Entangled (A Private Collection)

by Fresina, Jayne

  Evernight Publishing

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2011 Jayne Fresina

  ISBN: 978-1-926950-45-7

  Cover Artist: LF Designs

  Editor: Kimberly Bowman

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  To Sam

  ENTANGLED

  A Private Collection

  Jayne Fresina

  Copyright © 2011

  Chapter One

  Two o’clock in the afternoon, Saturday, April 14th, 1888

  This wasn’t supposed to be happening. She wasn’t supposed to be in bed with her husband, even if this was their wedding day. But nothing was going to plan and, as he said, who else would know what happened behind the closed door? Lawrence Arthur Bailey was a bad influence on her.

  Suddenly swept up in his arms, she dropped her bouquet of crocuses and they scattered across the carpet, where he trampled them under his large, clumsy feet as he carried her to the bed. The air filled with spring, each crushed petal releasing more layers of sweet fragrance into the room until she felt almost drunk with it, giddy as a young girl in love for the first time.

  His lips met hers, warm and demanding, yet generous, too, and she sank into the bed with no further qualms.

  After all, it was their wedding day. Strictly speaking, he had a right. And no one but the two of them need ever know.

  His fingers worked quickly over the buttons that ran down the front of her bodice, while she applied herself with equal diligence to his trousers.

  It had been twenty-six hours since Daisy Wellfleet first met the man she’d arranged through correspondence and the recommendation of a friend to marry. Twenty-six hours since she first laid eyes on all this unexpectedly solid, male beauty. Twenty-six hours since she first panicked and realized she might possibly have made a dreadful mistake. Each one of those twenty-six hours had careened irreversibly to this point, and now here they were, stripping one another of their rain-soaked clothes as if they contained poison ivy, while she should be demurely resisting his bold allure.

  She’d had it all planned. She’d explained it to him very carefully several times. This was a marriage of convenience. A marriage in name only.

  From the moment they’d met in person, Lawrence Arthur Bailey had refused to listen.

  His mouth was on her breast, his tongue teasing her nipple, his hands sliding her skirt and petticoats up to her waist stripping her drawers downward, freeing her legs. With a blissful sigh, she arched under him, spreading her thighs as his trousers slithered down around his knees.

  There was no time to get fully naked. That would have to wait for the next round. After twenty-six hours of jaw-grinding temptation and the forceful curbing of two insatiable appetites, they were simply both too hot to waste time. Her best gown, one of Lady Westerfield’s hand-me-downs, was about to experience some shocking treatment that surely, in its previous, sheltered life, it had never known. But as far as Daisy was concerned, he could rip it off her body with his teeth and, in her current state of abandon, she would laugh merrily.

  He swung his hips and she felt his cock, merciless as a battering ram, ready to breach her fortress.

  “Lawrence,” she gasped, wrapping her legs around his waist.

  “Don’t call me that,” he groaned.

  “What should I call you then?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, in the next breath he entered her, plowing forward with the full force of his lower body.

  She cried out, until, remembering the guests in her hotel, she quickly stifled it. The Wellfleet hotel might look a little shabby, but it was a respectable establishment, not a house of ill-repute. The squeaking bed was bad enough, but she could, at least, control her own sounds.

  She was on fire inside and he stoked her flames so skillfully. Her entire body might as well be in bondage to him.

  * * * *

  He opened his eyes and looked down at her, a slight smile pulling on his lips. He really ought to tell her the truth, but now wasn’t the best moment. Over the past twenty-six hours there’d never seemed to be a perfect moment to politely explain that he wasn’t Lawrence Bailey. Somehow it all got away from him. But she wouldn’t.

  The bed groaned as he withdrew and thrust again, settling deep inside her, claiming his place like a brazen cuckoo.

  Admitting he’d lied about his identity would quite spoil the mood now, wouldn’t it? Moving his hips slowly back and forth, he kept his gaze pinned to her face, watching every shimmer of bronze eyelash, listening for every quickened exhale. He marveled at how easy it was to forget he had a life before this, before he met her.

  Perhaps he should have said something sooner, but what else could he do? Yesterday in the hotel foyer, she had been so certain he was Lawrence, he hadn’t wanted to disappoint. And why let Lawrence Bailey, whoever he was, have all the pleasure?

  He bent his head and roughly tongued her wet, distended nipple. Legs wrapped tight around him, she grabbed his hair and jerked his head back.

  “Lawrence,” she gasped again, causing another small spark of guilt that was brief and he selfishly extinguished it as the urgency overtook them both. He felt her tiny quakes already beginning. Soon the breath would be ripped out of her on a high scream of pleasure and his would quickly follow.

  Later would be time enough for confession, he decided. He would make it up to her now, apologize thoroughly in advance.

