Tears slid down her ravaged cheeks. “He let me punt on tick, didn’t he? And before I knew it …” Her shoulders sagged. “At first he just said he’d take payments. But there was interest, too. I gave him almost everything and it still wasn’t enough. And … and—”
“And you continued to visit his gaming hells?” Hugo guessed.
She shrugged.
“He wanted you to keep playing, didn’t he.”
She didn’t need to answer.
“So once you were over your head he gave you the option of getting rid of me and then signing over the business?”
She chewed her chapped, peeling lip and cut him a quick, sly glance.
Hugo pointed at her. “Don’t lie to me, Laura. Because if I learn you’ve lied—”
“It was Cowan’s idea to get your half.”
Hugo gave an ugly laugh. “You mean he was faking the grand passion he claimed he felt for you?”
“Yes, he used me!” Her face twisted into a scowl. “Does that make you happy?”
“As a matter of fact, it does a bit. So, the dumb bastard thought you’d be able to sell the place if I wasn’t around, eh? It must have come as quite a shock to him when he learned you were in debt up to your neck.”
“It’s worse than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s one of Bev’s bastards.”
“So what? That’s not exactly rare. I understand Bev’s got more brats running around the rookeries than that bloke from the Bible.”
“It turns out that Bev is makin’ noises about getting’ old,” Laura said. “He’s talking about choosing an heir and he’ll pick the one who impresses him the most.”
“Ah,” Hugo said, comprehension dawning. “Solange’s would be quite a prize for Cowan to bring home to dear old Da.” He studied her miserable face. “But you didn’t know about any of that, did you?”
“No. At least not until—well, not until after it was done.”
“You bloody fool.”
Laura didn’t bother to deny it.
Go on,” he ordered.
“Cowan said that if I could get rid of you, he knew a forger who could help with the deed. He said once it was all mine then I could sell the place, pay off the money to Bev—with some left over—and we could get married. He said that he earned enough from his work with Bev that I never needed to work again.”
“I’m guessing it wasn’t Cowan’s plan to have me arrested?”
“No, he wanted you dead.” She locked eyes with him. “I went behind his back and arranged this with a bloke I knew. I couldn’t do it, Hugo. I couldn’t have you killed.”
“I’m touched. Finish the story.”
“Things didn’t go the way Cowan said.”
Hugo gave a bitter laugh.
“The forger didn’t fix all the documents in my name, he used Bev’s.” Her face twitched, her eyes haunted. “When I found out, I tracked Cowan down. He laughed at me—the things he said—” She choked on a sob. “I threatened to tell and—and—” She swallowed convulsively. “He beat me so hard I pissed blood for a week.”
Hugo shook his head in disgust.
“So you were gone, Bev owned your half with nobody to dispute it, and I still owed him all that money. I signed over my half two days later.”
“How could you be so bloody stupid, Laura? Didn’t you think—”
“I thought Cowan loved me!” Her words echoed in the dank room. “I thought maybe I’d finally gotten lucky. Why not—it wasn’t as if Cowan were anything special. Melissa married a bloody lord and got out of the business—both her and Joss married into the aristocracy. Was I asking too much to marry the bastard son of a criminal?” She pinioned Hugo with her ravaged gaze. “Was I?”
Hugo gritted his teeth against the pity that stabbed at him. She deserved nothing from him but scorched earth retribution.
Based on what he’d observed the past few nights as he’d skulked around Solange’s their clients had already begun to scatter. It was physically painful to see the business he had poured his life into—for years—falling apart.
And all because of her.
He sneered. “So now you work for him?”
“I only work two nights a week and he lets me live there, although I had to move into a smaller room. He said he’ll let me stay as long as I pull my weight.”
Which, judging by her sickly pallor, significant tremors, and the bones pressing against her grayish skin, wouldn’t be long.
He shoved his hand into his hair and pulled until his eyes watered. Christ. His head was bloody spinning. What, in the name of God, could he do to salvage any of this?
“Hugo?”
“What?” He had to force himself to look at her.
“If Bev learns you’re back, um, well—”
“Why do you think I haven’t just strolled into Solange’s?” Hugo snorted. “Of course, I didn’t have any idea of the extent to which I was fucked until talking to you, sweetheart.”
Laura’s pale cheeks flushed slightly, making her look like a feverish corpse.
“Do you know the name of the man who forged my name?” he asked.
She swallowed and then nodded again. “But if you put me in front of a judge, I’ll say it was you that signed it, Hugo.” She gave a slightly hysterical laugh. “I’d not survive the day if I ever tried to drag Bev or one of his men into a courtroom. Even if he didn’t kill me, I’d never survive a journey in the belly of a convict ship.”
She was right on both counts.
Hugo had to clench his hands behind his back to keep from grabbing and shaking her. “In my room there was a—”
“Strongbox under the floorboards,” she finished. “I took it. I’m sorry,” she said, dully.
Hugo closed his eyes and clenched his teeth against the impotent rage threatening to boil over. He’d kept five hundred pounds in banknotes tucked away in that box, not to mention a great deal of jewelry and other valuables—all of which he’d hidden close at hand in case of an emergency. Gone. All of it gone. He laughed weakly and opened his eyes to find Laura staring.
