The Last Bachelor

by Betina Krahn

  Her fingers splayed over the keys and his fingers slid over hers, curling, fitting themselves to their curve. Slowly, deliberately, his fingers coaxed hers to press the keys, one at a time. Over and over he stroked her fingers; over and over she yielded him control. She could feel his body pressing against her back, his breath moving her hair and brushing her ear. She could feel the warmth of his body melting her determination … turning it into a deepening pool of desire.

  Then he stilled, and after a moment drew his hands back up her arms and rested them on her shoulders.

  “Read it,” he whispered into her ear.

  She managed to scroll the paper up and focus her eyes on it. There, in bold type, were the words: DO YOU LIKE THIS?

  She sat staring at them for a minute, feeling tension collecting, then releasing. And she put her hands to the keys again and typed: YES.

  She could almost feel him smiling. He slid his hands down her sides, warmly caressing her waist, asking, “And do you like this?”

  She typed: YES.

  He blew softly in her ear, and then nibbled it, and finally tongued it with long, luxurious strokes. “And this, sweetheart? Do you like this?”

  YES.

  He slid his hands up her corseted ribs to her breasts and circled his palms over them slowly, again and again. “And do you want more of this?”

  YES.

  Then his fingers found her buttons and gingerly pried them free. She could scarcely breathe as her jacket parted and her blouse buttons began to give. Finally her chest was bare, and his gentle, rousing fingers dipped into the cups of her corset to tease her nipples. She squirmed against the chair as he rolled them between his fingers and thumbs and managed to vibrate cords of sensation that reached down into her warming, tightening hollow.

  “And this,” he murmured raggedly into her ear, “do you want this to stop?”

  Of habit she typed: YES.

  His hands withdrew from her aching breasts with a caressing stroke, and she nearly choked on her dismay. She opened her eyes and was mildly shocked to see her half-bare breasts. But she was even more surprised when her eyes focused on the three little letters that had put an end to the luscious pleasure she had been experiencing. Y-E-S.

  She groaned silently. Why did he have to choose now to begin taking her refusals seriously?

  “One more thing,” he said quietly, leading her fingers back to the keys. With his fingers guiding hers, they typed cut: DO YOU LIKE ME YET?

  She paused, feeling confused and excited and powerfully drawn to him. Here, in his world, he seemed the most reasonable of men. The most forward thinking and capable of men. She liked the loyalty he inspired and liked the way he put his values to work as policies in his businesses. And on a personal level she liked the way he laughed and the way he teased, and the way he was trying to make up for the hurt she had suffered. She had to admit … she was beginning to really like him.

  She typed out “Y-E-S” again.

  He spun her around by the shoulders and his eyes were glowing and his face was dusky with both arousal and pleasure. He leaned forward, staring at her mouth, and she parted her lips, expecting a hungry and penetrating kiss. What she got was a quick brush of promise. Dismayed by how easily he had raised her sensual responses, she snapped straight on the chair and frowned at him. He smiled mischievously.

  “Button up, sweetheart. I’m supposed to be taking you out for a bit of dinner.” His gaze dropped to the silky rose crescents peeping above her corset. “And if you sit like that much longer, I may change my mind and make you the main course instead.”

  She liked him. It was a simple thing, really, he thought. More friendly than passionate. More affectionate than sexual. But it was vastly more pleasurable to him than anything else he had experienced with her, from the sweetness of her bed to that delicious little typing exercise. She liked him. That knowledge kept him smiling all through luncheon.

  She liked him. It was a very complicated thing, really, she thought. It was a little bit companionship and a little bit passion. It was some part desire and some part respect. And it was infinitely more dangerous than anything she had experienced with him before—including their abandoned loving in his bed. She liked him. And despite her worry over what it meant, she couldn’t help returning his smiles.

  Antonia’s intention of avoiding another incident notwithstanding, another imbroglio was lurking just around the corner, literally. Returning from dinner, they spotted a small crowd in the street at the south entrance to Remington’s building. Antonia tensed and slowed, and Remington paused outright. Both squinted against the sun, trying to make out what was going on.

  There didn’t seem to be any checkered coats or oversize bowlers in the group, but that small relief was undercut by the puzzling predominance of skirts and ladies’ hats and signboards in the crowd. As they approached, they realized that the group was listening to someone speak. A woman’s voice carried high and clear above the gathering, punctuated periodically by feminine calls of agreement and the waving of signs and jiggling of placards. It was a gathering of women.

  And from the sound of them, angry women.

  “They must not be allowed to make women into mere chattel!” the speaker was saying passionately. “They must be held accountable for their abuse of women, for their use of women as voiceless drudges or as receptacles of their vile pleasures—” Remington recognized the tenor of the words and one or two of the faces, but it took him a moment to place them, and that was just one moment too long.

  “There he is now!” a woman at the edge of that group of radical suffragettes shouted, galvanizing the others. She lurched toward them, pointing, and a score of faces followed her. “And he’s got a woman with him!”

  “That must be poor Mrs. Paxton!” shouted another.

  The women rushed to meet them, and before Antonia could do more than shrink back against Remington’s side, she was engulfed by women pushing and shoving, shaking fingers and fists, and venting their anger in the most alarming invective.

