Helena was about to go to bed when a knock came at the door. “Yes?”
It was Hastings, who could have used the connecting door between their bedrooms, but had chosen to approach via the formal entrance to her apartment.
She’d last seen him at Bea’s tea only hours ago, so there was no need for her pulse to accelerate at his proximity. But accelerate it did. Her hands had been all over his hair—and all over the rest of him. She’d licked his beautiful neck. And she’d offered to take his manhood into her mouth and pleasure him until he—
“You need something, Lord Hastings?” At least her voice sounded properly remote.
He had a large envelope in hand. “I have another manuscript for you.”
“Another Old Toad Pond tale?”
“No, something much less suitable for children.”
“What is that?”
“An erotic story.”
She blinked, taken aback. “Do children’s writers also dabble in pornography these days?”
He hesitated. “It’s an erotic story about you and me.”
Her heart thudded with both vexation and, unfortunately, further arousal. “You think I’d like a story about how you rogered me and enjoyed it?”
His eyes were on the envelope in his hand, his fingers wrinkling a corner of the flap. “It wasn’t written to titillate—or maybe I should say it wasn’t written merely to titillate. When your family took you to America at the beginning of the year, they hoped that time and distance would cool your passion for Mr. Martin. I, on the other hand, feared that deprivation would make you reckless, leading you to be caught. Should that be the case I would, of course, step in and offer marriage. And you would accept my hand to spare your family the scandal. But I couldn’t help imagining how miserable we’d be in that marriage, which led me to the writing of the story.”
His explanation made no sense to her. “And the story would have made us less miserable?”
“It’s—” He took a deep breath. “Yes, I thought it would. It’s a love letter, you see, full of everything that I could never say to you in person.”
A sweet misery engulfed her. So he did try, in however indirect a manner, to court her.
“Regrettably,” he went on, “I probably wrote and illustrate the story in such a way as to guarantee that you will never read past the first two pages.”
She could strangle him in her disappointment. “You are really your own best enemy, aren’t you?”
He raised his face, his eyes a sea grey in the light of the lamps. “Yes, I’ve known that a long time.”
She said nothing in response, but he could almost hear her scream, You idiot, in her head. He tapped his fingers against the envelope that contained everything he should have said to her long ago—or a copy of it, since the original was still in her office at Fitzhugh and Company.
“I’ll leave this with you, then.” He set down the envelope on an end table. “Good night.”
At the door, however, her voice stopped him. “When I was still at his house, Fitz told me to remember that you are sensitive and proud. I don’t mind people who are sensitive and proud, but you are to sensitive and proud what the Taj Mahal is to an ordinary mausoleum—a white marble monument with gardens, minarets, and a reflecting pool to boot.”
She exhaled long and unsteadily, as if trying to calm herself. “Why? Why are you like this?”
He had no idea how to answer such a question.
Her eyes narrowed, then she turned toward the mantel. He realized she was only following the direction of his line of sight, and he had been, without quite intending to, looking toward the photograph of his mother.
She walked to the mantel for a closer look at the photograph, which depicted his mother in costume. The small plaque on the frame read, Belinda Montagu as Viola. “Good gracious,” she muttered. “Is this your mother?”
He’d inherited the curls and the cheekbones from his mother; the resemblance was undeniable. “Yes.”
Helena turned around. “She was an actress?”
He could not tell whether Helena assumed the stage was but the venue from which his mother sold her favors, but enough people had done so in his life that he reflexively leaped to the latter’s defense. “She was very good at her craft.”
“I don’t doubt that. I am only shocked that your father’s family allowed the marriage to proceed.”
“My uncle was sixteen years senior to my father and quite indulgent of his little brother. No doubt my father convinced him that my mother would settle down to become a good little hausfrau, and that in time her past on the stage would be forgotten like last year’s news.”
It felt strange to speak of his family history—almost as if he were disrobing in public, right down to his underlinen. He’d never had to do it before: Everyone either already knew or soon found out from someone else. And when boys at school had, the only explanations he’d given had been via his fists.
“So did Belinda Montagu ever become the domesticated Mrs. Hillsborough?”
“Her real name was Mary Wensley. And no, after two years she returned to the stage. She and my father were in the middle of an annulment when he died—and I was born eight and a half months later. My uncle was convinced my birth was a shameless ploy on my mother’s part to gain a portion of his fortune, since he and his wife were childless.”
“But I thought your uncle was your guardian.”
“I lived with my mother until I was seven. Then, one fine day, we came across my uncle. And within weeks he’d assumed guardianship of my person.”
Looking back, he realized it was quite possible his mother had engineered the meeting—she’d known she didn’t have long to live and she’d wanted him to have everything his uncle could offer. But Hastings had wanted nothing of what his uncle could offer, not when his uncle was determined to repent for his earlier permissiveness with Hastings’s father by denying Hastings every freedom and pleasure under the sun.
