by Mia Vincy
“You want to…Oh.”
She didn’t know what to do with her hands, which were fluttering this way and that. He, of course, was quite at his leisure.
“Should I be…on top of the covers, or underneath?”
“On top will make it easier. And I am trying to make this easy for you.”
“Oh, is that what you’re doing?” she muttered.
She crawled onto the bed near the pillows and sat with her knees hugged to her chest, her nightgown pulled tight over her feet. His powerful form in her peripheral vision teased her, dared her to look. She wriggled to dispel the peculiar sensations in her nervous body and kept her eyes straight ahead.
He made no move to touch her, but watched her, thoughtful and serious. It was as though there were two versions of him—one wicked and playful, the other gentle and caring—and the speed with which he switched between them made her head spin.
But there was also the ill-mannered hothead, the brash whirlwind, the intense idealist, the stubborn tyrant, the demanding employer…How confusing he was.
“You’re being very brave,” he said. “How far are you going to take this?”
“I am a gentleman’s daughter and I honor my promises. You gave me half an hour of politeness so I can give you…Oh.”
That wicked, playful glint returned. “Half an hour? Is that how long I get?”
“I don’t know. How long does it take?”
The sound he made might have been a laugh, might have been a groan. He rolled onto his back and covered his face with his hands. She had no idea what version of him this was and was regarding him with some perplexity, when the ring on the smallest finger of his left hand caught her attention.
Right next to where his wedding ring would be if he hadn’t lost it.
“What was it about anyway?” she asked. “The argument with your father.” She shifted onto her knees and touched the ring lightly. “The two of you mentioned a ring. Was it this ring?”
When he rolled back onto his side, she took his ring hand in both of hers. He let it rest there, heavy and trusting, so much bigger and more powerful than her own. It was a busy hand, as she would expect from him: a network of veins and bones, with a long, thick scar near his thumb, a smaller one by his wrist. Not soft but not rough. His nails were clipped and clean. He said nothing when she ran a thumb over his knuckles, brushing against the fine black hairs, pausing at the ring. The band was ornate silver, with a large square bezel set with onyx, on which was engraved a coat of arms.
“It’s a signet ring,” she said. “Was this given to you when you were still Lord Treyford’s heir?”
If this was the signet ring of Viscount Otham, the courtesy title for the heir to the Earl of Treyford, then Joshua had been entitled to wear it once. But now he was not: It claimed an identity—a very high social position—that was not his. Wearing it was a terrible thing to do.
Which was no doubt exactly why he wore it.
She glanced at him. His eyes were on their joined hands, and with his lashes lowered, he looked almost at peace. The candlelight softened his features, caressed the angles of his cheekbones, the curves of his lips. She could not recall ever noticing the shape of a man’s lips before.
“It must have been difficult for you,” she said. “To have lost everything at only fourteen.”
“It was half a lifetime ago and of no interest whatsoever.” His eyes flicked up to meet hers. “I can think of much more interesting things.”
He tugged his hand free and set his palm on her thigh. Warmth and pressure coursed through her, sweeping up over her skin, pausing to swirl between her thighs. An odd sensation, intensifying, right there, where he…where they…where she…Oh dear.
His hand inched upward. She instinctively slapped both hands over it. She stopped his progress, but not her own body’s persistent call.
And she should not try to stop him. She should encourage him. Seduce him, even. She would never get a child if she didn’t.
“Backing out already?” he asked, rough and low.
“I will see this through.” Her voice was unsteady and she tried to smile. She glanced at his…there…She thought she could see its shape beneath the robe but that was probably just the candlelight and her feverish imagination. “It would help if I knew why.”
“Because it’s splendid.”
Wicked and playful again, but also sharp and intense, and his eyes, so heated, calling to her body, amplifying those sensations, uncomfortable and yet, well, almost splendid too.
“How can it be…Oh, never mind. I don’t want…I mean.” She took a deep breath, tried again. “Tonight. Your father. What…” She caught herself tracing the outline of his fingers on her thigh and stopped. “He did wrong, but he is still your father,” she said. “And surely you owe some of your current success to whatever reparations he made you.”
“Reparations? Oh, the innocence.” He rolled onto his back again and folded his arms behind his head, staring at the pink canopy. The sleeves of the banyan fell back to reveal his forearms, incongruous against the pink silk brocade of the bedcover. “As soon as our parents’ marriage was annulled—once it was proven that Father’s first wife had died only the year before, so our mother was never legally his wife—Bram, Isaac, and I were hauled out of school like criminals and sent back to Treyford Hall. We expected our mother to be there, but she had run off somewhere with Miriam—that’s my sister; she was four then. The house was shut up, no servants but a couple of old retainers, and all anyone told us is that solicitors were seeking some cousin or other to take us in.”
“But your father?”
“We never heard from him again.”
“Oh, Joshua.”
He still seemed at ease, but his voice was flat and hard, and she fancied she could sense his tension.
“That first night in that big empty house…There was no fire, so I tried to light one, but I didn’t know how to,” he went on, still talking to the pink canopy. “I knew the theory, but had no practice. All my life to that point, other people had done everything for me. There we were, my two little brothers and me, with nothing, and I thought—if I can just light this fire…”
She pictured a dark-haired youth staring at the fireplace with such intensity it might have burst into flames from his glare alone.
