by Karen Ranney
One hand reached out and snared the opening of his shirt, pulling him closer. He smiled, startled as he heard the material tear. He stripped his clothes off with immoderate haste, baring himself as blatantly as he’d demanded of her.
He left her, went to the wall, turned a lever mounted there. In moments, she was bathed by a mist.
He smiled at her look of wonder, his smile fading as she closed her eyes, turning her face up to allow the mist to bathe her cheeks, forehead, nose. She extended her arms up into the air, her body arching into the soft cloud.
He’d wanted her naked and wet ever since the first time she’d come into his glasshouse. He’d not expected, however, the punch to his gut, the sudden feeling of need so great that he wanted to brand her his.
It did not matter that he thought her an adventuress. It did not matter that he could easily suspect her of underhanded dealings, of being manipulative and cunning. It did not even matter that if she believed in what she said, he could quite possibly call her insane.
At this moment she belonged to him, and that was all that mattered.
The mist bathed their skin, pinpricks of sensation. She opened her eyes to find him staring at her, his face glistening with the mist, his hair wet. And through it all, the sun beat down, warming them.
His gaze slicked down her body just as the water crept, droplets at a time, down her skin. Her skin was slick, the kiss she gave him voracious. Was it not the lioness who killed the prey? He felt himself swept up in the openmouthed demand, in her whimpers as if they were shouted commands.
He bit her shoulder, just the tiniest bite, to tame her, teach her who was the master in this game. She retaliated by doing the same, by plucking his nipple between her fingers and then gently biting it, scraping his flesh with her teeth.
What the bloody hell had he started? She was wild, wet from the mist, dappled by the sun, the primordial mate.
Patience, Archer.
Patience, hell.
He turned her, braced her so that her hands rested upon a workbench, stood behind her and drove into her so fast and so hard that she gasped at his entrance.
“Did I hurt you?” he whispered over her shoulder, dotting little kisses upon her neck. Regret and lust vied with each other for dominance. Lust gave a hearty sigh of relief as she shook her head, then reached back with both hands and grabbed his hips.
He should have gone slower, he told himself that. He should have treated her with some gentility, but those words, also, were lost in the mist and the mindlessness of it. He buried his hands between her legs, coaxing her on with soft strokes and intrusive fingers. He heard himself talking in a voice nearly raspy with need, but couldn’t decipher the words, had no idea what he said and why.
Nothing mattered at that moment but Mary Kate, and the sobbing cries he heard uttered in a voice lost to pride. He didn’t know if they were hers or his.
The glasshouse was attached to the end of the west wing, and through a connecting door Archer could enter the house undetected. It was a convenience he rarely used, but he was grateful for it today, as he strode through the door and into a storeroom with Mary Kate in his arms. He was quite frankly glad of the short distance, of the chair that sat waiting for its ultimate disposition—reupholstery or to be torn asunder for wood and scraps.
Playing Sir Galahad nearly killed him. She was not a delicate female, was Mary Kate, and she was deadweight, having succumbed to that arcane condition the French called so delicately la petite mort, and which had given him a bad turn there for several seconds. Now, as he sat upon the abandoned chair with her cradled in his arms, he wondered what the hell was wrong with him that he could be so abjectly contrite on one hand and so pleased as Punch on the other.
It was a gratifying experience for his ego, even though he wasn’t sure he could live through too many more of these experiences. Making love with Mary Kate transcended any experience he’d ever had. Oh, he started off slow enough, but he was galloping hell-for-leather at the end, defying gravity, his age, and any rational thought processes that might, God forbid, slow his race to completion. She was damn well wearing him out.
She made a little sound, and he held her closer, her cheek cradled against his naked chest. She was so utterly beautiful, he thought, looking down at her. He was feeling acutely protective at this moment, another sensation of which he was unfamiliar.
Damn, he was a fool. To know so much about a person, to suspect her of the worst subterfuge, and to willingly enter her web of deceit seemed to him to be the most idiotic of actions.
She’d been a barmaid, an occupation she’d easily admitted, yet her voice was softly modulated and unaccented. She’d milked cows with those elegant hands, scrubbed floors with her hair tied up in a kerchief. Why did it not seem to matter? She’d had every opportunity to know his secrets and take advantage of his trust, yet he found reasons to excuse her for it.
He pushed back the tendrils of hair from her face, feeling an absurd sense of tenderness as though she were a child entrusting herself to him. He smiled softly to himself as she half turned, restless. She was more than pretty, she looked like a nymphet, a cherub wafting among the clouds, draped with satin and silk, hair curly and unbound, a creature taken full blown from Guercino’s Virgin and Child.
Archer, you’re an absolute ass.
There was a knock on the door, a discreet tap. Bernie fluffed out her peignoir and then her hair, tilted her chin up, then down.
“Come in,” she called softly, thinking that it would not do to seem so eager.
“I’ve brought the wine you asked for, ma’am.” The handsome blond footman stood at attention, which was all very well and good, except that she wasn’t his commanding officer and the upper button of his tunic was undone.
