by Julia Bennet
“I’m sorry, Will,” she said as they made their way through the woods. “That probably wasn’t the sort of wedding you’d have preferred.”
“Again, I think I’m supposed to say that to you.”
“Why, because I’m so romantic?”
He laughed until he realized the implication. “Wait, you think I’m romantic?”
“Deep down, yes. Am I wrong? Can you tell me truthfully that you wouldn’t rather have married in the little church with flowers and the organist playing?”
“Wouldn’t you?” He didn’t like that she treated the entire thing so casually. He didn’t expect her to pretend this was a love match, but they’d still committed themselves to each other. To him at least, it hadn’t been a trivial decision.
“I don’t know. What I do know is that the wedding day isn’t the important part. I want you to know that I mean to be a good wife if they let me.”
He squeezed her hand, taking comfort from her words.
He’d almost forgotten them for a moment. They’d decided to keep their union a secret for the time being, which meant they still needed to be careful.
“Once we’re back inside the grounds, we can pretend this is an ordinary walk, but until then, you’d better keep your hood up.”
He wished he could take her away tonight, but to do so would trigger immediate consequences. If they announced the marriage, the duke would immediately move for an annulment, something that would be easier to accomplish with the ceremony so recent. The longer they were married, the stronger their position. If they ran, whether or not they announced the marriage first, they’d prove Sterling’s point. Helen would seem impulsive, even erratic, and Will underhanded. Lord Shaftesbury, probably already predisposed to take Harcastle’s side, would take a very dim view of Will stealing Helen away.
They could only hope fate gave them the time they needed to plan their next move. If they could get Bell to speak on their side with Mrs. Braithwaite to support him, or if they gathered further evidence to impugn Sterling’s reputation, they might be able to tip the scales in their favor.
Or so they’d reasoned. But after the hurried, not to mention perfunctory wedding, the union felt tenuous, the rights it conferred on Will, the say it gave him in Helen’s fate, as insubstantial as a spider’s web.
“I don’t think I should go back to my own room tonight,” Helen said. “Fletch might…I’d rather stay with you.”
She had that look again. Careful, calculating. The look she wore whenever she tried to manage him. Heaven help him, he was starting to find it oddly alluring. What he really needed was time to think away from her damn allure, but now they were married, time apart from her wouldn’t be so easy to come by.
It was hard to think of Helen as a patient. That word “wife” rendered all other appellations obsolete. Yet, the marriage might be set aside. Was it wise to rush into consummating it? He knew half a dozen ways to prevent pregnancy, but not one of them foolproof. If he got her with child…
“Let’s get back inside before we think about that,” he said.
But he knew Helen would do everything in her power to stop him thinking clearly. He didn’t understand what drove her. Surely not desire for his person, whatever she told herself. She likes pretty fellows, remember? And Will didn’t want her to do anything she didn’t truly want.
An entire evening alone in his tiny room in these circumstances seemed unwise, so when they got back to the house, Will suggested Helen bathe. No doubt she ached after her ordeal. He also asked Elsie to sit outside, actually within the dressing room this time, a chaperone of sorts, to keep him honest, to keep him sensible, and to act as a sign to Helen that nothing would occur behind the closed bathroom door.
The hours after dinner always seemed calm at Blackwell, the patients hidden away in their rooms for the night while the doctors retreated to their books and papers. Outside, the light had dwindled. The stained-glass of the high clerestory window in the doctor’s bathroom looked almost black. The only light in the room came from the fire and the candles Will had lit. The only sound was the occasional slosh of water as Helen moved.
He kept his chair turned away from the tub, but doing so was harder than it had been before.
My wife. He tested the words in his mind, but they didn’t feel true yet.
“I could stay here all night.” Helen had spoken on a contented sigh.
