by K. Webster
Now? I still want to protect her.
“You’re quiet this morning,” I say gruffly.
She’s peering out the window, watching the scenery flash by. We boarded the train a short while ago and settled into our private sleeping quarters of the car. I paid an outlandish amount to reserve this car for us. I also reserved the one beside us for Jasper and Elisabeth. Upon Edith’s wishes, we boarded after them to avoid a confrontation between her and her sister.
“Not much to say,” she whispers with her eyes trained on the window.
Ever since last night, after I’d helped her clean up and tucked her into bed, she’s behaved differently. Not at all like herself. It rattles me that she’s lost inside of her head and I’m not allowed in there with her.
“Want to discuss what happened?”
She shrugs her shoulders but still won’t meet my eyes. I’m seconds from physically shaking the words out of her when she finally huffs out her reply.
“Discuss the fact that my gigantic wedding ring given to me by my ‘husband’ became tangled in my lover’s hair? And that, when I teased him about it, he lost his mind?” she snips out. Her bottom lip quivers, but her eyes remain affixed.
“Look at me.” My demand seems harsh even to my own ears.
She flinches but shakes her head. “I’m rather happy looking out the window.”
I slide out of my seat and launch myself into the one beside her. Her breath hitches in what seems like fear, but the stubborn woman holds her ground and won’t look at me.
“Look at me,” I growl as I inch my face closer to hers. Her scent invades me, and I inhale the sweet perfume she’s taken to wearing lately.
“No, Alexander.”
When I slide a palm across her belly, she yelps.
Not in fear.
Pain.
“Are you hurt here?” I demand as I gently rub my thumb over her stomach.
This time, she does look at me. The tears are back, and they spill out. “Yes.”
I clench my teeth together and attempt to keep myself from exploding. My fists itch to smash something to smithereens. How dare that monster hurt my wife?
“Show me.” I know I sound like an arse, but I need to see.
“But you’ll see me naked and . . .” she trails off when I slide the top of her dress over her shoulder.
I noticed earlier that she’d chosen one of her simpler frocks and forgone a corset. Now, I know that it was because she was in fucking pain.
“You’re my wife. I’m going to see you naked plenty of times,” I murmur. My lips graze the top of her shoulder, and she gasps. I hadn’t meant to kiss her there but it felt right.
I can tell she wants to argue, but instead, she slumps her shoulders and allows me to unfasten the back of her dress. Once I’ve undone it, I slide the material down her arms and let it fall into her lap.
My eyes land first on her pert, bare breasts. I nearly groan aloud when my cock hardens in response. Her chest rises and falls in rapid succession as she watches me watch her. The urge to taste them is overwhelming and my mouth waters accordingly.
I blink my eyes to clear my mind and meet her brown ones. “Where?”
Her small hand slides out of the sleeves of her dress, and she tenderly strokes a place on her stomach. I lean down to take a closer look, and when my ear grazes her nipple, she gasps. The moment I see the green-and-purple bruise the size of a fist on her stomach, I become livid.
“That fucking pig! I should have killed him!”
She whimpers when I lean forward and place a gentle kiss on her flesh—such a stark comparison to my harsh words.
Being this close to her naked body, inhaling her, I become hungry for her. A hunger that never existed to this degree for this woman begins to furl its way through me. When I kiss the bruise again, her hands thread themselves into my hair.
The action is intimate, and my cock begins to painfully ache to be inside her.
I drag my nose along her skin upwards until I feel the curve of her breast. The tiniest of kitten-like mewls escapes with her ragged exhalations. Not waiting for permission, I flick my tongue out and taste her breast. My tongue drags along the pale flesh until it encounters her pebbled nipple.
“Alexander,” she hisses as if my name is a curse word.
As I tease her nipple with the tip of my tongue, I notice she tastes sweet like the sugar cubes I devoured as a boy. It is just as I always imagined. Needing more, I suck her into my mouth with an urgency I don’t understand.
