by Jess Russell
He bent to her with such focus. His eyes dark and liquid as he pressed in deeper then retreated. Back and forth, back and forth, deeper and deeper. She pushed up to meet him.
He smiled the most beautiful smile. She swallowed, wanting to keep up, but it was all so—full—so—overwhelming. He picked up the pace, steadily building his delicious assault on her body, a dance that urged her to join in his vigor. She pushed as he thrust, learning the steps instinctively. Seeking to match him.
“Yes, my love.” His eyes still held hers, their breaths as one. Their motion as one. Something big was building. An enormous wave that must surely drown her.
Yes, yes, let it come. Let it take me.
“Now, Anne, now.” He dipped his hand to where they joined finding her bud.
“Ahhhhh!” The wave crashed over her shaking her to her core. Lost in its tumbling tide, she did not care if she ever emerged.
Slowly the waters fell away leaving her drenched and limp on the white linen sheet.
She drifted, she knew not how long, so wrung out that only the shift in his energy pulled her out of her bliss.
It was clearly his time now, his careful finesse gone. He tucked his chin to his chest as he drove into her. Thrusting, retreating. Thrusting, retreating. She reverently touched his arms, his chest, amazed at the machine of his body which gathered and stiffened as if he were on some precipice. He threw his head back, neck stretching, his mouth open in a silent roar. Oh heavens, he was magnificent. Then she burst apart again.
Her body had deserted her long ago. She lay open and slightly bewildered at the enormity of what they had just done together. This morning she would rise out of these sheets and put on her clothes once again, but she knew she would never feel quite the same, ever again. He had given her that gift. And perhaps, that sorrow.
His hands drifted over her. As if they could possibly have a hope of shoring her up. She relished this loose-limbed feeling where her body seemed to have no boundaries. This must be what it might feel like to move through water. To swim. Oh, to never come back to shore and drift forever in this bliss of love.
But reality intruded and worries surfaced. Nothing was fixed. She would be a naïve fool to think this one night of magical love might cure all the problems that lay between them. But it was a beginning.
She cradled his seed within her. Please let it take root, please.
And please, when could they do it again?
****
The bong of the clock jerked her awake. Sunlight spilled into the room. She blinked at the light.
James.
She reached for him, but he was gone. The whole encounter could have been a dream except for the sweet ache between her legs and his musk on the still warm sheets.
And her shredded night rail.
And the smears of blood between her legs.
And the giddiness that bubbled within her.
Not a dream. Not a dream at all.
Perhaps even a beginning.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“To freedom.”
Dev toasted the image reflected in the darkened window.
His shadowed twin saluted back.
Free. The concept rang around him like a clanging bell. A vibration so penetrating—at times euphoric with its promise, but mostly the notion had him pulling in around himself. This brave new world all too much.
One twitch and the curtain extinguished his ghostly companion. Brandy swirled in his glass, its amber legs running down the sides thick and even.
What time was it? Three minutes after he’d last checked.
Once again the elaborately scrolled medallion on the ceiling drew his gaze. If only it could penetrate the horse hair and plaster to divine the scene in the room above. Was Anne waiting up there for him tonight? Would she want him again?
When he’d slipped into her room in the early hours of the morning, he promised himself, as he had every night before, that he would only look—to watch as she slept. But she had been awake. And she had called him James.
His beautiful Owl had taken charge, putting a halt to his delinquent neglect. She wanted a child. Likely she only acted because she could not stand a lie, needing to make the babe a reality, but still…
Sinking into her softness had been like nothing he’d ever experienced. Driving into her center, filling himself even as he filled her. And the aftermath, a different sort of drug, one of focus and clarity. She made him clean. She made him whole and full of promise. He craved that feeling again. But did she?
Still too early to go up and see. God damn these endless nights. The burn of brandy filled his mouth. He set the glass aside before he took another.
