“I have conditioned the Courtlands not to pry,” he said. “They will accept us. Whatever our relationship.”
Sabine nodded and looked out the window. He’d said the wrong thing, that much was clear. Possibly everything he’d said had been wrong. This was one of the many reasons he preferred to say so very little at all.
After a moment Sabine looked back. “They will wish to move you,” she informed him. “Their home is one of the grandest in London. You would have every luxury there. Elisabeth will want to care for you. They are your family, you’ve said it yourself. And I am merely your . . . friend.” She looked at the floor.
Stoker stared at the top of her head. He had no working memory of Sabine ever betraying a moment’s insecurity. Not when he’d rescued her from the locked cupboard, or when she’d trailed around the Duke of Wrest. But this . . . ? It sounded like she was afraid to lose him.
It sounded as if she wanted him.
For the second time that day Stoker tried to engage his brain, to think and reason, but he heard only the sound of the ocean. He blinked, trying to stay ahead of his shock and . . . and . . . something else he could not name, something he’d never allowed himself to identify.
Carefully, slowly, he ventured, “I am comfortable here.”
“In my cellar apartment?” she asked sarcastically, casting him a wry glance.
“Yes.”
“With my dog?”
He looked at the vermin dog, licking the last vestiges of chicken and potatoes from his plate. “Yes,” he lied.
“And Perry, and being looked after by a footman who is unavailable most of each day?”
“I am comfortable here,” he repeated, the only phrase that seemed to have been right.
Sabine pushed off the wall. “With me kissing you when clearly you hate it.”
“I don’t hate kissing you, Sabine. I hate what comes next.”
“Avoiding me?”
“Look,” he shot back, “I am immovable in a sick bed. You avoided me. That’s not what I mean.”
She laughed at this. “You are the strongest, heartiest man I’ve ever known to claim a sick bed.”
“Thank you, I think, but that’s beside the point. I want to be clear—” He stopped and took a deep breath. “Please be aware: I will never pursue you after we . . . after the—”
“Because you dislike it,” she guessed.
“Because I want it too much, Sabine,” he breathed. “I want it with a ferocity that you cannot fathom. May you never fathom how much I want you. Yes—I am a strong man. Yes, I am determined to resist you. But please be aware, when it comes to how much I relish the look of you, to the years I have fantasized about touching you and how much I want to take you to bed, I don’t believe that I have the strength to resist you forever.
“So,” he continued, his voice rising, “if you continue to test your curiosity on me, when I am in this bed and cannot escape you, I would ask you to rethink the way you view our marriage, because it will rapidly cease being ‘convenient’ or ‘detached.’ We will also cease thinking of each other as friends. It will become a marriage in every sense.”
Sabine stood very still for a moment; her expression was thoughtful, almost placid. A tantalizing pink color rose on her cheeks. After a moment she asked, “A marriage like Willow and Cassin or Tessa and Joseph?”
“No,” he said. “Not like our friends’.” He slid his legs off the bed and shoved up, biting back a growl of pain. “Cassin is a gentleman and Joseph is almost a member of bloody Parliament. I am no gentleman or politician, Sabine. I’m from the streets, with no notion of manners or refinement or gentility. My needs are raw, my desires are wholly untamed, and I have discovered during my time here that I have only the loosest hold on my self-control.”
He expected her to back away, to collide with the wall and slide toward the door. Instead, she took a step toward him. He continued, “Do you remember what I said about a transaction, Sabine? About sex being a man’s pleasure in exchange for some item or aid a woman requires?”
“Of course.”
“Because if you continue on, if you instigate these provoking conversations and encourage the kisses and the proximity, I will, eventually, crumble. Your innocent curiosity will spark, catch fire, and flame into something not innocent at all.”
Sabine’s eyes grew huge and she put a hand to her throat. Stoker hated speaking so coarsely; he hated threatening her, but this could not go unsaid.
“It turns my stomach to say this to you, of all people, but if you continue to press me, Sabine, then select your bauble or your property or whatever your heart desires, because I will owe you. When it’s finished. I will take you, and I will not be able to hold back, and I will be in your debt.”
He was sweating now, unsteady on his feet. He flung his arm out to take hold of the headboard and Sabine jumped. Stoker swore and closed his eyes, hating to unsettle her.
Better with words than with deeds, he thought.
Now she understands.
Now she will leave me in peace.
The room fell silent; his breathing was the only sound. Even the dog had gone still on the bed, staring back and forth between them.
After a long moment Sabine said, “Alright. Let us call on the Courtlands. Will you write to them? How correct you are. It has been shortsighted of me not to invoke more help.”
Stoker dropped back onto the bed. “That’s it? You’ve decided?”
“Let us just say that I’m . . . satisfied with your answer.”
What answer? Stoker remembered only growling and threatening and flailing?
“About wanting to remain here, with me,” Sabine said. “Satisfied,” she repeated, “puts it very mildly, I’d say.” She turned back to her mural. “We are on the same road, if not at the same place at the moment. Luckily, I am a cartographer of some merit, and I know how distance can be drawn to scale.”
He shook his head, looking at her through narrowed eyes. “I was serious, Sabine, about . . . about the potential of our intimacy.”
