Ren shook his head. “I’ve already checked near the bridge. There’s no sign of her.”
Betrice clasped her hands under her chin, too dismayed to worry over the wisps of her hair becoming dislodged in the building wind. “Henry rode out that way just a few minutes ago to look for her. I was just coming out to send Jakes to fetch you from Amberdell. You may take him with you now.”
Ren nodded, mounting his horse once more. The groom led out a fit farm beast to ride, already saddled. When Ren reined his mount about, he saw a strangely significant look pass between Betrice and the fellow, Jakes. Then Betrice turned back to Ren. “Should I go to Amberdell, just in case she returns there?”
Ren nodded shortly. It was a good suggestion. “My thanks.”
Riding out with Jakes keeping well up with him, Ren spared a thought from his growing worry to wonder why he’d avoided conversation with Betrice for so long. She seemed an extremely good woman.
* * *
Callie had made a pact with herself. For every ten steps, she could rest for a count of ten. Ten walking. Ten resting. She kept to the river path, retracing Sally’s steps, for one could not get lost when following a river. That way all her attention could be spent on counting to ten, again and again.
At least the effort of lurching along, using a stout branch for an ill-fitting crutch beneath her shoulder, kept her somewhat warm. It wasn’t so bad until the wind picked up, sending icy drafts up beneath her thin skirts and making her hands stiff with cold.
Ten walking. Ten resting.
Every now and then she varied her routine by thinking up ten ways to enact vengeance upon Mr. Porter for his neglect. Stinging ants in his drawers. Asps in his bedsheets. Poisoned ginger.
Having seven imaginative siblings gave Callie a great wealth of vengeance to call upon. Unseamed trousers. Burrs under the saddle.
Changing the locks of Amberdell.
Making him moan and cry out and shiver on the carpet. That was Callie’s favorite. She was bloody tired of always being the one to fall to pieces in a soaring orgasm every night. All right, then, not really. She adored it. But it was about bloody time that Mr. Porter had a taste of what it was like to be truly powerless with lust!
She probably ought to do that one before the stinging ants. They had a tendency to cause swelling—and not the good kind!
Ten. Ten.
She was becoming colder and she didn’t think she’d come very far at all. Sally had been cantering for such a long while … miles? Surely not … yet a horse could cover a great deal of ground at a run and she’d let Sally run herself for a good long time … a horse could run at perhaps twenty miles an hour? So, for perhaps a quarter of an hour … which was twenty-five minutes, no, wait, that was a quarter of one hundred … and an hour was sixty minutes …
Her head hurt and it was difficult to make the numbers stay still in her mind. They danced and pranced together, their shoes clad in tiny spikes that sent tiny lightning bolts across her vision …
Ten. Ten.
“I want [step] to sit before a fire [step],” she said out loud. “I want [step] a hot bath [step].” The crotch of the stick dug painfully into her armpit. “I want pillows!” Step. “I want tea!” Step.
I want my mum.
Fat tears of self-pity began to roll down her cheeks. She let them. It was high time she gave in to a good howl! Bloody Mr. Porter and his bloody dusty house and his bloody rude villagers and his bloody cold Cotswolds!
Well, but … she loved the Cotswolds. She’d have to think of something else to hate.
Sally. She hated bloody Sally. And right then she even hated Betrice and Henry, for loaning her that idiot horse. Except she wasn’t an idiot horse. She was a very nice horse.
Something made her spook, I just know it. The same something that knocked down the ladder, and locked the cellar door.
Not the ginger, though. Best not think about the damned ginger.
Well, she had plenty of time to contemplate the puzzle, what with the miles and the math and Sally’s long, high-bred legs. And the fact that, apparently, Mr. Porter hadn’t even missed her.
* * *
Ren never did spot Henry riding toward the river. By the time he took his gelding down the grassy riverbank to the old barge towing path, he’d forgotten all about his cousin. Before him, dug deep into the damp earth of the path, were hoofmarks. One set, rather dainty, with fine, well-smithed shoe marks, set far apart.
