by Danice Allen
While this unladylike behavior did not exactly suit Mrs. Tavistock’s notion of what was proper, Beth’s mother put up with it in the hope that one day her daughter would marry Zachary. The events of the last month, commencing with the betrothal of the wild couple and ending with the death of Mr. Hayle and Zachary’s certain inheritance of Pencarrow and the wealth attached to it, had fulfilled Mrs. Tavistock’s loving ambitions for her elder daughter most satisfactorily.
Sadie untied Beth’s dress, and the high-waisted, long-sleeved, modestly cut dress slipped past her slender hips to the floor, followed in short order by a petticoat. Beth stepped out of the pile of black bombazine and ruffled muslin, sorely tempted to prance about the room in her light shift. It felt so good to be free of the heavy, sober gown!
“Sit by the fire, miss, or ye’ll likely catch yer death,” commanded Sadie, correctly interpreting the liberated light in Beth’s eyes. “Yer mum asked me to watch out fer ye here at Pencarrow, and I’m bound to keep my word. I’ll fetch ye a blanket.”
Beth sat down in a high-backed purple velvet wing chair and assumed a most obedient air. Sadie hung the damp dress over a broad rocker near the fire and dug a blanket out of a heavy chest at the foot of the bed. She covered Beth from her neck to her toes, taking care to tuck the brown woolen blanket snugly about her icy feet.
“Thank you, Sadie,” Beth said demurely.
Sadie cast Beth a suspicious look, but only asked, “When’s yer mother and Miss Gabrielle coming, miss?”
“Mama and Gabby are coming with Vicar Bradford. I do hope the rain lets up soon,” she added, glancing worriedly toward the dark windows. A persistent drizzle still fell outside, and a brisk wind blew in from the sea. “It will be a wet procession to the gravesite and, I fear, an even smaller congregation than we expected.”
“’Twill be small enough,” Sadie predicted sourly. “A good man in his own way was the master, but folks hereabouts won’t shed nary a tear for ’im.” Sadie sighed heavily and shook her head, but soon shrugged off her dismal thoughts and settled a keen gaze on Beth. “I can’t sit here and watch ye, Miss Elizabeth, but I hope ye’ve sense enough to stay by the fire. I’m wanted in the kitchen. Cook’s all in a pucker, feedin’ a viscount and all.”
“Tell Cook to calm herself, Sadie,” advised Beth. “The viscount’s very nice.”
Sadie snorted. “Nice is as nice does, miss. Why ain’t he been to see his little brother in all these many years, I ask ye?”
Beth’s smooth brow furrowed. “I don’t know, Sadie. But somehow I think there must be a good reason. I’ll find out, of course.” Beth gave Sadie an arch smile. “I’ve my ways of getting to the bottom of things, you know.”
Sadie gave her opinion of these proceedings with yet another snort. “Meddlin’, Miss Elizabeth, don’t bring nobody nothin’ but bad luck. Ye’d best leave well enough alone.”
With those words Sadie left the room. Beth’s smile faded as she stared into the fire. Indeed, she thought, how could Sadie advise her to leave well enough alone? In her opinion, things just weren’t well enough to leave alone. Zachary would always wonder why his brother hadn’t answered his letters or come to see him after their father died. She felt it very much her wifely duty to help Zachary come to some kind of understanding with his brother.
The viscount’s figure came promptly to her mind’s eye. Beth vividly recalled the tall, elegant gentleman called Alexander, Lord Roth. In looks he and Zachary were nothing alike. In fact, Lord Roth looked exactly like the Hayle side of the family. She suspected that somewhere in the ancient Hayle lineage a little Gypsy blood had tumbled in. Those eyes of his were as brilliant and black as wet coal.
The fire crackled companionably as Beth contemplated Alexander Wickham’s Gypsy eyes. She’d studied him thoroughly during the few minutes they’d stood together outside the parlor that held the mortal remains of his grandfather. She’d watched the emotions flash in his eyes even while his facial muscles remained unmoved. He had striven valiantly to hide his feelings, but his eyes told all.
