by Zoë Archer
“I’m sorry,” she said, not sounding particularly sorry.
Will shrugged again. “If I’d been serious, I would’ve acted sooner. But I kept puttin’ it off, and puttin’ it off. It wasn’t a big surprise that she’d found herself somebody better.”
“Better than you?” she asked, her dark eyebrow as arched as her voice. “Impossible.”
“Quiet, woman.” He gave her behind a playful swat. She laughed and punched him in the arm. “There were plenty of gals who found ol’ Will Coffin to be quite a catch.”
Her dusky violet eyes serious, she said, “You are. Any woman would be fortunate, indeed, to win you.”
Kitty, the girl he’d met the other night at the pub McNeil’s, had said almost the same thing to him, and it hadn’t meant much. But hearing those words coming from Olivia was like drinking the best whisky—warming and dizzy-making.
“You should have no problem finding a wife when you return,” she continued.
Frowning, he asked, “Why this fever to get me gone and hitched? Tryin’ to tell me something?”
She lowered her eyes, staring at his chest. “Trying to tell myself something,” she said lowly. “I have to keep reminding myself that you’ll be leaving, maybe soon, and you’ll find a woman more...suitable.”
As confessions went, this one made him want to snarl and cheer at the same time. “I ain’t thinkin’ about tomorrow or the next day,” he said. “Just right now, with you. Ain’t that enough?”
It seemed to be. She smiled, both sad and content, and let her eyes drift shut.
His hand ran up and down the curve of her hip, a woman’s hip, full and rounded, despite her slenderness. He spread his palm over the slight swell of her firm belly.
“Liv?”
“Mm?”
“How come you ain’t got children?”
Her eyes opened and an old shadow passed over her face. “Yes,” she murmured, “my empty house.”
“I shouldn’t have asked.”
“You should know.” She traced her fingers along his collarbone, the edge of the scar he’d gotten a long time ago, but her gaze was far away. “David and I tried for several years. Finally, I became pregnant. He was so happy, and I was, too. But five months into the pregnancy, there was a problem.”
He’d seen those problems before, in the ranchers’ wives, the sodbuster women having baby after baby, and soiled doves who weren’t cautious. Sometimes the babies didn’t make it, and sometimes the women didn’t. Or both mother and child were taken away in pine boxes.
“We called the doctor right away,” Olivia went on, “but it was too late. I miscarried. It was...ugly. So much blood. The doctor told me,” she said, her voice thickening, “that I was lucky to be alive, but there would be no children.”
“Aw, Liv,” Will said, wiping a tear away with the pad of his thumb as it trailed down her cheek. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded, then leaned into his palm as his other hand stroked the dark silk waves of her hair. “We asked for a second opinion, and a third, but the doctors all said the same thing. The miscarriage had left me barren.”
He’d seen a lot of death and loss over the course of his life. A body couldn’t live out West and not meet up with sorrow, but still, Olivia’s fate stuck in his chest like cactus needles. She had such a warm and generous heart, just right for loving children, and to have that taken away seemed hard and cruel.
“It took almost a year for me to get well,” she continued, drawing in a breath, “and David stayed out of my bed out of deference to my health. But even when I was completely healed, he didn’t visit me at night. Maybe a few times, but I could tell he was not particularly enthusiastic about the idea. Finally, I got the courage to ask him about it, and he said that he didn’t really see the point any more.”
“What?” Will didn’t think too much could surprise him, but this did. Surprise quickly turned to anger. He saw red, a sudden gut-punch of rage that hit him hard and fast.
She sat up a bit, letting her hair fall into her face as if to curtain her bitterness. “If I couldn’t conceive, then there was no reason to continue sharing a bed. That’s what David said.”
“Are you sure he’s dead?” Will growled. “Because if he ain’t, I’d like to beat and bury him myself.”
Her smile was rueful. “I am quite sure David is no longer alive. It took me a long time to determine if I was, however.”
