Argent (Hundred Days Series Book 3)

by Baird Wells

  “Why not two?” offered Spencer with a wink, already feeding the beast.

  Looking pleased with so much attention, Sampson finally gave into his tiny master's grunting and chiding and loped off, dragging her behind.

  Laughing, Alexandra glanced to Spencer and found his eyes already on her. She smiled and raised an eyebrow, inviting the question she read on his face.

  “Do you have children?” he asked.

  “No! Of course not. You?”

  His mouth quirked. “Bennet is my perpetual child.”

  “For all your digs, I like your brother,” she protested.

  Spencer's brows wiggled. “And he likes you.”

  “He does?” She sat forward, excited that a member of Spencer’s family approved of her. “What did he say?”

  “Nothing I'd repeat in a lady's company. They weren’t platonic declarations, I assure you.”

  Flattered, she laughed through a mouthful of strawberry tart. “Be certain to send him my regards.”

  “Don't toy with the lad. You'll crush him.”

  Alix cocked her head and drank him in. “And what about you?”

  “What about me?” he challenged.

  “Will my toying crush you?”

  His smile was slow and wolfish. “Where I am concerned, madam, you had better be prepared to make good on your threats.”

  “Oh,” she breathed, and leaned back on her arms, “I believe we've established that I am.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  They had been sitting together silently in the parlor for more than an hour, judging by the clock's chiming out in the hall. It was a perfect, contented silence, without anxious remarks or outside intrusion. It was Spencer’s favorite brand of silence.

  It had become a quick tradition, tonight marking their fourth evening together in the sitting room after John and Laurel had retired for the night. The first few nights they had played cards, conversed; he’d drawn a battle map for Alexandra while telling a story, and she had added artist’s details to his poor sketch. He had traced her fingers while she drew; fingers led to knuckles and then a wrist and then he was brushing her throat. Lips a breath apart, they had resolved to keep a safer distance the following evening.

  Spencer had no idea what made him look up from his letter at Alexandra, curled onto a small blue sofa directly across from him. Whatever it was, he found her watching him. Spencer took a long draw of his scotch and raised his brows.

  She closed her book and tossed it onto her lap. “I want us to have an affair.”

  He sputtered, smoky liquor burning his throat. “What!” he wheezed, coughing to expel liquor from his lungs. He couldn’t have heard her properly.

  She spoke slowly, words husky and annunciated here and there by a teasing pause. “I want to have an affair with you.” Her gaze was frank, honest.

  His chest spasmed. He coughed again and rubbed a fist over his heart. “I think you did me an injury,” he croaked.

  Alexandra rolled her eyes. “I'm serious.”

  “So am I,” he panted, wincing. “I think I'm having an attack.”

  “Well?” She looked unconcerned by the prospect of his impending death.

  Yes; a hundred, a thousand times yes. Spencer cleared his throat and sat back, slapping his ribs and still dodging her. “You cannot just ask to have an affair.”

  Hands went up. “Why not?”

  “Alexandra, have you ever had an affair?”

  “No.” The information surprised him, and he thrilled at her eagerness in the garden.

  He nodded. “That explains your asking to have one.”

  “Well,” she started, crossing her arms, “Were you going to ask me?”

  “No.” Because one person couldn’t simply ask another. It was a dance, a choreographed string of encounters which he hadn’t managed to arrange with her, at least not yet.

  Her frown stretched into silence, and he raised his palms. “Because I hadn't thought of it,” he amended. “Not because I am not interested.”

  “You've proved my point! If I had not asked you, and you were not going to ask me, how were we going to have one?”

  Not much to argue with in her logic. Still, there was an art to the whole thing which she seemed to be missing, something he struggled to quantify. “You can't ask,” he repeated. “That's not how it’s done.” As quickly as the words were out, Spencer wondered why it mattered. Why did people go to such lengths, do such a ridiculous dance? Was there any harm in the sweet, earnest way Alexandra risked herself now?

  “Well,” she fired back, “have you had affairs?”

  “Yes,” he mumbled into his knuckles. “Oh, yes.”

