by Jo Beverley
“Are you quite all right?” asked one. The rather gaunt one who was dressed normally.
“Yes, completely!” Hermione said, and fled. Once out of the room she heard low conversation behind her. She was muddying Beth’s house. Resenting every moment it took, she untied the ribbons of her boots and took them off.
She dropped the shawl on top of them and abandoned them there to hurry toward the front of the house and the stairs up to the ballroom. Her rational mind knew that the man, whoever he was, wouldn’t be leaving at this moment, but the rest screamed to hurry, hurry, or she’d never know.
Some servants were still in the hall. A footman said, “Milady?”
She ignored him and ran upstairs, aware of passing some people on the staircase, but no longer caring. She raced along the corridor in her stocking feet, weaving past startled couples and into the ballroom.
The dance had ended. People were standing, strolling. Where was he? Where was he?
Dark hair. No, that was the man who’d lost an arm.
That other one was too short.
“Hermione?”
She heard Beth’s voice somewhere nearby, but she’d seen him now, across the room, laughing at something a blond lady had said to him. The one in diamonds. He was at ease here and so exquisitely well dressed, with such pristine white linen at neck and wrist and touches of gold and jewels. Even his hair was different. There was a red to it.
It wasn’t Thayne.
But her heart wouldn’t believe what her mind told her, and when he turned, perhaps alerted by a mood in the room, her heart ruled.
“Thayne!” she cried, and ran to him.
Chapter 37
Mark caught Hermione, bewildered by her being at this party, and alarmed by her demented, shoeless wildness. She was all too like his mother, though she was laughing and crying as well as babbling nonsense.
“Hermione. Has someone hurt you?”
In response, she fainted. He caught her up into his arms, stunned and with no idea of what to do.
“This way.” That was his host, the Marquess of Arden. Telling him to take Hermione away from here. Good idea.
They escaped the ballroom, but faced a gauntlet of people in the corridor, all staring and speculating.
“This way.”
Now it was the marchioness, the hostess, steering him past the stairs. “Arden will devise a story,” she said quietly. “Let’s get her to her room.”
Her room? Here? He’d been searching London for her and she’d been in Belcraven House? He followed down a corridor, around a corner, and into a room with a rumpled bed.
Lady Arden pulled back the covers. He put Hermione down, smoothing her silken skirts, touching her stockinged toes. She was dressed for the party except for slippers, but she hadn’t been there. He’d have known.
She was beginning to come around, blinking and grimacing in confusion. But then she saw him and clutched at his arm.
“It is you!”
“It is me. But why that turns you mad I can’t imagine.”
“Because you’re dead!”
“Because you’re supposed to be dead,” Lady Arden corrected.
He looked at her. “Dead?”
But Hermione had knelt up to turn his head so she could stare desperately into his eyes. “It is you? You look different.”
Though still perplexed, he smiled for her. “It is me. I needed to change my appearance a little.”
She was still frowning, doubting. “Tell me about Tranmere,” she demanded. “The last night at Tranmere.”
“Before a witness?”
Then she smiled. He’d never seen such brilliance light someone’s face. She pulled his head down for a kiss, shocking him with raw passion, then broke apart to stare at him again, but smiling, smiling. “It is you.”
“It is. But why think me dead?” He looked to the side to the more rational person here, but the marchioness had gone. She’d closed the door behind her. He should open it again and ring for a servant or demand a chaperone. . . .
Hermione pulled him back to face her again, touching his hair, sending shivers down his spine. “So short.”
“The only unfashionable thing about me.” He captured her wandering hands and tried to make sense of all of this. “Hermione, how are you here? I’ve been searching the inns of London for you and your relative.”
“The Curious Creatures. They brought Nicholas Delaney to the Cross Keys, and he sent Beth Arden to bring us to the fairy palace, and now you’re alive.”
Dear God, she’d run mad. Like his mother.
“You were searching for me?” she asked, seeming pleased.
“Desperately.”
“Come on the bed,” she said, moving over.
Not wise. The chaise in Tranmere had been perilous enough.
“I need you to hold me.”
He couldn’t resist the intensity in her voice. He took off his shoes, then joined her on the bed and took her into his arms to soothe her back into her wits. But she kissed him again. Soon he was entangled in her perfumed silks with her hair sliding beguilingly free.
He found the strength to stop the kisses, but stroked her lovely cheek.
“I’m alive, love. I’m not going to disappear.” He took her hand and held it over his deeply beating heart.
“I know,” she said, looking at him as if she thought he was insane. “I need to touch you, though.”
She began to work off one of her long silk gloves. It was stained with mud or dirt. Where had she been?
He helped her, gently asking, “Curious Creatures? Fairy palace?”
Suddenly she laughed. “Did I sound demented? Poor love. I’m not like your mother, I promise you.”
Only she would grasp that so instantly.
She tossed the gloves to the floor and touched his cheek with a bare hand. “The Curious Creatures are a philosophical society and I’ve come to think of Belcraven House as a fairy palace. That’s all.”
He covered her hand with his own. “Nicholas Delaney?” He remembered meeting a Delaney at the party. A dangerously charming fellow.