“That’ll be Sally,” grunted Jakes.
The other, large, unshod, the hoofmarks of a farm beast. Like a hundred other plow horses in the valley, except for a rather large crack in the right fore.
“That’s a horse what’ll come up lame,” commented Jakes with a concerned scowl. “Poor beastie.”
The larger horse’s hoofmarks covered Sally’s. Both sets led off upriver, up the path. Ren set his gelding at an easy canter, keeping his eyes on the ground, but it wasn’t hard to follow the dug-in marks of two horses at a run.
At a chase?
The plow horse’s track was deep, indicating a heavy horse and a heavy rider.
A giant silhouette on the top of the hill.
Not really the giant’s style, riding a farm plug—although it might be for reasons of cover. Could someone from his past be taking a strange sort of vengeance on his bride? But why?
Ren spurred his mount faster, feeling the urgency grow. I have a bad feeling …
* * *
When the first icy raindrops fell on the back of Callie’s bent neck, she stopped and glared at the sky. “Now you’re just being vile.”
Then the drops became harder, water turned to ice high in the air.
“Oh!” Callie lurched to the side of the path, dragging her stick, then crawling on all fours—which is bloody difficult in a muslin day gown so where the devil are my proper clothes, Dade?—up the grassy bank and into the dubious shelter of a small willow tree. With dismay, Callie settled into a shivering crouch and glared at the view filled with bouncing white hail the size of hazelnuts.
She watched them plopping into the river, splashing large like stones, turning the surface of the water into a roiling mess. Then, as she gazed outward, she saw him.
The dark shape of a man, standing on the opposite bank. Callie shrank back beneath the little tree, crawling nearly behind it, unable to take her shocked gaze from the figure in her view.
A giant, dressed in dark clothing, wearing a shapeless hat, staring directly at her, unmoving, oblivious to the hail battering him without mercy.
Chapter 19
Ren, riding hard through the hail and the stinging rain that came down in its aftermath, almost missed it. There, across the path, a line drawn as if with a stick, scored right through the tracks of the filly and of the plow horse. Reining the gelding to a squealing halt, Ren twisted his mount about on the narrow path and trotted back to the mark. Jakes followed a few minutes later, remaining respectfully back from the evidence.
Ren dismounted and knelt to inspect it. The mark was strange but the ones preceding it were stranger. A series of small depressions, single footprints? No, they were opposed by a hole, dug into the trail by a stick? A small woman with a cane? Or a crutch.
She is injured.
His belly tight with worry for her, he followed the odd line to the edge of the path, and then followed the scuff marks through the soaking grass on the riverbank. Someone had scrambled up the bank.
The trail of crushed grass led to a small willow tree halfway up the slope. Its infant withies barely swept the tall grass. Through the dangling branches Ren saw a flash of something pale. A shapely pile of muddy muslin.
He found her within, curled up on the far side of the trunk, her gown and spencer and face daubed in mud.
“Calliope?”
She opened her eyes. “Oh, it’s you.” She sat up a bit. “I didn’t think you were coming after all.”
“I’m sorry. I had a late start.”
She blinked at him. “
Were you brooding again?” she asked indifferently.
Guilty as charged. He nodded, bemused. “I fear so.”
“I knew it.” She shivered. “Such a bloody waste of time, brooding.”
He was beginning to see her point. He reached for her hands. They were like ice. He drew her up into his arms and easily lifted her.
“I want a bath,” she declared flatly.
“Yes, you do. You look as though you had a fight with a mud monster.”
“I did it deliberately.”
“Why ever for? It made you nearly impossible to see.”
“Exactly.” Her gaze was fixed at a point across the river, but when Ren looked there was no one there.
* * *
Ren rode at high speed back to Amberdell with Calliope in his arms. He left Jakes in the yard with the horses and carried her straight up to her room. He found Betrice there, pouring a steaming pail of water into the smallest copper tub.