A knock on our door startles me, and I pop off her nipple.
“Who’s there?” I snap.
I’m frustrated that she’s frantically sliding the dress back into place. With a sigh, I set to helping her fasten the back.
“It’s me—Jasper,” the voice answers on the other side of the door. “And Elisabeth.”
Edith’s eyes widen, and I know she’s terrified at the idea of meeting with her sister.
“Hold on a moment,” I call out and turn to her.
“I can’t talk to her,” she whispers. “She hates me.”
I slide an arm around her and pull her to me carefully. “It will be fine. Trust me.”
She relaxes in my arms as if my words calm her.
“Come in,” I bark.
The click of the doorknob causes Edith to sigh raggedly. I hate that she’s so anxious about meeting with my best friend and his wife.
“Good afternoon, you two lovebirds,” Jasper smirks as he enters.
I nod my head at him. Behind him, he tugs his wife along. Both women avoid the eye contact of the other. Jasper assists Elisabeth into the chair before sliding in next to her. I give Jasper a look that says, Tread lightly, and being that he knows me so well, he simply nods.
“Have you told Alfred of your marriage yet?” he asks.
I groan, because even though my intentions had been to send him a letter of my marriage, I hesitated to go forth with it. The letter sits folded in my breast pocket along with the contract Edith signed and our certificate of marriage.
“No. I shall inform him upon our arrival.”
Jasper’s eyes widen, and his gaze flickers over to Edith. “I’d like to suggest the two of you begin acting like a married couple. Alfred is no fool, Alexander. He will call you out on the authenticity of the marriage. And what about Alcott? You know your idiot brother will be eager to ruin you if at all possible—that’s his life goal.”
I grumble and clench my jaw. Father will question our relationship, no doubt. And Alcott? That bastard will do whatever he can to blow our secret wide open. We have to up our game before our arrival.
“I guess I don’t understand why you would go along with this,” Elisabeth whispers, but she doesn’t raise her eyes to meet Edith’s.
Edith stiffens beside me, and instinctively, I reach over and take her hand in mine.
“I mean, when did you become this person?” Elisabeth asks.
“I forced her into it. Much like you were forced into a marriage with Jasper,” I snap.
Jasper sits up straight and pins me with a glare. “Enough, Alexander. And, honeysuckle, they’ll work it out just like we did.”
Everyone sits in tension-filled silence until finally Jasper speaks again.
“I apologize for being forward, but have the two of you even kissed? Made love? How do you intend to convince your father?”
He’s absolutely correct. We’re going to have a hell of a time convincing my father. Edith and I never even sealed our marriage with a kiss. I’ve looked after her, but we’ve carried on with our lives. Bloody hell! What was I thinking? We should have spent more time with each other rather than with our lovers. Father will figure it out immediately.
“Kiss me, wife,” I murmur to Edith.
She turns to regard me with surprise. I can feel the eyes of Elisabeth and Jasper upon us.
“What?” she asks.
“Kiss me. The act begins now. We’ve had our time of holiday, but now
, it’s time to work,” I inform her.
Her eyes widen. The woman who agreed to this has gone and left the goddamned train, because the one before me seems terrified. Hell, I’m fucking terrified but it needs to be done.
I slip a palm over her cheek and thumb it in a gentle manner. “Edith, it will be okay. Just close your eyes and go with it.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she slams her eyes closed and parts her lips. The sun shines in, and a few strands of red sparkle in the sea of her mahogany hair. Her face is free of any color, and she is simply beautiful in her natural skin. I’ve never wanted to kiss her as badly as I do now—now, it’s all I can think about.
Leaning forward, I graze her lips with mine and relish how soft they feel. Her breath smells of the sweet honey she added to her breakfast tea. I want to taste her.
Knowing that her lip is injured, I press my lips more firmly to hers, careful not to hurt her, and kiss her deeply. Then her tongue darts out and meets mine. The moment they connect, I’m flooded with the taste of her. Honey. Cinnamon. Vanilla. And her.