  “There you are—you foul, heathen beast—you monstrous deceiving man!” a dignified-looking woman in black declared, shoving a fist under Remington’s nose.

  He drew back and tried to pull Antonia along behind him through the crowd, but they angrily pushed him back and refused to let him escape.

  “You’ve shown your true colors at last!” shouted another, thrusting her round, florid face into his. “All this time pretending to be a supporter of suffrage … an emancipator of women … a devoted equal rights-er!”

  Ugly cheers greeted that. Remington tried to speak up and rebut the shocking charges being made against him, but he was drowned out by a third woman shouting:

  “Touting emancipation—all the while abusing and degrading women—forcing them into bondage to serve your vile urges! We knew all along you were a fraud—and now you’ve proved it!”

  “Fraud.” “White Slaver!” “Oppressive Male.” “Carnal Beast!” Jeers flew out of the crowd like rotten tomatoes. Antonia felt Remington flinch as if struck and looked up. His face was red and his chin was tucked defensively. But his eyes were dark and turbulent—disbelieving.

  With widening horror she realized that he was totally unprepared to respond to such unexpected feminine virulence against him. He was a man who had gone against his peers and colleagues to champion women’s suffrage and equality. He had published articles and made speeches in the Lords demanding equal treatment for women. He was a man who had begun education and training programs in his business concerns to allow women to better their lot in the workplace. Whatever Remington’s motives, no man in all Britain had sided more vehemently against the “chains” that bound women to dependent and subservient roles under men. How could they possibly think he—

  “Take heart, sister!” someone called, as the attention shifted to her. “Come with us—we’ll help you!” “Rise up, sister, and strike off the shackles of male oppression!” “Don’t let him degrade you—force yo
u into degrading labor—speak up!”

  Through the din and the buffeting Antonia realized that this was at least in part about her. They thought she was being abused, and they had come to confront him because of what they read in the cursed newspapers! She did speak up.

  “Stop this!” Her heart pounded wildly as she burrowed her way in front of him and faced them. “Stop it! How dare you attack his lordship on the street like a lawless pack of ruffians?” There was a stunned pause for a second; then someone from the back shouted:

  “He attacks women on the streets—it’s no more than he deserves!”

  “That’s not true!” she shouted, trembling with righteous anger. “And I should know—I’m the one he was supposed to have attacked! The vile newspapers printed a pack of scurrilous lies, just to sell papers!” She took advantage of their surprise to seize his arm and draw him with her toward the building and safety.

  “He forces women to degrading labor—he treats women like thralls!” came another charge. “He made you work like a drudge—held you up to ridicule—”

  “I work for him as a result of a wager—freely and of my own blessed will! It’s between him and me! And if you want to know how he treats women in his businesses, why don’t you ask the young women in his factories and businesses—ask them about their reading classes and typewriting programs—”

  Anger choked off the rest, and she turned and pushed and shoved her way through the frustrated crowd of women, with Remington right behind her. Behind them she could hear desultory rumbles and confusion. Calls of “dupe” mingled with “poor misguided creature” as she glared at the women blocking the door until they moved. Then she turned to the others again.

  “Go home—all of you. And if you really want to know what Remington Carr believes about women, I suggest you come and talk to him civilly, as mature, rational women who believe in the decency and dignity of womanhood!”

  She shoved her way past the women just inside the doors, and by the time the red haze cleared from her senses, she was on the steps, nearing the third floor and encountering a cordon of men across the stairs. Most were clerks and officials of Carr Enterprises who had organized to keep the women from invading their offices, and when they saw Remington with her, they let her pass. Partway down the hall she realized she was still holding Remington’s arm in a fierce grip and released him.

  “It was those bloody wretched newspapers—that Rupert Fitch and his lot,” she said furiously, stopping to look up into his face. “I cannot believe the way otherwise reasonable people accept everything they read in black and white, without a moment’s pause.” She felt a surge of righteous rage and blurted out, “Abusive, bullying, oppressive—a white slaver, for pity’s sake! How dare they say such things about you?” The crack of tension in his face and the beginning of his smile made her realize that until very recently she had thought such things about him, too—had used some of those very words to describe his behavior toward her.

  Somewhere along the way her attitude had begun to change.

  “I mean—about me,” she added hastily, lowering her scarlet face and tucking her chin. She headed down the hallway toward his office doors, stunned by her vehement defense of him. He certainly didn’t need her protection—he was a man of the world, a man of power and privilege. He was virtually invincible. If anyone needed protection here, it was she. And what she needed protection from was him!

  She quickly found Collingwood, and for the rest of that very long afternoon had to face both the memory of his face that moment in the hallway and the sensuous suggestion of the typewriter’s tapping keys.

  The women were long gone from the lobby when Remington escorted her downstairs late that afternoon. The only remnant of their harrowing encounter was a discarded placard lying just outside the door. As they waited on the steps for the cab that would take her home, she found it difficult to look at him. He watched her avoiding his gaze and read in her manner the confusion that the day’s events had stirred in her. He fought an almost overwhelming urge to pull her into his arms, telling himself it was best not to press too hard.