Ten days he’d tossed and turned in that monstrous bed, his bride only a withdrawing room away. He always ended up on the bloody floor, huddled beneath one thin sheet. Yet the hour or so he had slept next to her, had been the soundest he could remember.
He shifted a ledger filled with his ideas for shoring up the Malvern coffers. Over the years they had been severely stretched. Apparently farming was not as profitable as it had once been. He flipped to the last pages. A four thousand pound bonus recently paid out to Doctor Hives. No wonder the man was so keen to have the Mad Marquess “cured.”
Old Tally was proving a good tutor and seemed to value Dev’s ideas. He’d always been excellent with numbers. Austin also attended the meetings. He smiled and bobbed his head like a good yes man. Though it was patently clear he resented Dev’s suggestions. One may smile and smile and be a villain…
The line from Hamlet tugged at him.
He’d searched Austin’s rooms but found nothing—no paintings, no incriminating letters. His brother went to his clubs, saw his mistress, bet a goodly amount he was fairly sure Austin could ill afford. Nothing nefarious. Hell, things he had done himself before being shut away at Ballencrieff.
What a sapscull he had been back then. And now, apparently an even bigger fool to be goaded into trying out his old life. Gilbert Nightly, hearing Dev was back among the living, had corralled him into coming out. It only took one visit to his old haunt to bring painful enlightenment.
The reliable rakes and wastrels at Coggan’s Raid had cheered and clapped him on the back with shouts of, “The prodigal returns!”
Nightly had ushered him to a faro table. Within moments he’d been handed a bumper of brandy, a whore had draped herself over his lap and her heavy, cheap perfume had filled his nose. She looked slightly familiar. Hell, most likely he’d bedded her, but her name eluded him. He was sure he had smiled, making all the appropriate sounds, and he must have drunk the brandy because the glass was immediately filled by another nameless whore who hung expectantly over his shoulder. The panic inside him would have started an avalanche had he let one part of it out.
He’d stayed to play several hands. They would have chewed him up and spit him out had he not done so. Dressed up rabid dogs they were, all poised to tear him to shreds should he let down his guard one fraction. His friends. And he had been just like them not so long ago.
He’d left them in the small hours of the morning with a raging headache and his suit reeking. He’d never gone back.
His glass was empty. Should he have another? No, no fuzziness when he went to Anne tonight.
He pulled open the desk drawer. A sheaf of architect’s drawings lay bound in a red ribbon. Anne’s home. Their new home.
He had engaged Mr. Elton Menlo, an architect whose modern ideas he admired. The land had been purchased and the footings were about to be poured. A surprise for his bride. He planned a huge library and a medicinal garden. And a multitude of windows.
The conservatory needed something more. He had an idea for a window much like the one that had once graced this library—maybe an orange grove instead of climbing roses? But as he drew the folder out, a heavy vellum card embossed with the Queen’s crest fell out. Just where he’d thrust it eight days ago.
Damn it all.
Might as well face it. He
ran his finger over the blue wax seal, cracking it in half. He flipped the page over. Formal letters, all in tidy rows, invited him to exhibit at Her Majesty’s National Art Exhibition. Signed, Sir Charles Brocket. The same twit who at last year’s event had had the temerity to “sky” his portrait of Nell Whittley. Nell’s lovely face hung just under the bloody rafters making the perspective all skewed. All tits and no head.
Brocket was a jealous ass. Always had been. Well, it hadn’t helped that his wife had come to Dev’s studio seeking to have her “portrait” painted by a “master.”
Of course he had buttoned her back up and sent her packing without so much as a peck on the cheek, but her husband could not let such a betrayal slide.
So he had paid. Paid doubly, as Miss Whittley had withdrawn her favors after being dubbed “Mounds with Tiara” by the rags.
He reached for the bottle of Camus Frères, but instead, pulled the latest broadsheet toward him. He’d committed most of it to memory, having read the thing five or more times.
