His sisters were chatty and accomplished, although their chatter veered dangerously close to the inane, and their accomplishments were limited mostly to the pianoforte or arranging flowers.
Cassin could not, in fact, remember any woman making quite as much sense as Lady Willow, despite the outrageousness of half of anything she said. She got to the heart of the matter, sharing only what was necessary to convince him or defend herself. She looked him directly in the eye. She did not fidget.
In the end, it mattered less what she said because his brain shut down, his body took over, and he was left to simply, happily, listen. All the while he fought the compulsion to—and this was the most alarming bit—reach out and touch her.
He held her gaze as long as he could, one skeptical eyebrow raised (he might have been losing his mind, but he did have his pride), but then he gave in to the inevitable and slid his gaze to her mouth. She noticed because her breath caught. For half a beat, their eyes locked. His heart was an accelerated thud in his ears and throat. And then, damn her, she swiped her wet pink tongue across her bottom lip.
“I’ve something I need to know,” he heard himself say. His eyes fixed on the lip where her tongue had been. She swiped it again, and he swallowed hard. “As designed, will this ‘arrangement’ include making love as husband and wife?”
Now her tongue froze, a tiny pink triangle on her bottom lip. It disappeared into her mouth. “I beg your pardon?”
“Yesterday, we shared a kiss—two kisses. And, I should warn you, we’re about to share another. Kissing is well and good—for now. But it begs the question, as your husband, will I take you to my bed?”
Cassin had come to Leland with two lists. One list contained the things he needed to know, and another list held the things he wanted to know. Dates for the supposed marriage, the location of her aunt’s house in London, the name of her family’s lawyer. At the very bottom of the second list, before Will you bring a vehicle into the marriage? and Have you taken the smallpox vaccine? was this question, the sex question, a topic he’d assumed they wouldn’t have time to discuss.
Instead, he’d damn near led with it.
She licked her bottom lip again, presumably just for the cruelty of it, and said, “I . . . well, honestly . . . ” She was suddenly less articulate, and damn if he did not find her discomposure just as alluring.
She went on, “We haven’t . . . that is, I had not fully conceived of this as part of the arrangement. I thought I might gauge how . . . necessary the prospective husband seemed to feel about it after . . . after we’d become man and wife.”
He squinted, trying to comprehend a world where the necessity for sex with her would be anything less than extreme. The struggle must have shown, because she laughed a little—a light, teasing sound—and she touched three fingers to her lips.
“Forgive me,” she whispered, “I cannot believe we’ve circled back to this.”
Cassin took a step closer. “Yes. And if you find that even the least bit remarkable, you’re more naive than I think. Whether you conceived of it or not, the attraction between us is undeniable, Willow.”
“I did not plan one way or the other,” she said softly, her eyes growing huge. “How could I? I could not begin to conceive of a man like you.”
Cassin’s control snapped. He reached out, wrapped both hands around her waist, and pulled her to him.
She let out a little gasp.
“Conceive of it,” he rasped. “And let me assure you”—he spoke low in her ear—“I will find it absolutely necessary.” He gathered his strength and lifted her off the ground. He kicked the door to the workshop closed with the heel of his boot and strode the three steps to the workshop bench, where he plunked her down.
“Oh,” she said, scrambling for a hold on his shoulders. And now they were eye to eye, nose to nose. His lips were inches from hers. Her laughter died, and the only sound was their mingled breathing, fast and shallow.
She surprised him by moving first, reaching beneath his coat, feeling her way around his body. She grabbed hold of his waistcoat, leveraging closer, and he sucked in a breath. His coat felt suddenly heavy and superfluous and bloody in the way, and he shrugged it off. He edged closer, nudging her legs right and left until his thighs hit the edge of the workbench ledge. The skirts of her dress were pulled taut across her lap, her knees on either side of his hips. All the while, her eyes never left his; she made breathy, intermittent noises—part shock, part excitement. He growled and came down fast, smothering her mouth with a kiss. She received him, meeting his lips, dropping her head. Her auburn curls brushed the backs of his hands. He scooped up a loose handful, tangling his fingers until he cradled her head in his palm.