  His body pumped rapidly between her spread thighs, the muscles in his back tensing, his buttocks taut. Hot and slick he took her, rubbing his face on her bosom, his eyelashes fluttering over her hardened nipples. She contracted around his powerful, throbbing shaft, and as she climaxed, he reached down and touched her core with the pad of his forefinger, extending the peak of her excitement.

  He, too, was ready, swelling within her, about to burst. She opened her eyes and looked up at him, that beguiling jade green, dewy now with a fine, heated mist.

  “By the way,” he might have said, “I’m Lucien Blackwood. Delighted to make your acquaintance.”

  But it was too late. The dam burst and he came, rushing into her.

  So the lie continued. For his own wicked purposes, Luke Blackwood propagated this dreadful misunderstanding, encouraged poor Daisy Wellfleet to become thoroughly and ravishingly entangled. He might have been ashamed of himself, if he was anything other than a Blackwood.

  Chapter Two

  The day before

  He was the last one out of the mail coach. As the tallest passenger with the biggest feet and the widest shoulder span, he might easily have thrust his way out before anyone else. Being Luke Blackwood, he wouldn’t have cared whose eye he almost poked out in the process, or whose skirt he trampled on. However, he was, at that moment, fast asleep, huddled in one corner of the vessel, arms folded across his broad chest, his strong, square chin buried in one shoulder. It was a very good thing he snored so loud, or else the coach might have driven on with him in it. But since every gusty rumble emitted from his mouth could hardly go unnoticed, he was discovered by the harried coachman and quickly prodded awake with one end of a horsewhip.

  “Oy. Mister.”

  He cracked open one eye.

  “Middleton, mister.”

  He
swatted the prodding whip away with a hand the size of the coachman’s head. “What the blazes?”

  “Middleton, mister. We’re here.”

  Finally the name registered some meaning. Middleton, the small, busy market town he’d visited once or twice as a young man looking for a little excitement away from his father’s house, but not having the means or inclination to travel far. If memory served, he thought with a slow yawn, he’d lost his virginity here in the arms of an obliging widow. The same widow who similarly serviced his elder brother and probably his younger brother too. Yes, Middleton was the place to go for women of easy virtue, as far as he recalled. There was little else to attract him there as a young man, so it was the town’s solitary claim to infamy in his mind.

  But today he had a different kind of mission to fulfill in Middleton.

  With a low grumble, he began to unravel. The coach wheels groaned as the vessel swayed violently and the horses whinnied in alarm. People in the street, hearing the commotion, quickened their steps, anxious to be out of the way before whatever horror lurking inside the poor coach emerged into daylight.

  The step dipped under his weight. Too slow to bend and misjudging the door height, he cracked his forehead against the edge of the opening. Although the sound of the hard contact echoed for a mile in all directions, he barely flinched. His forward motion continued at such a reckless pace that the coachman, taken by surprise, was knocked sideways off his feet. Luke tripped over the sprawling fellow and subsequently collided with two young ladies, ripping the sleeve of one and butting the other with his large, hard head.

  “Get out of my way then,” was his gruff apology to all three wounded. The two women didn’t linger to argue, but scuttled onward, one holding her head, the other her torn sleeve. Luke glowered down at the coachman, who slowly clambered to his feet. “Where’s my luggage and the parcel? Quick, man, I haven’t all day to stand about idle.”

  The coachman’s countenance was a study in angry purple. Reaching up for the last trunk on the coach, he muttered and spat over his shoulder before heaving it down, dropping it to the cobbles with a bang. Next followed a large, square item wrapped in calico and string. Luke, meanwhile, surveyed the whitewashed front of the building.

  The Wellfleet Hotel.

  That was a clue. Someone here must have a connection to the woman he sought. Good. Hopefully he could get this over with quickly, deliver the painting, get home to his books and his writing, and not have to bother with people again for some time. With one hand he rubbed his smarting temple where he’d banged it on the coach. It was really starting to hurt.

  He settled his parcel carefully under one arm, then he looked around for a boy to carry his scuffed trunk into the hotel. Sighting a small urchin leaning by the wall, he gestured, showing a gleam of coin from his pocket. The lad ran up eagerly.

  “Take my trunk inside, but first tell me where I can find Miss Daisy Wellfleet. At least I believe that’s her name although she may be married now. She lives here in Middleton, I’m told.”

  The boy took his coin, leaping from foot to foot as if the soles of his feet were burning. “Miss Wellfleet owns the hotel, mister.”

  “You mean she works here?” The boy had to be mistaken.

  “She owns it, mister. Like I said. What’s the matter? You got your big ears plugged up?”

  “No I haven’t.” He stared down at the insolent, grimy-faced child. “Take that tone with me boy and I’ll tan your hide.”

  “No you won’t.”

  “Yes I will.”

