by Karen Ranney
He should have warned her that he had gained the ability to see through her garments; imagination had fashioned anything she wore invisible, veiling her in iridescent nakedness. But he did not speak the words that teetered on the tip of his tongue, nor did he tell her of his dreams of late, filled with torrid and amorous adventure, leaving him hot blooded and stallion-ready at morning.
She slipped a book from its place on the shelf, holding it close. Archer noted that she was not as calm as she would have herself appear. Her elbows were locked, her gaze flitted nervously about, lighting on each separate object in the room.
Once, a sparrow had entered the Yellow Parlor by means of one of the windows. He’d watched it flutter around the room in a panic, while the chambermaids swatted at it with their brooms. Strange, how Mary Kate reminded him of that hapless sparrow, dead of fright, his heart beating so hard it had exploded in his chest. She trembled in the same way.
You are safer behind locked doors, Mary Kate. Too bad he’d only thought that warning. It would have been more honorable to speak the words.
The wind howled outside, a precursor to wintry weather, to storms out of the north and bent branches laden with ice. Yet it was a noise like a cautionary sound, a warning given in nature’s voice. Even the fire seemed to know she was improvident, spitting admonishments at her from its nest in the hearth.
She clutched the book to her bosom. He wanted to tell her that The Dunciad was frail protection against his wishes and his wants and an eternity of celibacy visited upon him. He should warn her that looking as she did, the firelight making a glowing crown of her hair, her full lips as alluring as any sweet his cook could conjure up, these were all lures and provocations.
Because Mary Kate was silent, an innocent object of his sudden lustful appetite, and because he was as quickly ashamed of it as he was aware of it, he lowered his defenses just a bit, to equalize their positions.
“You should not be here.” There, it was spoken. A warning. Did she come to convince him she was innocent? He did not want to hear what she had to say, prudence guided him to stay away from this woman. What was in question was not that she would try to appear without guile, but how long he would resist her explanations. He suspected he would believe her too quickly.
She looked up, her quick glance less shuttered, as open and wide as an infant’s. Someone should tell her she should not be so trusting of others, he thought, irritated, forgetting that he himself should be the one less accepting.
Silence. It had a taste. Dark, thick, it had a tang of rejection, a hint of pain.
It was not a restful silence between them now, but one alight with sparks. He found himself hardening, readying himself, an ancient reaction to man’s finding his mate. A totally improvident physical response to a woman diametrically his opposite in all facets of life—station, purpose, past. Yet he could not prevent the reaction in his loins any more than he could the anger she sparked in his mind—that, too, was unwise.
“I did not mean to disturb you.”
“Was your husband the one who taught you to speak, who banished the accent from your voice?” He realized he had been making a line of his quills, then, with one finger, he demolished such orderliness.
“My mother did not like to hear the Irish spoken in our house. She would whip us if we did.”
“She sounds a veritable paragon, this mother of yours. And the rest? Did she teach you Pope and how to enchant with words, then, Mary Kate?”
There was a flush on her cheek. From his words, or his studied inspection of her?
“Mrs. Tonkett. She was a retired governess, with a penchant for teaching, still. She found a willing pupil in me. I learned my letters from her, learned to cipher and how to add a bill. Most nights I sat by the fire, a branch of candles at my side, while I read aloud the works of Goldsmith, Pope, and Johnson.”
“And dreamed of times when you would no longer be a servant.” He held a quill too tight between his fingers. It had bent beyond salvaging. He laid it down, steepled his fingers, studied her.
“Is that what you object to the most, that I might wish myself more? Or that I married Edwin and escaped servitude?”
He was too easily irritated by her, by the way she had of standing up to him, by the words she threw back at him. “Why are you here, Mary Kate?”
“Because you thought me guilty of some sin I’d no knowledge of, Archer St. John. Because you followed me and made me prisoner, when all I wished was your well-being.”
“And yet you speak of Alice as if you know where she is. As if you and she have concocted this plot between you.”
“How can I prove I have not done something? It is so much easier to do the opposite. I can provide you with no information that would exonerate me.”
“And if I said it does not matter? That I forgive you?” His voice was lazy, deceptively so.
There was silence while she studied him. “I have done nothing to be forgiven for.” A smile was her answer.
“What was Edwin like as a husband?”
“You’ve asked me that before. Do I hold such curiosity for you?”
“I wonder why I feel compelled to answer your lies with honesty. I find that you manage to pique my interest far beyond what is wise. Do you, I wonder, choose to be such an enigma?”
“Another impossible question, Archer.”
“Then an easier one. Why did you have no children?”
“I almost bore a child. I lost him before term. The midwife said I would bear another. I never did.”
“Did you wish to?”
She linked her fingers together. “My husband did not wish it. He said he was too old to be responsible for another child when he’d already fathered a daughter and a son long dead.”
“And so, from that day on, he did not touch you.”
“You cannot know that.”
“Can’t I?” There was a smile upon his lips. She turned away from it, glanced above his head to the open curtains, the night shining black through them.