He gazed down at the scuffed tabletop, the papers on it a pale yellow blur in the candlelight, but it didn’t matter where he looked because he could still picture her, relaxed and languid like her voice. Her shift would be soaked through and clinging to her curves. He’d seen her that way once before, and now he couldn’t stop envisioning it.
He cleared his throat.
“Is something the matter?” she asked. The sound of water and the slight scrape of her feet told him she’d sat up and probably leaned forward to look at him. “You sound… Is this really such torture for you?”
“All alone with the woman I married? You know it is.”
“Well…” More sloshing. “There’s a simple remedy.”
The temptation—to turn around, to stride across the small space between them, to touch, to feel, to kiss—was almost unbearable. To take her down onto the cold stone floor, to hold her wet and shivering against him.
“And what if they succeed in setting this marriage aside?” he asked.
“Won’t consummating it make that less likely?”
“It’s almost impossible to dissolve a marriage for non-consummation. Anyway, if we say we did, how will they prove we didn’t?”
In the ensuing silence, he could feel her thinking. The wheels turning in that busy head of hers. “But it’s not as though I’m a virgin anyway. Perhaps I think it’s worth the risk. Perhaps I want to be sure of you.”
“Perhaps you do, but bedding down on those terms seems a cold-blooded thing to do.” He wanted her warmth. It was there. He’d caught glimpses of it on so many occasions. Surely, they couldn’t all have been pretense.
He traced the scratches in the tabletop with the tip of one finger. Thunder rumbled outside as candlelight flickered on the back of his hand. His huge, great paw. The hand of a laborer, not a physician.
“You know it isn’t only that,” she said, her voice low, perhaps mindful of Elsie sitting beyond the door. “I don’t know how to convince you or what to say that I haven’t already said.”
“I wonder if you understand how much things will change. Once that door opens… Ours isn’t a conventional match. Wouldn’t we be better off waiting?”
“Your attitude…” The softness had gone from her voice. “You’ve been married. One would think you’d be less… But then I know so little about your past.”
“There isn’t much to tell. You know it all already.” He counted off the facts on his fingers, trying to distract himself as much as her. “I grew up here in this very house. My mother was the housekeeper. Sir Clifford paid for my schooling because he had no sons and he was fond of me.”
“But beyond that? What about your wife? What was she like?”
A note of exasperation had crept into her voice, and that, more than anything, compelled him to answer. Part of him feared she was moments away from climbing out of the bath. She’d grab his arms and force him to look at her, never mind that she was soaking wet and mostly naked. Yes, part of him feared, but part of him hoped as well.
“She was my wife,” he said stupidly.
“You must have loved her a great deal.”
“Yes.”
“And she loved you?”
“I believe so.” Then, because he realized how uncertain he sounded, he added, “I always knew she loved me, but Esther was a romantic, ruled by her emotions. Love was something she fell into. A feeling, not an action. A noun rather than a verb.” He smiled at the memory even as it twisted his heart. “She couldn’t help falling in love with an upstart housekeeper’s son anymore than she could help how she struggled t
o hold on to that feeling later when times grew hard.”
He hadn’t meant to say so much, and judging by Helen’s silence, he’d surprised her for once. No, his first marriage had been far from perfect, but neither had it been without joy. He and Esther had loved each other as best they could. If she’d lived, he felt sure they would have continued to experience both the sweet and the bitter. Like all relationships, theirs had been complicated.
“Did you enjoy the marriage bed?”
Of course, Helen never stayed quiet for long. And how like her. From love to lust, as if they were the same thing, as if she were a man or a—
He caught the errant thought before it finished forming. An ugly thought unworthy of a scientist and certainly unworthy of a gentleman. Damn Dr. Sterling and his antiquated claptrap anyway. Helen wasn’t a nymphomaniac.
“Will?”
“Why would you even want to know? Isn’t it better to leave the past where it lies?”
“An interesting attitude from someone who asks me about my past all the time. We’re married now. Surely, it’s better if we both know what to expect. Here I am practically naked, and you won’t even look at me.”