“And did you?” she prompted.
He snorted. “Felt like hours before I even got any sparks from that blasted flint. Striking it over and over until my fingers were sore and numb. Until then, I had never realized how useless I was. But yes, I got it lit in the end.”
The words sounded like the punchline to a bitter, humorless joke.
“I don’t understand. If your father did not help you, how did you get from three disowned boys to wherever you all are now?”
“Another man came,” he said quietly. “Another man, whom we had never met before, but who was disgusted by the whole business. He came to Treyford Hall, unannounced, uninvited, and he stayed and talked to us about it, when no one else would, and he vowed to help us carve out new lives. Isaac, he was only ten, he wanted to join the Navy and travel the world, and Bram, he was twelve, he wanted to go to India and catch tigers, and I wanted…” He paused. “I said I wanted to be rich. That man owed us nothing, but he came to help us anyway. The best man I ever knew.”
Tears stung her eyes. She blinked them away. “Papa? He helped you? That was the debt you owed him?”
“Curse you. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“I’m not crying.” She rested her cheek on her knees. “That’s why you married me.”
“I married you because he asked me to marry you and I’d have done anything for him. And speaking of marriage and debts—”
Oh dear. His mood had shifted again.
“You’ve delayed long enough, Mrs. DeWitt. It’s time for my reward.”
He moved like a cat, all power, no effort, one moment lying on his back, the next kneeling down in front of her, hands resti
ng on his thighs.
Cassandra mirrored his position, feeling a secret, unexpected thrill. He dwarfed her massive bed, through his physical size and sheer energy. She enjoyed looking at him, she realized. She enjoyed the long, lean shape of him, the contours of his broad shoulders draped in dark-red silk. She enjoyed the warmth that radiated off him. The quick flash of his smile. Those gleaming coffee eyes. His intensity. His focus. Even his discombobulating changeability. This was uncomfortable but surely it was good. Ladies never spoke of lust, were taught that it was shameful. But it must be good, she decided now, though she would die sooner than admit it.
Maybe he would hold her first. Or kiss her. That would be nice. It was so long since anyone had made her feel special.
She waited. He drummed his fingers on his thighs and looked about the room. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he did not know how to proceed either.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what to do next.”
“Perhaps I should go first. To show you.”
Her imagination tried to picture that and rebelled. “How can you reach?”
He pulled back, eyes wide, and then laughed so richly the mattress rocked below her knees. “On you, I mean,” he said, still laughing.
“It’s not fair to laugh at me. You men cannot demand that women be innocent and then mock us for being exactly what you say you want.”
He wiped a hand over his face, his laughter subsiding to a groan. “I assure you I cannot reach. It is one of the tragedies of being human.”
“Well, another tragedy of being human is that women aren’t born knowing this kind of thing,” she snapped irritably. “So if you want me to honor our agreement, you shall have to stop laughing at me and try communicating for once.”
“You mean to go through with this, don’t you?”
“We had a deal.”
“You are adorable.”
His tone was as languorous as a summer afternoon. He lifted one hand slowly, then rested his knuckles against her cheek, a touch warm enough to melt chocolate. He brushed his knuckles back and forth, back and forth, and she matched her breathing to his rhythm. His eyes searched hers, half puzzled, half…concerned? Then his gaze fell to her mouth. Back to her eyes. Back to her mouth.
And she thought: My husband is going to kiss me now.
She closed her eyes and waited. His lips would be as soft and warm as his caress. She would tangle her fingers in his hair. And run them down his neck, over his shoulders. Spread her palms over his chest. His skin would be hot to the touch, she was sure of it, and his body hard. She might feel his heartbeat. Feel his energy. And he would touch her too. That sultry caress would slide down from her cheek to her throat, perhaps even to her breasts, now clamoring for his touch. He was her husband. This was good. They would make babies. She heard her own breathing and shut her mouth to quiet it, but a moment later, her lips were parted again.
Waiting. Waiting. For him to—
“It is remarkably diverting to tease you,” he said cheerfully.
She jerked back, her eyes flew open, and blood rushed through her head.
“You were teasing me?” She knocked his hand away from her face. “I’m trying to do the right thing, the honorable thing, and you’re making fun of me?”
“’Fraid so.”
He vaulted past her in a swirl of silk and landed on the floor with a thump. She spun around, her nightgown getting tangled up in her legs so she had to kick herself free. She gripped the bedcovers to keep from clawing at his wicked face.
“You never meant for me to do it?”
He grinned. “No.”
“All this time I’ve been worried about it and wondering if other women did it with their husbands, and you…You…you fiend!”
“Mrs. DeWitt, you didn’t!” He arranged his banyan around his shoulders, eyes wide and laughing. “Do you mean to tell me that while we were making polite conversation at the rout, you were imagining all the couples—”
“Not all of them! And I don’t even know what to imagine but…”
“Oh, you are too adorable!”
The beastly man was laughing at her again.
