by Thea Devine
And well he knew it.
How could she have done this to herself? Bold, adventur-
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ous Jenise, daring to take on the beast only to be utterly seduced by him.
How stupid. How inutterably naive of her.
"Jenise...?"
And now—she was ruined for any other man, ever...
"Yes, Julia?" Was that her voice? In her mind, she heard only him; her nipples tightened in anticipation, her body creamed.
"Would you like some tea?"
Thump ... reality beckoned; and the mirror only reflected what was the truth: that she was the most foolhardy woman in the whole of England for having abandoned his bed, rejected his sex, and tossed this once in a lifetime chance away.
******************
"My dear Wick, we shall call her Chaste until such time as we ascertain she wishes to be addressed as something else."
"I have offered her the ultimate name," Wick growled, "and she will take it if I have to tie her up and stand her at the altar. I will meet those expectations and I will not be a laughingstock. I will fulfill my duty. And she is likely knocked up already with how much cream I spent in her.... Damn her eyes—who is this woman, who, who would defy me and revile my name?"
It was early evening, and they had been traveling for a good two hours, and had only just arrived at Wick's London town house.
And he hadn't let up for the entire trip, Ellingham reflected with a covert smile. He didn't know whether Wick's fury was pure selfish possessiveness of a thing he believed to be his, or whether something about this" woman bit deeper in his soul.
Whatever it was, Wick was not bored, and there was something to be said for that.
"We will go round to her father's house now." Wick said as they debarked from the carriage and followed the footmen and a half-dozen trunks into the house.
"We will not," Ellingham said emphatically. "We will spend the night, and you will contemplate whether you truly
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want to leg shackle yourself to this woman. After all, what can happen in the course of a night? She won't have run off to Gretna with someone else."
"Won't she?" Wick growled. "She ran out on me ..."
"And in the morning," Ellingham continued unflappably, "we will send a note, and then, if she is amenable, we will see her."
"If... ?" Wick roared. "And it is not we who will see her...."
"Of course. Meantime, tonight you can sit and ruminate on all her bad qualities to prepare yourself for jilting her. Or, you can enumerate all the things you quite liked about her to prepare handing yourself over to the parson's purse. Either way..."
"If you will not tell me who she is," Wick said with a dangerous edge to his voice, "you will assign someone to watch her house to make certain she does not sneak off with the footman."
Ellingham looked a little taken aback at that demand. "As you wish, of course, my dear Wick. We'll get Max on it. He hasn't quite lived up to his part in this whole to-do. Let me send a note posthaste so that there isn't one moment when my lady is not under observation."
"My lady?" Wick grabbed that observation in a minute as Ellingham scribbled a note, summoned Wick's butler, and sent the thing off.
"She is a lady, Wick. Nothing less would do."
"So I was led to believe. But ladies don't run away in the middle of the night."
Oh, this desertion was killing him, was it? Ellingham wondered which was the worst of it—the betrayal or the rejection. Maybe both. There hadn't been a woman in recent memory who had had the guts, the nerve, the daring to repudiate Wick. They fell all over him; hell, even this innocent piece was wax in his hands.
And yet—and yet—there was backbone there as well. She hadn't followed the path of the other two. She dared to speak
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her mind and will. And when things were not to her liking, she had taken action.
Perhaps this was one with the strength and cunning to tame a libertine.
Wick on a leash, by God—
Wick was pacing the room. The fire was lit, the butler had brought the port, which sat untouched on a side table. And Ellingham sat by the fireplace, watching him with glee in his eyes.
"You are enjoying this, aren't you? God, if I find out you had a hand in this, I will draw and quarter your nether parts, my erstwhile friend. It was your idea, after all is said and done."
"Brilliant, too, if I do say so," Ellingham murmured. "I do believe I will have some port. This is great sport, watching your agitation."
"My—what... ?" Wick stopped in his tracks. "No. I am not agitated, I am in a rage that the bitch took everything and left me with nothing, not even the possibility of a wife, which is the greatest prize in the whole of England. Who is she, to scorn such an honor? Who? And to leave me hanging like this in public ... I swear to God, Ellingham, if you don't tell me ..."
"So that is the whole of it—Wick's public embarrassment that the cunt he has chosen to wed would not have him? You could remedy that in a heartbeat, my dear man. Send around to Innocenta. There will be no discomfort, she will understand perfectly, and no one need ever know. She, certainly, would never tell. And Virtuosa is smart enough to know that social ostracism is but a word away, should she choose to gossip."
"I—do—not—want—Innocenta. I—want—Chaste."
The words echoed in the room. Resonated somewhere outside of every rule by which Wick had lived. Insinuated themselves somewhere deep in his craw, because suddenly the thought of anyone else in his bed was repulsive.
... I want Chaste ...
He had never thought to ever speak those words about any
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woman. The moment he said them, he felt total shock, surprise, and he instantly wanted to take them back. Because hovering in the air—they were real. They had meaning.
They had a witness.