“Is it white? I find that red wine gives a headache. But then, perhaps it’s because I drank too much of it the last time I partook of it. Could that be it, do you think?”
A grin sliced through the tanned face before it resumed its implacable lines. “I’m certain I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Your name is Peter.”
“Aye.”
“And you’re new to Sanderhurst.”
“Aye, that I am.” There was just the most delicious trace of brogue in his voice.
“You needn’t look so wary, Peter, I am but trying to be pleasant.”
“Is that what it is, now?”
“And what would you call it?”
She should have been scorched by his look. A slow up-and-down perusal of her half-clad body.
“I’d call it seduction, an’ I want no part of it,” Peter said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“An’ right you are. Ashamed of yourself, you should be, Bernadette St. John. Chasin’ a man that way. When, and if, we lie down on the sheets, it’ll be because I say so, not because you’ve wiggled your fingers at me.”
“Is that right?”
“Aye, it is. An’ if you’re half the woman I think you are, you’ll be willin’ to wait for it.”
“Will I?”
His smile was a blaze of male satisfaction. She nearly threw something at him. “Aye, Bernie. It’ll be worth waitin’ for. Until then, I think you’d better have one of the female staff serve you in your room.”
She was still staring at the door after he’d closed it.
Chapter 27
Bernie insisted that Mary Kate join her and Archer for dinner in the state dining room, a place Mary Kate had only seen through her exploration of Sanderhurst. Serve there, perhaps. Sup? Never.
She had responded with an earnest desire to have a tray taken in her room. In fact, she would fetch it herself to save the little maid the journey. Even that was vetoed in such a stentorious voice that Mary Kate was certain the entire staff of Sanderhurst, over thirty people, had heard.
“If he thinks you good enough to share his bed, Archer shall not cavil about your sharing his board. Is that not so, Archer?”
It was not enough t
o have such humiliation heaped upon her, Bernie had to ice the cake even further by involving Archer in this discussion.
She should have stood her ground with Bernie, but experience over the last week had taught her that the Countess of Sanderhurst had an implacable will. Take the matter of her name. She absolutely refused to respond to anything other than Bernie, insisting that she was much more democratic than Mary Kate, else the younger woman would not have such difficulty.
Little did Bernie know that the dilemma of what to call her was the least of her worries. She was more than confused, she was restless and uncertain. The nights were filled with passion laced with humor. The days, with warmth and camaraderie and more comfort than she’d ever known. Still, Mary Kate was mindful that she did not belong here. She did not reside at Sanderhurst because of opportunism or greed, motives she suspected Archer thought her guilty of, even though she lacked the courage to ask him. Instead, she was enchanted and bemused by the range of emotions she felt.
This was not her home and she did not belong here, and these were days of halcyon pleasures that she would never have again. And through it all, the nights when she could not wait to hear his footfalls and the mornings when she awoke to feel him beside her, kissing her neck and leading her to passion’s precipice once again, she knew she had to leave. There was a family to find, and loved ones to belong to, and a home, perhaps, that was more rightfully hers.
But for tonight, she would pretend she belonged in this palace, and to its prince. He was exquisitely tailored, the perfection of dress and decorum achieved only by the very rich or those who do nothing all day to occupy themselves but think on their attire. He wore his evening clothes well, even for such a large man. But the twinkle in his eyes did not quite match the severe black of his formal coat, or the snowy lace of his jabot.
“I think, Bernie, that Mary Kate would add just the touch of balance we require for an evening of discussion.”
“There, Mary Kate, did I not tell you? The man is positively democratic in his beliefs, which is but one topic for our dinner this night.”
And it was. That and the slave trade, which Bernie found reprehensible, an opinion shared by Archer. The high price of food imports was discussed, along with the news Bernie shared that the French revolutionists had turned the grounds of the Tuilleries into a potato field.
“Those fools have made some idiotic law, my dears, that only one pound of meat a week can be eaten, upon pain of death.”
“It sounds like something the French would do.”
“Your prejudice is showing, Archer.”
“What would you have me do, Mother, salute those idiots for slaughtering some of their finest minds, or for developing a revolutionary calendar with such months as Thermidor and Fructidor?”
“He has a French chef only because of me, you see,” Bernie said in an aside to Mary Kate. “I hired Alphonse long ago. I think he dislikes the man because Alphonse can outbrood him. Archer does have a habit of melancholia when it rains.”
“The sky is perfectly clear, Mother.”
“I was being but metaphoric, love. Have you noticed, Mary Kate, that he addresses me as Mother only when he is sorely irritated at me?”
“I am here, you know. I have not absented myself from your midst,” Archer said before Mary Kate could answer.
“It would be a shame, my darling, if you do. We women do so like a Homeric hero.”
“You have gotten worse with age, Mother, beyond my ability to control you. I should have put that frog into your bed.”
“Oh, you did worse things than that to me, Archer. You cried in your sleep. If that did not put the fear of all mothers into me, nothing else would have. Nothing that your feverish little boy’s mind could conjure up could possibly have worked as well.”
Mary Kate watched their by-play with fascination. How alike they were, each stubborn and opinionated and determined. How fond they were of each other, that was as plain to see.
