All Dressed in White EPB

by Michaels, Charis

  “And perhaps I have known my share of young lords through the years,” Tessa went on, “but the titled men who have called on me have been rather . . . impoverished, if I’m being honest. Debt-ridden or otherwise sniffing around for my dowry. I abhor the notion that I should be married only for your money, Papa. How much more confident we will appear when I marry for actual affection. Joseph is successful in his own right. His interest in me is me. And me alone.”

  “Is he successful?” challenged her father. “I hardly see him refusing the dowry, do I?”

  “Oh, quite successful, Papa, as you well know. The boys told me they’ve looked in on his company in London. He’s taking the dowry only to finance his next expedition without dipping into his own fortune. He is a shrewd businessman. All of London will marvel at his wealth when he returns from Barbadoes.”

  “But this is another concern,” said her mother. “Why marry a man set to leave the country within days of your wedding? A young couple should devote their first year to establishing themselves in London. You should be seen out, you should start a family. How will society acknowledge his business acumen if he is on the other side of the world? Out of sight, out of mind, as you know.”

  “Oh, but this way,” said Tessa, scrambling, “we shall have two opportunities to make an impression. This year, we’ll have a grand wedding in high style, and all of your friends will attend. Next year, Joseph will return with his new riches, and that is when we will make the rounds to parties and society functions. Don’t you see? His travels will forestall the usual slide into matronly obscurity after the wedding. We will wait a year and then burst onto the scene anew.”

  Tessa forced her most dazzling expressions, gesturing with her hands to paint the picture of acclaim her mother’s vanity could see. Inside, she was trembling, praying she was convincing them.

  “Well, he has impressed us more than any other man you’ve trotted out,” her father finally said.

  Tessa cringed at the thought of her old life and “trotting out” men. This, she thought, must end. The men, obviously. But also the flirtation, the coquettishness.

  If she managed to marry Joseph, she vowed to become a new woman.

  “He is very handsome and successful,” conceded her mother. “I should relish the looks on people’s faces, I daresay, when he returns and you may bask in your new wealth. One would never wish to boast, of course, but what is boasting and what is a triumphant homecoming? Can you imagine the ball we might give in London, Wallace?” Isobel St. Croix looked into the distance, fantasizing. “And afterward, you would likely move across town . . . to Mayfair, perhaps? Or Knightsbridge? New vehicles, of course. And who’s not to say—maybe even a country house?”

  “Perhaps,” said Tessa, trying not to think of the reality of Joseph’s triumphant homecoming.

  “Very well,” said her father, sharing a look with her mother. “Your Maman has taught you nothing if not distinction, Tess. To sparkle. To be special. To be envied. What could be more distinctive than a marriage to an upstart who is poised to shower you with riches? But you must give us time to plan a proper wedding. We will send you off in high style. There will be no doubt in anyone’s minds that this is a union that matters.”

  Tessa’s heart caught in her throat. “How much time?”

  “Four months?” said her mother.

  And now Tessa did stomp her foot. She pushed up from the table. “We shall do it in three weeks,” she said.

  “Three weeks?” said her mother, strangled.

  Tessa nodded with finality. “Joseph cannot enjoy his triumphant return if he postpones his opportunity to go. His partners are already sailing without him. The wedding must be in three weeks or . . . or we elope.”

  Isobel’s face went white and Wallace’s glass froze halfway to his mouth.

  An elopement, of course, would be the ultimate embarrassment. Well, perhaps not the ultimate embarrassment, but she dare not threaten that.

  Tessa crossed her arms over her chest.

  “No elopement,” conceded her father, and her mother said, “We shall see what we can manage in three weeks.”

  Chapter Four

  “But will you be gone so long as a full year, Joseph?”

  One week later, with the days of their hasty betrothal well underway, Tessa sat at the pianoforte in the Berymede music room while Joseph leaned against the instrument and watched her play.