... I want Chaste ...
He rolled the words around in his mind for a few moments.
What was it about Chaste? But he had been asking that question from the first, setting her apart from the three who had come to him supposedly on equal ground.
Would he be so adamant if Innocenta had been the one to leave him?
What was it about Chaste?
Beautiful, witty, elegant... yes. Aware of what her being chosen to compete for his attentions meant on the most basic level. Willing, yet reserved. Bold. Restrained. Attuned to her body in spite of her innocence. Truly a virgin, yet eager and receptive to everything he wanted to do to her once he claimed her maidenhead. But still something elusive about her. Something she was withholding, was standing back and watching from afar even as she opened her most intimate secret places over to his questing sex.
Yes, that was Chaste. Chaste, whom every time he so much as thought her name, he got hard and hot, and thunderous inside with wanting her. That was Chaste too—with the boundlessly fascinating body that he could not stop fondling. Chaste of the rock hard nipples, and the hot, tight cunt whose depths were endless and enthralling.
Where even now, he might already have planted his seed ...
Or ought he wait until that was proved a reality? Make her come to him, as well she should after what she had done.
Yes, that was the way of it. He would make her crawl, make her come until she screamed for mercy ...
But what if instead, she utterly repudiated him and someone else married her, took on his child, and got to plow that supple, compliant body and suck those hot, luscious nipples—
No! It didn't bear thinking about. He wouldn't think about it.
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It was inconceivable. He had chosen her and chosen she would be. It didn't matter what she wanted.
Ellingham perfectly understood. And that was the end of it.
And tomorrow, he would make her see ...
******************
And so, the last thing Jenise expected wa
s the creamy vellum with Wick's seal and a request, signed by Ellingham, ever discreet, that she consider meeting with Wick.
Nor was this something to be kept from the family. Not with Wick's carriage and footman and the whole artistocratic formality of the presentation of the note.
Julia was fair jumping over her shoulder trying to read what Ellingham had written.
"No, it is not from Wick," Jenise snapped as her mother inquired yet again. "Wick must have a go-between even for this. He cannot lower himself to publicly choose a mate. He cannot, apparently, speak for himself."
Jenise's mother raised an eyebrow but forebore to comment. She was as curious as ten cats about what had gone on in the past days at Holcombe, but all things Wick were never subject for anything but speculation or gossip. Anyone involved never would tell, and neither, she suspected, would Jenise, although she had a fair idea what Wick would have required of any female he invited to his home.
That certainty aside, it was curious still that a note had
been sent in the aftermath, and she held high hopes that per
haps something had transpired which would be to the good of
Jenise's future.
Of course, Jenise being curled up in the blue room, looking utterly vexed and angry by turns, was not a hopeful sign.
"If I see him—if—I must have that time with him alone," she finally said to her mother. "Do not even try to inflict yourself as a chaperon. You cared nothing about that when I went to Holcombe."
"But Wick went to great pains to assure us his mother would play that role."
"Yes, from the dower house twenty miles away. Or what-
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ever. He will charm you all to a fare-thee-well, Mother. But now I have some sense of the wrongs he has done to Julia and every other woman within his orbit, and I will never cave in. There is nothing the ogre can say after these blighted days in his company that will sway me."
******************
Ellingham came anyway. "Wick didn't think he could have kept him away. And it was only when they were but a block or two from Chaste's home that Ellingham even told him her name.
"Trowbridge? Trowbridge? I believe I know that name ..."
"Indeed you do," Ellingham agreed, "but I'll let you remember just what it was."
"Games. I hate games. Chaste is playing a game. Trowbridge, Trowbridge—wait—a slender wispy blonde .. . Oh, Lord all bleeding mighty—one of those cool, catch me, coddle me virgins who go cold cock, thinking to force a proposal from me. That icy little chit? I did her the biggest favor dropping her like a hot stone. Hell and bloody damnation. Chaste is her sister?"
"There it is. And perhaps the cause of Chaste's defection?"
Wick contemplated that for a moment. The scenario was clear: Chaste was out for sweet vengeance. And she had served it with a hot, savory sauce and a plateful of promises she never meant to keep. "Shit."
"Well, we'll just turn the carriage around and ... send round to Innocenta, who will be ecstatic to receive you."
"We will not." Oh, the steel was in his voice, along with determination, purpose, and not a hint of ennui. Chaste would not get away this time, Ellingham thought gleefully. He couldn't wait to see.
******************
But what he didn't expect was Julia. Not this Julia, who was nothing like the wounded pigeon that Wick had discarded by the wayside.
Who was this Julia, standing confident and tall, a faint wash of color suffusing her cheeks, her bright blue eyes glit-
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tery and defiant as she showed Wick to the blue room and ushered Ellingham into the drawing room?
He could not stop staring at her.
"My Lord," she murmured, her voice low, rich, musical. Had he never noticed that about Julia in all the weeks of Wick's pursuit. Or her well-rounded body, her beautiful posture, her lovely manners, her innate poise.
