Relief rushed over Sophie when she saw the light coming from beneath Garrett’s bedchamber door. He was still awake, thank God.She knocked and heard his gruff voice in response. “Come in.”
Pushing open the door, she began, “I’m sorry to interrupt—”
She broke off abruptly. Garrett rose from his back to a seated position on the carpet, his face flushed. His shirt was open at the neck, revealing a hint of his broad, bronzed chest. He smiled at her. A real smile, not one of the forced ones he normally gave. It took focus away from the angry scar on his forehead. It was handsome enough to strip away her defenses.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“I… ah… well, I was exercising.” His gaze lowered to his bare feet, and his toes curled into the plush maroon strands. “I find it to be… invigorating after the long days of inactivity.”
“I understand,” she said softly. Tristan had often complained of feelings of lassitude brought about by such inactivity—that was why he’d taken to daily alternating vigorous riding with boxing at Jackson’s.
Garrett rose to his feet and took a step toward her. “I’m glad you came.”
The look in his eyes said he thought she’d come for an entirely different reason than she had. She’d need to nip that in the bud right away. “There’s something very important I need to discuss with you.”
Instantly, lines of concern creased across his forehead. “What is it? Has something happened?”
“Yes.” He opened his mouth to speak again, but she motioned to an armchair. “May I sit down, Garrett?”
“Please.”
She crossed the room and lowered herself on the edge of one of the chairs. It always felt odd to be in this room alone with Garrett, when it elicited such vivid memories of Tristan. Yet Tristan’s essence had vanished from the place. It smelled solely of Garrett now, of his musky, almond scent. And though he hadn’t changed the furnishings, they now looked more a part of him than of Tristan.
She took a deep breath and glanced up at Garrett. He had sat opposite her and gazed at her in concern.
“What is it, Sophie?”
“It’s about Mr. Fisk.”
Garrett seemed to relax a little. “I see.”
“Is it true he has two thousand a year?” she blurted.
He looked surprised but quickly recovered. “Yes, he does.”
“Where does it come from?”
“An estate outside Leeds, left him by his uncle. But soon he shall have far more than two thousand a year. I intend to add another four thousand to his income.”
“What?” she gasped. Perhaps her husband had gone mad after all.
“He deserves it. For liberating me from my reduced circumstances.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
She wasn’t so certain. To her, it sounded like highway robbery. On the other hand, a part of her understood Garrett’s logic… as illogical as it was.
“Does he know of this?”
“Yes, I told him today. That sum takes into account his continued services as well. He’ll continue to manage all of my assets, including Calton House.”
Sophie swayed in her chair, gasping for breath. She clutched the arms to steady herself.
“Garrett, what—how—?”
He shrugged, his face relaxed. “I trust William Fisk implicitly. The work is too much for me to manage alone. I have more pressing problems to worry about.” He looked directly at her, piercing her with the icy blue of his eyes.
“Garrett…” She tried to stifle the urge to whimper in despair. What had he done? Handed control of his fortune, of everything Tristan had worked so hard to build for him, to a dishonest man who had already compromised his sister?
“He saved my life, Sophie,” Garrett said in a low voice. “He gave me my life back. I will forever be indebted to him for that.”
Sophie pressed a shaky hand to her forehead.
“What’s wrong? I’m not abandoning my fortune, just assigning Fisk to manage it. He will only help me to build it, I promise you.”
Sophie rubbed her temple. First Becky and now Garrett. Either they had both lost their minds or she and Tristan had. She thought back, running through her conversations with Tristan, and through all her past encounters with Mr. Fisk. Truly, she had disliked him from the moment she’d seen him looking at her naked body tied to the bed. Logic told her it wasn’t his fault he had witnessed that scene, and she’d tried to forgive him for that, as much as her instincts screamed in protest. He’d never done anything blatantly wrong. He made her and Tristan wary, but that wasn’t enough of a reason to accuse him of the offenses she had already accused him of in her mind.