“He’s the leader of a group called the Company of Rogues. My brother Roger was a member, which means they think they can take charge of my life.”
He chuckled. “Foolish men.”
“They brought me here. Though I shouldn’t complain about that.”
“Except that it hid you. I’ve been searching inns. When we couldn’t find you, I began to fear you’d come to harm.”
She brought his hand to her lips and kissed it. “I thought you were dead. You are. Dead and buried.” She frowned in thought. “If you’re not, then who’s in your grave?”
“No one, love.”
“I mean Edward Granger’s grave.”
“Ned Granger has a grave?”
“I didn’t believe it until the silk rose.”
Suddenly he understood. The silk rose he’d forgotten until too late, until his old clothes had gone to a ragman. With so many urgent matters, he hadn’t felt he could hunt down a shabby coat for a tattered scrap of silk, but he saw how this dreadful mistake might have been made.
He cradled her hands in his. “Love, love, the dead man must have bought my cast-off clothes with the bit of silk still in a pocket. I shouldn’t have let it slip out of my mind for a moment.”
“No matter about that. You’re alive. You forgot more than the rose, though. He had your cards, too, though they could hardly be read.”
Now he began to suspect the truth. Ned Granger had never carried calling cards. “Then how was the body identified?”
“Someone came forward to do so. It must have been one of your revolutionaries. But then, why claim it was Granger when it wasn’t?”
“An excellent question. Name?”
“Mitc
hell.”
He saw it all now, and he’d have someone’s guts.
“I know no one called Mitchell. This is the Home Office people pursuing their course without thought for the pawns. If Ned Granger is dead, Solange Waite might lower her guard. A pity that she rarely reads English newspapers.”
“So you do work for the government. I thought as much.”
Of course she’d worked it out, his clever lady. The woman he’d held in his heart through the long years. He kissed her again, letting free all his passion and need, and felt it ignite in her. She kissed him back as she’d never kissed him before.
“When I thought you dead . . .”
“When I couldn’t find you . . . ,” he murmured, trailing kisses down her warm, silken neck, past cool beads and onward. “I thought I’d lost you.” His lips found her plump breasts and the hollow between them, where he inhaled her delightful scent. “This is a wonderful gown.”
“One of Beth’s,” she breathed. “I own nothing so fine.”
“You will. Beth’s?”
“Lady Arden.”
“She’s an old friend of yours?”
“No.” She raised his head so she could kiss his lips. “It doesn’t matter. Kiss me more. And more.”
He remembered the kiss at the King’s Head. The passion that had flared. And in Riverview House. She wasn’t mad from grief anymore, but she was close to it from relief.
He fought free of her. “We can’t do this, love. You’ll regret it.”
“I won’t.” Her lips were red and moist from kisses and her gown in wanton disarray. A slight nudge and her nipples would rise free. . . .
“Hermione, you’re not in your right mind.”
“I’ve never been righter.” There was something steely amid the seductive lusciousness. “I’ve thought about this.”
He groaned.
“I thought you were dead,” she said. “I believed you were dead and I knew then it had been wrong to be sensible in Tranmere. The future is always uncertain and I want to know you. I want to know all this, with you. Show me. Teach me. If you love me, Thayne, pleasure me. Please.”
She drew his head back down toward her breasts and he couldn’t resist. Soon her nipples were free and he teased gently at them so that she stretched like an ecstatic cat. Then he turned rougher and she clutched his hair in a way that told him the measure of her excitement. She was made for passion, and she soon shattered into the gasps of pleasure she’d so boldly demanded.
The intensity of her response consumed him. Vaguely he knew he should be surprised by it, but he wasn’t. From her bright eyes at that ball to the kiss in Ardwick, passion had crackled in her from the first, only waiting to be released. He gripped a handful of skirt and drew it up so he could stroke a silk-stockinged leg. He found the cotton frill of her drawers, maddened by the little noises she was making, by the way her body still moved with desire.
“Stop me now, Hermione,” he said.
But she laughed. “Why? This is wonderful.”
“Yes, but we can’t. Not yet.”
He tried to pull her skirts down, but she dragged them higher, up to her waist. “We can. We must. You could die. I could die.”
“No one’s going to die.”
“Everyone dies.”
“Eventually.” He caught her grasping hands. “Have sense, woman!”
“You could die tomorrow.” How anyone in such glorious disarray could be so purposeful, he didn’t know. “You still have enemies.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“And they’ll kill you if they can.”
“Yes, but—”
“So love me now. Here. Tonight. If you die, I want your baby.”
“No.”
She pushed him back down and crawled onto him. “Please.” But then she hesitated. “Unless you don’t want to.”
Her sudden uncertainty broke him. He clutched her to him. “Oh, I want to. More than life. But only if you promise to marry me.”
She shocked him by pulling back, frowning. “That’s a very shoddy proposal.”
He burst out laughing. “I’ll never understand you.” He rolled off the bed and went to one knee. “My dear Lady Hermione . . .”