For as long as his mother lived, he’d run away to visit her every time his governess turned her back. After his mother died, he lived with a band of Gypsies for almost six months until he was caught and brought home. He didn’t bother running away from Eton—even with all the bullies it was better than living at home with his uncle. And eventually the bullies had learned to leave him alone, because he was a far nastier fighter than they, and no one came away from a brawl with him unscathed.
Helena frowned, but her eyes had become softer, as if she were beginning to understand something about him that she hadn’t before.
“Don’t,” he said immediately. “Don’t excuse me for having been an ass simply because my mother’s profession might have caused me difficulties with my uncle and at school. You never did it before and I’ve always liked that about you—I earned your disfavor not by the grace of my parentage but by dint of my own hard work.”
She stared at him, this dunce who would turn down her sympathy. “Well, then, if you say so. You were a complete ass and your lovely mother would have been ashamed of you.”
For some reason, the way she handed down her reprimand, with a roll of the eyes that was half wonder, half exasperation, made him smile—the first genuine smile that had come to him since she remembered that, indeed, he had been a complete ass.
The corners of her lips also lifted, but she turned away before he could see whether that seed of mirth became anything more. “Good night,” she said. “And you may leave your smutty story here. I may look at it when I’ve finished with all the other books you own.”
As promises went, that was quite good enough for him.
It wasn’t until he’d opened the door that he remembered to tell her, “By the way, you spend most of the story tied to a bed. I hope you enjoy.”
CHAPTER 14
Helena circled the end table on which the envelope lay, tapping her chin, clearing her throat, regarding Hastings’s manuscript askance. It was late; she ought to be resting, and she didn’t have much of an appetit
e for erotica—or at least, she hadn’t developed a great appreciation of it by the time she turned nineteen.
But, as it turned out, one did not simply leave unperused a smutty love letter in which one was fastened to the bed for one’s husband’s pleasure.
The manuscript, titled The Bride of Larkspear, had one place where Hastings had left a note saying, If you read nothing else, read this. But if she read nothing else, how would she be able to place into context the passage he’d selected?
She opened the manuscript to a random page to see just what it was that she didn’t absolutely need to read.
“Why are my hands tied?” she murmurs. “Are you afraid of them?”
“Of course,” I reply. “A man who stalks a lioness should ever be wary.”
“And what does he do when he has caught said lioness and put her in a cage?”
I brush aside a strand of hair that has fallen before her eyes. “He teaches her that captivity can be wonderfully enjoyable—and trains her to become a tame house cat, a sweet, willing little pussy.”
Her eyes darken at my not-so-subtle double entendres. “Lionesses do not become house cats.”
My hand travels down and grazes her rib cage. “Why belittle your ability to change? It is only your first hour of incarceration.”
I have always loved to antagonize her. Little wonder she’d long refused to have me. In the end she’d chose me over absolute ruin—not a choice that greatly flatters me, but now she is mine, for better or for worse.
It really was about them.
“Why?” she asks, her voice tight. “You are a man of wealth and position. You do not lack for feminine attention. I have even heard you described as charming—though I will never understand it. Why then have you chosen to cage me when many would be glad to be your pet, your sweet, willing little pussy?”
I step closer and watch the pulse at her throat accelerate. Her breasts rise and fall in a beautifully agitated cadence. Lust swells like a dark tide in my blood.
“Their eagerness bores me,” I whisper, my lips nearly caressing her ear. “It will be more fun to watch you struggle.”
A tremor passes through her—my darling is finding me more difficult to ignore.
“You revolt me,” she says harshly.
I do not doubt that. But if I revolt her purely and absolutely, we would not be here. Within her cool contempt, there has always been—or so I believe—an element of interest that she refuses to acknowledge.
“Excellent. Nothing spices pleasure like a little revulsion.”
Well, so far nothing that was terribly smutty.
I palm her breast and rub my thumb along her already hardened nipple.
Helena nearly dropped all the pages. She’d judged too soon; this most certainly was an erotic story.
The master of Larkspear brought his reluctant bride to pleasure with his fingers while she was tied to the bedpost. Then he tied her to the headboard and gave her yet another trembling climax—this time with his cock.
It was a few minutes before Helena could stop panting. She dared not read any further, or she’d crash through the connecting door and ravish Hastings—and she was far from sure how she felt about him.
But as she set aside the manuscript, she saw Hastings’s note again: If you read nothing else, read this.
Oh, why not?
The petite mort is powerful, one long, voluptuous convulsion of mutual pleasure. Afterward I untie her wrists and hold her in my arms. She believes it is her body that bewitches me, her smooth skin and tight quaint. She is not wrong; I am beguiled by her smooth skin and tight quaint. But it is this that has me completely in its thrall, this moment of paradise when she is still too suffused with pleasure to use her now-free hands to push me away.
I bury my face in the glory that is her unbound hair. I part her hair and kiss her nape. I stroke her shoulder, her arm, and her sweet soft belly with the greediness of a sot gulping down common gin.