  Despite being a skilled musician, she barely acknowledged her talent and seemed to play only to entertain herself. The nonchalance intrigued him, because she was so very aware of all her other gifts. She flaunted her beauty and her cleverness with an ironic, flirtatious sort of vanity that, God save him, Joseph found charming. She was well aware that her dresses were expensive and beautiful and never grew tired of praise or second glances.

  The music, however, she simply played.

  Even now, she departed the memorized notes and improvised skillfully, timing the tempo and notes to the ups and downs of their conversation. His heart pounded as he watched her. The focused sort of . . . determination (there was no better word for it) that she brought to their early days seemed to dissolve when the wedding date had been set. After that, a playful vivacity took over, and the change took his breath away.

  “But will you be gone a year?” Tessa sang, repeating her question. She clinked out dark notes of sadness and dread. She hunched dramatically over the keys, her blonde hair spilling forward, and pounded out a mournful refrain.

  Joseph smiled and looked away. Everything she did delighted him.

  “We cannot say how long we will be away,” he said, speaking over the music, “because we are learning as we go.”

  “We are learning as we go . . .” Tessa sang lightly, switching to a lively march.

  He made no effort to hide his amusement. Even this conversation was to be a performance. He could watch her, he thought, indefinitely. It required real restraint not to scoop her from the bench and pull her into his arms.

  Still, he warned, “It would not hurt you to understand more about the expedition. Your dowry has underwritten it, after all. And it will take me away from you—”

  “Yes, but not so long as a full year,” Tessa cut in, pounding out a series of ominous chords.

  Joseph chuckled. He had never met anyone like Tessa St. Croix.

  “Tell me,” she sighed, switching the music again, now a rolling melody, slowly building, the soft beginning of a great opus. “Tell me about the venture . . . underwritten by my dowry . . . that will take you away from me for nearly a year . . .”

  “Will you stop playing?” He raised an eyebrow.

  “Will you provide some incentive for me to stop?”

  A flash of heat shot through him, and he glanced at the open door of the music room. He cleared his throat.

  “Tessa . . .” he warned. She loved nothing more than to goad him.

  She did not answer and he watched her play, allowing the music to wrap around him. He opened and closed his hands.

  Their betrothal had brought him no end of delight and hope. Her parents wished to host a large wedding and elaborate breakfast feast, and he’d delayed his departure for Barbadoes to accommodate the grand affair. His partners had sailed ahead of him. He was grateful for the additional time with Tessa but also anxious to get underway. The sooner he reached Barbadoes, the sooner he could come back to her.

  But before he went, he would have her comprehend what he was doing and why. His expedition had been oddly difficult to explain to her. She was loath to be serious, even for a moment, to speak of business and logistics. He, too, would like to be always in jest, to tease and flirt and nearly succumb to their considerable attraction, but he was determined. She must understand where he was going and how very long he would be away.

  She glanced up from the pianoforte and flashed him a pout. He was pierced with another shot of lust.

  She returned her attention to the keys with renewed volume.

  “You
r parents assign a great deal of trust in me, allowing us to spend time alone together,” he said. “I am meant to be listening to you play, not compelling you to leave the instrument.”

  “Yes, but you’re the one who asked me to stop playing.”

  “I want your attention, not your—” Joseph stopped talking. Of course he could not describe what he really wanted.

  Tessa slid her left hand from the keyboard and picked out a few notes with her right, a spare little melody, just the tinkling of a few keys. “Will you come sit beside me, Joseph?”

  He narrowed his eyes. She pushed the bounds of his self-control. It was as thrilling as it was frustrating.

  “I promise to be a very good girl,” she vowed, alternating two notes together in a fluttery little trill.

  “That remains to be seen. But will you listen to what I’m trying to tell you about the expedition?”

  Another trill. “I will listen so very carefully.”

  Joseph glanced again at the door and then slid onto the piano seat beside her. If he expected her to move to create ample room for them both, he was mistaken. She snuggled closer. Her skirts lapped over his lap. Her foot worked the pedal of the pianoforte and their legs rubbed together. He felt the heat of her body up and down his side. He was swamped with the scent of her.

