by Merry Farmer
Cold fingers of anger snaked down Ram’s back as he caught on to his brother’s intention. “It doesn’t eat up all of my time, brother.”
Ajay made a non-committal gesture. “Still, starting a new business is a tricky thing. Especially when you are relying on family to finance things.” He laughed with pretend levity. “I wouldn’t want to lose my investment due to distractions.”
The color drained from Noelle’s face. She stopped pretending to smile. “I see,” she said.
Ajay locked eyes with her. “I trust that you do.”
Silence fell. The band finished tuning. The bandleader took his place at the front of the group and raised his hands. With a flourishing gesture, the band burst into a happy and playful march. It was completely at odds with the pall that had fallen over Ram, his family, and Noelle.
Halfway through the first song, Ajay said, “I’ve had a letter from our cousin, Gurbaksh.”
Ram’s frown intensified. It seemed as though his brother wasn’t finished making his point yet. “Oh?”
“He writes to say that his neighbor has a beautiful and talented daughter, Amrita is her name, who is looking for a husband.”
Noelle stiffened at Ram’s side. He was about ready to storm off himself. “I wish her the best of luck,” he grumbled through his clenched jaw.
“I thought perhaps I could recommend a fine, enterprising young man for her.” Ajay glanced sideways at Ram, his grin unmistakable. Also unmistakable was the look he shot Noelle.
Ram couldn’t bring himself to answer. He was far too furious at his brother’s blatant attempts to undermine any sort of friendship he and Noelle had been forming. A cold breeze blew around them, hinting at snow, or at least a cold, damp rain, but Ram was boiling inside his coat.
The band finished their first song, and the assembled crowd applauded. They launched into their second piece, a lively dance. Sam and Louise, who were still playing around Faye’s skirts, began to cavort around her, laughing and giggling.
“Will you two settle down,” Faye scolded them. She twisted and turned, trying to manage them with a baby in her arms. “You’ll bump into your father, and he’ll—” Her scolding was cut off by a gasp.
Ram looked up to see what had startled her. Faye’s mouth was open and her eyes wide with horror as she spotted something behind them. Ram turned, as did Ajay and Noelle, to see what had Faye so upset.
“It’s him,” Faye whispered just as Ram spotted the black coat and shiny top-hat of Lord Shayles.
Ram wanted to reach for Noelle’s hand, but she thrust both of them into her coat pockets as she snapped away from Shayles.
“What’s he doing here?” Ajay asked. “Stepney Green is miles below a lord like that.”
“I know who he is,” Faye hissed, low and ominous. “Everyone talks about him, talks about how he snatches up pretty girls from good families with promises of easy money.”
Ram’s head throbbed with anger, both at Faye and at what he suspected Shayles’s reasons for being in Stepney Green were. He glanced over his shoulder, only to be rewarded—if that’s what it could be called—to find Shayles staring at Noelle.
Unfortunately, Faye saw who the blackguard was staring at too. “It’s you,” she growled, glaring at Noelle. “It’s you he’s got his eye on. I should have known.”
“It’s no such thing,” Ram defended Noelle. “It’s just a coincidence.” He knew he was lying.
“This is the kind of trash you spend your time with?” Faye asked, keeping her voice down and darting anxious glances around, probably to determine whether their neighbors thought she was tainted by association. Before Ram could defend Noelle again, Faye rushed on with, “They say he’s vile, that one. They say he and his friends do unspeakable things to the girls they lure away. Aberrant things. Things no normal man would do.”
Sam stopped his innocent play to ask, “Mama, what is ‘aberrant’?”
Ajay cleared his throat. Several of the people standing near them cast sideways glances in their direction. An uneasy tension broke the cheery feeling the band music had set out to create.
“That man has nothing to do with anyone here,” Ram said, anger making his voice shake. “He—”
“It’s all right,” Noelle whispered, her shoulders dropping. “I should go.” Eyes downcast, she started away from Ram and his family in the opposite direction from where Shayles stood watching.
