He walked around the bed to dim the lamp on her side. When he reached for the knob on the gas jet, her hand slipped down the inside of his leg.
“Don’t turn it off,” she said.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! His eyes closed, and his groin tightened. Granted, it was his suggestion that she touch him. He told himself the experience would allow her to feel less alone, or maybe make him feel less alo—God almighty—this was killing him.
“We’re not married, Rafferty. I feel it is only proper that I ask permission.”
“Proper is not the word I’d use,” he managed with difficulty. He abandoned the lamp to sit on the edge of the mattress. “What is it you wish, darlin’?”
“I want to see you, Rafferty,” she said. “All of you.”
Lord, his John Henry must have stretched another two inches at her request.
“It was dark that night with the Baron. I never saw what he was doing to me. I just felt . . .” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I want to see what a man looks like.”
Rafferty stood, then tugged at the string at his waist that held the linen garment on his hips. Due to the effect of her appreciative gaze, the material didn’t fall directly to the floor but rather snagged about his straining cock. He slipped his hand over himself to free the garment that slipped to the floor.
She gasped. Her eyes widened. “No wonder it hurt so,” she whispered.
“No,” he reassured her, while resuming his seat on the bed. “I promise you. It doesn’t always hurt. A woman’s body has a way to ease a man.” There was nothing easing about this conversation. He was as hard as the bedpost and afraid that would frighten her all the more. “Do you remember when he asked if you were ready?”
She nodded her head.
As much as he hated the Baron for what he did, he had to concede this one point. Rafferty brushed some strands of hair away from her pale face. “I think the Baron was asking if you were slick with moisture.”
She looked at him as if he were mad. “Moisture?”
“Do this for me, darlin’. Reach between your legs and feel inside the crevice that shields your . . . virtue.” Good Lord, what did women call these things? The terms he knew were sure to prove offensive to his elegant and proper . . . wife.
She blanched.
“Now, now,” he soothed. “You didn’t hesitate to cover yourself with your hand when I caught you in the tub.” He smiled. It was a memory he would always cherish. “Do the same, but this time, let your finger slip inside.” She didn’t move. “You can do it beneath the blanket. I don’t need to see.”
But he could imagine. He saw the hesitant movement in the rise and fall of the bed linens as her hand inched toward the very region he’d suggested.
“Can you feel that it’s moist?”
She closed her eyes and pressed her lips tightly together but nodded again.
“Now,” he said. “I’m going to make it more so.”
IF HER EARLIER ENCOUNTER WITH THE BARON HADN’T already condemned her to hell, this certainly would. She could feel Rafferty’s gaze on her as her fingers slipped into the feminine cleft that was never named in all her years at school. It was taboo, dirty, unspoken of for fear of retribution, yet here she was exploring that very area while a man watched. Heat didn’t confine itself to her cheeks; her whole body burned. With the palm of her hand on the fluff of hair that grew in that forbidden spot, she stretched her fingers past the folds that guarded her entrance. Yes, it was moist there, but that did not explain how her body could ever accommodate something the size of Rafferty.
The shame of her exploration eased when nothing untoward occurred. She had just begun to relax, when Rafferty’s hand pressed her own exploring one. Before she could protest, she felt his hand mold her breast, and his mouth . . . Sweet Jesus! . . . moistened the thin night rail that covered her crest. He suckled her right through the material. Her body arched. Instantly, moisture flooded her fingers. Indeed, the entire area tingled with a sort of primitive yearning. He rocked her captured hand, forcing it to press parts of her she’d not touched before. Sensation flashed in lightning streaks of carnal anticipation.
“What is happening?” she gasped.
“Did you feel like this before the Baron took your maidenhood?” Rafferty asked, pausing in his titillating feast of her breast.
“No,” she admitted. It had happened so quickly, she hadn’t felt anything except a dry, painful scraping. But she didn’t want to think about that now. She wanted Rafferty back at her breast. She wanted Rafferty exploring the depths of her cleft instead of herself. She wanted to feel how it should have felt had she been “ready.” A drop of moisture pressed by velvety-soft skin nudged her hip.