A surge of compassion flowed through Beth, along with some other warming sensation she couldn’t quite peg. Suddenly she felt oppressed and hot beneath the heavy woolen blanket and thrust it off and onto the floor. She tucked her legs beneath her and tugged her thin shift down to cover her ankles.
Now the firelight shone on bare skin, and Beth could feel the heat seep into her bones, just as if she’d been swimming in Brookmoor Pond and had lain on the sunny bank afterward to dry herself. Her shift dipped low over her full breasts, exposing two pale mounds that were pinkening in the glow from the fire. Beth reveled in the free, sensual feel of firelight licking against her skin.
Blushing, she tried to understand the feelings and subtle changes that had besieged her lately. Not physical changes, really, because she’d developed breasts earlier than most girls and had at first deemed them merely a nuisance. They’d crowded her gowns and gotten in her way whenever she took a notion to climb a tree or scramble on her stomach down a hill. And they’d been embarrassing. Everyone had noticed them. Especially men.
But when Zach had finished his schooling, grown tired of traveling about the gay postwar continent, and was casting about for a suitable wife to settle down with, Beth’s respect for her breasts increased tenfold. Suddenly she very much liked having a womanly shape, because Zach looked at her with new eyes.
It had been Beth’s intention to marry her childhood friend since she was six and he was nine and they’d enacted a marriage ceremony down in Dozmary Cove. She loved Zachary dearly and was determined from that date forth to secure him as her husband.
She certainly couldn’t think of anyone she’d rather spend her life with. They were so very comfortable together. But through reading this and that and listening in when her older cousins came to visit, she’d discovered that men demanded something more than comfortable companionship from a wife. Passionate beasts, obviously, they had to feel a certain eagerness to crawl into bed with their life’s companion. As her mother informed her, however—shuddering delicately as she did so—genteel, proper, respectable women were not required to feel anything during the marital joining. In fact, they were better off if they didn’t.
Beth had taken her mother’s word as gospel. Indeed, who would know better than her mother what constituted a happy marriage, since it was obvious that her parents had loved each other very much? But lately Beth had been having second thoughts. She was glad that Zachary desired her. That alone gave her a certain gratification that bordered on the sensual. But she wanted more. She knew instinctively that there was something more to be had between a man and a woman. Her curious mind and her quickening body told her so.
Moving restlessly in the chair, Beth thought about the village lasses. She’d seen the way they looked at Zachary whenever she rode into town with him. Obviously they found him attractive. Some even looked as though they’d gladly lift their skirts for him in return for just one of his smiles. Beth puzzled over this and couldn’t understand what one’s station in life had to do with physical desire. If the village lasses were aroused at the sight of Zachary, dimpled and blushed under the influence of his teasing gaze, why didn’t she?
Perhaps, thought Beth, she just hadn’t gone about things properly. Well, “properly” probably wasn’t quite the most precise word to use in this case. In fact, maybe she’d been too proper.
“Knock, knock. I’m coming in, Beth.”
Beth started guiltily when she heard Zachary’s voice at the door. It was almost as though she had willed him to come to her chamber while she sat in her near-nakedness shamefully contemplating carnal lust. She got up on her knees in the chair and observed him from over the back of it. He was raking his hands through his hair again, a sure sign he was agonizing over something. And of course Beth knew exactly what that something was—Alexander Wickham.
As always, Beth left off thinking of herself when she knew Zachary needed her. Heeding time-proven methods of lift
ing Zachary’s mood, she proceeded to tease him out of his sullens. She smiled mischievously.
“Sadie’ll beat you senseless, Zach, if she catches you in here. Remember that time when she chased you about the house with the broom?”
“I was a mere boy then,” retorted Zachary, glowering. “She wouldn’t dare thrash me now that I’m master of the house.”