He was so mad he could spit. “Listen to me, Liv.” He took both her hands in one of his own. With his free hand, he tipped her face up so she could look him square in the eye. “That husband of yours was an idiot, a schmuck.”
“I don’t know—”
“If he didn’t realize that he was the luckiest son-of-a-bitch in England because you were his wife, then he deserved to have the tar beat out of him. And if he didn’t make love to you on account of you being unable to have babies, then it really is good that he ain’t alive any more, ’cause I surely would kill him myself.”
She looked at him for a long time. “I believe you,” she finally said.
He exhaled loudly, trying to calm himself down. He really was furious. It enraged him to think that David Xavier had been given the greatest blessing, Olivia as his wife, and thrown it away. Few men were so favored, but Xavier had wasted his gifts.
“Now, if you were my woman,” Will said, a smile curving one side of his mouth, “things would have been very different.”
She smiled, too, knowing and heated. “How different?”
“Well, for starters,” he said, “every chance I got, I’d do this.” And he pulled her against him, bringing their mouths together, open. He let himself pretend that he had all the time in the world to explore her, as leisurely as you please, the wet inside of her mouth, her velvet-rough cat’s tongue that met his own and stirred all the way down. Even just kissing, she had so much heat in her, she could burn a barn and whole fields with it. Lord knew, Will was on fire.
Then she pulled back. “Surely, you wouldn’t stop there,” she prompted.
As games went, this one surely beat horseshoes by about three hundred miles. “Nope. Next, I’d do this.” He gently pushed her down onto the bed so she lay on her back. Propped on his side, he moved his hands all along her body, shaping and sculpting her, trying to learn her as well as he knew his mountainous home and the black glittering sky above. He took his time, feeling the warm satin of her skin flushed with desire, the bow of her collar, each breast, small but full and tipped dark pink, the echo of her ribs that tapered down to her smooth belly, the dark V of silky-crisp hair between her legs, and the legs themselves, strong and sculpted beneath ivory flesh.
I’m praying, he thought to himself. He’d never been one for church, preferring to take his divine inspiration from what surrounded him. But lying here with Olivia, touching her reverently, he felt something shift inside him, something large and profound, as though he’d finally learned the answer to a riddle he’d been trying to solve.
But he couldn’t touch her worshipfully for very long before hunger took hold.
“That can’t be all,” Olivia said breathlessly, as hungry as he was.
“Then I’d do this.” He bent down and took possession of her mouth again as his hand went between her legs, finding her as she opened for him. They moaned together as he stroked her, bringing wetness from the inside out. Her hips bucked, urging him to go faster, be quick, but he wanted to go slow. He wanted to draw this out, draw her out, until time melted.
His other hand cradled her breast, then found the hard tip and rubbed. She arched, offering herself up to him. Will wanted nothing more than to bury himself in her, but he made himself stay beside her, touching her most secret places. Several times, he brought her right up to the edge, then slowed his pace as she panted.
“Do you know what I’d do next?” Olivia asked, breath shallow as she gazed up at him through short, black lashes.
“What’s that, darlin’?”
“This.�
� With surprising strength she reached up and took hold of his shoulders, then pulled him down on top of her. Her task was made easier by his complete lack of resistance. He settled immediately between her opened legs, and almost chuckled as he felt her hand grasp and position him at her entrance. Then he didn’t feel much like laughing as her hips rose to meet his, and with a sharp hiss of breath, he slid into her. They might have been carrying on all night, but she was still glove-tight and hot.
They both became delirious, moving together, around and inside. Her heart knocked against his own. He wanted to go as far into her as he could, so deep that boundaries lost meaning and they weren’t two people any more but something else, something new entirely. So he plunged in, again and again, searching, seeking. And it felt so damned good. He thought he’d surely die of it, which, to his mind, wasn’t such a bad way to go.
He could feel it, as sure as sliding down the bank of a flood-swollen river to be washed away below. Olivia was becoming dangerously precious to him. Someone he was starting to believe he couldn’t live without.