Rafferty suddenly released her hand and sat up on the mattress. He turned away from her, mumbling something low and barely audible. She pulled her fingers away from her entrance, the tips wet and slick, and moved them to his thigh.
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked. Why else would he turn away? She was a failure as a proper society innocent and apparently as a wanton as well. Her body still vibrated with a needy tension.
“You did everything right,” he said after a moment. “It’s me who’s fouling the works.”
“You?” she exclaimed, incredulous that he thought he had somehow failed. “You’ve done nothing but what I asked.”
He looked at her over his shoulder. “Darlin’, it’s a terrible thing that the bastard baron did to you. He took something that by rights didn’t belong to him, and you’re the one who’s paying the price.” He stood; his hand raked through his hair, and his cock bobbed as if it had a mind of its own. “Yet here I am wanting you, just like he did. I want to thrust inside you and show you the pleasure you were denied. But I’ve no more right to you than that bastard did. So what does that make me?”
Wanted. Desired. Needed. She wanted to scream but instead said nothing. She wasn’t supposed to want him like this. It was to be a pretend marriage.
He reclaimed his drawers from the floor and pulled them over his extended cock.
“Your brother called me a man of honor tonight.” He turned off the gas jet, plunging the room into darkness. “What honor is there in taking his sister without commitment or consequence?”
She heard his heavy steps round the bed. The mattress dipped to accommodate his weight.
Abandoned again. Deserted as before, only this time without the benefit of sexual congress. Tentatively, she reached her hand in the dark to touch his back. “You said to always touch you when we were together,” she whispered.
“Not tonight, Arianne,” he said. “It’s probably best to leave me alone.”
Twenty-Two
HE’D BEEN AVOIDING HER FOR A COUPLE OF DAYS, being careful to only go to bed when he knew she was asleep, slipping out of bed before she was awake. One night he thought to just rest his eyes in his office before climbing the stairs to check if Arianne was asleep. Evans woke him the next morning slumped in one of the upholstered chairs in the office.
She’d been busy during the day making calls, receiving calls, scurrying about preparing for her garden party. He’d had some calls from some of the president’s cabinet members, but those were made out of curiosity and boredom. There was not much to recommend politics in Washington in June.
The Duke was suspicious once again. He hadn’t directly confronted Rafferty with accusations this time, but Rafferty felt he was constantly watched.
So he was surprised when Arianne knocked on the office door. The moment he saw her, something twisted in his gut, much as it had every night that she sat across from him at the dinner table, speaking to her brother, speaking to the footman, speaking to Ben, avoiding him. He could see her loneliness but felt powerless to help her, knowing exactly what would happen if he did. He stood the moment he saw her in the doorway and hoped perhaps she’d come to talk, much as they used to.
“I’ve brought someone to speak with you,” she said, calm and reserved. Then she
stepped aside and ushered in a frightened woman about a year or so younger than Arianne. “This is Rosie Murray, who used to be in the legation’s employ. She needs your assistance.”
How had she found her? The inquiries he had made through Evans had led nowhere. “Come in, Miss Murray. Have a seat.”
As Arianne turned to go, Rosie looked back at her. Rafferty recognized her fear. “Arianne, please stay,” he implored. “I believe Miss Murray will be more comfortable if you are present.”
Arianne hesitated, then selected a chair near Rosie. He had a hard time taking his gaze off his beautiful, elegant pretend wife to focus on the fidgety Miss Murray.
“Miss Murray, what can I do for you?”
“I had a cousin named Mary O’Shay, but she’s dead now,” Rosie’s thin voice said. “I’d like to send her home to her family in Ireland. There’s a funeral home that will do it for nothing, but I can’t get her body.”
“Wasn’t Mary O’Shay the woman who was found with Lord Weston?” he asked, to see her reaction.