“I had a farmhand carry it up here. I hope you don’t mind. Oh, goodness, Callie—quickly, into the tub!”
“I have her, Betrice. But thank you.”
Betrice gaped at Ren for a long moment. Then she seemed to fade a bit, shrinking into the background as she had always seemed to before. “Of course, Lawrence.”
She left, closing the door behind her. Ren stood Calliope on one foot and swiftly began undoing her wet spencer. The damp wool fought him for a moment. She slapped weakly at his hands.
“No, you’ll stretch the fit. I haven’t another.”
Ren paused. She didn’t? As he eased her arms free of the clinging wet short coat, he tried to remember what she’d worn for the past week.
There was a pale blue gown and then a sort of white one. Ivory, the ladies called it. Which, he realized, was the filthy ruin she now wore.
“Were you traveling with nothing at all when you came here?”
She blinked at him. “We lost almost everything in the river that first night.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t ask.”
I believe I’m going to lose this one, too. “Do you not have more things at home?”
She sighed wearily. “One would think, wouldn’t one?”
He’d not even noticed her doing without. “Then you must order some new items at once. There is a dressmaker in the village.” He lifted her gown over her head.
“There is something so satisfying…”—her voice was muffled. Then she popped out again—“about post factum permission.”
He frowned. “Meaning you have already done so.”
She stood shivering in her damp chemise. “You have no idea the bill that is coming your way. Mr. Button is quite persuasive.”
Hmm. He could certainly afford a few trifling gowns. He bent, swept her into his arms, and deposited her into the steaming tub, chemise and all.
“Eek!”
He frowned. “Too hot?”
“Mmph. Ah, no.”
Her fair skin was already turning pink, but she seemed to savor the heat. He pulled on the floating hem of her chemise and tugged it over her head, leaving her entirely naked.
“Nothing else?” He frowned. “No pantalets?”
She kept her eyes closed. Was she blushing? Then Ren had a blood-heating memory of slicing her pantalets off with his sword. Ah, well. Yes.
Then he realized something. “You never wear a corset, do you?”
She turned her face away. “Mama says they aren’t healthy.”
“Well, I agree. Your figure needs no improvement.”
Startled, she drew back. “That is the first time you’ve ever paid me a compliment.” She blinked. “In fact, I believe this is the longest conversation we’ve ever had … that didn’t end in a sword fight, at any rate.”
He poured a pitcher of steaming water over her head. She gasped and sputtered. “Don’t worry, I daresay I’ll fall back into a brooding silence soon.”
She pushed back the hair streaming into her face and scowled. “Death is silent,” she threatened.
He almost kissed her. He didn’t mean to. She simply looked so delicious and bedraggled and she still had a smear of mud on one cheek and her skin was blotchy from the heat and her breasts floated so temptingly in the sudsy bathwater.
He wanted to kiss her. He bent to do just that, then remembered that he still wore his hood. Hoods played bloody hell with kissing, that was the truth. In addition, hideous scars probably didn’t do much for it, either.
She was busy scrubbing at her hands and arms and neck with the sponge Betrice had found somewhere. “Soap! I’ve missed proper soap!”
Ren blinked. “I like that salt you use.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve been here for a week and the only soap I could find was that harsh lye stuff I used on the floors. I wanted proper bath soap.”
Ren conceded that it might be easier to bathe with soap—and she’d only needed to ask him—but he was going to miss the scent of rosemary on her skin. Perhaps he could find rosemary soap in London … for what purpose? She would likely be gone before he could find it.
Reminded, Ren rose to his feet and began to roll down his sleeves. “I shall leave you to your bath, then, since you seem to be feeling better. There must be some bread and cheese in the larder. I’ll leave it outside your door.”
She frowned up at him, gazing, as always, right through his hood. “What about tonight?”
He tilted his head. “I assumed you would be too tired … and your ankle…”
“Oh, bother that.” She waved a soapy hand, spattering gobs of suds on his muddy boots. “I’ve been through much worse than this. Once Lysander tried to win a race by putting Chinese rockets on the back of his pony cart. My mount took exception and dumped me into the Serpentine in Hyde Park in the middle of February. I went right through the ice.