“What are you going to do, Hugo?”
“I have no bloody idea.”
Chapter 27
Martha was dreaming that she lived in a house with over one hundred cats.
“Darling?” one of the cats said.
A warm hand slid over her belly, the touch jolting her awake. She opened her eyes to find Hugo smiling down at her.
“Let’s take this off, Martha. Sit up a bit, love.”
Her body responded even though her brain was still half-asleep. “I was having the strangest dream,” she said, lifting first her hips and then her arms as he raised the nightgown over her head.
He shrugged off his robe and it slithered to the floor with a soft hiss. Martha had left a candle burning on a table by the door and it was the only light illuminating the huge bedchamber. She wished that he'd lighted more; as immodest as it was, she adored looking at him when they made love.
“What was your dream about?” he asked as he climbed the padded stepladder they needed for the high bed.
“I dreamed that I lived in a house with over one hundred cats.”
Hugo chuckled, the sound low and sensual. “Maybe that was a premonition; I’d say Cailean is moving in that direction. Spread your thighs for me, sweetheart.”
Martha instantly complied, her sex already pulsing at the thought of what he was about to do.
He stroked up her thighs, his fingers grazing her mound. “I missed you today,” he said, his voice oddly tight.
Martha pushed up onto her elbows, trying to see his face. “Is everything all right, Hugo?” The candle was behind him, casting his face into shadow. He didn’t sound … right.
“Everything is fine, darling.” Hugo pushed her legs wider and pinioned her thighs with his forearms before opening her. He made a low growling sound. “More than fine,” he murmured.
And then he proceeded to teas
e orgasm after orgasm from her body.
Somewhere around the fourth or fifth, Martha grabbed his hair, needing to yank hard to stop him. “Hugo.”
He allowed her to pull his head back, but he still stroked her swollen lips with his fingers. “What?” he all but snarled.
Martha couldn’t see his face, but she could feel his glare.
“What is wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong.” He thrust two fingers into her and scissored them.
Martha cried out at the stretch exquisite, her hips bucking for more.
“Am I not giving you pleasure, Martha?”
“Of course you are giving me pleasure, but …”
“But what?” He began to pump her with deep, deliberate thrusts.
“But—” Martha gasped as his finger touched something exquisitely sensitive inside her.
“You’re so beautiful and responsive, Martha. It makes me happy to give you pleasure—to give you orgasms. Please, let me make us both happy.”
Martha wanted to tell him to stop—she wanted to know what was bothering him—but his mastery over her body was greater than her selfish desire for more.
He added a third finger, driving into her harder. Her hips lifted to meet each thrust and take him deeper. The sensation within her was subtly different than any other she’d experienced—more visceral and slower to build.
Martha bit her lower lip, but she couldn’t restrain the keening, primitive noises pouring from her mouth as he relentlessly drove her toward bliss.
“Let me hear you,” he ground out, his breathing hard from the sheer physicality of what he was doing to her. “Don’t hold back. Scream and yell; come apart for me.”
His words were the last straw and she shattered.
“Yessss,” he hissed as she spiraled out of control. “Come for your husband, darling.”
Martha lost track of time and was lazily drifting in a haze of pleasure when Hugo gently turned her onto her stomach and then lifted her onto all fours. “Up on your hands and knees for me, sweetheart.”
Once she’d complied he shoved her legs wider with his knee. “So beautiful.” His voice was almost feverish, but his hands were as steady and commanding as ever. “Rest your head and shoulders on the bed for me,” he said, gently pressing her down. “Yes, just like that.”
He had never taken her this way before—the way animals mated—and it felt wicked and primal to be so open and exposed to him.
“I wish you could see yourself, Martha,” he said, as if reading her mind. “You are entrancing.” He stroked the slick folds of her sex, his caresses almost hypnotic. “I ache for you, lover.”
Martha shivered at both his words and the sheer carnality of her pose. He probed her with the tip of one finger and her back arched as she shamelessly thrust her bottom against him, her knees spreading wider, her hips tilting.
He chuckled darkly. “Such a needy little thing, aren’t you?”
Martha wanted what he was offering too badly to care about her pride or modesty. “Yes, Hugo, I’m needy—for you.”
He pushed his thumb inside her and stroked something that made her whimper.
“Mmm. So tight and wet and ready to be filled.”
Her body clenched at his filthy words and he growled his approval before replacing his thumb with something far thicker and hotter. “I love this so much, Martha.” He sounded almost … anguished. “I want you to know,” he said, entering her with only his crown and gently pulsing his hips so that he breached her over and over, “that I have never felt this way with any other lover.”
Pleasure and jealousy swirled in her belly at his words. She loved that she was special to him, but she hated the thought of him doing this with others.
He caressed her hips as he stroked deeper, but still not deep enough. The rush of desire she felt for him—to be taken and dominated by his far larger and stronger body—shocked her. Later, when she wasn’t in the grip of passion, the violence of her emotions would worry her. But right now, she needed him with a hunger that threatened to consume her.
“Please, Hugo.”