“Will, please,” she cried into his shoulder, “I want you so much.”
“Sweet Olivia,” he groaned, “I’m yours. Only yours.”
She tensed around him, then gripped him hard, over and over, finding fulfillment with a sharp cry. He was right behind her, release like a bullet, and he shouted her name. There was so much he wanted to say to her, but couldn’t, and so he let the simple shape of her name hold everything he felt. Such a small word, so elegant and refined, now weighted with his own wandering soul.
Chapter Fifteen
Urgent knocking on the bedroom door woke them both. At first, Olivia didn’t know what to make of the sound. It penetrated a deep, dreamless sleep—the first she had enjoyed in a long time. Which made sense, given the fact that she had made love all night with a man at least four years her junior, a man with a boundless sexual appetite that was satisfied only when she had sleepily insisted that she was completely worn out. She didn’t even have time to suggest to Will that he return to his own room to prevent speculation. She was asleep before the words left her mouth.
Groggy, disoriented, she heard the insistent knocking as if lying at the bottom of a lake. Eventually, she opened her eyes and looked around. Her room was filled with bright sunlight and appeared as though a tornado had recently passed through it. Knickknacks were scattered on the floor, several chairs had been overturned and there were telltale heaps of clothing strewn about. Turning her head, she saw Will stretched out beside her in the bed, sprawled on his stomach in an attitude of oblivious satiety. The sheets were bunched around his waist, appearing snowy next to the dark bronze of his taut skin.
She could have spent a good half an hour simply looking at Will in her bed, a sleeping wolf, handsome and dangerous. The tenderness he was capable of made her breath catch in her throat just remembering it. She could almost believe at times last night that there was more to this thing between them than simple attraction—the way he said her name, touched her, just looked at her. And her own heart had been so perilously exposed, vulnerable. She had burned for him, yes, could even feel desire stirring now, but there was that something else that was binding her to him in a way she wasn’t prepared for.
Nor could she think on it now. There was that awful, relentless knocking.
“Please, madam,” Mordon said through the door, “it is most urgent you rise. Mr. Huntworth is downstairs.”
Any vestiges of lethargy were immediately shaken off. Olivia sat up in bed. “I’ll be down in ten minutes,” she called.
“Shall I send Sarah up to help you dress?”
Olivia glanced over at Will, whose aqua eyes were now open and regarding her alertly. They were both quite naked.
“No, I will manage on my own,” she answered.
Mordon’s footsteps died away as she got out of bed. Pulling on her drawers and chemise, she tried to calm her racing mind. She felt herself begin to fracture again, all sense of unity from last night lost. Mr. Huntworth never came to her house, unless...
“There’s trouble,” Will said behind her.
She whirled around and saw him stepping into his trousers. The sight of him unclothed in broad daylight made her already racing heart leap. It still astonished her that one man could be so solidly built, so well-muscled he put classical art to shame, and that he had desired her was nothing short of miraculous.
“I’m certain Pryce or his man Maddox have struck again,” she said. She contemplated her corset, and the idea of squeezing into it was unbearable. Instead, she located a starched, stiffened camisole she wore for days at home and slipped her arms into it. Her fingers stumbled over the buttons, but she managed to get it on properly. A small bustle and two petticoats followed.
“I should’ve stayed at the brewery last night,” Will said darkly. He also dressed, putting on his shirt and hoisting his braces onto his shoulders, but she saw the way his gaze lingered on her as she ran around her bedroom in search of clothing.
“I hired extra men to do that.” She selected a shirtwaist and long, gored skirt; Olivia had no time for Regent Street fashion. As she faced her mirror, she saw that her face betrayed exactly what she had been doing last night. Her lips were swollen and red, her cheeks lightly abraded from Will’s stubble, her eyes slumberous despite her agitation. Perhaps by the time she reached Greywell’s, it would be less noticeable. Until then, there would be no help for it. Surely the servants knew already.
Will appeared behind her in the glass as she roughly dragged a brush through her hair.