“The Serpentine isn’t very deep, you know,” she informed him seriously. “I simply pushed off the bottom and popped right back up through the hole. Dade got me out by using Lysander as a rope. Mama never even knew a thing.”
She smiled. “Dade set Lysander straight, though. My younger brother had to sit upon a cushion for a week!”
“He beat him?”
“No, of course not! He took all the springs out of the pony cart! Orion helped him. He’s so good at everything mechanical.”
“And malevolent,” Ren murmured. “But you don’t mean that you still wish to…”
She nodded briskly. “Oh, yes. That is our contract, is it not?”
She wanted the pearl. Of course. The faster she earned back the pearls, the sooner she could leave him in her memory, to be just another adventure like the pony carts and Chinese rockets.
He wanted her.
She wanted to go.
She could simply leave. She must know that. There was very little he could do to stop her. Although some husbands would simply bring their straying wives home by force, Ren would never imprison her here. The pearls were meaningless to him, just a twisted bargain made by a man with nothing left to lose.
Abruptly he wanted her to go. He wanted her to leave now before he became any more attached to her body and her voice and her wide hazel eyes and her clearly mad way of looking at things …
Disregarding his shirt and his weskit, he plunged his arms into the tub and scooped her out. He deposited her on the carpet before the roaring coals Betrice had built up. Then he blew out the candles and stood before his bride. She curled her injured ankle almost beneath her, sitting with her legs tucked up next to her and her back straight, looking at him, with only the glow of the burning coals to light them. He dug into his soaked weskit pocket and held up a pearl. “You understand what I request of you?”
“Yes.” She gazed at him for a long moment, her expression somber. “Do you?”
Then, she closed her eyes, put her hands loosely behind her, and opened her mouth. He placed the pearl upon her tongue, letting his fingertip trail over her lips when she closed them. Would he never kn
ow her kiss? Would he be able to let her go if he did?
Quickly, he stripped off his wet clothing, leaving his hood on the filthy pile. He took a moment to wipe the last of the mud from his arms and neck, then he stood before her, naked as he had never been before.
He stepped closer. His erection jutted before him, hardening and thickening at the thought of her sweet innocent mouth upon him. She would see what a bastard he was. Now, she would see the beast in truth.
“Open your mouth.”
Her jaw dropped. Her eyes were still closed so when he pressed the head of his cock to her parted lips, she frowned in confusion.
Her hands came unclasped from behind her back and she began to reach upward.
“No,” he commanded. “Just your mouth.”
Callie realized what it was now. Shock trembled through her belly although she was careful not to show it. Yet, he had put his mouth on her, had he not?
Her tongue darted nervously to her lips, and in doing so ran feather light around the blunt tip of … it.
She heard him gasp. It was a vulnerable sound, a sound of need and desire and lack of control.
Ooh, yes. An excellent development.
Callie flicked her tongue again, this time more slowly, more exploratively. He twitched and she could hear his breath come faster, although he didn’t make the same sound again.
I want to make him do that again.
The pearl still lay upon her tongue, so she used it on him, rolling it over that now-wet tip, using her tongue to massage it in a great circle round the end.
There it was. That sound again.
Mr. Porter, you are mine now.
He’d made her whimper and scream and cry out nonsense that echoed through this empty house.
Worthingtons knew a bit about vengeance.
Callie opened her mouth and took him in. The blunt tip ended in a sort of ridge. With her lips now wrapped around his rod just past that ridge, she ran her pearl-tipped tongue around and around it.
If she was not mistaken, the man had begun to tremble, just a bit. The pearl was getting in the way now, so Callie discreetly let it fall from her lips and focused entirely on taking the thick length of him into her mouth. When he’d pressed to the back of her throat and there was still more, she withdrew slowly, thinking it was time to assess the situation.
When She Said I Do Page 18