But she grabbed for him, laughing. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Of course I’ll marry you, Mark Thayne! I wish it could be now.” She looked up at the bed hangings. “I remember a story about someone getting married with a curtain ring. . . . No clergyman. There’s probably one at the party.”
“You propose we go down there to demand an instant wedding?”
She was grinning. “I would if I could.”
“Alas, no license.”
She waved a hand. “Such fiddling legalities. At Gretna we’d only have to say we were man and wife.”
“That’s Scottish law, not English.”
“Does God mark borders? I claim you, Mark Thayne. . . . You are truly Mark Thayne, aren’t you?”
“Truly, though I have to confess that I’m also Viscount Faringay.”
“You’re suddenly a peer?”
“I’ve had the title for years.” Her frown worried him. “You mind?”
“You could have told me.”
“Would you have believed me?”
“Perhaps not, but I’ve fretted so about how we were to live.”
“You have?”
“Don’t look so pleased.”
“I can’t help it.”
“You’re not a poor viscount, are you?”
“Will you not marry me if I am?”
“I’m too far gone for that, but as it happens, I have money now. My great-uncle’s giving me a dowry of ten thousand pounds.” She eyed him mischievously. “So perhaps, sir, you’re a fortune hunter.”
He laughed again. “You do like to win, don’t you?”
“I do, and I’ve won you. I claim you, Mark Thayne, Viscount Faringay, as my prize.”
He kissed her hand. “And I claim you, Lady Hermione Merryhew, as mine. We are man and wife. Strictly speaking, we need witnesses, but no, we are not going to the ballroom to recruit any.”
“I could have a ring, though,” she said, scrambling off the bed, opening a drawer, and taking out a trinket box. He noticed again how gracefully she moved, but not with languid grace—with strength and poise.
He delighted in how she showed no embarrassment at the way her bodice exposed her and her hair was tumbling loose. Its thickness pleased him. He would brush it for her at times. When they were married. Such a deeply satisfying thought.
She closed the lid and returned to him with a ring in her fingers. It was a slender golden band holding three small dark stones, probably garnets.
“It was my mother’s, when she was young.”
He’d give her rubies, but this would always be precious. He slid it onto her ring finger. “My wife.”
She climbed back onto the bed. “And wife means wedding night.”
He’d never wanted anything more, but he said, “Better to wait.”
“I thought we’d dealt with that.” She grabbed his coat and began to push it off his shoulders. “I need you now. In case you die, I must.” Her hands stilled and she rested her head against his shoulder. “I never expected this, to feel like this. In my heart, yes, but in my body? I fear I might explode.”
“Oh God, yes.” He kissed her, but then fought free again. “Let us do this right, my love.” He left the bed, shed his half-off coat, and then locked both doors—the one to the corridor and the one into a dressing room, knowing he should fling them open and even call for help. What the devil were they all doing, the Ardens, this Company of Rogues, the whole damn party, not stopping this?
There was only him to stop it, but when he turned back, his Hermione sat expectantly on an unruly bed in a nest of striped silk, nipples ful
l and rosy, looking at him as if he were her moon and stars.
Explode. Definitely. But this was their wedding night. He couldn’t just toss her down and plunge into her.
He shed his waistcoat and cravat. “Care to join me in disrobing, wife?” That came out more brusquely than he’d intended, but she obliged, blushing, eyes bright.
“You’ll have to play maid, husband.” She turned her back.
He hadn’t noticed before how low the back of her gown was. Never had the hollow of a spine been so alluring. It demanded to be kissed, then licked, and so he did. She inhaled, stretching her neck back, rising up on tiptoe so that his fingers turned clumsy and almost lost their strength. Thank God there were only four hooks.
He slid the gown down her arms. She wriggled to help it slither off onto the carpet, which did nothing for his control. He set to work on her corset laces. He’d heard of men cutting them and had thought it barbaric. Now he cursed the lack of a sharp-enough knife.
He was only half-done when she said, “It’s loose enough,” and worked it up and over her head. “There,” she said, turning to him in only her shift. She’d pulled it up in taking off the corset, but nipples jutting beneath plain cotton were as potent as when exposed. Her breasts needed little help from whalebone to stand full and high. She saw where he was looking and blushed, but then laughed. “I’m glad this isn’t our real wedding night.”
“What mad thought’s in your head now?” he asked, dragging off his waistcoat.
“I’d have been undressed by my maid. I wouldn’t be watching you undress.”
He laughed. Laughing came easily now. As with a maniac? But who the hell cared?
Waistcoat gone. Pantaloons unfastened and off. Drawers and stockings off. Only the shirt left. She was still watching, bright with pleasure.
He picked her up and put her in the bed in her shift, then lay beside her in his shirt and pulled the covers over them.
“I thought of this once,” he said, pulling a remaining pin out of her hair.
“About us together in a bed?”
“That? Frequently.” He fingered her hair around her, finding a few more pins. “In Riverview House, I went first to your bedroom. Your nightgown was over a rack by the fire. I wanted you naked in a bed with me, but I liked the idea of nightgown and nightshirt. It said marriage to me, and permanence, and even growing old together.”