  He swallowed hard. “Now will you stop playing?”

  “Playing helps me to listen, don’t you see? It occupies my hands.” She glanced at him. “How else am I to occupy my hands, Joseph, while I listen to the long details of your long expedition?”

  Joseph made a growling noise and shifted on the seat. She slid closer. She was playing with both hands again, a rhythmic succession of chords that seemed to mimic the accelerated thud of his heart.

  “How about this?” she suggested. “For every detail to which I listen and acknowledge, you will give me one kiss.”

  Joseph laughed. He’d never met anyone as bold or diverting. “You want me to kiss you here, now, in the midst of the servants? With your mother somewhere in the house?”

  “No one pays any mind if they can hear the pianoforte. What trouble can we get up to if I am still playing?”

  Joseph growled again. His mind spun with the very great potential for trouble. Tessa made no secret of her desire for him; in fact, she had made it clear that he could make love to her even now, before they were married, if he so desired.

  He did desire, very much, but he was also an honorable man, and he had been granted the respect and blessing of her parents. The wedding, however elaborate, was being thrown together in a matter of weeks. Although his need for her was colossal, he assured her they could wait.

  “And what if these kisses cause you to stop playing?” he asked.

  “They won’t,” she promised, leaning over him, pressing the lush curve of her breast against his arm to reach the highest note on the keyboard. She pinged it twice and scaled back down with renewed volume. Joseph grinned at the opposite wall.

  “It might,” he said, watching her profile as she bent over the keys.

  “I suppose we’ll never know. . . .” she sighed, and he was undone. He bent his head and brushed his mouth across her ear once, twice, breathing against the soft whirl of skin.

  “I know a challenge when I hear one, Miss St. Croix,” he whispered, “and you give me little choice but to accept.” He kissed her ear lightly, nipped her earlobe, and breathed deeply against her skin once more.

  The music came to an awkward pause and the room filled with the sound of her hitched breathing. After that, two flat notes. Clink-plink.

  Next, a sigh, a laugh, and she resumed her playing. The recovery took only five notes. She’d reverted back to the memorized piece from before. She sat bolt upright, tossing her hair over her shoulders. “Go on, then,” she said, smiling down at her hands. “You have my full attention.”

  He watched for a moment more, wondering if he would ever recover from the delight of her, marveling that a spirited, beautiful, irresistible gentleman’s daughter seemed to want little more than to delight him.

  He cleared his throat. “The shortest conceivable time I will be away is eight months,” he told her. “We will sail for Barbadoes, buy supplies and hire workers, and then decamp to the island to begin work.”

  The past June, Joseph and his partners had won a small, seemingly worthless tropical island in a game of cards. They assumed the island had no value, until new scientific research revealed an unexpected resource with the potential to make them all very rich. Their scabby little island was heaped with it. They needed only to determine how to extract it from the island and sell it back in England.

  Tessa nodded and proffered her cheek.

  Joseph bit back a smile, checked the doorway, and then nuzzled her skin. He refused to be led and bypassed her cheek for the sensitive spot on her neck, just below her jaw. He breathed deeply, reveling in the scent of her, and then laid a line of kisses from her neck to her lips, sucking gently. His left hand slid across her back and around her waist, pressing her more tightly against him. Her playing slowed but did not stop. He heard her slight intake of breath and she swayed a little on the bench.

  “And what is it . . .” she began, but her voice was a squeak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “And what is it that you are mining from the island? Dead birds?”

  “No. Not dead birds. It’s a naturally occurring resource called guano. It is dried bird excrement.”

  She crinkled her nose, and he was overwhelmed with the urge to pull her from the keyboard and draw her into his lap.

  She glanced at him. Deftly, she lifted one hand from the keys. With her other hand, she maintained the steady drum of a throbbing chord. With the raised hand, she proffered her wrist, flipping it so he could kiss the sensitive underside.