“Liv,” he said lowly.
She stopped in mid-brush, meeting his eyes in the mirror. They were clear and serious.
“You want me to clear out?” he asked.
She set down the brush and turned around. She knew what he was offering. Leave before the word could circulate about them, and absent himself from her presence if she found him embarrassing, a reminder of her iniquity. She looked at him steadily, and was struck again how Will surpassed simple definition. He was pure physicality, but he was exceptionally intelligent and perceptive, more so than any other man she had known, and protective of her.
“I want you to stay,” she answered levelly.
He smiled a little, as if he had been expecting her to say just that, but not believing her all the same. “You don’t have to be polite. Tell me to go, and I’m gone. I’ll find someplace near the brewery and keep helpin’ out there.”
She placed her hand on his rough, tense jaw. “I am not being polite. I want you here.”
“There’ll be trouble.”
“If there is any trouble, there is no place I need you more than beside me.”
His grin, the one that ignited her up from the inside, spread across his face and onto hers. “Darlin’, anythin’ you want.”
They leaned into each other and kissed quickly, causing tiny flames to lick along her spine. Her adventure far surpassed anything the fictitious Lorna Jane could ever achieve.
“Madam,” Mordon said again at the door, “please come quickly. Mr. Huntworth is growing exceptionally agitated.”
“One more minute, Mordon, and I’ll be down.”
Olivia watched Will tuck in his shirt as she pinned up her hair and slipped on a short-waisted jacket. She had been given an opportunity to end their affair before serious damage could be done, but she had chosen not to. She told herself it was because she needed Will close at hand to help her counter Pryce’s threat, but that wasn’t the complete truth.
Without trying, Will had laid claim to most of her heart, and she wanted, against reason, to give it to him, no matter the cost.
Despite the hideously early hour, George Pryce was in a wonderful mood. He couldn’t help whistling to himself as he ambled back along Park Lane to his house on Upper Brook Street. He strolled around a few bakery wagons and even nodded a courteous how-do-you-do to a passing bobby, who recognized him immediately and blustered out a “Good day, Mr. Pryce,” be
fore he walked on.
Oh, it really was a fine morning. Pryce took the front steps of his house two at a time, and even smiled at the astonished butler before giving him his hat, coat and gloves. He then made his way into the dining room to have a cup of coffee and read over the paper, blissfully content.
His eyes scanned the sporting news, but his mind was still back with Maddox at the Notting Dale stockyards. Pryce’s mood was too high to even register anger at being forced to meet his mercenary at such a filthy, stench-ridden location. But Maddox insisted that such places were the safest, since no one of Pryce’s acquaintance would ever venture to such disgusting and disreputable spots.
“So it’s done, then?” Pryce had asked Maddox over the awful squeals of the pigs.
Maddox nodded. “I carried out my plan exactly. Lady Xavier won’t be brewing any more beer. Greywell’s is finished.”
He could barely suppress his delight. “What about the American?”
Surveying the pigs being driven to market, Maddox shrugged. “I’ll manage him.”
Though it wasn’t exactly what Pryce wanted, he was still marvelously thrilled. That happiness lasted all the way back to his Mayfair home, where, in a clean, sweet-smelling dining room, he finally reveled in his triumph. No one said no to George Pryce, and, by God, he had proven it. She would be ruined, at last, and then he could finally turn his attention to something new. There had to be hundreds of prospects to claim his interest, and his mind spun thinking of novel playthings.
“What’s so amusing, George?” his father asked, poking his head in the dining room. “I could hear you laughing all the way at the top of the stairs.”
“Nothing, Father,” he answered. He made himself calm down. “Just pleased about the cricket scores.”
Frowning, Henry Pryce disappeared from the doorway. No doubt he thought his youngest son the veriest wastrel, exulting over something as inconsequential as cricket. But even his father’s disapproval couldn’t diminish Pryce’s good humor. All he had to do now was sit back and watch the death throes of Lady Xavier’s prized brewery.