  “Well then, you tell me. When would you call on me? How would we go on? Tell me how it’s done by other people.”

  Tediously, he admitted, running through the sequence. “They meet. Share a few dances. Are sat together at dinner. They find one another attractive, and hopefully enjoy some conversation. Then some innuendo, a flirtation, and each returns the other's banter. The lady offers her card and invites the gentleman to call at an opportune hour. Perhaps he even asks for her key.”

  “Oh,” breathed Alix. “I thought we were already doing most of that.”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it into a frown, dumbfounded. He really had been buried in the wool. “So we have.”

  “But you never thought of me...?” She shrugged.

  “As I said Alexandra, not because I don't think of you in that way. I don’t believe I appreciated how much territory we’ve covered.” He wondered that it had felt painless, natural, and not a bit like the effort he’d described.

  She perked up, a smile dimpling her cheek. “Then we should. Why wouldn’t we?”

  Spencer raked fingers through his hair, refusing to believe that Alexandra grasped what she was asking. “It's not a ham or a birthday party. You don't simply have it.” And you certainly couldn’t take it back.

  Her sigh bubbled with frustration. “Well, explain it again, then.”

  “It's not an open sort of thing. Meeting after dark, sneaking away before dawn.” Affairs involved a great deal of contortion and cloaking about, things which tried his patience. Then again, watching her bite her lip as she considered his words, he had difficulty remembering why he objected so much.

  She frowned. “But we already have an 'open sort of thing'. John and Laurel invite us everywhere. We can still sit together, dine together, dance together. Ride out together. Plenty of young men take ladies to the park and no one seems to raise a brow. If we were younger, or married, someone might fuss.” Alexandra winked. “But we're just old Lord Reed and dusty Mrs. Rowan. Even Paulina will be hard pressed to object, if we keep company with other people.”

  It was nearly frightening, how much sense she was making. And how anxious his body was over it. Spencer sat up, pressed his fist to his lips again and looked her over. “I have an idea, but you're not going to like it.”

  She sat up, too. “What is it?”

  “You're not going to like it,” he warned again. It was dangerous, built on impropriety and fraught with risk, where Paulina was concerned.

  Her arms flailed. “Just tell me!”

  “My family has a small parcel near the Scottish coast. It’s tiny, and I think my father only stubbornly hung onto it because it was contested for centuries. There’s nothing there but an old chapel, some wild horses and a stone cottage.” He leaned forward and rested elbows on his knees. “I had planned to go for perhaps a fortnight, next week. Some quiet for both inside and outside my mind.”

  Alix was leaning forward, beautiful face lit by a grin. “And when you return, we could commence?”

  “We could commence while we are there.” He reached for her hand. “Come with me, Alexandra.”

  She exhaled sharply, sat back and then fell completely into the sofa, eyeing him. “It's risky.”

  “Aye. But we would have time. Time to sort this out, and make a start out from under prying eyes.�
� Days and nights alone with not a soul around.

  “I like it.”

  He didn't trust his ears. “You do?”

  “I do.” She nodded slowly. “Can you wait that long?”

  In that particular moment, the truthful answer was 'no'. “I don't know.”

  Her half-lidded smile hammered his resolve, and she shrugged. “Neither do I.”

  * * *

  Spencer lay in bed long after the house was silent, well past the final creaks of servants drifting specter-like through Broadmoore at their final night time tasks. He had wrung every moment of Alexandra’s time from the day, before retreating to relative safety inside the shadows of his bed. With the velvet curtain drawn tight, he’d hoped for nerve to examine his feelings about her. Instead, he had shifted restlessly beneath the quilt, afraid of daring into such unfamiliar territory.

  Afraid to venture alone, he amended. For all her teasing and flirtation, Alix had made few overtures before tonight, no meeting him halfway as she had in the garden. He needed to hear that he consumed her thoughts, her body and her mind, as much as she did his.