She rose up on her knees, right at the edge of the bed, and swiped at him, but he danced sideways, out of the way.
“You horrid—” She swiped again. Again he dodged. And laughed.
“—Wicked—” Another swipe, another dodge, another laugh.
“—Awful—” Another swipe, harder, faster this time, and she would have fallen off the bed if he hadn’t darted forward and caught her forearms to hold her steady.
And kept holding her, gentle but firm, looking perplexed.
“I am all those things and more, but you already knew that,” he said. “Why so upset?”
“I am only trying to do what is right. You ought not mock me for it.” She pulled away from him. “That was not nice.”
“Nice?!” He backed away. “Under what constellation did you ever imagine me to be nice?”
“Papa said you are a good man. And the Duke of Dammerton said you have a good heart. And Mr. Newell said—”
“Mercy. The naivety! Do you think I became rich by being nice? Do you think those fancy friends of yours court me because I’m polite?” He laughed, a bitter, mirthless sound. “Most of them cannot stand me, but they cannot stay away from me and that, my darling, has nothing to do with being nice. So forget any silly notion that I might ever be nice to you and, for mercy’s sake, don’t get any romantic ideas.”
She gaped at him. “Are you so vain as to think I might fall in love with you?”
“You wanted me to kiss you just now.”
“I did not!” she lied, cheeks burning. “You arrogant, insufferable fiend! I want nothing from you. You can go back to your…women and get them to do…that thing.”
“Maybe I will. Because they never expect me to be nice, and when it’s over—” His voice was tense and rising in volume with each word. “—I leave them and they leave me, and they bloody well don’t nag me to behave or colonize my house or disrupt my life!”
“Well, you are disrupting my life.” She borrowed a trick from Arabella: She raised her chin and looked into the distance. “You may leave now.”
“Oh, I may leave, may I?”
“Don’t let me keep you.”
Of course, insufferable contrary beast that he was, he stepped closer. “I know that one,” he growled. “That’s polite-speak for ‘Go away’.”
“You must hear it a lot.”
“So say it. Tell me to go away.” He cradled her face, and she cursed his deceitful hands, for his touch was divine though he was a loathsome beast. “If I do kiss you, will you tell me to go away?”
He brushed a thumb over her lips, sending a frisson of pleasure down her spine. She fancied she saw his eyes darken. He would laugh at her again. He was not wrong; she was at risk of forming foolish notions, if only because she looked at couples like Arabella and Lord Hardbury, and Harry and Lady Bolderwood, and felt a terrible, futile yearning for what she could never have.
With a tentative hand, she grazed his hair, curled her fingers into it. It was ridiculously soft and she should never have touched him. But somewhere under that irascibility, that wild animation, that rudeness, hid a gentle, caring man.
“You are still so angry,” she whispered.
His head jerked back, out of her reach. “I what?”
“With your father, with me, with all of us.”
“What utter nonsense.” He leaped back and paced about, waving his hands. “I don’t care enough to be angry.”
“Deep down angry.”
“Stop telling me what I feel.”
“It’s all right. I understand.”
“No. You do not understand.” He advanced, loomed over her. “You do not understand a bloody thing.”
“Joshua…”
She reached for him, to soothe him, comfort him, as she longed for someone to do for her, and she almost had a
hold on him when he whirled away, fast and furious, and her hand snagged on his robe. He kept moving under the force of his own momentum, and she could not release her hand, and the ties came undone. The whirlwind stopped. He froze, facing toward her, his robe hanging open.
He was, as he had warned, completely naked underneath.
Oh, Saint Sebastian!
Cassandra stared, helpless to look away: that chest, flat nipples, ribs, lean waist, a trail of hair, and his…
His…what did she even call it?…manhood. It stood upright against his belly, darker than his skin, as big and angry and demanding as he. Through the pounding of her heart, she was aware of dark hair, lean hips, muscular thighs, and warmth, warmth flooding through her, robbing her of air, as her eyes sent an urgent message to her body and her body throbbed with a newly discovered need.
“Seen enough?” His voice seemed to come from far away, and she could not tell if he was angry or amused or something else altogether. “If you wanted to ogle my cock, wife, you should have just asked.”
She shut her eyes, folded both hands over them. The darkness did not help: She could still see him, still feel him. After a year, a decade, a century, he muttered, “And I’m not angry, curse you,” and the air moved and the door slammed and she was alone again.
Slowly, Cassandra lowered her hands and curled them into the bedclothes, resisting the sinful urge to touch those parts of her body that still clamored for the man. The room was too empty and the floor was a thousand miles away and she did not know herself anymore.
She scrambled off the bed and to the door, but froze with her hand on the latch. If she went into his room, she would—what? Put her arms around him, hold him, have him hold her.
If she went into his room, he would say something unkind, mock her, turn her away.
Instead, she stood and breathed herself calm, then went to her writing desk and composed a note: “Dear Lady Treyford,” she wrote.
Chapter 9
It was not enough for the blasted woman to colonize his house. Now she’d colonized his mind too.
The next day, Joshua kept himself busy with meetings in the City and inspections at the dock—places he was sure not to encounter his wife—but his every moment was invaded by her image.