Perhaps he was truly, madly in love with Becky, and perhaps he did respect and ultimately support Garrett as much as he pretended to.
“Becky wants to marry him,” she said abruptly.
Garrett smiled. “I thought that might be the case.”
“She says it’s what Mr. Fisk wants as well.”
“Then it sounds like a perfect match to me.”
Sophie’s chest tightened. She was ready to weep with frustration. “I disapprove,” she said stiffly. “I don’t think it’s a perfect match.”
“Who do you see for Rebecca, Sophie? Nobody will want her now that my inevitable madness is public knowledge.”
It seemed Mr. Fisk had gotten to him, too. Sophie jumped to her feet, her anger bubbling over. “You’re not mad.”
He looked up at her with the same sympathetic gaze Becky had. As if to say, Poor, deluded Sophie. Thinking there’s hope where there isn’t any.
“I am, Sophie. We might as well face the facts. Fisk and I have already started planning for the future.”
“No,” she gasped, staring at him.
Slowly, he rose, his palms held out to her in a calming gesture. “Yes. I can’t control it, and I ultimately can’t control myself, and there’s no cure. There will be a time when I lose all my faculties. Permanently. I need to make sure you and Miranda are well provided for.”
Garrett was not mad. He wasn’t. He couldn’t be. Only one doctor—a doctor she didn’t like and trusted even less—had made this ridiculous diagnosis.
“I want you to see another doctor. You must hear a second opinion.”
Garrett paused. “Of course. If that is what you wish.”
“Thank you.”
“But it’ll just be a waste of time. Based on your suspicions, I asked Fisk to obtain MacAllister’s credentials. He is the most prominent specialist of psychology in this country.” His face gentled, and his eyes filled with compassion. “I’ve accepted the truth, Sophie. Why can’t you?”
She turned away from him and covered her ears like a child. “Stop it. Just stop.”
He came up behind her. His hard chest pressed into her back and his warmth spread through her. Slowly, he pried her hands from her ears, then held her pinned in front of him.
“Listen to me. If—when that day comes, I want you to have me confined. I won’t be a burden to you and Miranda. When that happens,” he paused for a moment, then finished in a low voice, “I want you to go back to Tristan.”
She felt sick.
“Until that day, I want you to promise you will be mine.”
No, no, no. Stop it, stop it!
“But we need to take precautions. I don’t want to hurt you, and if I should fall into one of my fits while I am alone with you, my pistol is in the oriental cabinet in the dressing room. I want you to—”
“Stop,” she groaned.
He pressed a kiss against the top of her head. “Yes. I’ll stop. There’s no need to dwell on the future. I want to live for the present.”
His hands slid up her arms, skimming beneath the sleeves of her robe and nightdress. Still callused from his toils on the farm, his fingertips rasped gently over her skin. He lowered his head farther, and his breath danced over her earlobe.
“Let me make the most of the time I have left. Let me make love
to you.”
Sophie couldn’t bring herself to speak, so she leaned against him, tucking herself deeper into his embrace.
His lips grazed the shell of her ear, and she shuddered.
“Sophie.” His voice caressed her, slid under her skin, stroked her soul. He reached down to untie the sash on her robe, then spread it open and pushed it off her shoulders. It puddled on the floor. Slowly, he raised his hands back to her shoulders and turned her around to face him.
She looked up at him. The scar on his forehead was a lurid reminder of all the pain he’d suffered, but besides the scar and the tiny lines around his eyes and mouth, he looked the same. Strong jaw and masculine, aristocratic nose. Stormy blue eyes. The small cleft in his chin, the burnished gold hair she loved to run her hands through. She slipped her arms around his torso, clinging tight. For a long moment, they both stood still, and she reveled in the feel of their bodies pressed together. Garrett had been home for over a month, and this was the first time they’d simply held each other. Sophie breathed deeply of him. He smelled of the almond soap she’d used to clean his hair on the day she’d helped him bathe. It seemed like an age had passed since then. His hands slid up to cup her cheeks and then he lowered his lips to hers. Softly, he nudged against her until she opened for him, and their mouths began a smooth, sensual glide. Sophie bunched his shirt in her fists.