She was so elegant, proud, and beautiful. Something about her had changed: she had learned something from those travails. She had grown, and she was worthy, and he didn't expect this. What was this? It had nothing to do with him, in any event. He didn't want this. And he knew that was a lie.
His gaze glanced against hers, to repudiate what he was feeling, but Ellingham knew in that moment the game was over, the rules had changed, and that he, without ever having played a hand, had lost.
Julia. Everything he had ever sought was embodied in that name and in that person, even considering he had never known he was looking. But of course, he'd been looking— there had just never been a woman who excited his interest.
And yet Julia had always been there, in the backwash of all of Wick's conquests. Blast the man for not appreciating what he'd had. And thank God, he hadn't, because Julia was the one.
Julia. Everything had changed. He had to earn her respect now or suffer to lose her forever.
Julia. He never wanted to leave her. He sat down beside her on the sofa, feeling in his heart of hearts as if he had finally found home.
******************
And so she was letting him languish, Wick thought furiously, pacing the room with no control, and no Jenise on whom to vent his fury. He was beginning to think he had spent too much of his time and too much of his tallow on the bitch already.
That was the thing with women. They absolutely thought
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that men were brought to their knees by what was between their legs.
Ha. Not he. Countless women had tried. And failed. And the only reason he was here was because of Ellingham's campaign to get him a wife and heir. If that had not been out in the air for the past months, if the whole of society were not expecting some denouement, if he had not used his mother's good name in the quest for a virgin to corrupt and impregnate, Chaste would not have a chance in hell at his name.
At least he had some conscience, he thought. He wasn't totally off the line himself. And Chaste had some refreshing qualities. He might be able to stand to live with her as long as it took to birth an heir. They'd come to a settlement. She'd lead her own life, and he would continue as always.
What woman could resist such a proposition? Not any of the hundreds he had casually fucked. So who was Chaste to go running off like that?
Immediately his fury engorged him.
And at that moment, the door slowly opened and Chaste slipped into the room.
Or he thought it was Chaste, but since she was enveloped head to foot in a long cloak with a hood that covered her head and face, he couldn't be quite sure. It might be that fragile sparrow of a sister—except he didn't think she was quite that tall.
And then she parted the edges of the cloak to reveal that she was naked beneath, and she waited.
"... Chaste?"
But there was no question. He knew that bush, those nipples.
"A body, my lord. What does it matter if it is Chaste or Innocenta or one of your ladies in waiting ... ?"
"It is Chaste I have chosen to be my bride."
"No, it is a body you have chosen, my lord. A place to root and a nipple to suck and nothing more. Therefore, any body
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will do. Go and choose one from the roster of willing bodies you have already possessed, and leave this body in peace."
She was too calm, too still. This was not going anywhere near how Wick had imagined it. Was it not true that in the lending library romances a woman capitulated the moment her beloved came after her? What was wrong with Chaste? Did she not understand how utterly out of character this was for him?
Damn Ellingham's hide. To have put him in this position because of this frivolous competition. To bring him to this, the torture of having to look at Chaste's breasts and belly and the bushy entree to heaven and not touch... not possess—Any other woman would be on her back by now trying to entice him, and here was Chaste rejecting him all over again.
A man could only take so much.
And a
woman. Jenise was near faint with fear at her aggressive stance. This was not the way to deal with Wick— Innocenta had had the right of it. But she could do nothing less. As easy as it had been for him to master her, she was determined that on every other ground they must be equals. To capitulate now, she would lose all pride and never regain any footing with him.
In this room, in any event.
Truly, just for these moments he would give her before he became unutterably bored with the game of getting a wife, she must stand toe to toe with him and not give him any ground. Then Ellingham would steer him toward Innocenta, who had no emotional investment in him as a man, and too much experience with other men, and would comfortably rub along on his money as his wife.
"I've chosen you—Jenise—and the choice is irrevocable."
Oh! The tone was implacable, and to hear him say her name—dear heaven, it did give credence to the fact he was serious if nothing else.
"I believe I have said no."
"No. You said come and get me if you really want me. You have won, Chaste. I am here, and running out of patience
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looking at your nakedness and knowing that in this house I cannot touch you, I cannot savor you. And you well may be carrying my child."
"Truly, that is all you want," she said frostily. MThe heir. The rest can go hang."
"You too, Chaste? You demand that I change my nature?"
"What is man's nature, or a woman's for that matter? No, I would ask you shoulder some responsibility. It isn't enough to carry the title and then strew your bastards all over the island while your chosen wife looks on. That is one condition I would never accept. On the other hand ..." she looked down at her body, "who could have known that I, as genteelly raised as I was, would embrace sexual congress so completely, with all my body and soul. It might well be that I would be strewing the countryside with bastards while you are relegated to the closet ... now there's a thought. All those lovers with whom I might never have a chance but for the fact I was Wick's wife. Just on that condition alone, I might reconsider ..."