  Slapping his way out of the bed, Spencer claimed his breeches from a chair beside the door and wriggled into them. Determination carried him down one staircase and through darkened halls, promptly fizzling when he came to a stop in front of Alexandra’s door. Minutes passed, ticked out by a clock somewhere far off in the house, and Spencer began to pace. His thoughts were sorted and composed in increments of five steps down and five back. He lost count of passes, muttering scraps of feeling he couldn’t piece together.

  Her door flying open startled him and stopped his progress.

  He took her in, head to toe, receiving the same treatment in return though he hardly noticed. More than once he had indulged a fantasy with images of Alexandra as his harlequin from the masquerade. Her appearance now eclipsed those, a delicious new imagining for his private moments.

  Dark waves tumbled over her shoulders, their length drawing his eye to the swell of breasts beneath her white muslin shift. A half-moon spilled through windows inside her room, bathing her in ethereal light which caught the depth of her blue eyes. His heart ached at her loveliness, body following suit.

  Alix swallowed and broke their silence first. “Have you any notion how much noise you’re making out here?” She had meant to tease, he guessed, but a tremble pulling at each word stole her mirth and hinted that she felt at least a fraction of what he had, pacing alone in the hall.

  “Alexandra…” He’d meant to say more, to explain his reasons for coming and plead his case like a rational man. Reason burned to ash as his fingers twisted between silken strands of hair, and he drew her in, their bodies meeting with more force than he had intended when she didn’t resist. His shirt and her shift; two layers of fabric were a poor substitute for willpower when her breasts pressed his chest.

  Her slender fingers gripped his neck and finished the distance between their lips. Full and sweet, her mouth was every bit the pleasure he remembered. She matched his every slant and press, catching his lower lip between her teeth when he mustered the strength to pull away.

  She pressed the back of one hand to her mouth, panting. “Oh, my goodness.” Her cheeks flushed and he caught a smile in her eyes. “I’ve told myself a thousand times that it would never be as good as I remembered.”

  He grinned broadly enough that his jaw ached. “It is.”

  “It is,” she agreed, her words little more than a whisper of breath, hot against his throat.

  He darted from her shoulder to her waist, her hip and then her cheek, trembling fingers reacquainting him with her shape, and then he stepped back. “Good night, Alexandra.”

  “What?… No.” Her head shook, brows drawn into a puzzled vee. “What do you mean, good night?”

  He moved back a few more steps and bowed low. Her unspoken invitation nearly did him in when he met her eyes.

  “Where are you going?” she demanded in a husky whisper.

  He stopped backing away. “To sleep.” Now that he could sleep, certain that Alexandra’s feelings mirrored his own.

  “You...what? Sleep?”

  “There are times,” he murmured, closing the distance again a pace at a time, “when a man has need of an answer.” At arm’s length now, he stopped and ran fingers over her throat and cradled her neck, thumb brushing her hair. “And he can rest once he has it.”

  Her eyes closed, and there was no missing a hitch to the rise and fall of her breasts. “What was the question?”

  “You were,” he admitted, tracing the curve of her cheek.

  She swallowed, fingers perching on his wrist without enough pressure to encourage or deny him. “What was your answer?”

  He put space between them, palms tracing her shape one last time. “You were.”

  “Can we wait?” she asked again.

  He drank her in, soft and flushed and well within reach, and swallowed some doubt. “Can we?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Haywood Village, English Coast -- July 12th, 1814

  As it turned out, they could wait. Alexandra wanted to be impressed by their willpower, but truthfully, they had seen almost nothing of each other in the two days before Spencer headed north.

  A convenient invitation from Lord Darby, inviting her to Scotland to visit Amelia, could not have come at a more opportune time. Alex took silent enjoyment in Paulina’s struggle, not wanting Alix in company with her new, more fashionable set of friends and not wanting to relinquish her grip.

  The agony was waiting two more aching, chest-thumping days to follow behind Spencer while shaking Chas and Paulina off of her skirt hem, insisting that she wished to visit Stirling for her cough. Laurel, her unwitting ally, had insisted it was for the best and hinted that she and John could chaperone.

