“That was different,” she protested, twin flags of color appearing in her cheeks.
His nearness flustered her. Good. His gaze lowered to her mouth again. Just a dip of his head or a bump in the road, and their lips would meet. She smelled sweetly of rose and bergamot, and it was nearly his undoing. His body reminded him that it had been a year since he’d last had a woman. Since he’d last had her.
A marriage in name only was going to be goddamn impossible.
But he wasn’t going to kiss her, not now, not yet, because he was still angry with her. Damned angry. “It was no different,” he countered, recalling how she tasted, how much he had loved kissing her. Everywhere.
She drew back into the carriage squab as far as she could go. “You never told me you were marrying another woman.”
No. He had been too caught up in Helen to do so. Somehow, it hadn’t mattered until it had mattered. And by then, the damage had already been done. He should have told her. He should have charged back to London the moment he’d rectified matters in Paris, back to Helen’s side. But he couldn’t atone for things he should have done. He couldn’t rewrite their past and neither could she.
He leaned closer. “You never told me I had a son.”
They had each wronged the other, wounded each other. They bore equal guilt in their mutual state of distrust. But some of his fury had already dissipated.
She worried her lower lip and the urge to kiss her had never been stronger. “You should have told me, Levi.”
“Yes, I should have,” he agreed, because it was true. He could own his faults. “I’m sorry for that. I intended to tell you before I left for Paris, but you found out on your own before I could. Believe me, it was never my intention to hurt you.”
“I wish I could.” Sadness darkened her eyes. Sadness that he had caused.
He hated that he’d been the source of any of her pain. “As I said, I have a lifetime to prove you wrong in your opinion of me.”
“But you also have a lifetime to prove me right, and that is what I fear most,” she said softly.
She looked incredibly vulnerable in that moment, and he thought of how changed her circumstances had become. When he had left her, she had been every inch the earl’s daughter, draped in silk and jewels. But now her dresses were cotton, unadorned. She wore no jewels. She had been an unwed mother living in a small room alongside the women she was attempting to help. He was responsible for that. He had not been careful with her. He had been reckless and foolish and too filled with pride, and he had been wrong. Part of him didn’t blame her for keeping Theo from him. What an ass he’d been.
He drew the backs of his fingers across her cheek, unable to stop himself. How had he ever imagined he could live the rest of his life without seeing her again? Without touching her again? Without her?
“Helen, from this moment forward, you needn’t fear anything. You’re under my protection now, you and Theo both. You’ll have the best of everything.” And they would, by God. His business was intact and so were his funds. He hadn’t needed VanHorn wealth after all. He’d damn well made his own.
She didn’t flinch away from him, simply held still as he traced a path down her cheek to her creamy throat and then slid his hand back to cup the base of her skull. She was so soft. So warm. “I don’t need anything from you,” she said, stubborn as ever.
He stroked the tense cords of her neck, worked them with his thumb and forefinger. “Perhaps not, but I will give freely anyway, beginning with a new wardrobe. What happened to your fine silk gowns?”
“Someone else is enjoying them.” She leaned into his ministrations ever so slightly, giving in despite herself it seemed. “I sold them all. We needed the funds to help start our endeavors at the House of Rest.”
She’d sold her dresses. Hell. He wondered what else she had sold, how far she would have gone to refrain from asking him for help. “Surely Jesse and Bella would have aided you. Would not anyone in your family?”
“They all offered but I refused.”
Obdurate, willful woman.
“Why would you refuse?” His fingers slid into her silken hair, finding a bevy of pins that begged to be removed.
“I wanted to rely on myself alone.” Finally, she swatted at his hand, keeping him from taking down her hair as he so longed. “For my entire life, I have lived beneath someone else’s roof, depending on the mercies of my father or a family friend or a sister. I wanted to prove to myself that I could manage on my own.”
And she had more than managed. The house was thriving from the looks of things. In the week since his arrival, he’d learned from the girls that Helen was teaching them valuable skills that they could use to better themselves. They were learning to read, write, sew, and cook from Helen and from each other. It was all rather enterprising of her.
He should have retreated back to his side of the carriage, but he couldn’t seem to force himself to move away. “That’s admirable of you. Foolish and stubborn, but also admirable.”
She smiled then as the vehicle came to a halt. Just a curve of her lips but enough to make him realize it was the first genuine smile she’d bestowed upon him since his return. Perhaps he was thawing her ice the same way she was steadily melting his. “Thank you. For the first and the last part of what you said, though most assuredly not the middle bits.”
He found himself smiling back at her in spite of everything. It had only required one year, bribing a Registrar, some meddling, and a few ocean crossings, but she was finally, at long last, his wife. As she should be, and as she should’ve been this long year past. That same, odd sensation he’d felt once before settled in the vicinity of his chest for a lingering moment.
Contentment.
Mrs. Levi Storm.
How many nights had she lain awake, staring into the inky darkness of the ceiling in her little bedchamber at the House of Rest, thinking about Levi’s wife? How envious she had been of the tiny-waisted girl who would have taken his name and shared his bed. She hadn’t wanted to be of course, but the thought of Levi with another woman had cut in a way nothing else could. All those nights when she had fed Theo and rocked him back to sleep, her mind churning, how could she have known that she would be here in this moment?
