by Carrie Lofty
But he was that man, whatever that might come to mean.
Now, his wife awaited him.
He was stripping his ascot even as he strode down the corridor toward the guest bedroom . . . which was empty.
For an instant, his heart seized. She’d gone. She’d resented his heavy-handed behavior so much as to simply flee. The shock nearly doubled him over.
As his vision cleared, he saw her wedding dress. It had been laid out with care, not flung aside in disgust. He stepped forth and touched the lace along the bodice. His eyes caught on Polly’s bags, which had been ransacked. A hairbrush rested on the tiny vanity.
Confused but resolute, he stalked with greater anticipation toward his bedroom. Of course she would be there. He should’ve expected no less from his indomitable girl.
His heart seized for a very different reason when he opened the door.
Polly slowly arose from his bed, bathed in the light of two tapers. Silken red hair draped in heavy curls around her shoulders. In his entire life, he had never encountered its color, its texture, its equal. That glorious, shimmering beauty had first caught his eye, but the graceful sweep of her features had entranced him ever since—the wide arch of her cheekbones, the laughter that shaped her guileless smile, and the dancing fire in eyes like enchanted pools.
And her body. Good God, he could barely look on its perfection. Pert nipples stood out in relief against a fine cotton nightdress. Her breasts were unbound, full, luscious. The barest hint of hair between her legs waited, dark and tempting, beneath the pale fabric.
Her smile turned teasing. “Took you long enough.”
His swallow was more like a gulp. “I was thinking.”
“About?”
“How to keep up with you tonight.”
“You tell pretty tales, Mr. Christie, but I can hear right through them.”
“Fair enough. Would you believe me if I said I regret having installed you in the guest room?”
She held out a hand. “Yes, and I expect an apology.”
He walked toward her as if his body had been forged of iron and drawn by a powerful magnet. The doubts he’d tussled with for hours fell away in a rush. Lust took its place. Lust—and a caring he could not deny.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Christie.”
Her eyes widened. The delicious softness of her lips parted. Their hands touched.
Entwined.
Flame shot through Alex’s body. She was in his arms before thought, with her warm curves pressing against his chest. She kissed him with as much passion as he’d come to expect from this amazing woman. He licked the seam of her lips, and she opened to welcome his tongue. Hers was hot and textured in that fine, exciting way, as if their plunging need could create a friction strong enough to sizzle and light.
He did not take. She did not acquiesce. Instead they matched one another, kiss for kiss, touch with ravenous touch.
Polly tugged at his clothing, which had become almost painfully constricting. He needed air. He needed room to move. Most of all, he needed her hands on his bare skin. Their fingers tangled as they stripped his coat, collar, shirt. She yanked open his trousers, which made him laugh a giddy release of pent-up energy. He kicked off his shoes, shucked his trousers. Her gasp was more fuel for his raging fire.
“Oh, I remember that,” she said, taking his phallus in hand.
Alex groaned. He clasped his hands around hers. The pulse of his hips was involuntary but unbelievably right. An eternity had passed since they’d last touched—if a week could be an eternity. His mind bent the laws of physics, insisting that it was indeed possible.
He needed more, and more still. After releasing her maddening fingers, which continued to steadily stroke his hard prick, he grabbed at her delicate nightgown. Flesh and curves. Breast and stomach and waist. Those secret curls. His hands felt clumsy and rough against the finely spun cotton.
“It’s the best garment I own.” Her breath feathered over his collarbone just before she pecked tiny kisses across his pectorals. “Don’t rip it,” she said with a voice full of teasing.
Alex stilled, inhaled deeply. He removed her hands from his aching body and deliberately raised them overhead. “Hold still.”
After a rush of pure emotion at seeing her happy trust, he knelt. He still felt clumsy, but at least his hands had purpose. Undress her. But don’t hurt her beautiful cotton creation. He hadn’t expected her to wear something so lovely. It was simple and pure, whereas his Polly was cunning and devilish. That contrast was everything he’d come to need from her.