I want more of her.
My hand slides into her hair, and I pull her to me. She lets loose a moan that I devour with my mouth as I kiss her. Suddenly, the metallic taste of blood warns me that I’ve kissed her too hard—that I’ve reopened her cut.
When I wrench away to inspect her, I see the small trickle of blood, and once again, fury floods through me. That bastard did this to her. Then she opens her eyes and explores my face as if she’s trying to uncover why our kiss was so decadent.
I know the answer.
Edith.
Leaning forward, I suck her bottom lip into my mouth and run my tongue over her cut. She whimpers but allows me to clean her with my mouth. There’s something carnal about the way I nurse her wound with my tongue.
A clap startles me, and I jerk my head over and see Jasper grinning crookedly at me.
“That. Keep doing that and you’ll convince him.” He shakes his head. “Hell, you convinced me.”
THE KISS. IT’S ALL I’VE been able to think about during the entire ride to Havering. Once we concluded our kiss, we had a lovely lunch with Jasper and Elisabeth. My sister and I remained quiet while the men laughed and told stories of their childhood. I even found myself smiling on more than one occasion.
Alexander and Jasper are closer as unofficial brothers than Elisabeth and I are as flesh-and-blood sisters. Perhaps, one day, she can find the heart to forgive me and we can have the friendship our husbands have.
Husbands.
Each time I remember that Alexander is my husband, I want to chuckle. It has been a game for us, but now, we need to focus and become serious if we’re interested in making it seem real for his father’s sake.
“We’re nearly there,” Alexander says tightly beside me.
Jasper and Elisabeth recently retired to their cabin and left us alone. We remained in companionable silence until now.
“Are you worried?” I ask, turning my head to look at him. He hasn’t left my side since he first came over to me earlier.
His dark eyebrows furrow together, and I see it. This strong, confident man is intimidated by his father. The same motherly instinct to protect, much like I did for Elisabeth and Ella after Mother died, washes over me. I’ll see to it that his father has no doubts. I will throw everything I have into this relationship to make him believe.
I tentatively touch the hair on his face. The coarseness of it scratches my palm, and I briefly remember the way it felt against my breast. A warmth floods my veins at the memory of it.
“We’ll convince him, husband.” I smile conspiratorially at him.
His full lips spread into a grin, and his eyes flash me his appreciation. A woman like myself really could fall for a man like him. She wouldn’t even have to try that hard.
“I’m pleased that you’re so confident, wife,” he teases.
I lean forward and surprise him with a chaste kiss on his lips. The moment I move away from him, he growls and seizes my lips again, but there is nothing hasty about it. He kisses me as if he intends on living there—owning every inch of me with his mouth.
“Why haven’t we done this before?” he murmurs between kisses as his fingers tangle in my hair.
I fist his shirt and pull him closer. “You were too busy with your whores.”
He grumbles in response, and before I know it, he’s dragging me onto his lap. I gasp when he shoves my dress up and pushes my leg over him so that I’m straddling him.
“No more talk about the whores. While in my father’s estate, we won’t speak of it all. Understand?” he questions harshly.
I release his shirt and glare at him. “Understood.”
When I go to slide off him, his hands grip my hips and prevent me from moving.
“Where are you going, wife?”
I shake my head as I stare at him in disbelief. He doesn’t want me. He needs me. And not in the way I would like. I’m a partner in his game. I’ll do well to remember that.
“I asked you where you were going.”
The desire to the slap him is overwhelming, but instead, I throw myself into character. I thread my fingers in his hair and nearly laugh aloud when his eyes widen in surprise. Leaning forward, I kiss him as if he were the sweetest lover in all of the land. I kiss him as if he were the love of my life. I kiss him as if he were to be gone tomorrow.
He is erect beneath my spread legs, and I wonder what it would feel like to make love to him. I’m sure he would be the same overbearing arse in the bedroom that he is outside of it. But would he touch me in ways no other has? Would he be there for me afterwards to hold me? Before I can allow myself to give into the hope of something more, I squash it. These men are all the same.