  “Miss Wellfleet won’t let you. She’ll tell you how it is. She sets folk straight about that.”

  “Does she indeed? Well, she won’t set me straight.”

  “I reckon she will.”

  “I reckon she won’t.”

  The boy sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “What do you want Miss Wellfleet for? What’s she gorne and done?”

  “Plenty, I’m sure. She’s a woman isn’t she? They’re all more trouble than they’re worth.”

  “You ain’t coming to arrest her are you?”

  He turned his head sharply, staring down at the boy. “Arrest her?” Aha! So the woman was a criminal of some sort. No surprise there since she’d apparently consorted with his reprobate father at some point in the past.

  “Mr. Carbury says she’ll be thrown in prison one o’ these days,” the boy explained, “for not payin’ her bills.”

  “I see.” He glanced over at the hotel doors again. “Well, I’m here on another very important matter and no business of yours.”

  “Is it a secret then?”

  “Almost as much of a secret as why you’re still standing there asking me questions.”

  “No need to get hoity toity, mister. You’ve got a cut on your noggin. And a bloody great bruise.”

  “You’ll have a sizeable bump on yours, too, in a minute.”

  “Shall I get the doctor? I’ll fetch him for another penny. I’ll even run if you give me a shilling.”

  He sighed. “Just take the trunk inside.” He’d find out for himself about this suspect Miss Wellfleet creature. “And don’t drag it, for pity’s sake!”

  The boy dropped the rope handle by which he’d begun to pull the trunk up the steps and took hold of both ends, struggling to lift it. Finally, Luke handed him the parcel instead and lifted the trunk onto his own wide shoulder.

  “Want something done, might as well do it myself,” he muttered, stubbing his toe on the step.

  “Sorry, mister.” The boy followed close behind. “It’s a damn heavy trunk.”

  “Yes it is. And don’t say damn.”

  “Why not? I say damn all the time.”

  “Then you should stop.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m always right.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a gentleman and you’re a rotten little cretin.”

  As they passed through the door and into the hotel foyer, Luke looked around for further assistance, but found only a handful of guests sitting about on furniture that had seen better days. A thick drift of cigar smoke hung heavy in the air, competing with the waxy odor of thick perfume in which several nearby females appeared to have drenched themselves, presumably to attract flies.

  Busy casting the cluster of ladies his usual frown of disdain, he forgot to look where he was going until a large potted palm arrested his progress quite suddenly, lurching into view as he rounded a pillar and slapping his face with long, sharp green fronds. He almost dropped his trunk, but resettled it on his aching shoulder, strode up to the front desk, and slammed his hand down on the brass bell.

  No response.

  The boy shuffled up behind him, carrying the square package which was almost as big as he. “Miss Wellfleet must be in the back room, mister.”

  Beyond the counter and the wall of pigeon holes with little brass keys hanging, a door stood ajar. Upon it, a small, chipped plague read “Private”. Luke could just make out the flicker of movement through the crack in the door and then he heard voices.

  “I told you, Mr. Carbury, I have no interest in selling this hotel.”

  “You’re making a mistake, Miss Wellfleet. Go back to what you know. Go back to the Westerfields and leave the hotel business to those of us who know what we’re doing before you run this place into the ground, lose every guest, and ruin any chance your brothers might have of getting a decent price.” The man’s voice was low, smooth, controlled. “My offer will only decrease the longer you keep me waiting, Miss Wellfleet.”

  “I’m sure your time is valuable,” the woman replied, her voice less steady, but struggling bravely. Only a little break in her voice on the softer consonants gave her away. “You have your own hotel to run, and I can only wonder how you find enough hours in the day to come here and threaten me so often.”

  Waiting at the counter, Luke set his trunk down and rubbed his shoul
der. The door to the back room opened a few more inches until he saw her hand, a small, pale, childlike hand with neatly trimmed fingernails. There was a little frayed lace on the cuff of her sleeve, and her wrist was so slender he knew his own fingers could wrap around it almost double.

  “Threaten you, Miss Wellfleet? I haven’t even begun. You have no inkling of the trouble you’re getting yourself in to.”

  “I think you’d better leave my hotel, sir.”

  “I know all the tradesmen and suppliers in Middleton, Miss Wellfleet. I know where you have all your accounts. You may soon find your credit is no longer acceptable in Middleton.”

  Luke had heard enough. It wasn’t often that he interfered in other folk’s arguments, but he had several reasons to intervene in this one. He was in a hurry, his head was hurting, and he didn’t like the man’s tone. He wasn’t generally the most gallant gentleman in the world, but even he wouldn’t stand by listening while a young woman was berated in this fashion. There didn’t seem to be anyone else to stand up for her, and the little break in her voice reached right inside his soul, begging for his attention. If there was one thing he couldn’t tolerate it was a bully.