“My husband was not an unkind man,” she said, effortlessly deflecting his curiosity, channeling it into another path. Now he wanted to know what Edwin Bennett had done that would render her so careful of his memory, even now. What was the kindness he had granted her?
“He worked very hard, he was very diligent.”
“Yet he was colder than the grave.”
“Again, you cannot know that.”
“But you did not love him. Why?” He replaced the jewels in their drawstring bag, the cameo, too.
“Is that a question you need answered in order to gauge my innocence?”
“No,” he said. “But perhaps in order to satisfy my curiosity.”
“You have an overabundance of that emotion. Curiosity between us is a dangerous thing, I suspect. I remember wishing mine satisfied, only to be ridiculed for it.”
“Is that why you left, why you preferred the dangers of London to the luxury of Sanderhurst?”
She shook her head.
“Or is it why you’re here now, when it would be safer to be tucked into your bed, with your covers drawn up to your chin?”
“Perhaps.”
It was the one word she should not have spoken. But, no, she was not content with that, she had to embellish the truth a bit, adorn it with silk ribbons and pressed flowers.
“I find myself oddly reluctant to be alone. Tonight, at least.”
He sat frozen, catapulted into disbelief by her invitation, the proof of the similarity of their thoughts.
The fire’s glow echoed the color of crimson draperies, was diffused on the silk-covered walls, made mellow the masculine lines of furniture, the mahogany gleam of wood. This room was a place for surreptitious cigarillos, for the sipping of port or brandy, for hearty laughter and pointed discussion of shipping weights and the market’s rise. Not a place for confrontation of the basest sort, man against woman.
“Is this the way you would convince me of your innocence, Mary Kate? Bli
ndfold me with lust?”
“I did not know Edwin was your solicitor.”
He nodded, as if he had expected the words. “And you were not penniless, and without recourse. Do not forget that part of it.”
“I never knew Alice,” she snapped, such a harsh sound from a voice he’d grown to think melodious that he smiled, charmed at the sight of Mary Kate drawn to anger.
“That, I am beginning to accept as the truth, madam, perhaps the only part of this that seems plausible.” His fingers were occupied in tearing a bit of paper apart, long strands of it as if he would separate the fibers themselves. He wondered if she noticed that his fingers trembled at their chore.
She would be wiser to scramble from this room. It would certainly be safer. Instead, she said the only thing that would loose the reins of anger from his hands.
“And can you not forget, for one night, that you should not believe me? Or pretend, if you will, that I am someone different? Someone you might come to like, to befriend?”
“You have the oddest habit of shocking me, Mary Kate.”
He stood and walked toward her. She didn’t move, did not retreat, not even when he reached out and touched the curve of her jaw. How utterly perfect she was, all radiant reds and palest ivory, with those green eyes that lulled and beckoned and spoke words her lips never voiced. Hold me. Kiss me. Touch me. Had she said those words, or had he only thought them?
“I do not want a friend of you. Lover, perhaps. Even whore. But not friend. Not charming companion.”
He thought she looked like an earnest scholar with her arms around a book, except for that mouth that promised lush kisses and the imploring in her eyes that offered even more—a kitten to his hand, a slave to his mastery, a queen in his kingdom, a woman to his manhood.
Take her.
She was danger and mystery and warmth all in a delectable female package. He’d not felt the warmth for so long.
“If you had any sense at all, you would run from here as if a wolf were on your scent.”
“And miss the sweet devouring?”
Her smile hinted at all the answers for all the questions he’d had about her. She expressed longing, she professed ignorance, and yet that smile brought with it all the tenderness of maternal devotion, all the wickedness of Eve, all the excitement of a harlot born and bred for the trade.
He was compelled by lust so strong that it swallowed up all reason and thought and rational discourse, leaving only need and desire like a ticking clock in the foggy uncertainty of his mind. He reached out and gently pulled the book from her grasp. Her eyes were clear, unclouded by any emotion, direct, as serious as any look he’d seen from her.
He did not tell her what he thought, that his wife had offered him legality but no warmth. In her bed he was welcomed with passivity and resignation, not open curiosity and a promise of some mad and wild race to the finish. She had never dared nor challenged him, never questioned or wagered with him. He could not envision Alice ever looking at him this way, as if beseeching him to teach her the strange and wonderful game of love.
He pulled Mary Kate into his embrace, saying nothing until she softened around him, winter taffy growing warm by the fire.
“I’m a fool to offer it, but I’ll give you one more chance to leave this room untouched. After that, my bed will be scented with you.”
“I’ve no wish to leave,” she said softly, the words falling between them with almost no sound. It stopped his heart, such sweet surrender, and had the ability to feed the ravenous wolf within, taking the edge off his hunger and leaving him appeased enough for dessert.
He smiled, a particularly raffish grin, comprised of one part victory and two parts anticipation. He bent his head to breathe in her exhalations of breath, in tune with her the way a musician feels the soul of a delicate instrument.
He moved finally, stepping around her to the library door, flinging it open with less than his usual grace. He turned, extended a hand to her, and she stared at it for a long moment until she stepped forward and laid her hand in his.