“I believe you are very serious. I shall be very serious too. We shall both be so very serious. In fact, I’ve already begun to think about the thing.”
“What. Thing?”
“The thing that I want. In exchange for the moment you stop.”
“Stop what?”
“For the moment you stop holding back.”
Chapter Fourteen
October 24, 1834
Belgrave Square, London
Dear Cassin,
I am writing to inform you never to call, or write, or bloody cross to my side of the bloody road to say bollocks, you worthless rotter of a former friend. Thank you for absolutely nothing. This letter has been dispatched in duplicate to Joseph.
I understand that Sabine has sent word that an attempt was taken on my life and my subsequent abandonment in a morgue. I have rallied, no thanks to you, and I urge you to reverse any plans to call on me in London. I would rather return to the morgue than receive such a disloyal friend.
Your indifference will live with me forever, you selfish whoreson. I cannot believe you left my moldering form, half-dead, as a burden to my wife. Your true mettle has been revealed. Go to bloody hell.
Sincerely,
Jon G. Stoker
Brent Caulder, the Earl of Cassin, tossed the letter aside and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. He looked at his friend Joseph Chance across the desk. “That’s putting it lightly.”
“He’s livid,” said Joseph. “I can’t say that I’ve ever heard him write so much in one letter.”
“It’s partly in jest,” said Cassin. “Surely. He’s angry but it’s hardly his style to harangue us for being rude. What he’s really trying to say is this: Don’t come.
“Yes, buried neatly beneath profanity and accusation,” said Joseph.
“I’m relieved, at least, that he’s out of danger. If he can write this letter, he’s clearly recovered. He’s tougher than all of us
put together. I never doubted it.”
“Who would have guessed. A knife fight to bring them together. Cupid’s arrow can take many forms, I suppose,” said Joseph. “Naturally, Stoker, of all people, would require a blade to the spleen to be brought ’round. He always was the dashing one.”
“One thing’s clear. We were correct to keep away. Despite this obvious temper-fit letter. If we’d rushed to his aid, Sabine would have never considered him.”
“She might send him away yet.”
“If Sabine’s letters to Tessa can be believed, there is quite a bit more happening in Belgravia beyond bandage-changing and soup-eating.”
“Whatever it takes,” chuckled Cassin, leaning back. “I should have stabbed him myself, years ago.”
“Well, you might say we’ve stabbed him in the back by not coming. That’s what he believes. Abandoned.”
“Well, abandoned for his own good,” Cassin sighed. “He will thank us in the end.”
Chapter Fifteen
Grosvenor Square, Mayfair’s lauded neighborhood of noble families and respectable wealth, was developed on swampland beginning in 1724. Although planners originally considered constructing a uniform block, a more heterogeneous design prevailed, and nearly every townhome boasts a different facade and color.
The great irony of the square may be that its center garden is actually an oval. The park is gated, but the privacy of the gardens is often breached. As early as 1727, vandals dismembered the mounted statue of King George in stately Roman martial dress.
Grosvenor Square, Grosvenor Street, Brook Street, and Park Street all public thoroughfares; Park Square open to residents only, although the still-vacant King George pedestal is visible from the street.
—From A Noble Guide to London by Sabine Noble
They waited a week and a half to call on Bryson and Elisabeth Courtland. Sabine claimed she was under deadline for her next installment of travel guides (not entirely untrue), and Stoker abided. His manner since their heated discussion after the garden was careful and . . . if not abiding, then a little stunted. He did not challenge her when she ordered him to eat; he did not strain his stitches; he rested and slept. He did not make good on his threat to ravish her. He was, at long last, a compliant patient.
It made her even more resolved that they should put off the call to Bryson and Elisabeth Courtland until he was almost fully healed. It was ridiculous, perhaps. Stoker was not her personal invalid to keep locked away from his friends. If he was still sick, would they not take him from her? Yes, she thought, they would. And she was not prepared to let him go.
And so they passed twelve more healing days in Belgravia, and now they were due at the Courtlands’ for tea by four o’clock. Stoker had sent for a fresh set of clothes and had Harley dress him in waistcoat, cravat, and jacket. The finished ensemble belied no trace of infirmity; he was a handsome gentleman on morning calls. Even the tattoo was hidden.
Sabine, for her part, endeavored to match his aplomb. Perry prepared her orchid-colored day dress and hat, and dressed her hair with loose curls piled beneath the brim. It was silly, but she wanted to look worthy of Stoker when they met this couple. Sabine was a gentleman’s daughter, after all, despite the fact that she worked as a travel writer and lived alone in a cellar in Belgravia. Would it matter that she entered into a convenient marriage with a stranger and now kept him restricted to her bed? Possibly. It never hurt to look one’s best.
It was unlike her to be nervous about a simple afternoon tea with new acquaintances, but she found herself slamming down combs and stomped into stockings, her behavior to Perry nothing short of petulant. She had dreaded the meeting for days, but then she had swept down the stairs and the look on Stoker’s face when he saw her—a whipsaw double take, a sweep of his eyes, obvious desire—made calmness settle in. It shouldn’t matter, but his obvious appreciation was worth more than any approval she might receive from the Courtlands.