“That was her.” She raised her voice. “But she wasn’t like they say she was.”
“What was she like?” Arianne asked. It wasn’t a question Rafferty would have asked, but it was the perfect question for Miss Murray. Rafferty could tell the woman relaxed just by describing her older cousin. Mary had a beautiful singing voice, she said, and was trying to find work as an actress in New York. She’d write Rosalie exciting letters about life in the big city and her new beau, but then the letters became more distant. The man acquaintance was something of a rebel, she said, and involved in a movement determined to free Ireland. Rafferty glanced over at Arianne, but she was intently listening to Rosalie’s tale.
Mary had heard something, some dangerous plan that had scared her, Rosalie said. Her man friend had taken to beating her when he drank too much, and according to Rosalie, that was a lot. Mary said she needed to talk to someone in the government, so she turned to Rosalie. She had said she couldn’t go to the police, and she was afraid her gentleman friend would kill her if she talked to anyone in New York.
Rosalie had approached Lord Weston about meeting her cousin, and he agreed, but then they both were killed.
“Do you think her man friend found them?” Rafferty asked.
She nodded her head. Arianne handed her a handkerchief, which she used to dab her eyes.
“Did she talk to you about the plan?”
Rosalie shook her head. “She was too scared.”
Well, there was little more to pursue from that quarter. “Did she ever mention the name of this gentleman friend?”
“She never said his name. In her letters, she called him T. That was how she wrote his name, just a capital ‘T.’ ”
Toomey! He knew it! The woman had every right to be scared if that was her man acquaintance. “Did you keep any of her letters?” he asked. Maybe he could find something Rosalie forgot.
“Lord Weston kept the one I showed him, but the rest are gone.”
Another lead that led nowhere.
“Tell me what I can do to help you?” Rafferty asked again.
“The police buried my cousin in a potter’s field when no one came to claim her. Money’s been scarce since I left here.”
“And you left because . . .” Arianne prodded.
“I was afraid he’d come after me. He might have known that I worked at the legation. So I left and stayed with a friend. If it hadn’t been for Mary’s burial . . .”
“Have you found other employment, Rosalie?” Arianne asked. “It mustn’t have been easy without a letter of reference.”
“I’m with a small family now, Your Ladyship. It doesn’t pay the same, but I’m not liable to wake up with my throat slit.”
Rafferty chose not to point out that one does not wake up under those circumstances.
“So what can I do to help you?” he repeated.
“The good people at the Irish Trust and Funeral Fund said they would make sure Mary was sent home good and proper. They said they would pay for the whole thing ’cause they’re a charity for the common good and all. I’ve got two gravediggers that will dig up Mary from the potter’s field, but they want to be paid cash money. I thought maybe as they say Lord Weston killed my cousin . . .”
“But you said you didn’t believe that,” Arianne protested. “You said she wasn’t that kind of girl.”
Rosalie lowered her gaze, suitably chastised. “But she wouldn’t have been killed if she hadn’t agreed to meet Lord Weston, and he arranged the meeting and all. So you see—”
“Lord Weston set up the meeting?” Rafferty asked. “He picked the hotel?”
Rosalie blinked. “He sent her the money for the train and told her to go to the Lincoln hotel.”
“And how much do you need for these grave robbers?” He unlocked the desk drawers so he could retrieve the book of withdrawals on the legation account.
“They’re gravediggers, sir. They said they needed two dollars.”
At that price, he thought grave robbers would be more realistic. “One more thing, Rosalie,” Rafferty said. “How did you find out about the Friends of the Irish Trust?”
“I found this notice, sir.” Her face brightened. “I brought it with me. Would you like to see it?”
She pulled a paper folded over many times. He straightened it out and pressed it down on the desk before him. As Rosalie had indicated, this group was offering to arrange for shipment of her cousin’s corpse and coffin back to Ireland, at no charge whatsoever. Strange arrangement, that. He knew well that the shipment of coffins was a costly affair, to say nothing of the steep expense to embalm the bodies. Only the wealthy could afford such services, which was one of the reasons the sheer numbers on the dock were confounding.