He hilted himself with one long, hard thrust.
Martha sucked in a harsh breath at the depth of his penetration.
“It feels different this way, doesn’t it?” He stroked from her waist to her shoulders, the caress emphasizing her bowed, submissive position as he kept her stretched and full. “Deeper and more … primitive.”
He was right on both counts. And even though the pleasure bordered on pain, Martha loved it and needed more.
“I’m going to be selfish and take you now,” he warned. “Hard and fast.”
Martha thought about the multiple climaxes he’d just wrung from her body and wondered at his definition of selfish.
“Tell me you want it,” he asked as he withdrew slowly, inch by inch. “Beg for it.”
“Please, Hugo, I want—”
Her words were the proverbial match to a fuse. “Take it,” he grated, slamming into her hard enough to move her up the bed.
Martha groaned. “More, please.”
“Take it all,” he growled, giving her his full length with each savage stroke.
His hips drummed faster, harder, his grunts and snarls becoming maddened as he claimed her over and over and over again. By now they’d made love so often—often three or four times a night—that she knew the signs of his impending crisis.
His thrusting became wilder and less controlled. “Martha—I need—” His fingers gripped her hard enough that she would have bruises tomorrow. “I need—” And then he shouted her name and buried himself, his body jerking with each jet of hot seed.
She closed her eyes and reveled in his primal claiming.
The spasms gradually diminished and came farther and farther apart, until he was still. And then he sighed deeply and relaxed.
Martha slid forward, until she was lying on her stomach, with Hugo sprawled on top of her. He was heavy, but not unpleasantly so. The hard, sweaty muscles of his stomach and chest molded against her back and his shaft was still buried inside her, half-erect.
It was … heaven.
He shifted slightly, exhaled—the sound one of profound contentment—and then became boneless with sleep.
“Hugo?” she whispered.
He didn’t so much as twitch.
Martha couldn’t help smiling, even though she was more than a bit unnerved by his almost frenzied behavior. He was always an energetic lover—also vulgar and without shame—but he’d never been so frantic before.
Something had happened to him today. Not that Martha could have any idea what as she had barely seen him during the daylight hours since their arrival in London a week ago.
He disappeared every morning before she woke and only returned home after she’d gone to bed, slipping in beside her while she slept and waking her with his skilled, passionate lovemaking.
“I’m sorry, darling,” he’d said the third night, after she’d asked if he would ever eat dinner with her again. “Things should slow down … soon.”
“Have you met with your business partner?” She wanted to ask the woman’s name, but decided it was not her affair. If he wanted her to know, he would tell her.
“Not yet, but soon. I promise you it won’t always be this way. Why don’t you and Cailean explore together, for now, and then next week I’ll engage a leasing agent to show us some properties?”
For the first few days Martha and Cailean had occupied themselves discovering London, walking for miles and visiting historical sites that she had never imagined she would get to see in real life.
But two days ago, when she’d gone down to breakfast, she’d learned from Richard the footman that Cailean had left even before Hugo that morning.
Martha had been beside herself with worry until Cailean returned before dinner, clutching a filthy, battered, and bleeding cat. Martha loved animals—all animals—but the mangy feline had a face that only its mother—or Cailean—could love.
<
br /> It was missing half of one ear from an old injury and the bend in one of its back legs wasn’t quite right. Most daunting was its entirely white right eye, which seemed to look right into Martha’s soul as she helped Cailean bathe the beast.
She had never bathed a cat before and would never do so again. Her arms looked as though she’d climbed through a dozen rose bushes. Cailean, who’d borne the brunt of the cat’s ire, looked even worse.
Once the animal was free of grime, its coat was actually an attractive black and gray tortoiseshell. But that was the only attractive thing about it.
Butterbank had located a small medicine chest and Martha had tended to the poor creature’s injuries.
Clean, dry, and full of milk and a bit of liver, the cat had slept soundly in front of the kitchen hearth. Not until the following day had she learned that Cailean had slept right beside her.
Any ambivalence Cook or Butterbank might have had about the new addition to the kitchen—whom Cailean dubbed Maggie—dissipated when Maggie presented Cook with an obviously well-fed rat.
After the cat incident Martha had asked Hugo to have a talk with the younger man and make sure he wasn’t venturing into dangerous parts of the city. No matter how huge he was, he was still a gentle, kind lad who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Martha could not be comfortable thinking about him exploring some of the parts of London that she’d seen from the window of a hackney.
Remarkably, Cailean was transfixed, rather than daunted, by the size and complexity of the city. Indeed, he seemed almost at home.
So, the only one of the three of them who had nothing to occupy them was Martha.
In addition to the housekeeper, there were at least a half-dozen maids—for the kitchen, the bedchambers, the common areas—a footman, the butler, and even a cook.
They’d been married almost two weeks and she’d never even cooked Hugo a meal! It just didn’t feel right.
Never had Martha believed that she could become bored with too much leisure time and too many books. It seemed profoundly ungrateful to admit that—even in the privacy of her own head—but it was true.
Hugo and the Maiden: A Steamy Virgin and Rake Regency Romance (The Seducers Book 3) Page 24