“But that’s just the point,” Beth continued, lowering her voice to a sultry softness. “You’re no longer a boy, and with me like this …”
Judging by the alert way Zachary’s head reared up and the glow in his golden eyes, Beth knew she had succeeded in diverting him from his troubled thoughts. But after a moment of staring at her intensely, his eyes shifting away only once to note her black dress drying on the rocker, he moved to the door and locked it with a key that had been lying nearby on a chest of drawers. Now Beth really began to suspect her own motives. She wondered if she was truly trying to divert Zachary’s mind from his troubles or if she had some brazen experiment in mind.
Her conscience told her that proper women didn’t do such things, but her more adventurous self reasoned that if she could please and beguile her husband-to-be just a little now and then, where was the harm in it? And if in the course of pleasing and beguiling her betrothed she discovered whether or not she had a single passionate bone in her body, well, that was all right, too, wasn’t it? She’d never let him see her nearly naked before, however—at least not since they’d matured into adults—and he’d never locked them alone together in a room. She trembled a little at her own boldness.
With just a few long strides, Zachary stood by the chair. Beth instinctively pressed herself against the back cushions in a belated show of modesty. Zachary’s eyes moved purposely over her tousled hair, along her long neck and shoulders, and down to the swell of her breasts. Cheeks flaming under the fire in his eyes, she tried to analyze whether she was blushing as a result of rising desire or if she was merely embarrassed.
Then, following Zachary’s gaze, Beth glanced down and discovered that pressing against the cushions to shield her breasts from his eager view had actually accomplished the opposite effect. They only looked all the more enticing, she supposed, thrust up that way and gleaming white against the deep purple velvet of the chair.
“You’re a fetching little baggage, Beth my love,” crooned Zachary, dropping one hand below the curve of the chair and lightly trailing a long slim finger over the mound of one breast, dipping into the cleavage, and then continuing along the mound of the other breast.
Beth shivered. It pleased her to please him. And it was exciting, in a way; she’d never been touched so intimately before. She swallowed and brazened it out, hoping to please him yet a little more and still succeed in sending him away while keeping her virginity intact. And maybe, just maybe, her breath would quicken like Zach’s, and her pulse would beat frantically just as Zach’s was doing. Since his cravat was undone, she saw how the hollow of his throat pulsated as his heart beat a reckless tattoo. Why didn’t her heart beat thus?
“I want to make you happy, Zach,” she whispered, determined. She lifted her head and parted her lips slightly.
Zachary’s gaze was riveted to those full, inviting lips. His hands grasped her shoulders firmly, and he bent low till she could feel his breath on her face. “You shall, my love,” he said.
His lips came down on hers, softly at first, then harder and more insistently. Suddenly she felt herself being lifted out of the chair, her feet dangling inches above the floor. When her feet finally connected with the hearthrug, Zachary was pressing her so close to him that Beth could hardly breathe. He was firm and lean and smelled of sandalwood soap, and she supposed she ought to feel light-headed with desire by now. But when Zach’s tongue slipped into her mouth, all Beth felt was blind panic. In her opinion, the experiment had gone quite far enough—and so had the pleasing and beguiling! At the first lessening of Zachary’s embrace, she squirmed away and scampered around to the other side of the chair.
“Zach, I said I wanted to make you happy,” she reprimanded him playfully, though her heart beat fearfully fast. “But not now!”
Zachary seemed dazed. He blinked several times, then cupped his chin and ran his lean fingers along his jaw. “By God, Beth,” he said at last, “I believe you’ve turned into something of a flirt. You don’t invite a man into your bedchamber while you’re half dressed, love, without making the poor fellow think … Well, you know!”
As Zachary strove to recover his composure, Beth’s confidence returned. After all, it was only her dear Zachary gone slightly berserk. She returned to her former teasing manner. “First of all, this is not my bedchamber—”
“Will be if you wish it,” interrupted Zachary, moving forward a step, embers of passion showing in his tender expression, ready to ignite with the least encouragement.
“And second of all, I didn’t invite you,” she finished, flashing him an impish grin before snatching the blanket off the floor and wrapping herself in it, Indian style.
“Dash it, Beth, we’re as good as married. I don’t know why you’re being so skittish,” he complained, plowing through his hair again with impatient fingers.