As Polly stood trembling, he traced his fingers up her calves. The cotton pooled around his forearms and gathered as he caressed up, past her knees, past the sleek strength of her thighs. When he reached her backside, he kneaded and squeezed. Every touch became rougher, more demanding. He slid around to her stomach, which bared the apex of her legs. With two thumbs he parted her folds and licked inside. Her gasp sank low into a moan as he tasted, teased, drove her higher.
But even there, he didn’t linger. Her moan returned—this time with disappointment. “Patience,” he whispered against her damp flesh. “Wouldn’t want to be too hasty.”
“You’re going to get yours.”
He gave the silken skin below her belly button a single kiss. “Oh, yes.”
Up and up he trailed. The nightgown was almost entirely caught along his forearms. Still she waited with her hands overhead. Bared breasts offered another temptation he could not resist. He swirled each nipple with untamed aggression. Her body was a feast. A treasure. He could spend the rest of his days and nights learning every beautiful inch.
God, they were wed. They had a lifetime.
Blood beat in his ears and his erection was furious with want. A little shimmy and one last delicate tug freed her from the delicate cotton. Polly scampered onto the bed. For a brief, breathless moment, she was on all fours with her rounded arse his to admire. Admire? Hell, drool over.
She turned to sit against the pillows, then crooked a finger. “Come and get me.”
“That seems to be the theme of the evening.”
He stalked onto the bed. She backed a little tighter against the pillows. Perhaps she felt the animal hunger building inside him, threatening to burst free.
“You want me,” she whispered with a sly smile.
“I do.” She pointed her toes and gave a little wiggle, as if she, too, could not contain the pulses of want. He grabbed her calf and pulled her to the middle of the bed, completely flat. “Yet I had a misguided notion of taking this slowly,” he said. “I wanted a proper seduction on your wedding night, Mrs. Christie.”
“Removing my nightdress was slow enough. Give me your strength now, Alex. You want to.”
“Yes,” he growled.
“And I want you to.”
The animal claimed him just as he claimed his prize. Arms around her, legs entwined, he pressed his throbbing shaft against her belly.
She smiled. “Mm, that’s mine.”
“Yours.” He took a rosy nipple into his mouth again, and grazed his teeth against her sensitive flesh. Small, elegant hands tunneled deep in his hair and scraped down to his scalp. Her restlessness moved with his. Whether she opened her knees or he did was no concern.
“Prove it, Alex. Prove what’s mine.”
He positioned his swollen head against her opening, which was slick and hot. His mind was gone. He thrust home. Deeply. She took every inch, even grasping for more with taut fingers digging into his flanks. Alex levered over her and supported his weight on his elbows. He bowed his head against her neck. Every thrust proved how much his muscles could give to her and take from her. Polly crossed her ankles at the base of his spine. The position drew them even closer, but she still managed to slip a hand between their bodies.
“Touch yourself,” he gasped. “Between your legs.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Bloody hell.”
Her eyes rolled closed on a quiet exhale.
“Look at me,” he rasped. “I want to see it on your face. I want you to see it on mine.”
Each time he thrust to the hilt, he felt her fingers working. The desire in her eyes was a fire he stoked higher with every rough movement—until her release choked out on a little scream. She arched into him. Her pelvis ground against his, seeming intent on making blissful seconds become infinite.
The sheen of her flushed exertion was beyond arousing. Alex sipped at her temple, then roughly claimed her mouth once again, hips and tongue questing.
She cupped his cheeks and held his gaze. “So hungry. So close to what you need. You wanted me to see it. Now show me.”
The tide of his pleasure was too much to contain. He shuddered, groaned, and drove into her hot, soft slickness one last time. “God, Polly,” he gasped, neck arching back. “My Polly.”