Ram instantly started after her, heedless of his family. He checked on Shayles, but although the man continued to watch them, a sly smile on his face, he didn’t make a move to come after them. It was a small consolation. Ram paused long enough to stare back at Shayles. As soon as the blackguard noticed and switched his glance to Ram, Ram glared, letting him know that Noelle was protected.
As soon as he felt the message had gotten across, Ram picked up his pace and chased after Noelle.
CHAPTER 6
“N oelle! Hold up!”
Noelle slowed her steps at Ram’s call, blowing out a frustrated breath. She reached the edge of the crowd on the far side of the park from where Lord Shayles still stood and turned to wait for Ram. Shayles had apparently lost interest in her and was scanning the rest of the crowd. But Noelle didn’t think for a moment that he would forget about her. She was having a hard time forgetting about him.
Ram caught up to her, hooked his arm through hers, and continued walking to the road. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Noelle sent him a sidelong look. “I told you your family doesn’t approve of me.”
“They’re just being stubborn,” Ram insisted. “Anyone with eyes can see that you don’t have anything to do with Lord Shayles.”
Noelle pressed her lips together, glad that she could pretend to be checking for oncoming carriages before crossing the street instead of answering. The truth was, Lord Shayles’s offer loomed large in her consciousness. As desperately as she’d hoped never to find herself faced with the choice between sin or starvation again, it felt as though that moment was speeding toward her. Worse still, the one person she thought she could count on to help her might be as powerless to the whims of fate as she was.
“You didn’t tell me you have a bride waiting for you in India,” she said once they were across the street and walking briskly on their way.
“I don’t,” Ram answered immediately.
“Your brother seems to think otherwise.”
“My brother is an arrogant fool who thinks that making a few wise investments gives him the right to dictate other people’s lives.”
Noelle let out a breath, too overwhelmed by the odds stacked against her to argue. They turned a corner and strode down a narrow road choked with houses. In spite of the inclement weather, children were out playing in the street unattended, laundry hung from lines strung between the buildings, and a pack of dogs growled and fought over a bone. It was so far from the England that Noelle’s friends had written about that it made her want to weep.
“Where are we going?” she asked Ram, stopping as they reached the next crossroads.
Her question was more profound than practical, but Ram answered, “I’m taking you home.”
Noelle sighed and shook her head. “I can’t go there, Ram. Your family doesn’t want me there.”
“I want you there,” Ram said, clasping her hand firmly. “I want you with me always.”
Noelle swallowed, a shiver of hope zipping down her spine, warming her. Ram wanted her?
But no, the time for indulging in fanciful dreams was well past. She couldn’t heap her problems on Ram. He was a good man who deserved better than that. He had his own dreams to chase after.
She shook her head. “I have to figure out a way to make it on my own. I have a little money left, and I’m confident that I can convince Mr. Platte to pay what he owes me eventually. I don’t have to live in Mayfair, or even Fitzrovia. I can live here.” She glanced around at the gloomy, poverty-ridden street.
“You’re meant for better things, Noelle
,” Ram insisted.
Before Noelle could argue, he marched on, holding her hand now. She closed her mouth against her protests and followed him down the street, across two more, and around the corner to the street where Ajay’s house stood.
With Ajay’s entire family at the park, enjoying the concert, Ram let them in through the front door instead of sneaking up the ladder in the back. It felt odd to shake the moisture from her coat in the front hall, then to tromp up the stairs, past the family’s bedrooms, and on to Ram’s attic room. But Noelle had to admit that once she was in Ram’s room with the door closed, she felt as though she were home.
“I can’t keep living here in secret,” she said all the same, unbuttoning and shrugging out of her coat.
“With any luck, you won’t have to,” Ram said, attempting an encouraging smile. He took her coat and hung it on a peg, draping his coat over top of it.