“Tell me of India, Bernie. I’ve heard it is hot and dusty and they worship cows. Is that the truth?” Mary Kate caught Archer’s grateful look from the corner of her eye. She propped her chin upon one fist and gazed imploringly at Bernie, knowing, even from such short acquaintance, that Bernadette St. John was a storyteller, and like most spinners of tales, could not resist a captive audience.
Bernie’s voice droned on, and in one ear, Mary Kate heard of the nizam of Hyderabad, and the beginning of the third Mysore War, enough information not to be accused of inattention should Bernie question her. Yet the bulk of her regard was not on her, but on Archer.
Each person held the secret of himself tightly guarded, did he not? Archer St. John. A hermit to all outward appearances. A man of reclusive temperament. A scholar, a spice king, a betrayed husband. All of these descriptions fit him, and yet none singly.
And what did he see when he looked at her? Widow. Gentlewoman only slightly removed from the tavern. Dairymaid, student of Pope, impecunious dreamer.
Mary Kate absently rubbed the back of her neck. The pain was bearable, the anticipation nearly excruciating. Was the onrush of pain another warning? A precursor of yet another vision? And she’d thought herself free of them, having been spared this last week of the soft, insistent voice that impelled her to protect a man who neither wished for her protection nor seemed to require it. And yet she would do so for his own sake now. Perdition. That was what she was headed for; all the innate common sense of which she was so proud rose up in protest. To love Archer St. John was foolish.
I never meant to love him. He was my friend, the one to whom I’d go whenever there was a problem I needed solving, or when the world seemed not to understand me so well. His laughter was the most glorious thing, like the sun sparkling on morning dew, all new and without guilt, or wickedness in any degree.
I remember when we were children together, walking over the fields beside Sanderhurst, entranced with the ancient house of the St. John earls. He and I would fish in the lake to the south of the property, using thread from my petticoat and a whittled hook. He would never catch a fish, he said, because I was forever talking, and fish did not like the sound of a girl’s voice. So I would sit on the bank with my knees drawn up and a finger across my lips and a pursed expression on my face evidently so pained that he would finally laugh and release me from the bond of his silence. How like the summer his smiles were, and all I had to do to experience that season was to salt my memory with the recollection of that day.
After all those years of laughter, of confidences, he seemed like my other half, the missing part of me where I stored all the good times, all the wonder tokens of childhood. I like to recall that he was not simply my friend, but that I was his, too. He could coax music from the wind. Once, we had sat beneath a tree and he had bid me be still. We sat there listening to the sound of the spring breeze soughing through the branches, hearing the orchestra of leaves.
It was then I began to realize he could make music from his mind, create it in the basest of places, the most sacred of rooms. He was not simply mine, but with such a great talent, he belonged to the world.
He was my great good friend, my love, my dearest.
One Christmas he bent toward me, offering me a kiss of peace, a benediction he’d gifted me for many years. It was a normal gesture between kin and close relatives. When his lips touched my cheek it was as if a stroke of lightning grounded me to the earth. How horrible that knowledge and awful, and how wondrous all at once, as if I knew such a perfect secret but was forbidden to ever entertain it in my mind.
From that moment on, I vowed to become a proper wife to Archer St. John. It was such a sinful thing, to love someone the way I was beginning to love him, so wicked that I tried to forget it.
Instead, he occupied my every thought, my every dream. He was my friend. My love.
Mary Kate blinked, surfacing into a silence that was almost a roar.
Archer sat beside her, rubbing her hands. Bernie sat on her other side, waving a
vile mixture of sal volatile beneath her nose.
“Are you very sure you’re all right, my dear?”
Mary Kate sat staring at the candles as if fixated by their flicker. In a moment they would tell her that she had not responded to their questions, that they’d had to wave the vile smelling salts in front of her in order to gain her attention. At least she had not fainted again.
It isn’t you, Mary Kate thought, looking at Archer, a glance that was filled with enough puzzlement to inspire his own.
But who is it? Whom does Alice want me to protect?
Chapter 28
“It’s a breech-loading musket, Mary Kate, not a snake.” Bernie rolled her eyes at the way Mary Kate was eyeing her new firearm.
“I truly do not care what it is, Bernie. Why must I even be here?”
It had taken fifteen minutes of walking to pass through the east wing of Sanderhurst. They’d exited through one of the lesser doors, emerging onto a path that led through the adjoining forest. The stark black bark of leafless trees and the gray, smoky sky combined to create a depressing day. Yet there was a hint of warmth in the air, so much so that the constant drip of melting ice was heard.
“Because I truly do not wish to be alone out here in the woods.”
Mary Kate’s look was a cross between astonishment and hilarity. “You have a gun, Bernie. A very large and mean-looking gun.”
“I do not mean for the sake of safety, Mary Kate. I enjoy concentrating upon more than one task at a time. And I think you should not be so afraid of weapons, my dear. You would do quite well at target shooting, if you could refrain from screaming at the sound of a gun firing.”
Bernie had not been prepared for Mary Kate’s surprise at the very first shot from her new Nock breechloader.