Speculation runs rife about whether the Marquess of D will submit an entry to her majesty’s charity exhibition. And if he antes in, who will be his subject? Will he paint one of his famous angels, a devil, or perhaps another ghostly, blank phantom? White’s betting book is chock full of possibilities. But others would say the M of D’s talent has dried up now he is newly married.
No doubt Brocket was stirring the pot with the papers, licking his chops for more revenge.
Dare we speculate a certain red-haired beauty might consent to be hung? One thing is certain, Miss N W will steer clear of the M of D’s brushes. She is now a favorite of Manet. As for the new marchioness, perhaps that blank canvas was in fact her portrait? No one has seen this phantom bride.
He slapped the paper against the table. That arsehole, Brocket, needed a good shove up his own rafter.
By God, his next painting would not be hidden and snubbed. It must be irrefutably magnificent. Lauded. And the ton would eat their crow right alongside Sir Charles. They would not dare to call James Drake anything but a genius.
Except that masterpiece was, as yet, a blank.
A terrible new devil had taken up residence in his brain. Time and again he’d push it away, but the fiend slipped in, its blackness polluting the images waiting to come out through his hands and his brushes. It whispered even now.
Perhaps you cannot paint without your drugs.
He felt for the hard knot of opium against his breast. Still there. His eyes burned from so little sleep, his cheeks were raw with biting them, but so far, he’d resisted
A rush of wind blew down the chimney feeding the flames in the firebox and causing the ceiling medallion’s golden flourishes to cavort with their neighboring shadows in a jolly country dance.
Would Anne have mended her night rail with her awkward childish stitches, embarrassed to have her maid repair it? Or, would she have shed it, leaving it in a pool on the floor as she hastily kicked it off? More likely she’d methodically lay it over the chair by her bedside table, neat and proper. Would she tentatively touch herself, pretending her fingertips were his? Wanting to feel him inside her.
Had they made a child? Their child.
They were both like characters in a farcical play—thrust into the roles not knowing any of the lines, enacting a plot not of their choosing. She must produce a child, and he must paint again. The audience sat salivating, waiting for them to fail.
But at least she was his now, giving herself to him bodily as well as contractually. No going back. No dissolving the marriage.
Typical glutton that he was, always wanting more.
Right. Enough torture. Enough brandy. Time to go up there and see if he was welcome.
The door to her bedchamber opened with nary a sound but she immediately turned toward him. Awake.
Moonlight cast a luminous path along the floor and onto her bed. Waiting for him? No way to tell from her solemn eyes, but he so wanted—needed to believe she had been. She did not speak only lifted her arm, a ribbon of white through the pale beam. His ring shot fire, a dragon’s breath in the cold room. Seeing the opal on her finger made his heart pound and his skin flush.
“James…”
****
Now, hours later, he lay on his side his body deliciously wrung out. He’d worried she would be sore, but he was learning his wife was good at getting what she wanted. And she’d wanted him, three times, in fact.
She stirred and burrowed her mouth into the pillow.
Soon she would wake. Time to leave her before she could look in his eyes and see he was a sham and not the confident man who came to her in the darkness. The one who had no scars. The one who made her writhe with pleasure.
She frowned in her sleep, as if she could divine his falseness. As if, with the coming light, she could see he was not her dark prince, just a broken man who stumbled in the light.
Shadowed lids fluttered and lifted. “James.”
His name on her lips still felt new and unreal. A gift in itself.
He stopped his hand from touching her brow. “I must go. The scullery maid will be in soon to poke up the fire.”
“I was hoping you would stay”—her lashes dropped—“to poke up my fire.”
His bloody cock jumped like a circus animal. “You must never be let loose among a group of young blades, Lady Devlin. You will surely slay them.”
“Hmm.” Her mouth firmed up, the lushness of her lips pulling tight.
Still slightly embarrassed at what her body did, and said, in the dark of night, his sweet Owl. Those tiny pent-up whimpers, released after so much effort to keep them inside. Each one a reward for him.