Still kissing her, he dropped one of his arms and reached behind him, finding her hand and lacing her fingers with his own. Finally, he pulled away and led her to the bed. The bed she’d shared with Tristan.
Trembling from head to toe, she pushed away the thought. Before Tristan, this bed had belonged to her alone, and before that, to Garrett and her. Miranda had been conceived in it shortly before Garrett had left for Brussels.
He helped her climb up the steps. She slid under the blankets, and he tucked them around her. Looking down at her lovingly, he brushed a knuckle over her cheek. “I’ll extinguish the lamp.”
She nodded, and he strode toward the table between the two armchairs, his figure casting long shadows across the floor. With his back to her, he pulled his shirt over his head and laid it neatly over the arm of one of the chairs. Then he leaned forward and the light slipped away. Only the embers of the fire kept the room from descending into complete blackness. Sophie watched Garrett’s silhouette as he pushed his trousers down his hips. In the shadows, she saw the curve of his buttocks and the flex of muscle as they slid down his legs.
Completely naked, he walked to the other side of the bed and climbed in, settling beneath the covers beside her. For a long moment he lay still, not touching her. Then with a soft moan he turned and gathered her into his body.
She held him close, pressing her cheek against the taut skin of his chest. His growing arousal nudged at her thigh.
“I’ve imagined this moment for a long time,” he murmured.
She stroked his chest, in awe of the power simmering just beneath his skin. He was so big, all muscle and sinew.
His hand moved up and down her back, sliding the cotton nightdress over her skin. Snagging its hem, he hiked it upward, his rough fingers skimming her leg. She shivered.
“Are you cold?”
“No,” she breathed.
He tugged the fabric higher, and the heat of his erection, now rock hard, pressed against her thigh, skin to skin. Unable to resist the compulsion, she slid her hand between them and fluttered her fingers over his shaft.
“Sophie…” He buried his face in her hair. His body was alive, thrumming against her, on fire. Her fingertips traversed his steely length, adding pressure as she relearned the shape and texture of him.
“Does that feel good?” she murmured.
“Yesss,” he hissed into her scalp.
His grip tightened over her hip, then moved lower, and she allowed her thighs to fall open to his questing hand. He stroked the insides of her legs, nearing her center, teasing her by coming close then stroking away as she continued to slide her hand up and down his erection.
She curled her fingers around him, squeezing and pulling in short jerks. He sucked in his breath and finally gave her what she needed. He cupped her mound, adding just enough pressure to make her squirm with desire. His fingers delved between the lips of her sex, sliding easily through the silky fluid of her arousal.
He explored her as if he’d never felt this part of a woman, staring at her, his eyes dark with wonder. His fingers circled her, caressed her, teased her, made all thoughts of anything but the man lying beside her dissipate, then flow out of her mind altogether.
“I want you inside me,” she gasped.
In one smooth motion, he moved over her, his big body wedged between her legs, his torso towering above her. He stared down at her, searching her face, studying her.
“Say it again, Sophie.”
She raised her hands to cup his big shoulders, then slid them down to circle his flat nipples with her fingertips. He sucked in a breath.
He lowered his head to feather his lips over her cheek, across her forehead, down the ridge of her nose and finally to her mouth. “Say it again,” he whispered in a soft brush of air against her lips.
She curled her legs around his big body, tilting her hips in invitation.
“I want you inside me.” She punctuated every word in the silence, and they seemed to hover between them for a long moment before he was able to take them in, understand and believe.
He adjusted his body, and she reached down to guide him to her entrance. He paused there for an indeterminate amount of time, his body shaking over hers, his breath coming in gasps. She knew he was fighting for control, and a part of her wanted to command him to let it go and lose himself within her, to explain that she could take whatever he could give.
But it was important to him not to lose control. To stay in complete charge of his faculties, to prove to himself that he could retain his humanity.