“You know the reason for that.”
“Do I? Tell me this: Are you ever going to take me to bed, and if you do, will you consider it a pleasure or a chore?”
“A chore?”
Before he could think better of it, he twisted in his chair to face her and found her as he’d imagined. The shift stuck to her skin. The pinkish outline of her nipples visible through the thin white cotton. The darkish shadow at the crux of her thighs. At some point in their discussion, she’d lain back, and he could see everything.
All he could do was look at her. Even if he’d had the presence of mind to recite the Hippocratic Oath, he couldn’t regard Helen as his patient any longer.
He could go to her, here and now, and lift her out of the water. She’d feel cold and shockingly, wonderfully alive, her soft white skin tight against the sober black wool of his jacket. And she was always so bold. She wouldn’t hesitate to seek out the evidence of his desire. After all, she’d done so before when she’d come to his room.
How had he pushed her away that night? How had he borne it?
“You know very well it wouldn’t be a chore,” he said, still in his chair. But he hated how old he sounded, how dull and proper. “It would change everything. Once I touch you, I won’t want to stop. I’ll want you as often as you’ll let me take you. And if you change your mind about me, I won’t want to let you go.”
“That’s the idea.”
She stared at him, her mouth slightly open, chest rising and falling with rapid breaths. Unable to stand much more, he turned away and began gathering his papers. Without looking back at her, he went to the door and stood poised to open it, to let Elsie in. His hand hovered over the handle, but he couldn’t turn it. He couldn’t walk away from Helen again.
“Get out and get dressed,” he said without turning. “We’ll go back to my rooms, but if you reach for me, you’d best be sure it’s what you really want.”
Even to his ears, the words sounded like a dare.
Chapter Fourteen
Once I touch you, I won’t want to stop. I’ll want you as often as you’ll let me take you.
In the near-silence of the bathroom, Will’s words lingered in the air, but were they a threat or a promise? Even as they’d made her heart leap with hope, she realized he spoke like a physician delivering the direst of prognoses.
Before today, he’d never uttered a single word in condemnation of her obvious lusts and desires, but maybe that had been because his professional veneer made him reticent. Had she married a prude who might never understand how she yearned to be touched? Would he take her to bed but hate her afterward?
It shouldn’t be this difficult. That thought underscored all Helen’s fears about the man she’d married. The words echoed within her as she dressed, her eyes on her new husband’s back as he remained turned away from the sight of her half-naked body. First, the blasted oath and now this. Whatever this turned out to be.
“I’m ready,” she said once she’d fastened every last button.
He glanced over his shoulder, probably checking she’d told the truth. God forbid she show a bit of flesh. Apparently satisfied, he opened the door.
“Thank you, Elsie,” he said. “You can return to your room now.”
What did the girl think about going back to the attic alone? Mrs. Braithwaite was the only other person who knew about their marriage. To anyone else, this must look highly suspicious. Helen didn’t usually care what other people thought of her, but Elsie had treated her kindly since she’d replaced Fletch. Whatever her opinion, she’d hardly argue with a doctor.
Will eyed Helen coolly and stalked away, leaving her to follow or, presumably, not follow as she chose. She longed for the easy camaraderie of their walk back through the woods, when they’d laughed together about the drunken official. The wind howled as they made their way up the spiral staircase toward Will’s rooms. Outside, a storm brewed.
Not much different from in here, then.
Once they’d reached his bedroom, he went straight to the bed and turned down the covers. “You can sleep here. I’ll take the chair.”
I’m giving you a way out, so you’d better take it, his look said.
Helen almost responded to the anger in his expression before she glimpsed the fear beyond. When they’d broken into Sterling’s office, his nerves had been as steady as hers. She’d seen him be ten times as brave since, so why did the thought of taking her to bed frighten him so deeply?