She rolled on her back, exposing one exquisite breast. It puckered up, a delectable raspberry just ripe for plundering. “I only want to slay you,” she said in her matter-of-fact voice, the one he loved, so incongruous with the siren splayed before him.
“Well, then consider me dead and buried, my wife.” The chit reached for his bobbing cock as if they were both conspiring against him. “Now, none of that. I must go.”
“Why?” She half-sat up. The other breast said ‘good morning.’ Twin cups of cream topped with a single bit of red fruit. “Why must you go?” She certainly could look mulish when the occasion called for it.
He did not have an answer, at least not one he wished to share with his beautiful bride. I am afraid you will see the wreck you are saddled with for the rest of your days. I cannot stand the truth you demand of me.
No, he could say none of these things. He was selfish and would not risk losing these dark hours. “I see you got my ring.” Unearthed after hours of trolling through practically every jeweler’s shop in Piccadilly until he found perfection. He had touched the jewel just last night, but still, he wanted to hear her acknowledge the gift.
“Yes.”
Did she like it? More importantly did she like him. “I thought it suited you,” he nudged, since she was being a clam.
She ducked her head.
Really, his Owl could be bloody inscrutable when she wanted.
“It is an opal.” Another prod.
“Yes.”
Of course she bloody knew. She hadn’t been born under a rock, for God’s sake.
Her finger traced the curve of the stone. His mind immediately imagined that finger touching the curved tip of something else that changed color as well.
“—understand the colors are determined by the spacing between the planes and their orientation with respect to the incident light,” she said, as if reciting for her governess.
His cock bobbed like a good student. The sheet had slipped again. “Bragg’s law of diffraction,” he answered, and then cleared his throat. “Though I must say I was not thinking of Mr. Bragg or his theories when I selected it for you.”
“Oh…”
His smile seemed to shut her down. He waited to see if she would recover her footing. He knew the power of his smile and used it with lethal precision.
“I found a book on gemstones in the library.” Her hand drifted to the bedside table to touch one of her many books that were stacked neatly there. “You could not know, but it is my birthstone.”
Bloody Hell. What a sapscull he was. He did not even know his wife’s birth date. He could map nearly every mole on her body but did not know when she had come into this world. An opal—October, if he recalled rightly. Still time. “When?” His voice sounded harsh in his ears, so anxious to right his terrible gaff.
“October the third.” She shook her head, biting her upper lip. “Birthdays were never celebrated at Ardsmoore. Though some years I was fêted on All Hallows Eve, when the girls believed me a witch.”
The third. Over a month. “Remind me to hunt down those hoydens and give them the punishment they deserve.” What should he do for her? “A Libra. Loyal, diplomatic, gracious, fair-minded—I dare say Mr. Beauchamp would approve, if he ever paid any attention to anyone other than himself.” But his words applied to him, just as easily as Horace Beauchamp.
“And passionate. Do not forget passionate.” She drew a large looping circle over the sheet at her breast. “I do not know your birthday, either.”
The circles became smaller and smaller. He licked his dry lips. “April. April tenth.”
“Ah, that explains a lot.” She took his hand and placed it to her breast. “You are fire.”
“Anne…” He swallowed. “I must—”
“You must…what? Go?” She cocked her head. “Why? Because you must paint?” She sat up more. “I read the papers. And, in this, I agree with them. What you must do is paint.” She folded her hands primly in her lap. “Have you found a model yet?”
“I—no, not yet.”
She looked up at him as if she had all the answers within her and was patiently waiting for him to catch up.
“Anne, I must go now.”
She sighed. “Will the maid be so offended to see my husband sleeps with me?” She took his hand while shaking her head. “I do not understand these rules. I do not like them.”
He pulled his hand away, and settled the sheet and coverlet up over her. He had only so much resolve. “You will catch cold.”