And then they were off, lurching through midday traffic to reach Grosvenor Square. Despite the fact that they spent their evenings together and most days just a corridor apart, something about the close confines of the carriage felt new and uncertain. Sabine found herself commenting on the autumn weather (although she loathed idle chatter) while Stoker retreated into his most stoic, silent scowl. Their short journey was so forced and awkward, she had half a mind to call off the visit and send him on alone.
But then again, she wasn’t a coward; she wasn’t afraid of his sulky moods and she did not want to go home. If she went home now, he would not be there and she was not prepared for an empty apartment. Not yet.
And how full the days had been since their time in the garden park. If Stoker had become an easy patient, she had also become a more cooperative host. She did not purposefully invite undue risks with the Dryden investigation just to worry him; and she did not start again with her surveillance of the Duke of Wrest, despite the fact that he was now the suspect in Stoker’s attack. She had plenty to do, keeping a safe but observant eye on the wagon master, the chemist in Regent Street, and the charcoal kiln master in Hampstead. She also had her very real deadlines to make, and she looked after Stoker’s rest and nourishment and . . . and . . .
Well, Sabine wasn’t certain what, exactly, to call the third (although no less pressing) component of Stoker’s care. As a sea captain, world traveler, businessman, and general outdoorsman, he was not accustomed to bed rest or even prolonged captivity inside of doors. It fell to her to . . . if not entertain him, then certainly to distract him. The doctor had begun to wean him from the sleep-inducing pain medicine, and a restless, glowery demandingness settled into his copious waking hours. He wrote countless letters and devoured every available newspaper (and thereby used up all but forty-five minutes of his morning). After that he summoned a steady stream of hired men to his bedside. Her cellar apartments became a spinning top of sailors, shipbuilders, runners, property managers, clerks, and secretaries. The ruckus was almost enough to wish Elisabeth Courtland would step in and take him off her hands.
Almost.
“Would you allow me to take in Mr. Stoker’s supper?” Perry had asked one night as Sabine carried down trays of cod and turnips at nine o’clock. “You must be exhausted, after being out of the house all morning and locked in your study all afternoon.”
“I am perfectly up to the task,” Sabine had called with a smile.
“What a good wife you are, Miss Sabine,” Perry had praised.
Sabine had had no reply for that. Was this what a good wife did? Busied herself with her own pursuits all day and then brought supper so late, most reasonable people were already abed?
She had never guessed that marriage might allow her to occupy herself all day with her own work while her husband occupied himself with his separate undertakings, only to convene together in the evening to leisurely discuss the events of the day. The model of her own parents’ marriage involved the exalted hero-worship of her father, with all meals and the daily routine in service to the rhythms of his work or the provisions for and countdowns to his journeys. So complete was her mother’s devotion to her father that her own tenuous health had taken a terrible turn when he died. It was as if a part of her mother’s very purpose for living had perished with Nevil Noble.
In contrast, Sabine availed herself of all of Stoker’s business; they talked for hours about it every night. With everything she heard, she challenged or intruded, praised or rebuked. He told her of every person he assigned and hired and dispatched throughout the day, the letters he wrote, the things he bought and sold. He talked about his investigator’s impending arrival from Portugal and his work with the man to build a case against the Duke of Wrest.
Stoker, in turn, listened to her new conclusions and discoveries about the case against Dryden, weighing in on what he thought and what he did not believe.
These were lively discussions that stretched late into the night. They also spoke of books and music, his travels, and her guides and maps.
Sabine could not remember ever looking more forward to time spent with another person. She worked very hard all day, and happily so, but she lived for the evening meal with Stoker.
Only two topics seemed glossed over or omitted. The first was his most immediate personal plans for the future—his next voyage or his vague references to buying an estate somewhere and setting up “a real home.”
The second was any reference to some intimate, physical . . . “something” that would take their relationship from fulfilling and captivating to intimate. To touch or, God forbid, to kiss. But nothing was said and nothing was done. Her desire to reach for him was so very great, but also so very uncertain. It was like looking out at distant mountains but having no map to show the way to reach them.
There had always seemed like too much to say, he was too prone, she too upright, there was crockery in the way, the dog was barking, Perry or Harley were in the room, on and on it went.
The truth was, Sabine was too inexperienced as a seductress to know how to parlay dinner conversation, no matter how scintillating, into, well—her touch. What was more, she didn’t want to seduce him; she simply wanted to touch him and to kiss him, and for him to do those things in return. She’d spent considerable time and energy weighing the consequences to her heart if and when they did touch and kiss again. By all accounts, he would leave her when he was whole and able. She’d finally decided the thrill was worth the risk. But now he would not even meet her halfway.
In theory, the carriage ride with the vehicle’s velvet seats and close confines offered a more ideal environment to finally, at long last, lean against one another (at the very least). But they were in the carriage for some purpose, and social calls introduced the complication of tight wool clothing, stunting leather gloves, and hats that would collide if ever they ventured too close. Not to mention, they rode in a sort of uneasy silence rather than the familiar banter of her bedroom.
You May Kiss the Duke Page 16