She made a small, desperate sound and felt her way from his waist to his chest, sweeping her hands around his neck.
He moaned and kissed her harder, every muscle of his body pulled taut. Conscious thought was pitched into the air like a handful of leaves.
His hands left her hair and roamed her back, swooping low until he scooped her bottom and tucked her closer still. With no encouragement, she looped her feet around his thighs, and the new closeness was heaven.
When he broke the kiss to breathe, he dragged his face against her cheek, marking her with the roughness of his emerging beard and kissing his way down her neck. “Willow,” he whispered once, twice.
“Cassin,” she answered, kissing the top of his head, his ear. “Cassin, if we do this, how are we to remain detached and separate? Before I met you, a romantic entanglement never crossed my mind.”
He captured her mouth again, and she kissed him back. He fought for lucidity and lost, dragging in a breath. He had the idle thought that talking took too much away from kissing. He took her bottom lip in his mouth and sucked. So bloody soft.
“If we . . . make love,” she continued, pausing long enough to answer his next kiss, and his next, “will we not become emotionally involved? Will I not be your real wife?” He attacked her neck, and she dropped her head, moaning slightly. She added, “Your wife in earnest?”
“It needn’t be so . . . so serious,” he breathed, sweeping his thumbs up and down her sides, learning the perfect curve where her waist gave way to hip, her ribs gave way to breast.
“What do you mean?” she asked, stretching, raising her arms to give him more access.
Ah, she liked that, did she? He broadened his stance, still trying to get closer, swiping delicious circles from her hip to the ticklish spot beneath her arm.
“Cassin?” she said again, turning her face so her mouth was free.
He moaned, frustrated with the conflicting needs, to kiss her and to answer her at the same time. “We needn’t become emotionally involved to be intimately, physically acquainted, Willow,” he finally managed, speaking around nips to her ear.
He reached behind his hip for her foot, trying to tuck it more tightly around his thigh, but when he returned to her face, her lips were closed and hard and still. She’d gone still all over, in fact. The foot he’d just tucked closer, dropped from his leg and dangled from the workbench.
The change registered somewhere deep in the hibernating recesses of his brain, but his body did not hear. He buried his face in her neck, breathing her in, and said, “Can you not see how right this feels, sweetheart? We could enjoy the . . . rightness—and then walk away. Just as you conceived it, living our own lives. Our hearts need not engage.”
And now she wasn’t simply still; she was cold and stiff, rigid in his arms. He started, his brain scrambling to catch up.
He pulled back to look at her. “Are you—”
“Why am I surprised?” she said softly. Her arms fell from his neck. She leaned away, propping herself on her hands. He was given little choice but to step back. He gave his waistcoat a tug. He blinked at her. He stooped to pick up his coat.
He searched his brain for what, exactly, he’d just said to her. He couldn’t remember the precise words.
But he could gu
ess.
“Willow, I—” He wiped his mouth. “Your inexperience catches me off guard every time.”
“I may be inexperienced, but I know enough about myself to assure you that I will grow attached if I consummate my marriage to a man—that is to say, if I consummate my marriage to you.” She caught herself and stopped talking. She placed a hand lightly on her mouth. “This cannot catch you off guard, surely. I cannot agree to a physical relationship without an emotional bond.” She glanced at him and then quickly away.
He reached out to hand her down, but she leapt of her own accord and then sidestepped him.
“Believe me,” he heard himself say, “it can be done. Many, many people enjoy sexual congress with no . . . other commitment. Women and men alike. This is what I meant when I said that no wife of mine should carry on with paramours behind my back. It happens every day. Right or wrong.”
“Just to be perfectly clear,” she said, “you believe that a detached marriage should also amount to detached lovemaking?” She turned away. “We don’t know each other at all,” she said, a revelation. Her voice was soft. “If you believe this of me, you do not know me.”