Now, it was Helen who sat before a mirror in the dressing room of her sumptuous new chamber in Levi’s Belgravia home. It was Helen who stared at her reflection, wondering how the events of the last week had possibly come to pass. The deed had been done in a quiet ceremony by a beleaguered Registrar of Marriages, recorded for posterity with the wrong year to cleverly mask the truth of their scandal. Yes, she was well and truly Levi’s wife.
In name only, she reminded herself with equal parts sadness and sternness. While she hadn’t forgiven him for keeping the knowledge of his betrothed from her, neither was her heart perfectly guarded against him. Earlier that morning, on their carriage ride, she had very nearly given in to temptation and tipped her head forward so that their lips would seal. She hadn’t forgotten what it felt like to be in his arms. She hadn’t forgotten a moment of his kisses or the wicked things he’d done to her.
And she hadn’t forgotten that she loved him.
She had tried, very hard, to stop. But she’d discovered that love was a most persistent and vexing emotion. It didn’t simply cease to exist because of a betrayal or time or distance. Love was always there, a pulsing, vibrant, and terrible thing that merely waited beneath the surface of every hour to let its steadfast presence be known.
A knock sounded at the door that adjoined her chamber to Levi’s, giving her a start. She’d reluctantly put Theo down to sleep beneath the watchful eye of his new nurse, a woman who came highly recommended and seemed more than capable but who Helen had yet to completely trust. Her lady’s maid had been dismissed. There was only one person who could be on the other side of the door, in Levi’s very own chamber.
Dread settled in her stomach now, for she was about to face a most uncomfortable dinner with him.
At last, her sisters and their husbands and Bella and Jesse had left them after a celebratory breakfast that had spilled well into the afternoon. She’d been grateful for the company, a way to put some much-needed distance between herself and her husband after that carriage ride. Indeed, she didn’t think they’d even spoken more than a handful of words to each other during the festivities.
Another knock came, this one a bit more firm and insistent than the last. If she ignored him, would he simply go away? She very much doubted it, and rose to her feet, ready to do battle.
“Enter,” she called.
Of course it was he, effortlessly handsome in his evening finery. His long legs ate up the distance between them. His black jacket and gray waistcoat set off the crisp white of his shirt, and it all had been lovingly tailored to fit his tall, lean form to perfection. But it was his face, and not his body that stole her breath.
A shadow of dark whiskers shaded his strong jaw, and his lips were meant for sinning. They quirked into a smile that didn’t reach his gaze. “Mrs. Storm.” He stopped an arm’s length from her and bowed as if they were in court and she was his queen. “You are lovely as an angel this evening, even though you’ve chosen to eschew the gowns I purchased for you.”
She wore an artless day gown that Ruby had made, plain pink cotton, rather poorly fitted. No décolletage to speak of. He’d somehow filled her wardrobe with a small fortune in beautiful gowns since that morning, assuming she would be more than happy to don whatever he’d chosen for her. “I’ve made it plain to you that I don’t want your money.”
“You accepted the house,” he pointed out, his tone harsh.
Yes, she had, but for a greater good, and at the time she’d believed he had given it from a decent place in his heart. Now, she was fairly certain he didn’t possess a heart. “That was not for me.”
“Yet you lived there while hiding my son from me.” He took a step closer.
Helen was determined not to take a step back in retreat, no matter how tempting it would be. “I wasn’t hiding Theo. You were in America. I had nowhere else to go. What would you have had me do? Take some female pills to cure my troubles? Go abroad until Theo was born and then give him away to another family? That is what my mother recommended, you know.”
“That isn’t what I would have wanted, and you damn well know that.” His jaw went rigid. “Jesus, Helen, is that truly what she told you?”
“Yes.” And it still cut as deeply as it had the first time she’d heard the words. “Those were my choices. I chose the only path I could envision myself upon. I chose my son.”
“Our son,” he corrected again as he had earlier. “I would have been here for you had I known. You denied me that right.”
“I wasn’t going to beg a man who was already married to another for his aid,” she said coolly.
“Ah, but I wasn’t married to another, was I?” He flashed a grim, self-deprecating smile. “And if you had but listened that day before I left for Paris, you would’ve known I had no intention of following through with the wedding.”
His statement gave her pause, for it implied that she had been as complicit in the tangled muddle of their situation as he was. But she had listened to him, hadn’t she? He had said he didn’t love his betrothed, but he most certainly had never said he wasn’t going to marry her. It’s complicated, he had said. Complicated, her foot. How dare he try to turn the tables on her now, after all she had endured?
This time, it was she who took a step in his direction. She poked him in the chest with her finger. “You said nothing that day to leave me with the impression that you were crying off your nuptials. Not a single, bloody word.”
Oh dear, she never swore. But she supposed she had done a great deal of things in the last year that she’d never done before.
He caught her finger in his grasp, stilling her angry jabs and eliciting an unwanted frisson of desire deep within her. “Hang it, woman, don’t poke me.”