Boneless, he sank into the bed. They wound together in sighs and contented stretches. Her smile was just as wicked, but satisfied in a way that made his chest ache with pride. Pure masculine pride. He snuffed the candles, pulled her beneath the covers, and gathered her close.
Sleep claimed him nearly straightaway. He was simply overwhelmed. Caressing her hip and waist soothed him like no thought ever could. The perfect symmetry of man and woman. Through the fog of that lassitude, the words Polly whispered against his shoulder barely made sense.
“That was just the proof I needed, Mr. Christie.”
Twenty-one
Married only two weeks, Polly left Alex’s house without telling him, which felt like a betrayal, especially because she did so with the intention of seeing Tommy.
Meet me.
Those were the only words on a note delivered by post that morning. Tommy had signed it.
She told only Agnes that she was going. Checking in on Edmund had become habit. The little boy was fast melting her heart. His fever had long passed, and Edmund was making his first forays toward eating solid foods. When Polly peeked into the nursery, he’d been happily smashing porridge around a plate set on the hardwood floor. “Easier cleanup,” Agnes had said with an indulgent smile.
Polly tied on her bonnet and grabbed her tartan shawl, which Alex had later retrieved from the constables’ station. Spring had fully taken hold of the city, using its annual might to beat back winter. Warmer air. Rain, but with moments of sunny brilliance. The weather didn’t match her mood. She was jittery and apprehensive, not only about visiting Tommy but about Alex’s reaction if he discovered their secret meeting. Just when she and her husband had found a measure of happiness, however tentative, she was going against his explicit demand. His unfair demand. But she needed to. She was bored, restless, and in need of her old sense of purpose.
She couldn’t simply abandon her old life in favor of a new one.
And Alex had been acting strange of late—more than usual. George Winchester and Julian Bennett had each been by the house several times in two weeks. Their discussions behind the locked library doors turned heated every time. Once Polly had heard Mr. Winchester shout her name and call her “an ambitious piece of gutter trash.”
It had warmed her heart when Alex threw the man out, even as she worried about the repercussions. “I won’t open this door to you again until you apologize,” he’d said, cool and calm, before slamming it in Mr. Winchester’s face.
All the secrecy coincided so closely with the upcoming renegotiation of the weavers’ contracts, and he hadn’t brought up the topic of Jack Findley again . . .
Polly’s nape prickled with dread and suspicion.
She had been kicked out of every circle. That knowledge left her at sea. She might never be involved with finding out who’d sabotaged Christie Textiles, let alone the identity of the arsonist. How would she bear being so excluded?
Holding Alex through the night was a consolation, but even the warm temptation of his embrace didn’t reverse his demand that she leave the union and stay off the factory floor. Nor did it stave off the inevitable. A showdown was gathering, with their interests on either side.
She arrived at a tenement block even more ramshackle than those on her street and knocked on a door. Of all the people she knew, she most wanted Tommy to understand how she’d wound up married.
The door burst open. He hauled her inside.
Polly slugged him in the arm. “Let go of me! You’re acting like a rabid dog.”
“You deserve worse.”
“What I deserve is your thanks! I’ve worked to find out what really happened, and the first thing I get from you is scorn? That no one’s come looking for you has been my doing.”
“I’d have laid low just fine.”
“Living like a gutter rat. Don’t give me that bollocks.”
He nodded curtly toward a wicker chair in the small kitchen, then took a chair opposite around the solid wooden table. Mrs. Larnach’s late husband, a carpenter, had made almost all of the furniture in the tiny little flat, but he’d been gone five years. The place was slowly deteriorating.
Crossing her arms, she leaned away from her childhood friend. “Go on, then, Tommy. Make your accusations.”
He snatched her left hand. The simple gold band Alex had bestowed shone on her finger. “Married the master, have you? How could you turn against us like that?”
“Turn against you? Good God, Tommy. Think of the advantages!”
“Explain them to the assembly on Friday. I’ll drag you there, if you like.”
“I’d like to see you try.” She paused. “Wait—Friday?”