Chapter 22
He watched her, his face unreadable, the black eyes blazing, the emotion in them too easily read. He did not want a victim, but a partner. Not a subordinate, but a playmate. Not a friend, then, but a lover.
What would he say if she told him her legs were trembling so that she wondered how she could stand? What would he do if she whispered to him that there were places in her body moist and swollen and growing even more so with each breath she took, each slight movement of his fingers now trailing on her back, mocking the thin fabric of her dress and her imprisoned flesh.
She pulled herself away from his arms, but did not move away from his presence. He lured her like a cloud of warmth, affection neither voiced nor expressed but somehow hinted at, and a promise of something she’d never felt but wished for always.
She blessed him for the silence of this seduction. If he forced the words from her, she did not know what she would say. Yes—it would condemn her forever, make of her something her flamboyant appearance had always hinted at, destroy a reputation she’d kept unsullied. No, and she condemned herself to loneliness, not just for this night, but forever.
There was no choice, and yet there was. She did not lie to herself, pretend, did not confuse this feeling in her body, this excitement in her mind, for anything more or anything less than what it was. She may be damned for a sinner tomorrow, but for one night in her life, she would feel something. It may burn and sear and immolate her, but she would walk into the fire gladly, for the sheer joy of being able to remember the flames.
She nodded quickly, a gesture that he seemed to accept, and they left the library hand in hand, twin conspirators in a game neither chose to identify, but each desperately wanted.
He strode up the magnificent curved staircase two treads above her, watching her mount the steps with her left hand holding her skirts, the right tightly held in his. She licked her lips, a nervous gesture, but one that caused him to stop, walk down to where she stood, eyes wide. He bent forward and kissed her, his tongue tasting the wetness of her lips, bathing them as if tasting a delicacy too long left untouched. Just that, a quick kiss, and she was left breathless. He smiled, a gentle smile she’d never seen before, a smile of understanding.
How could he possibly know that she had never felt this way before, that nothing she’d experienced since first seeing him in her mind had been anything similar to the rest of her life?
How could he realize that walking up these steps with him in this magnificent house should have been tantamount to mounting the gallows, and yet it felt as if it was the only act she’d ever performed in her life that was correct and proper? Touching him felt ordained, commanded by a power greater than herself. Receiving a kiss from him seemed the greatest joy. How could he understand that her heart beat so hard that she was breathless from it, that it felt as if just looking at him made her different, stronger, weaker, changed somehow?
The door to the Master’s Suite was easily pushed ajar and she was urged forward by his hand and a smile. The door closed behind them, sounding as loud as a church bell pealing in the dawn.
In a matter of minutes, the room was candlelit against the night, bright branches of candles burning without a thought to their cost or the rarity of their sandalwood scent.
He removed his blue waistcoat, his torso clad now only in a white shirt, gathered at the wrists and the neck with precise and delicate stitches. He looked, however, none the less the earl in his shirt and form-fitting trousers. If anything, he looked more predisposed to royalty; a haunting kind of power seemed to envelop him, as if he were capable, at that moment, of performing all kinds of feats of wizardry, not the least of which was luring her here, to this room, to the brilliance of a chamber alight with candles.
He did not smile in triumph; his face was oddly somber, his eyes direct but warm. A lock of hair had fallen onto his brow, but such a minor carelessness could not detract from his perfection,
a man in his prime, armed with bold intent and a certain ruthlessness that was evident even in his stance. She should have been frightened by him at this moment, but curiously was not. Excited, perhaps, and certainly questioning, but not of him. He was as he had always been, autocratic, domineering, a man of purpose with hints of tenderness. In this, he was no less.
Archer walked toward the massive four-poster bed where the counterpane was turned down, the pillows plumped. Only then did he turn and hold out his hand again to Mary Kate.
The questioning of herself would come later, when this odd joy was eased, when the pleasure center in her core was satisfied, when she had wept the tears she felt too close to the surface.
“Come here, Mary Kate.” Was it possible for a voice to sound so tender and yet so dangerous? Was it command he uttered, or enticement?
She looked from him to the branches of candles scattered about the room. “Are you not going to extinguish the candles?”
His smile was the first upon coming into his room. “No, I’m not going to extinguish the candles. Why should I, when I’ve wasted valuable moments lighting them?”
She walked the four steps to the edge of the bed, hands clasped in front of her. He loosened one button and then the next and the collar of her dress sagged open.
She did not protest until he reached the last button, her bodice gaping open to expose a serviceable corselet rendered gray from innumerable washings. She placed her hand upon his, forced herself to meet his eyes. There was no amusement there, no cruelty, only some emotion she could not name. She appealed to that expression in his eyes, to the softening she saw there, to latent kindness which was in his person and his character yet only revealed itself grudgingly.
“Please,” she asked. It was darkness she craved, the softness of shadows.
He only shook his head, extracted the last button free from its cage, and bent forward, placing a sweet and tender kiss between her breasts. She did not draw away from him, nor make any further protests when he grabbed the hem of her dress and raised it over her head. He did not stop until he’d finished undressing her.