  Lady Conyngham’s invitation to Bath had put an end to the matter; Paulina, seeing her chance to be a big fish in a small pond, settled the matter at once. She agreed to Stirling, openly pleased at going to Bath for a fortnight in Alix's absence.

  Alexandra was left in peace, Paulina too absorbed with preparations to harass her. Thankfully, not one of them had been up at seven this morning to see her off; likely because she had told them all she was going at noon in order to slip away unharried. She had bounced up into the coach secure in the knowledge that Paulina was too terrified of Lord Darby to try and spy on her.

  Little sleep the night before, or for days now, turned out to be a blessing. She managed to last until the first time they stopped to change horses. Fresh air and milk, coupled with the carriage's renewed swaying, put her entirely out, and what she’d imagined being a long and lonely trip passed by in oblivion.

  They arrived at the salty, sand-blown little village of Haywood just before three in the afternoon. Alix repinned her hair, wiped her face with a damp handkerchief, and did her best not to look like she’d slept for four hours in a torturous u-shape between narrow seats. The carriage lurched to a stop before a two-story shop, its walls constructed entirely of silvery driftwood. Judging by the contents in the front window, it was a general store. It was also a boardinghouse and ferry, based on an ominous sign impaled beside the door which read: 'No tarts or drunks, in beds or in boats'.

  “A respectable establishment,” she quipped, gathering her valise. The door popped open, bathing her in a gust a sharp sea air, its cool breath welcome after miles in a stuffy cab. She thought nothing of it, and opened her mouth to thank the coachman when a voice a froze her in place.

  “Mrs. Rowan.”

  Alix sighed, her back to the door, and inhaled her name on his lips. “Lord Reed.” She turned to hand Spencer her bag, and stared. Barely shaven, bronzed by the sun, he grinned up at her like a perfect rogue. A shirt open at the throat was cinched into buckskins which left nothing to the imagination. Her heart thundered, recalling why she was here, and Alix pressed a palm to her chest to mute its rhythm. “Did you wait long?” she managed, letting him take her hand and guid
e her out into the blazing afternoon.

  “Half an hour,” he murmured, brushing the corner of her mouth, “That's when you were expected. I stayed here in the village last night, so it was nothing really.” Spiced rum caught in her nose, hinting that perhaps he'd been as nervous as she was now. Alix ducked her head and was silent.

  Spencer led her to a pair of horses, a stout chestnut and a delicate dapple mare, that were hitched and shuffling beside the shop. He lashed her valise with deft fingers, then rifled through his saddle bag and produced a bundle of off-white cloth and a pair of battered leather boots. “My room is paid up. Go inside and put these on.” He grinned. “We have a ways to go.”

  She claimed the bundle with trembling hands, moving in a daze toward the mercantile. She was here; she was truly here. And the reason...biting a smile, she shook her head. Coming to Haywood felt as natural as following Spencer into the garden. How far was the cottage? What would they discuss along the way? She wondered how they could talk about anything with the reason for her visit standing boldly between them.

  Her eyes took a moment to adjust inside the dim shop. Tobacco and dark sugar filled her nose, wafting from a wall of barrels and cartons. The main shop was clean but crowded by more esoteric goods, liver salts and lead ball molds hinting that it must serve villages for a long way in every direction.

  A crag faced old woman looked up from a counter at the back, her wild bun as coarse and silver as the shop's wood. Alix anticipated a scowl, but instead received a kind, thin-lipped smile and a nod toward the staircase. She had been expected.

  There were only two doors at the top of a creaking staircase. One stood ajar, the corner of a neatly made bed just visible. The other rough door was shut and was hung with a loop of weathered rope to indicate that it was occupied, she guessed. Alix stepped into the first room and shut the door, not bothering to lock it.

  Spencer had obviously done some tidying. The blankets had been stripped back to bare a mattress' blue and white ticking, which was surprisingly clean. They were bundled in a neat stack beside a wash stand. Beyond simple furnishings, the room was plain. She might have overlooked a sturdy table in the back corner, except a scrap of paper fluttering on top caught her eye.