“In the drawing room?” he said.
“I have a fondness for drawing rooms. I’ve done some of my best seducing in them.”
“As I recall from the last drawing room, your seduction technique is dreadful.”
“I’ve been taking lessons. I’m a very fast learner.”
She docked before him, basking in his warmth, his scent, his intoxicating vigor. He remained still, awaiting her next move. She faltered, and concealed her nervousness by studying him. A smear of soot marked his cravat. His shirt was spotless, the linen cruelly concealing his arms. Also unmarked was his waistcoat: an olive green, with regiments of tiny taupe tulips marching in exquisitely straight rows. Each tulip was a marvel of needlework: a hundred tiny tight stitches that would take longer to unpick than they had taken to sew.
With one unsteady finger, Arabella traced a column of tulips from his collarbone to his waist. Her motives for this seduction were suspect. Oh, she wanted him; no deception there. But honesty—it was new, this honesty, a result of discovering those hidden parts of herself—this novel honesty compelled her to admit she was driven by more than pure lust. At her core was a deeper desire: to stitch him to her even more tightly than those tulips were stitched into the silk.
To know, without a doubt, that he, too, wished them to be so bound.
She flattened both palms over those tulips, soaking up the feel of his broad chest.
“Careful,” he warned. “There’s soot all over my breeches.”
“And you smell of smoke and sweat.”
“How charming of you to mention it.”
“I’m being romantic.”
She pressed one of his hands, deliberately, meaningfully, to her waist. He used it to yank her against him, and she kissed him. Want me, that kiss both commanded and begged. Want me now and forever. Her hand trailed over his throat, kept from her by a mile of linen. She hooked her fingertips in the folds of his neckcloth, willing it gone.
It ignored her.
“What’s wrong?” Guy murmured. “Have you forgotten what comes next? Will you require instructions?”
“Your cravat. You did not wear one on previous occasions. I don’t like it.” She stopped pestering his neckcloth and grabbed a handful of linen. “And as for this bothersome shirt…”
“Do you mean for us to ruin another of my shirts?”
She looked him right in the eye. “I mean for us to ruin me.”
He caught her meaning. His eyes darkened; his breath hitched. He wanted this. He wanted her. He must. A man as honorable as he would never take that step if he was not truly willing to marry her.
“My last chance to ruin you, and I do hate to waste an opportunity,” he murmured. “It won’t be ruination once we’re married.”
Arabella’s palm drifted to rest on the hollow of his cheek, his sharp jaw, where his skin was intriguingly rough with stubble. On previous occasions, he’d been freshly shaved. She would know such things about him once they were married, little intimacies such as the feel of his beard at different times of the day. Did he wake quickly or slowly, cheerfully or not? How did he sleep? What were his moods? So much of him to discover. A lifetime of it. Hers to take, starting now.
“We don’t have much time,” she said. “Sit on the settee.”
At first, he didn’t move, his hand still burning her through her gown. Uncertainty threaded through her: She had miscalculated yet again. He did not want a quick seduction in the drawing room. He did not truly mean to marry her. His taste for dangerous games did not run to this.
But then his palm skittered upward, over her waist to her ribcage to the underside of her breasts, carelessly dragging the fabric of her gown with it, so the air weaved around her ankles.
“The settee, Guy. This is no time for a crisis of principles.”
“Firstly, my breeches are dirty,” he said, the rough promise in his voice at odds with his mundane words. “While my principles permit me to debauch a willing young lady in the drawing room, they forbid me from dirtying the furniture. I would have thought you’d appreciate that.”
“I do, rather.”
“And secondly…”
He moved swiftly, stooping to loop one arm around her buttocks. Her feet left the ground and she gripped his shoulders as he barreled her backward across the room to the table. A sweep of his arm sent a workbasket flying and she landed on the sturdy oak. Before she could find her balance, he flipped up her skirts, so she was staring down at her own pale, naked thighs above the royal-blue ribbons of her stockings. Brazenly, he shoved up her skirts further, exposing the dark curls of her quim to the velvet air.