That no one had told her of a new meeting meant she was truly done. A complete exile.
“Yes, not that you’ll be welcome.”
“Oh, I’ll be there. And if you make trouble for me, I’ll tell them where you’ve been hiding and how we should’ve turned you over to the constables a month ago. None of them will care about the truth. No one wanted this lingering over our heads when it comes time to negotiate our contracts. They need a scapegoat so everyone can get on with business as usual.” She pointed a finger at her chest. “I’ve kept that from being your fate. So don’t you dare threaten me.”
He looked chagrined for a moment, then his shoulders slumped and his youthful yet haggard features pinched into a scowl. “Say your piece, then. Why did you marry him?”
“He gave me no choice,” she said, her tongue dry and thick. “What’s worse, Da gave me no choice.”
“Tupped you, then, did he? Did you laugh with him after? Telling stories of our simple ways?”
“Shut your filthy mouth and see reason. He’s had nothing to gain by mingling with our people, or learning the names of everyone on the mill floor. At least he’s tried when no one else has.”
Tommy’s dark hair looked like tousled shadows even when lit by the spring sunshine streaming through the kitchen’s only window. “Is that how he caught your eye? Or was it the other way around?”
“I’m certain he came to Glasgow with no intention of marrying a penniless factory girl. Had he any sense, he’d have taken after a local debutante with money and connection.” She forced a breath of calm. “Can’t you see? This is our chance. Finally, someone with influence and an interest in hearing me out.” She pushed away from the table. “And I dare you to say I shouldn’t do what I can to keep Ma safe and secure. Look me in the eye and tell me I don’t have that right—bloody hell, Tommy—that obligation.”
“You’re a whore, then.” So calm. So devastating.
She banked a shudder. “Think what you like. But he didn’t need to marry me. Had he just been looking for a quick go, he’d have left off without a backward glance.”
Said so bluntly, and said to another person—not rattling inside her addled mind—she realized just what Alex had done. He was arrogant, stubborn, and occasionally blind to emotion of any kind, but he was good. She believed that, just as she believed he would be the one to bring change to their forgotten little corner of the city.
“Then tell me why he’s thrown in with the other masters,
eh?”
Her ribs felt tight. “How so?”
The leer Tommy sported left no room for doubt. He believed what he was going to say. “Mr. Alex Christie, your new husband, has entered into an agreement with the rest of their lot. They want to reduce wages this year—reduce costs to make up for the sabotage losses.”
“No. I don’t believe you.”
“Why else do you think we’re having this meeting? Rob Callaghan heard it from the overseer at Bennett’s.”
“Jack Findley? He’s the one pointing the finger at you! There’s no reason to trust his word.”
“It won’t matter once Hamish starts talking strike.” He smacked his fist into his palm. “About time.”
“You’d have everything undone. Now, on the verge of being able to get what we deserve?”
“How can you believe that so blindly, when your husband’s a liar?”
The room dipped and swam before her eyes. He wouldn’t. Not with his principles. She couldn’t imagine Alex Christie harboring such devious motives. He walked in a straight line and thought in a straight line. That he could’ve been using her to undermine the union was not only an entirely new fear, it was too hurtful to contemplate.
“I’ll find out, Tommy.”
His dubious expression was at least a change from the violent twist of his lip. “Find out what?”
“What he knows. What he’s agreed to. If they intend to provoke a strike just to break us down, they must have plans to bring in workers from the Highlands or Ireland. That sort of arrangement can’t be concealed, not down on the docks. And if they believe we’ll sit idly by, they’re dead wrong.” She met Tommy’s gaze head-on. “You know how hard I’ve worked, when no one else thought I should. Trust me, just as I trusted your word. I can be the ally we never thought we’d have.”
With his thin, rugged features still dubious, Tommy nodded. For a second she caught a glimpse of the boy she’d grown up with. They’d shared the scant treasures life afforded. Now he seemed willing to share a little bit of belief.