But all too soon, she removes my hands from her person. “I wish to sleep now.”
I place my hands underneath my head with a nonchalant air—as if I haven’t been rejected again. “Let me tell you a good-night story.”
“If it’s about what the prince really does to Sleeping Beauty when he finds her, I’ve heard it before.”
“No one sleeps in this story—or at least not when it matters.”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment. I tense, waiting to be further rejected.
“Well, why not? I might as well hear what other depravities have been rattling around in your head.”
She surprises me. I turn toward her, my head propped up on my hand. She gazes at the ceiling, my lovely wife, with no interest to spare for me.
“Once upon a time, there was a country named Pride,” I begin. “It was a proud country; everyone from the king and the queen on down to the lowest street sweeper was proud. But no one was prouder than the prince of the realm, a handsome young man by the name of Narcissus.”
“And he was so enamored of his beauty that he couldn’t stop looking at his own reflection?”
“My love,” I admonish, “how little faith you have in me. Would I bother to recount such a hackneyed story to you? Trust me: You have not heard this one.”
She shrugs indifferently. “Go on, then.”
“The most fashionable mode of travel in the country of Pride was a dirigible powered by none other than its owner’s personal pride. The prouder the person, the bigger his or her dirigible, and the higher and faster it flew. No one in all of Pride had a greater and fleeter dirigible than Prince Narcissus’s, which was, aptly enough, called Narcissus’s Pride.”
“And which will be thoroughly punctured by the end of your tale?”
I tsk. “Only ignorant foreigners would propose such a repellent deed. In Pride one would no more think of puncturing another’s dirigible than one would sell one’s mother on the town square.”
“And just how common was the practice of mother selling in Pride?”
“Nonexistent, for the people of Pride loved their mothers.”
My bride rolled her eyes. “All right. Go on.”
“A prince devised his own contest for ladies who wished to win his hand. For seven years running, the prince’s contest had been a three-day dirigible race, which he won handily each time. The entire country began to grow anxious for their prince, for he was of an age when he should settle down and beget heirs.
“Unbeknownst to the world at large, Narcissus had long been in love with a young woman of Pride named Fidelia, who owned a bookshop in the capital city. Fidelia knew Narcissus existed, of course; she even had occasional business dealings with him—Narcissus loved books, and Fidelia was the best conveyor of rare and valuable tomes in the land. But Narcissus and his fancy dirigible mattered little to Fidelia. In fact, she made fun of him to her friends, mocking the size of his dirigible, and what one man could possibly do with so much hot air at his disposal.
“Word would get back to Narcissus and he would pace the high ramparts of the palace, unable to sleep. From time to time he turned the telescopes in the astronomy tower to Fidelia’s bookshop in the city, to watch the light in her upstairs window, wishing he could be in her room with her, reading together.”
“My, for a moment I thought he meant to tie her to her bookshelves,” says my bride.
“Please, he is nowhere near as romantic as I am. Now, where am I? Ah, every three months Fidelia went on a book-buying trip to several nearby lands. The prince always watched for her return—when she came back from those trips was when she came to the palace with a crate of her best finds for Narcissus to inspect, and he awaited those meetings with a yearning only those who’d known unrequited love could understand.
“Pride was a country of largely predictable weather. They were in the middle of the dry season. Fidelia’s freight of books was loaded on drays normally used for barrels of ale, and not the covered wagons she’d have used in rainier seasons. But as the pr
ince watched her progress on the dusty plains outside the city walls, what should he see but an unseasonable storm on the horizon, fast approaching.
“He immediately called for Narcissus’s Pride, his dirigible. But by the time he reached her drays, the storm was nearly on top of them. There would be no time to transfer her books for safekeeping inside the gondola of the dirigible.
“The prince did not hesitate. Much to Fidelia’s openmouthed shock, he pulled out his dagger and sliced into his dirigible, opening it up into an enormous water-resistant tarp to place over her books. Fidelia, recovering her composure, found large rocks to place all along the edges of the tarp, to keep it from flying away during the storm.
“They finished and ducked inside the gondola just as rain came down in torrents. ‘Why have you destroyed your beautiful dirigible?’ Fidelia at last asked. ‘They are only books.’
“‘Maybe,’ answered Narcissus. ‘But they are your books.’
“To this day people talk about how the prince won the hand of his beloved after first taking a knife to his pride. Narcissus and Fidelia were married the next spring. They lived and ruled happily together for many years.”
It was not just a love letter, but a prayer, a devout hope for better things to come. And as Helena closed the manuscript, she found herself hoping for the very same.
CHAPTER 15
Life at Easton Grange revolved around Bea, who hadn’t the least idea that such was the arrangement. She was oblivious to many things, but one could count on her to be passionately devoted to her daily routine, going about it with the fastidiousness of a maestro conducting a Beethoven symphony.
Tempting the Bride Page 18