He laughed, a wicked, triumphant laugh. Dazed, aroused, breathless, Arabella locked her hands around his neck, and let herself fall backward as he loomed over her, eyes smoldering.
One hot, rough hand landed on her thigh, and began a slow, relentless march upward; her quim, rather pleased with this change in circumstances, pulsed in readiness for his touch.
“This isn’t the settee, Guy,” she said, her tone miraculously resembling hauteur. “Will you always have such difficulty with taking direction?”
“And secondly,” he repeated, as calmly as if he had not exerted himself at all; it was rather humbling to realize he had not. “Let us agree, right now, that you will not spend all our marriage ordering me about.”
His fingers were advancing up her thigh in inflammatory circles. No mistaking her own scent now, mingling with his. Earthy, messy, awkward— Perfect.
“Of course not,” she retorted, with treacherous huskiness. “I had not thought to order you about more than three quarters of the time.”
“Is that so?” His infernal touch danced in place at the uppermost inch of her inner thigh. “I do believe there is scope for further negotiation.”
“You mean to haggle at a time like this?”
“Seems the ideal time to haggle.”
His fingers broached that final inch, slipped between the folds of her quim, slid inside her. With a desperate gasp, she reared up to kiss him, but his teasing lips hovered out of reach. His intrepid fingers continued their exploration. They found the sensitive spot they were seeking; rampant pleasure made her arch and gasp.
“As I shall be a reasonable and lenient husband, I shall allow you to order me around one-third of the time.”
“What you think you will allow me is of little interest,” she retorted. His exquisite strokes did not pause. “My final offer: I shall order you around only one-half of the time. The other half, I shall allow you to think you are ordering me around.”
Again, she reared up to kiss him; this time, he let her catch him, their lips meeting and moving in time with his rhythmic touch. He straightened, bringing her with him, their mouths not parting for a moment, as she grappled with his breeches and released his hot, hard length into her hands.
He gripped her hips, y
anked her to the edge of the table, her naked thighs wide around him. Finally, his breathing was ragged.
“Now,” she murmured. “And that’s an order.”
He didn’t move.
“If you don’t do this right now, so help me, I’ll—”
“You’ll what, sweetheart?”
She glared at him.
“Oh, you’ll glare at me. It’ll take more than that to scare me away.”
But he required no further instruction: He pushed firmly, unhesitatingly, into her.
Arabella wrapped her legs around him, squeezing him to her as tightly as she could. She forced her eyes open, held his. She longed to throw back her head and surrender to sensation, but she needed to look at him, to show him what he did to her, what he meant to her, how intensely she wanted to hold onto this. That she offered her body in a vow to him; that she received his touch as his vow to her.
With one arm, he held her off the table, taking her weight, moving inside her. She moved with him, passion guiding her, reveling in each sensation, in the powerful movement of her hips and thighs. Taking her own pleasure, heightening his. No thoughts now, no breath, her face pressed into his neck, smothering her gasps, as glorious pleasure shuddered through her, holding him tight as he shuddered too, their bodies still joined.
Guy’s shoulders heaved under her airless limbs, and he released a long, slow groan into her hair. His arms tightened around her, gathering her together, gently lowering her to the table. His eyes were glazed and sleepy. He smoothed a hand over her cheek. Holding his gaze, she pressed a kiss to his palm.
“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he said.
“No. That was…” She sighed.
“It was, wasn’t it? One day, I’ll tup you very slowly, and then you’ll be sorry.”
He leaned toward her and—
A quiet knock sounded at the door. His eyes widened; no doubt hers did too. A heartbeat of stillness, until they leaped into action, smothering their laughter as he pressed a kerchief into her hand and they tidied themselves as best they could.
Taking his time, Guy sauntered across the room. He unlocked the door and lounged with one shoulder against the wall.