Just as he really gets into the kiss and rotates my hips so that he can control how I rub against him, I pull away.
“Dear husband,” I purr, taking satisfaction in the way his eyes darken at my tone, “this act we’re engaging in is quite enjoyable.”
“Yes,” he agrees before he attempts to kiss me again. His efforts are in vain, because I tug away and pin him with a firm stare.
“It’s an act and nothing more. You can count on me to put on a stellar performance in front of your family, but behind closed doors, you can shove your officious attitude up your arse. I know how this ends if you make love to me,” I tell him in a matter-of-fact way. “I will fall in some sort of infatuation with you and then you’ll discard me for another whore. I’m far too much of a jealous woman to handle that. In fact, I can’t be held responsible for my actions if that were to happen. So, if you want to keep up the feint, then I suggest we keep this strictly business like our original agreement.”
His jaw works as he listens to my words. I become mesmerized by his lips for a moment before shaking away the weakness.
“Understand?” I throw his word back at him.
After shoving me off his lap, he rises and stalks over to the door. Before he leaves, he spits out his response. “Understood.”
“There it is.” Jasper grins as he points through the small coach window.
The ride from the train station to Alexander’s family estate has taken longer than I imagined it would. Being in close quarters with Elisabeth, who hates me, and Alexander, who is angry with me, has only made the journey seem even longer. Poor Jasper has filled the silence, rambling on about God only knows what—I wasn’t listening. Instead, I thought about how thrilled I felt at having made Alexander cross with me. The man believes that, because he’s rich and powerful, he’ll always wield the upper hand. This afternoon, I showed him that he was sorely wrong in that thinking.
Peering out the window, I catch a glimpse of the estate Jasper pointed at. The enormous home sits proudly on a hilltop, surrounded mostly by trees. It’s quite possibly one of the largest homes I’ve ever seen, and a ripple of excitement shudders through me as I realize that this will be my new home.
When we climb out of the c
oach, I stretch my legs and inhale the countryside air. It reminds me a lot of home, and I prefer it here over London already.
“I’m rather exhausted from our travels and wish to rest before supper,” Elisabeth murmurs to Jasper. That’s when I happen to gaze over at them and watch as he strokes her belly.
“Lissa, are you pregnant?” I blurt out.
Her green eyes lift to mine, and she lifts her chin in defiance, as if I’ll try to take this away from her too. “I am.”
Happiness washes over at me, and before I know it, I’ve thrown my arms around her. “I’m going to be an aunt. This is wonderful news. Congratulations,” I babble out.
She doesn’t hug me back as she mutters her thanks. I realize she must feel uneasy with me touching her, so I retreat. I’m once again reminded how I selfishly chose my own wants and desires over that of my younger sister. When I was supposed to look after her, I took from her instead. A bitter memory of what I took floods my mind.
He pushes the door closed and prowls over to me with a look that normally brings me to my knees quite literally. However, tonight I am not interested. Last time we were together, I discovered a letter from Lissa that had fallen from his pocket. While he cleaned himself up from our sexual encounter, I read it without his knowing.
And I was gutted.
She missed him incredibly so. It was a moment of clarity for me. I was able to take a step back and actually witness what I was doing—how I was hurting her and she didn’t even know it. The revelation had nearly crippled me. It was so easy to live in the moment while we were at university but the reality was that he had my sister counting down the days until he came back to her. The desire to steal off back to the farm and confess everything to her was overwhelming. That evening, I decided it would happen no more.
But when William came back into the bedroom, he gathered his things and left without a backwards glance. I hadn’t had the opportunity to tell him until now.
“Good evening, William,” I greet brusquely. My arms are crossed over my breasts and I hold my chin up bravely.
“I need you, Edith.” His voice is a growl that works its way through my body. Tonight I am strong though. I’m no longer the weak woman that I was from before. I’ll do this for her.