Finally, he pushed into her, inch by excruciating inch, making all her nerve endings scream with delight each time he made a movement, no matter how slight. She wrapped her arms around him and murmured, “Yes, yes, yes,” at the exquisite invasion. He was so strong, so beautiful, inside and out. She wished he’d see his own perfection rather than constantly thinking the worst.
Finally he was seated all the way inside. He released a long sigh. Though his body pinned her in place, she squirmed, desperate for him to move.
“God, Sophie.” He shook from head to foot with restraint. “Oh, God.”
She let out a choked sob. “Please move. Please, Garrett.”
He complied, dragging out of her, then thrusting in again, faster this time, the glide of his rigid flesh against her sensitive inner walls making her cry out. She closed her eyes. Her head lolled back on the pillow as she felt him tense and tighten all around her. In her. She expected him to come, but he didn’t. He kept driving into her, driving her upward, pressing against the sensitive area above where their bodies connected, until her peak came. It rushed through her in a shock of sensation, causing her limbs to shudder and her channel to clench hard and ripple around him. Suspended over her, he froze. Then with a groan he withdrew, turning her over and drawing her up on her hands and knees. He slid into her again, and Sophie gasped. He thrust into her hard, once, twice. Over and over again, Sophie rode the wave of pleasure, cresting and receding with each plunge he took deep inside her. Time meant nothing—it was all red-hot, tingling, exquisite pleasure.
Then his hands tightened around her waist, and he stilled with his shaft lodged deep inside, shaking and groaning as his seed gushed into her in a hot rush. He pressed her down onto her belly, then left her, adjusting into a comfortable position at her side. She turned over and reached up to tangle her hands in his hair, pulling his head toward hers to give him a soft kiss on the lips.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Silently, she kissed him again, slipped her arms around his torso, and held him close. Sophie had neglected her little ga
rden for the past few months, but now that summer approached, her rosebushes had begun to bloom. She liked the stark contrast of red and white, and in her garden there were no pinks or peaches or yellows. Red alternated with white in a checkerboard pattern, and she drifted through the bushes, creating bouquets for the breakfast room and entry hall. Tristan had loved how the smell of roses permeated the house in spring and summer. He always said their fragrance reminded him of her. Becky and Aunt Bertrice were out making calls in anticipation of Becky’s presentation at court tomorrow, and Miranda and Gary were at the park with Miss Dalworthy. After having watched over her sister-in-law’s every move for the past few days, Sophie was glad to have some time alone. She almost wished Garrett had kept his henchmen so she could post one at Becky’s door at night. It was nighttime she feared the most when it came to Fisk’s manipulations, but aside from commanding Becky to sleep beside her, she didn’t know what to do.
At any rate, Becky couldn’t sleep beside her. Not since she’d moved back to the master’s bedchamber to sleep with Garrett.
Smiling at the memory of their gentle lovemaking last night, she knelt beside a plant to cut off a dead stem. Her monthly courses had arrived right on schedule this morning, but for the first time in her married life she didn’t suffer a pang of sadness for yet another month of barrenness. If she had found herself with child, she wouldn’t have had the first idea who the father was. As much as she longed for another baby, the thought of the further rift that might cause between Tristan and Garrett sent a tremor of panic down her spine. She was reaching toward another dead stem when the crunch of gravel alerted her someone was approaching.
“Sophie.”
She turned, brushing a wisp of hair out of her face, squinting up at the dark figure haloed by the sun. She shielded the rim of her bonnet to see him better, and he held out his hand to help her up.
“My hands are dirty, Garrett. I don’t want to soil your gloves.”
He chuckled, a low reverberating sound that warmed her body from head to toe. “They’ll wash.”
She reached out and grasped his hand, allowing him to pull her close to his body. She was dirty, and he was dressed in a handsome striped waistcoat that accentuated his broad, masculine form. His free arm curved around her waist. “Not enough room to waltz,” he murmured.
A Hint of Wicked Page 24