  But as he helped her into the cab, he couldn’t resist holding on to her hand for an extra moment. Her gaze sought his, and he could see roused feeling in her eyes.

  “Trust me, Antonia,” he said softly. Then he pressed something into her hand and stepped down off the cab, swinging the door shut.

  Halfway down the block she opened her hand to find another silk-covered button in her hand. Her button. He was slowly returning them to her, as reminders of her passion for him. She sighed and squeezed her hand and eyes shut.

  As if she needed reminding.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tension greeted Antonia the instant she stepped through the doors of Paxton House. Hoskins’s usual air of skeptical deference had been replaced by a hostile glower. He took her gloves and hat and jerked his head toward the drawing room.

  “Might just as well hang out a shingle … damned charity house for runaway females,” he muttered, shuffling off. “Women comin’ out the windows a ready …”

  Hoskins’s testy mood and the sound of high-pitched voices coming from the drawing room prepared Antonia for what she would find in her main parlor. The three recent additions to her household, along with Pollyanna, Eleanor, Prudence, and Molly, were clustered around the sofa on the street end of the drawing room, listening raptly to a distraught young woman in an expensive figured-silk dress. Antonia paused for a moment just inside the door, registering the presence of yet another of her protégées: Elizabeth Audley, who had married Lord Carter Woolworth.

  “She never let me suggest a menu or change a drapery or even speak with the laundress about the linen,” Elizabeth was saying in an aggrieved voice. “I found her in my room once, going through my personal things … she reads my dressmaker’s bills aloud, in front of Carter … and she intercepts invitations and turns away callers before I get to see them.” Tears of righteous anger were spilling down her cheeks. “His mother makes my life a misery, and Carter never takes my part. She snaps and snarls at me and he just turns and walks away.”

  Eleanor looked up from comforting Elizabeth and saw Antonia standing by the door. “Lady Toni! Look who’s come back to us.”

  Antonia managed to smile.

  As it happened, Elizabeth wasn’t the only Bentick bride to return to Paxton House that day. Delicate Daphne Elderston, wife of Lord Richard Searle, had arrived that morning, bag and baggage. When she learned Antonia was home, she hurried in to see her with a tale of a volatile husband whose storms and drafts of temper regularly trembled the roof timbers. Antonia graciously accepted both women into their midst and was grateful to learn Aunt Hermione had negotiated amicable sleeping arrangements for them.

  The supper table was quite full that night, set with five extra places. The atmosphere was thick with emotion, which occasionally erupted into nervous laughter or tears. After supper the group divided in two, the older ladies in the drawing room and the younger women in the upstairs parlor—where Antonia found them sharing their tales of woe. She watched from the door as they compared the miseries of a spineless mama’s boy, a skinflint, a perfectionist, a tyrant, and a man who scarcely acknowledged his wife’s existence.

  Had she made any matches that had ended happily? Were any of the thirteen marriages good and loving unions? Being treated like a servant or a troublesome child, having no property of your own, having no say in the most basic decisions of your life, being allowed no opinion of your own—was this what marriage was really like?

  She retreated to her rooms, thinking of her own marriage. It hadn’t been like that with Sir Geoffrey. He had been generous and honest and honorable … and so much older. And as she stood looking at her bed, remembering the way Remington had climbed up in it, she allowed herself to wonder what kind of husband he would make.

  He seemed warm and generous with those close to him. But then, those closest to him had always been men. She had seen only t
oo well how cold and inaccessible he became when demands were made on him by a woman. What would he be like when the problems and troubles and needs of life descended? Would he ruthlessly seize control, or lose his temper and bully and demand, or grow impatient and dismissive as he had with that Hillary woman and the infamous Carlotta? And what would he do if he had children? Odd—she knew that his Uncle Paddington loved and wanted children; she hadn’t a clue how Remington truly felt about them.

  Not that she needed or wanted to know, she told herself sternly.

  She found herself staring at the row of buttons down the front of her blouse, thinking of what he said as he put her in the cab. She found her black gloves on her dressing table and tilted them to let the button he had returned to her roll out into the palm of her hand. Trust me.

  After all she had seen and heard, after all that had happened between them, how could she? And why did she still want to so badly?

  The ladies of Paxton House were settling in for the night—a few still talking or reading, most preparing for their beds—when there came a fierce pounding on the front doors. Hoskins, who had already retired for the evening, was slow to respond, and the ever-increasing racket roused the entire population of the upper three floors of the house. Ladies in night robes and slippers poured down the steps and onto the gallery at the rear of the main hall. When Antonia poked her head out of her room and learned what was happening, she snagged her jacket and headed for the entry straightaway.

  Hoskins, with a many-branched candlestick in one hand and an empty, upturned one in the other, ambled through the hall, grumbling to himself. He placed the lit candles on the hall table to wait for Antonia to arrive. Eleanor, Pollyanna, Molly, Gertrude, Maude, and Prudence trickled down the stairs after Antonia, looking mildly alarmed at these odd doings. The sounds of feminine voices buzzed excitedly around the high-ceilinged hall as Hoskins threw the lock and opened the door.