“I will poke you,” she said mulishly, demonstrating by getting in another solid prod with her free index finger. “You had ample time to tell me everything before you were leaving for France and I had just discovered you had a beautiful betrothed from a newspaper article.”
He caught her other hand too, and the contact sent the same unwelcome heat through her body. Gently, he pulled her into him, his hands still holding hers. Her breasts brushed his hard chest. His eyes bored into hers. “I own that I didn’t tell you when I should have. But I had a great deal on my shoulders then. My company was being sued, we’d just blown up a damn wall and nearly assassinated the President of France in the process, we were short on funds, and I had begged Miss VanHorn’s father for a greater investment. And in the midst of all that, was you.”
She hadn’t known any of those things. None of them. It occurred to her then that she scarcely knew anything about his business other than his belief that his employees should have quality living arrangements. She knew nothing about electricity, how it worked, or how his mind worked beyond his propensity for dissecting pocket watches.
“You could have told me all of those things,” she said fiercely, “or any one of those things. I would’ve understood, Levi. And yet you did not. You didn’t say a word about your business being short on funds. Heavens, I don’t even know anything about your business, and I scarcely know anything about you. I suppose you simply didn’t care for me enough to share anything with me other than your bed.”
“Of course I cared for you,” he bit out. “How can you doubt it?”
“You cared for me,” she repeated bitterly, noting his use of the past tense.
“Damn it, what do you want from me?”
He was angry again, but so was she. How could he not see what was so obviously before him? “I don’t know what I want from you now.” She shook her head. “Nothing. I want nothing from you. I don’t want your dresses or your money. I don’t even want this chamber or this house or your name. Those are all just trappings, easily given or taken away.”
“Trappings,” he echoed, his voice cool. “You ought to be well accustomed to trappings as the daughter of an earl.”
“I was,” she corrected. “I have changed. You changed me.”
Levi’s countenance remained forbidding. “As you have changed me, madam, and yet it would seem we are destined to be forever at odds.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “And I hope you can see it is for the best if I do not join you tonight for dinner. I ought to check on Theo in his nursery.”
“Theo is being well cared for,” he said, unyielding. “We will have dinner together.”
At the moment, there was nothing she wanted more than to go to bed after this exhausting day. Alone. “No,” she said.
“Yes.” He tilted his head, considering her in a way she mistrusted. “The first day I met you, I discovered there was only one way to win an argument with you.”
Her eyes went wide. He wasn’t about to throw her over his shoulder again, was he? The Philistine! He released her hands, took a step away, and then in one deft movement, hooked her round the waist and hauled her over his shoulder as if she weighed no more than a feather. The breath left her in a swift whoosh, which was fortunate for him indeed since it rendered her momentarily incapable of blistering him with a few choice words.
She thumped on his back and struggled to regain her breath. Her corset made it nearly impossible, but she somehow managed. “Let me down, you oaf.”
“No,” he said slowly, pivoting and heading toward the door. “I don’t think that I will, Lady Helen.”
“What in heaven’s name do you think you’re doing?” The blood rushed to her head, making her quite dizzy.
“I formally request the honor of your presence at dinner,” He opened her chamber door and breezed out into the hallway, still carrying her over his shoulder as though he were a pagan and she his spoils of war. “Will you join me of your own free will, Mrs. Storm, or must I carry you the whole way to the dining room?”
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“If I say yes, will you put me back on my feet?”
“Perhaps,” came his cryptic reply.
“I will join you,” she said as primly as she could while hanging upside down, “as it seems I must one way or the other. Now do put me down, if you please.”
He did, and she reluctantly took his proffered arm, allowing him to escort her to dinner.
Levi believed himself to be a man of reason, which was why he stood silently, hands clasped behind his back, as his new wife wandered through his private workroom. When he’d overseen the new design of this elegant old edifice, he had taken great care to make it have as much of the same feel as his Fifth Avenue home as possible. Of course, there was no denying that his home in Manhattan was far larger, far more encompassing and grand than his Belgravia house. But London had always been meant to be his second home, the helm from which he managed the European arm of North Atlantic Electric. He wanted to feel at home wherever he lived, damn it. And so he’d taken a drawing room and the study, removed part of a wall, and fashioned a workroom instead.
This workroom was not nearly as brimming with projects as the one in his Fifth Avenue house, but he hadn’t known how long his stay in London would last when he’d left, and he’d brought as many of his projects as possible with him. He had a habit of deconstructing the works of others and rebuilding them into improved versions. There wasn’t a thing on earth that couldn’t be somehow reworked into something better.
She bent down to examine a contraption he’d dissected, fingering a foil-wrapped cylinder. He itched to say something. To explain to her precisely how the parts all came together to be one working machine. But he had decided to permit her to look her fill and to hold his tongue. He owed her that. So he waited and he watched.
As a general rule, he didn’t allow anyone into his workroom. Not even servants, for a careless maid could do a great deal of harm, whether by unintentionally dislodging a component or by revealing his prototypes to someone else. No, a man didn’t share his works-in-progress with anyone.
Sweet Scandal Page 21