“I’ve said this from the beginning.”
She did not respond, and he watched her float around the room. Reality and conscience began to weigh on him. This is not what he wanted. He was many selfish things, but he was not a coercer of virgins.
“Look, Willow, I was—”
“I cannot,” she said, cutting him off. She shook her head. “I don’t claim to know much of the passionate dealings of women and men, but I know myself. And I cannot trade intimacies with you and then walk away, feeling nothing. It’s not what I intended for the arrangement; it will disrupt our rapport, and I . . . I would suffer.” She glanced at him. “You may not know me, but I know myself. I am nothing if not self-preserving. To a fault, perhaps. It’s why I never intended to marry in the first place. We approach the agreement with no expectation of intimacy, or we don’t approach it at all. Strictly business. My dowry for the freedom of being your wife and leaving Surrey with my friends.”
“Fine,” he said. She was correct, of course. It was a pattern with her.
“It’s settled, then,” she said.
“Settled,” he repeated, rasping the word out. It almost hurt to say it. But only a scoundrel would twist her innocent design in order to sate his own need. And anyway, she did not appear open to further discussion. She dropped the hairpins on the workbench and stared out the window. She would not look at him.
“Fine,” he repeated. “I . . . I apologize for the kiss—er, kisses. I cannot . . . I cannot say what came over me.” This was a lie; he knew exactly what had come over him. Another reason to agree to her terms. He was afraid of what had come over him.
Without warning, she spoke again. “I want to be absolutely sure we intend the same thing.” She said the words with measured calm, staring out the workshop window. “Are you saying there is no prospect of a future between us? An authentic future? When you return to England?”
Cassin felt himself begin to sweat. He was not saying that, and he could not say that; likewise, he could not say the opposite. “An ‘authentic future’ was never discussed as part of the deal,” he said.
“Neither was detached sex, but you brought it up, didn’t you?” She spun around. “You’ll have to forgive me. I am a decisive person; I always have been. And I want to be sure I understand. About what you want.”
I want you, he thought, surprising himself. Beneath me in my bed. Braced before me against the wall. On the floor before the fire.
If he also meant “opposite me at dinner” or “walking beside me on the grounds of Caldera,” he could not allow himself to dwell on these. How could he assume, when there was so much left to do? Barbadoes, guano, her life in Belgravia. It was impossible to say what exactly, precisely, their prospects might be in two years or five years or even next week.
“I am saying that I have no idea,” he said. “We don’t have an accurate idea of how long it will take to mine the guano. And any calamity may befall us while we do it. I may see and do things that will change me forever, make me unsuitable, or miserable, or . . . I don’t know . . . one-legged.”
She wrinkled her nose, and he said, “It happens.”
He went on, “You may see and do things. You may despise London and move to France or Italy or the far side of the moon. Or you may adore London so much you never wish to be anywhere else. We cannot say.” He paused and she looked down at her hands.
“And,” he finished, “at the risk of overburdening you with my family obligations, the threat from my uncle becomes more pressing with each passing day. His letters reach me even here, in Surrey. He challenges my leadership and mocks my authority. My mother writes from Yorkshire that he turns up at Caldera, rallying the tenants to his side.”
“I . . . I’m sorry,” she said simply.
“Yes. How sorry we both are, but can you see why I dare not speculate about a future until I sort out my present obstacles? A lunatic uncle and starving tenants?”
She raised her head and nodded. Her eyes were bright.
Softly, he finished, “This is why I meant to dwell only in what we could enjoy right now. It was indulgent of me to consider it, but”—he blew out a puff of air—“you test the limits of my self-control.”
She nodded again, more to herself this time, and turned away, gathering up a stack of fabric. Her face was suddenly detached and determined and closed.
“I’ve asked and you’ve answered,” she said briskly. “I’m grateful for your honesty, truly. If nothing else, it allows us to move on. I’ve a list of logistical considerations that we must sort out in order to get a quick wedding underway as soon as possible.”