Beneath a thunderous brow, his gray eyes held her gaze. Every ounce of the desire she knew he felt had vanished from his expression. His lips, which had once met hers in the softest and warmest of kisses, thinned with resentment. He was a wounded animal trying to fend off a predator.
“You don’t scare me,” she said.
Momentous as today had been, this was still William Carter. She knew him. She trusted him. He would never deliberately hurt her.
“Excuse me?”
“You will not spend our wedding night in a chair. It’s…” She searched for the perfect word. “It’s silly.”
He stiffened with offended dignity. “Silly?”
“Ridiculous, actually. We both know what you want, what we both want, so why don’t you stop pretending?”
With swift strides, he crossed the small room toward her, his eyes snapping with a mixture of irritation and—oh, yes!—lust.
“This isn’t a good idea,” he said again, but this time he stood so close that his breath tickled her skin. Almost like dancing, she allowed him to crowd her back against the door. Not a good idea? She could think of only one answer to such a foolish statement; she reached up and undid her top button. His gaze fixed on her fingers as they moved to the next and then the next. When she slipped past him to get closer to the fire, he followed, his body never more than a centimeter from hers.
“Are you sure?”
Helen nearly screamed the answer. “Just kiss me!”
And then, finally, at last, at long bloody last, he did.
His lips brushed hers softly, tentatively. Skittish as he was, she didn’t want to frighten him off, so she didn’t deepen the kiss.
“See?” she whispered when he drew back. “There’s nothing cold-blooded about this.” She didn’t wait for his answer; it seemed imperative she prevent him from thinking too much, so she undid his jacket, her hands lingering over the planes of his chest. Later, when they were both satisfied, she’d listen to his heart again.
Together, they slid the garment from his shoulders, letting it fall.
“I think we should blow the candles out,” he said, his voice gravelly, almost unrecognizable. The sound of him gave her chills even if the words themselves were not what she wanted to hear; she was a little obsessed with the notion of seeing him without clothes, but if he was shy…
“
Yes,” she said. “If you really want to.”
He went to the nearest wall sconce and blew out the light. There were two more, and she waited for him in the firelight while he dealt with them.
When he returned to her, he tilted her face up for another kiss, his fingers gentle on her chin. She sank into his touch, her head falling back, her eyes closing as his lips parted over hers. In the dark, he grew bolder. Soft, deep, open-mouthed kisses, his tongue tangling with hers, one hand shaping her breast, the other pulling at her remaining buttons.
Yes. This was what she wanted. Caution fell away, and she reached between them, feeling in the dark for his erection. His breath rushed out as she touched him through the fabric of his trousers.
“Oh my, Will,” she breathed. Really, he had nothing to feel shy about. She almost burst out laughing at how hard and hot and, quite frankly, enormous he was. How she wished she could see.
He groaned, his hand tightening on her breast. Tightening, tightening, until it almost hurt. It wasn’t full dark yet, and when she gazed at his face through the shadows, she almost didn’t recognize him; his eyes had turned glassy, and his expression was harsh, almost sinister in the half-light.
He walked her backward, simultaneously fumbling at the fastening of his trousers; that hint of crudeness had her panting with need as her backside hit the closed door. She tugged him toward her, then pulled at her skirts, loving the feel of his hands over hers, helping her lift and gather the fabric aside. Her breath caught as he cupped her buttocks in his hands, lifting her, angling her until the head of his cock bumped against her. This side of him, the greedy kisses, his touch so firm and sure, so unlike anything she’d expected, left her reeling and out of control.
She wasn’t fully ready as he began to nudge inside, but she welcomed him anyway—anything he wanted as long as he didn’t back away. The breach was almost painful, but they were both nervous.
“Will,” she whispered, “I need—”
I need a moment, she’d been about to say, but he surged forward. He thrust fully into her, kisses and touches forgotten as he lost himself. She barely had time to brace herself against his shoulders before he shuddered to a finish. He sagged against her, gasping for breath. Meanwhile, she almost cried with frustration.