“I know you men, Zachary Wickham. No one buys the hen when the eggs are free,” she stated roundly, lifting a slender white arm from out of the folds of the huge blanket and wagging her finger in his face.
Zachary laughed out loud, and Beth could see the tension easing out of his body. As she watched him, she felt a foolish, happy smile curving her lips. Oh, she did love him. So what if he never sent her into a passionate swoon? After all, what was passion compared to true, abiding affection? Then he surprised her by catching her up in his arms and twirling her in a circle till her head was spinning.
“Beth, Beth, my wicked little wife-to-be, you’ll pay for this when I’ve got you for my very own,” Zachary warned. And judging by the bright glimmer of his eyes when he said it, Beth was quite sure he meant to keep his promise. She shivered again and still did not know why.
“Now go on, Zach, before Sadie catches you,” she told him as he set her feet on the floor again.
“Yes, Hook will be here within the hour,” he said, his arms draped loosely about Beth.
She noted with approval that Zachary seemed to anticipate the reading of the will and another encounter with his brother with more calmness than his earlier demeanor had seemed to predict. She felt safer now in approaching the subject that she knew was foremost in both their minds.
“He seems very nice,” she ventured.
“The word ‘nice’ is too all-encompassing and at the same time quite inadequate and vague,” argued Zachary. Then he sighed, adding, “Besides, you’ve only just met him. How can you know?”
“I know what you used to tell me about him, the things you remembered …”
“Well, perhaps I was remembering with the inaccurate wishfulness of a child,” countered Zachary on another sigh.
“Still, I don’t think he—”
“Good-bye, Beth.” He cut her off, pressing a brief kiss against her brow. “See you at the funeral.” Then, just as he reached the door and had the key in his hand, he turned with a thoughtful expression, saying, “Or do you want to come to the reading of the will?”
Beth’s face lit up. “Might I? I must admit I’m curious.”
“Well, you are to be my wife, and mayhap if you hear firsthand just how rich you’ll be, you’ll be more grateful,” he suggested playfully.
“Don’t wager on it,” she tossed back, grinning. “But I shall come to the reading!”
“I had, er … words with Stibbs, my lord.”
Alex lay on the bed, shirtless and bootless. He’d crossed his long legs at the ankle and flung an arm across his face to shield his eyes from the brace of candles his valet had placed on a rosewood table by the bed. “I knew you would, Dudley,” he replied dryly, never moving.
Apparently even such an unencouraging comment was enough t
o get Dudley started. Without looking, Alex could picture precisely his high-strung valet with his hands on his hips and his face screwed up into an expression of offended disdain. “He’s an insufferable thimble-wit! A disorganized sap-skull!” he declared theatrically. “Kept me standing in the rain and then in the hall for nearly half an hour! How difficult is it, I ask you, to summon a pair of footmen to tote baggage? And whilst I waited, never once was I offered a drop of ale—nay, not even a glass of water—to wet my parched throat. And parched it was, my lord, for I was frightened near out of my wits driving through that hellish storm!”
Alex slid his arm up to rest it on his forehead. He lowered his black brows and stared speakingly at his valet.
Dudley straightened up and endeavored to gather his dignity. His carrot-red hair shone bright in the candlelight, and his heavily freckled face, youthful for a man nearing his fortieth year, looked properly contrite. “Of course, my lord. You’re quite right!” he said stiffly. “I needn’t fly into one of my pelters. Beg your pardon. Lost my head! It’s just that I can’t abide an ill-managed household. Stibbs ignores essentials while he fusses over trifles!”
Alex raised a brow, a half smile quirking his lips. Perceiving his master’s expression, Dudley confessed, “Yes, yes, I know! I fuss over trifles, too. But you must admit, my lord, that I do not at the same time ignore essentials!”
“I daresay, Dudley, that I’d be hard pressed to discover anything you ignore,” Alex drawled, pushing himself up and swinging his long legs over the side of the bed. “I believe nothing escapes your critical eye. You’re quite a fusspot, you know.”
Dudley looked deeply pained by the mild reproof. He cast Alex a baleful look and without another word returned to his task of unpacking.