She paused and looked at him, and their eyes locked. Could she really cast aside the heart-pounding torrent of the last twenty minutes with so little reaction? One minute she was straddling him on the workbench, and now they would sort out logistics?
He searched her eyes for anger or resentment.
She stared back levelly, her eyes flat. She blinked and smoothed the fabric in her hand. Swollen lips and wild hair were the only indication of their passion.
God, that hair, he thought, wanting urgently to reach out and sink his hands into it.
“How can we best acquaint your partners with my friends?” she asked. “I would be remiss if I did not pursue potential for them as well as for myself.”
Cassin swiped a hand across his mouth. “Oh yes. The friends. By chance would these partners be called Miss Tessa St. Croix and Miss Sabine Noble?”
She straightened. “Yes, but how did you—”
“Stoker and Joseph have already sought them out.”
“They’ve what?”
Cassin shrugged. “Not called on them, but they have . . . looked in on them, shall we say. From afar.”
Her eyes went wide, and he looked away. “I apologize for their . . . er, assertiveness. I was as surprised as you by their speed. Perhaps I underestimated how eager they are to get the guano expedition underway. I . . . ” He started again. “They have compelled me.”
He paused now, considering this. They have compelled me. It was the newest reason in a long list of reasons he’d said yes to Willow’s arrangement. Stoker and Joseph wanted so urgently for the guano plot to succeed. He came to the partnership with so little else, and £60,000 was significant.
“But I’d not even uttered their names,” she said.
“It was not difficult to learn of your closest friends when we asked in town. It so happens that the villagers are more familiar with ‘Lady Willow’ than the never-before-known ‘W. J. Hunnicut.’ And how happy they’ve been to tell us about her two friends. My partners were intrigued, to say the least.”
“But could they not wait until Sabine and Tessa and I were prepared? It was one thing for me to be caught off guard by your interview, but my friends deserve the advantage of fair warning.”
“You have one day, I believe,” he said, sliding on his gloves. “Stoker and Joseph would like to meet them right away.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Willow traveled to her wedding alone in a carriage, except for her maid, Perry, and Mr. Fisk. It felt oddly fitting, considering Willow’s family’s enduring lack of interest in her, and Perry’s obsessive interest in her hair.
And then there was Mr. Fisk. Dear Mr. Fisk, whose relationship to Willow defied any label. And today he had ridden hard from London through rain and fog to reach her in time for the ceremony.
“Mr. Fisk,” Willow gushed when he poked his head into the parked carriage. Her tight clutch of nerves fell slack at the sight of him.
“Oh no, you mustn’t, Mr. Fisk!” Perry gasped, throwing herself across Willow’s perfectly appointed gown. “Just look at him, my lady! Wet and muddy, and he smells like a lathered horse.”
Mr. Fisk made a face of mock surprise while cold rainwater dripped from the brim of his hat into a basket of the maid’s provisions. Perry squealed and nudged it beneath the carriage seat with her shoe.
“Perry, stop,” Willow admonished with a tsk. “It’s not a real wedding, and we’ve waited days for Mr. Fisk’s return. Climb in, Mr. Fisk, if you can bear your wet clothes an hour longer.”
“ ’Tis a real wedding!” countered Perry, pressing her back against Willow, as if Mr. Fisk’s presence threatened them both.
“I feared I would miss it for certain,” said Mr. Fisk, “when the weather would not clear. But I dare not leave London until I’d answered every query on my list.”
Mr. Fisk had gone to London to prepare for the move; taking into account what Willow could expect to buy and how she should best pack and provision. He surveyed the living quarters and discussed the household with her aunt. He had his own motives too—Willow was sure of it—and so be it. She had long appreciated his watchfulness and forethought. In the last week alone, he’d taken great pains to verify every claim the earl and his partners made about their ship and island, the mining of guano, and the potential of selling it to English farmers.
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