“But there are only so many sorts of jobs that I can do without skills or references, and I need both of those for respectable lodgings.” Noelle huffed in irritation, pacing. “I feel like I’m going around in circles.”
Ram stepped in front of her as she paced, clasping her arms and fixing her with an intense stare. “There is another possibility,” he said. “One we haven’t explored yet. The very best possibility of all.”
His eyes flashed with fire. So much so that Noelle felt a burst of energy, like the first flare of a newly lit match. Her heart began to beat faster.
“Marry me,” Ram said.
Noelle’s mouth fell open. She blinked, not entirely certain she’d heard him correctly.
“Marry me,” Ram repeated. “It’s the perfect solution to all of our problems.”
She still didn’t know what to say. Her heart whooped and danced for joy, but her head shouted caution. Each was as loud and insistent as the other.
“We hardly know each other,” she managed to squeak out at last.
“We know each other better than I know whatever her name is, back in India,” Ram insisted. “We’re friends. We could easily be more than that.”
Noelle’s heart ached in agreement. The instant connection she’d felt with Ram had blossomed quickly into a deep-seated belief that they had potential. And the number of times she’d lain awake at night, wondering how Ram would respond if she tore down the pillow wall between them and slipped into his arms, was more than she could count. But she was a fool if she assumed those feelings were more than just infatuation.
Except that they didn’t feel like any kind of infatuation she’d experienced before.
She shook her head, forcing herself to turn away so that she didn’t throw her arms around him. “You have plans, Ram. You’re so close to fulfilling those plans. I would only hold you back.”
“Nonsense.” He reached out for her, forcing her to face him again. “You have become part of my plans.” His expression brightened even more. “I’m going to need a lot of help once I secure the space for my shop. That’s only the beginning. I’m going to need someone to help me organize shipments of merchandise, to help set things up, and to decorate the shop’s windows. I’m going to need someone clever to help manage the money and woo the customers. That person could be you.”
“I don’t know anything about working in a shop,” Noelle said, although her whole body vibrated with the possibilities. Or perhaps it was simply the way he inched closer to her, the light in his eyes intoxicating.
“You could learn,” he insisted. “Just like you learned to work in a café. I’m not saying things wouldn’t be a challenge to start,” he was quick to add. “Ajay wouldn’t allow us to live here.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Noelle agreed.
“But we could live in the store if we had to. I’ve seen the entirety of the space. There is a stove in one of the upstairs offices, and when they built the sewers twenty years ago, they added lines to the building, so we would have water.”
Noelle blinked in surprise at that. She’d always considered Haskell to be on the cutting edge of modernity because Howard Haskell installed a passable sewage system five years prior when almost no one else in the West had even heard of such a thing, but for an entire, massive city like London to be so up-to-date boggled her mind. But she couldn’t let that distract her from the problem at hand.
“You know what I am, Ram. You know what I was. Do you really want to shackle yourself to someone with a past like mine?”
Ram laughed, surprising her even more. “Darling, if you don’t care that I’m a brown-skinned colonial who grew up in the docks of Karachi, then why should it matter to me how you kept yourself alive in bad times?”
A tentative smile spread across Noelle’s face. Somewhere in the muddle of her problems and the relief of the help Ram had given her, it had completely slipped her mind that he was as foreign to England as she was. He was foreign to everything she knew, but that had ceased to matter the moment he went out of his way to help her. For the first time, her mind started to listen to her heart, listen to how much she wanted him.
“You…you really want to marry me?” she asked, eyebrows lifting, leaning toward him.
“Yes,” he said, taking her into his arms. “I don’t want anything else.”
To prove his point, he kissed her. His mouth slanted over hers, his warmth infused her. Noelle let go of the tension squeezing her like a vise and melted against him. She’d been kissed more times than she could count, but the gentle play of Ram’s lips and tongue against hers was as sweet as if it was her first time. It was the first time she’d ever opened herself to a man who she truly cared about and respected, a man she loved.