He withdrew a pen from its holder and a sheet of paper from the desk and wrote down the name and the New York address of the Irish Trust and Funeral Fund. Phineas was due back for a report. This sounded like something he could investigate. He set that aside to dry while he scribbled out a draft to the bank authorizing Rosalie double the sum she’d requested. While he didn’t feel the legation was obligated to pay Mary’s funeral expenses, Rosalie had provided some valuable information, even without realizing it, and for that she should be well compensated.
ARIANNE WALKED ROSALIE INTO THE HALLWAY. SPOTTING Ben, she instructed him to see Miss Murray home using the legation carriage. Then she returned to Rafferty’s office, closing the door behind her. Immediately, he rose to his feet. He was so handsome, it twisted her heart that they had managed so successfully to avoid having a meaningful conversation in the past several days.
“Rafferty,” she said. “I want to negotiate.”
He paused on his way around the desk. “I see.” He stroked his lip with his knuckle, reminding her of the kisses they once shared. “I take it there is something you desire?”
You, she thought but, of course, couldn’t say. She clasped her hands behind her back and stepped toward him. He moved closer as well, with that half smile she loved and his gaze fixed firmly on her lips. “The garden party will take place in just a few days. I’d like you to attend and welcome the ladies.”
“An appearance?” His eyebrow raised. He stood but an arm’s reach away until he slipped his arms over hers, clasped her fingers above her bustle, and tugged her closer. “And what am I to receive for this sacrifice?”
She arched her back and lifted her chin. “What would you like?”
He took the bait and trailed kisses up her neck. Christopher, his lips made her weak in the knees. He dragged his nose to her cheekbone. “Is that a new scent concoction, darlin’?”
Heavens above, she’d forgotten how much she missed his sweet brogue until he murmured in her ear. “I’m experimenting with patchouli oils. I mixed it with—”
He captured her lips, or she captured his—she wasn’t sure which, nor did she care. He backed her to a wall—the one with the stern photograph of Queen Victoria, if she remembered
correctly. He braced his arms on either side of her shoulders and traced her cheekbones with his fingertips.
“You should marry me, darlin’, so we can stop this pretending.”
“I’m willing to be your wife in all the ways that matter, Rafferty.” She wrapped her arms around his waist. “You could show me what the Baron couldn’t. Then, when this is over, I’ll have memories.”
She felt the shift in him, saw the lust in his eyes cool.
“Memories? You could end up with a lot more than memories.” His words whipped at her like cold driving rain. “You could end up with babies. Did you think of that? Would her ladyship even bother to tell the Irish cur of a father that she was carrying his whelp? We Irish breed like rabbits; isn’t that what the English aristocracy say?”
He pushed away from her and walked back to his desk. He studied some papers, moving them from one side of the desk to the other. “This party seems more appropriate for your brother. I would think the ladies would have more interest in a duke than just another Irishman,” he said without once looking up. “I assume garden parties, like knowing the proper uses for fifty different types of spoons, are essential for proper diplomatic appearances.”
Tears stung her eyes; a lump lodged in her throat. “You don’t understand.” Her voice shook. “Marriage—a real marriage—is not a game for me.”
He looked up. “And sharing your bed—sharing your body—is? Sweet Jesus, woman. I thought you had more pride than that.”
She couldn’t breathe. His words slapped across her face like an open hand. She turned on her heel and ran from his office, passing Evans and William in the hall. She stumbled up the steps and slammed the door to the bedroom.
Falling across the bed, she let the tears flow. It all came back. The resounding slap. Her father, the old Duke, screaming at her mother who lay crying at his feet, I thought you had more pride than that. She remembered that same look of disgust on her father’s face whenever Arianne came home on holiday. “You look just like your mother,” he’d say, then close himself away in his room.
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