  Joseph blinked at the creamy skin beneath her sleeve and the soft palm of her hand. Slowly, he raised the hand to his face and settled it on his cheek. She made the tiniest gasp. Her fingers formed gently around the curve of his face, warm and delicate. Slowly, he tugged, sliding her palm downward, scraping it against the stubble of his emerging beard. When her open palm was centered directly over his mouth, he kissed it. One gentle kiss in the center of her palm. She gasped again.

  Joseph himself felt a little like gasping. He fought arousal endlessly when he was near her, but when he touched her? When he touched her, he surged with need. What would it be like to make love to her, if kissing her palm ignited such lust? He counted the days—the hours—until he knew.

  In the meantime, he employed extreme restraint, kissing her wrist and then wrapping his own hand around her arm and tugging, pulling her to him. She listed in his direction, and he kissed the very corner of her mouth.

  Tessa went still again, her extended hand hovering above the keys. Disjointed chords rose faintly from the other hand.

  Another kiss to her mouth, and the chords grew slower and flatter and—

  “Tessa?” he said softly. “Keep playing.”

  She rolled her shoulders and returned both hands to the keyboard. She cleared her throat softly. “Bird excrement, yes,” she said, formally. “And it’s meant to make us all rich?”

  He watched her, dazzled by her recovery. “If all goes well, it should be quite profitable. The scientists claim guano is the most potent fertilizer known to man. When we grind it up and sell it to farmers, English crops could increase a hundredfold. They say that guano fertilizer will change agriculture forever.”

  “And you have found quite a lot of it? On your island?”

  “The entire island is caked with it in fact. A veritable mountain of dried bird droppings, sixty feet to the sky. We need only chip away at it, put it in barrels, and bring it back to England to sell it.”

  She nodded, playing more strenuously now, but she glanced at him. An invitation. She wanted the next kiss.

  He swore under his breath. He glanced at the open door and then leaned in to do what they both wanted. This time, he kissed her squ
are on the mouth. Long and firm and open. His free arm went around her. The notes of the pianoforte were reduced to a disconnected smattering of keys. He kissed her until neither of them could breathe.

  “You will drive us both mad,” he whispered against her skin. She was breathing hard and leaning against him. Joseph whispered, “Play . . .”

  She made a whimpering noise but her hand found the keys. She plucked out a few notes, then a cord. She rallied herself and added the other hand. She played on.

  Joseph released her and gripped the bench with his hands.

  “And this will take eight months?” Tessa said. Her voice shook. “You will be away for eight months to harvest the miracle fertilizer. While I . . . while I play the pianoforte alone?”

  “It is my very great hope,” Joseph said, scooting the bench back from the instrument, “that you’ll be playing it alone.”

  Tessa made a small yelp and tipped forward, but he caught her around the waist in the same deft movement. In the next second, she was on his lap, pivoted to face him. He plunked down his right arm on the keyboard, unleashing a garish tangle of notes.

  Propping his forehead against hers, he rasped, “It will kill me to leave you for that long, Tessa, but the very soonest I may return is July. Possibly longer. Can you bear it?”

  She shook her head violently. “No, I cannot,” she breathed. The movement rocked his arm against the keys, eliciting another terrible jumble of notes.

  He kissed her then, hard and thorough, wrapping his arms around her and propping her on the keyboard with an un-musical plunk.

  Tessa fell against him, kissing him back, winding her fingers into his hair and down his shoulders, clinging to him. Their mouths collided in a ravenous frenzy of lips and tongue and breath and heat.

  “Come back to me,” she whimpered, turning her head to breathe.

  “You could not keep me away,” he panted, seeking her mouth again.

  They lost all notion of time, they lost all notion of everything but the sensation and the closeness and each other.

  By some miracle, they heard footsteps when a footman strode down the corridor, and Tessa’s head shot up. Joseph stole one final kiss and then slid her back onto the bench and spun her to face the keys. He was standing behind her in the next moment, sliding the bench in place.