The truth hit her with full force. She loved Ram. It didn’t seem possible, but there it was. She slid her arms around him, molding herself against him and returning the passion of his kiss with her whole heart. They might not have known each other for long, but the intensity of their short acquaintance was more than most people experienced in a lifetime.
“Yes,” she whispered between kissed.
“Yes?” Ram echoed. His hand slid up her side to cup her breast through the fabric of her worn dress.
That simple touch was like dropping the match he’d lit earlier on a pile of dry kindling. Her blood surged through her, sparking the sweet ache in her core that she’d felt far too few times.
“Yes,” she repeated, smiling even as she tried to kiss him again. She shifted one arm so that she could thread her fingers through his thick hair, drawing him closer to her lips. “Yes, yes, and yes to everything.”
“You’ll marry me?” he asked, even as his wandering hands sought out the closures of her dress.
“I will,” she confirmed. Her free hand tugged his shirt out of the waist of his trousers.
“Noelle.” He whispered her name as though it were the sweetest endearment known to man. No other words were necessary. They both knew that Ajay, Faye, and the children wouldn’t be home for another hour at least, and they both knew what they wanted.
Between kisses, Noelle fumbled to undo the hooks at the back of her skirt, then the buttons running down the front of her bodice. As her clothes loosened and her skirt and petticoat dropped to the floor, Ram wriggled out of his shirt, tossing it aside. Undressing became the chore they had to do before they could wrap up in each other’s arms, but faster than Noelle would have expected, they were naked and reaching for each other.
Noelle smoothed her hands along the strong lines of Ram’s sides and hips as he pulled her in for a deep kiss. “Would you think less of me if I told you I’ve wanted to touch you this way almost since we met?” she whispered.
“Not if you don’t think less of me for wanting the same thing,” he said, laughter in his voice. “You’re beautiful.”
Hearing those words from Ram’s lips filled Noelle with giddiness. It made her head spin to hear all of the cliché platitudes men offered when they were paying to be with a woman meant in the sincerest way. It made her bold.
She circled her hands ar
ound the firm mound of his backside, teasing the sensitive flesh between his thighs with her fingernails, before circling her hand around to stroke his hardening length. Ram caught his breath as she palmed him, reaching from his testicles to the tip of his penis with long, teasing strokes. She wanted to do much more for him, but he held her against him, keeping her from sinking to her knees. His mouth explored hers as though tasting honey, so she mimicked what she wanted to do elsewhere with his tongue.
They both wanted more, though. Ram lifted her to her toes and stepped toward his bed. He started out lowering her gently, but they were both too hungry for each other, stroking and touching until they fell into an unceremonious pile on Ram’s blankets instead. That left the two of them laughing, even as they continued to reach for each other.
“It’s cold,” Noelle whispered between kisses, gasping as Ram circled one of her breasts and lightly pinched her nipple.
“Not for long,” Ram told her, voice laced with mischief.
He wriggled under the covers with her nonetheless, covering her body with his. It was a wonderful sensation, and Noelle inched her legs apart so that he could settle himself in the cradle of her hips. The hot stiffness of his erection moved between them, igniting fiery sensations within her, as he jerked in teasing imitation of what was to come. Noelle sighed at the sensation, feeling as though her entire body were turning to liquid.
In all her years of work for Bonnie and others, Noelle had learned a whole list of tricks designed to please a man, but she couldn’t remember a single one as Ram kissed and caressed her. She wasn’t there to give him his money’s worth, she was there to love and be loved by him. Their searing kisses were interspersed with feather-light touches to intimate places and bold explorations. It was more erotic than the wildest night of business that she’d ever experienced.
“I want you,” Ram whispered as he nibbled on her neck, his hand kneading her breast. “I want to lose myself inside of you over and over.”
“Do it,” Noelle sighed. She wriggled her hips so that he could, reaching between them to guide him home. “I want you inside of me.”
