A Wicked Kind of Husband

by Mia Vincy

  “I invited Mr. Isaac to stay here,” Mr. Das said. “I apologize. It was not my place.”

  Isaac was coming down the stairs swiftly, despite having to place both feet on each step, supported by his stick, before he could tackle the next one.

  “You did the right thing,” she said, loudly enough for Isaac to hear too. “Isaac will be staying here, and if Joshua does not like it, then he can either explain to me why, or find somewhere else to sleep. You will tell him that, Mr. Das.”

  “With pleasure, Mrs. DeWitt,” Mr. Das said with a bow, and left.

  Cassandra turned to Isaac.

  “Never mind Joshua,” she said. “He is not polite at the best of times. I, for one, am very happy to meet you.”

  Isaac looked at the door and back at her. “You are his wife, I gather. I apologize for the intrusion, Mrs. DeWitt.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “You must call me Cassandra and I will call you Isaac, for we are brother and sister now.”

  “It was a mistake to come,” he said stiffly. “I’ll not go where I’m not wanted.”

  “Whyever not? Joshua does it all the time. Besides, you are wanted, and never mind him.”

  Filby the butler was hovering, awaiting instructions, and so she gave them: a room for their guest, and tea in the drawing room.

  “Now,” she said briskly to Isaac, “I have had a rather astonishing day so far, and I mean to refresh myself by drinking tea and eating too many cakes. I insist that you join me and entertain me with exciting stories about life at sea.”

  She waited. After a moment, his face broke into a shy smile and his lost look faded away. At least she had accomplished one thing today.

  And perhaps he would also tell her more about their family. Perhaps something he said would help her understand her husband, and why he needed to push everyone away.

  Chapter 14

  That night, Cassandra lay in bed, watching the candle burn down, tensing at every sound.

  Until finally she heard footsteps, the door of the next bedroom opening and shutting, and her body came alert like a cat.

  She tugged off her nightcap, eased out of bed, and pressed her ear to the connecting door, listening to the sounds of Joshua moving around. A thunk—a boot hitting the floor?—and a second thunk. The clang of the poker as he tended the fire. And then—silence. No movement. No footsteps. Nothing.

  He was not coming to her.

  No surprise, really. After all, her day had been marked by failure—failure to persuade Lord Bolderwood to drop the case, failure to persuade Joshua to make love to her, have children, accept Isaac. Yet amid the day’s disappointments had been a world of delight: seeing him with the children, tying his cravat, their intoxicating camaraderie, the thrill of misbehaving, of laughing together, of their near kiss.

  We are husband and wife, she reminded herself, however he tries to deny it. Their marriage was not what either of them wanted but it was what they had.

  She tapped lightly, opened the door, and slipped into his room. He stood by the fire, his banyan tossed over breeches and shirt, staring at nothing. His hair tumbled over his forehead and the firelight licked at his features and the shadow of his next day’s beard.

  “What?” he said without looking at her. “I’m busy.”

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  She felt like an intruder, but went to his side anyway. Perhaps he would send her away, but her longing to recapture that day’s closeness made her stubborn. Besides, if she hesitated every time she risked failure, she would be like Mama and stay in bed all day.

  Finally, he shifted and inspected her with narrowed eyes. Her body responded to his gaze and she tried to ignore it. That was not what she was here for, not this time.

  “That is an ugly bed jacket,” he said. “What possessed you to buy such a thing?”

  “Notions of warmth and practicality, mainly.”

  From Joshua, she decided, that was almost an invitation to stay. So she adjusted the lapels of his banyan, her fingertips sliding over the warm silk as her knuckles bumped against his hard chest.

  “How was your day?” she said.

  “You’re using polite-speak on me now?” he said. “If you’ve come to seduce me, just bloody well say so.”

  Yet he did not move away. His eyes dipped to look at her mouth, before fixing on some point over her shoulder. She resisted the urge to slide her arms around his neck, to inhale his clean, spicy scent, taste his mouth again, press her body to his.

  “I came to talk about Isaac,” she said.

  At that, he pulled away, but she gripped his lapels and he came back to her. It felt like a prize. She flattened her palms over his chest. The heat of his skin radiated into hers and there—there—the beating of his heart. Her own heart beat faster in response and she reminded herself to breathe.

  “I don’t want to talk about Isaac,” he said. “I want to talk about your bed jacket.”

  “My bed jacket is not important. Your brother is.”

  “No.” He frowned at her bed jacket, as though it were a puzzle he had to solve. “You have your priorities all wrong.”

  “He told me he is looking for your mother and sister. I had not realized you never heard from them after they left.”

  “Everyone left,” he muttered. “I think it is the bow that makes it ugly.” He fingered the offending bow and his knuckles brushed the underside of her chin. A frisson danced down her spine and rested below her belly. “It must scratch your chin. That is entirely ridiculous.”

  “The fabric is soft. It doesn’t bother me at all.”

  “It bothers me.”

  He tugged at the bow, and she felt it loosen. He was undressing her! Oh heavens. She dragged her attention back to his family; it was more important than seduction. For now.

  “It must have been difficult for you,” she managed to say. “For your mother to leave without saying goodbye.”

  All his energy was directed toward untying that bow. “She had just been demoted from countess to mistress. Funny how women get upset about that kind of thing. There, much better without that bow.” He smoothed open the top of her bed jacket. His hands briefly rested on her chest, an inch above her breasts. Yet if he noticed that, or her ragged breathing, he gave no sign.

  “Bloody hell,” he went on. “There are more ties.”

  “Yes, they hold the jacket closed. They’re very useful that way.”

  “No, they are entirely unsatisfactory.”

  His nimble fingers plucked at another tie, and another, and another. Each time he tugged on a bow, he tugged at her breath, tugged a little more desire to the surface of her skin. She hauled back her wayward mind.

  “And to think your sister was only four the last time you saw her,” she went on. “Miriam—that’s such a pretty name.”

  “You do realize I am aware of all this information.”

  “You might have forgotten it. You have a selective memory.”

  “There.”

  His hands slid over her shoulders to part the bed jacket, and lingered, heavy and warm. His eyes burned as he looked her over, with a heat that had nothing to do with the fire, a heat that coursed through her body. She shifted uncomfortably and glanced down, uncertain. Her nightgown was not immodest, but its upper edge rested on the swell of her bosom and the fabric was thin, which meant…Oh dear. She moved to fold her arms over her chest, but, swift as always, he captured her wrists, holding them loosely at her side.

  “No, no,” he said, his eyes roaming wickedly over her. “I’ve decided I like your bed jacket a lot better when it is undone.”

  When his eyes met hers again, they were playful and intense all at once. She licked her suddenly dry lips and tried to speak again.

  “Um. As I was saying…”

  “Were you saying something? I didn’t notice.”

  “I think Isaac is feeling lost and alone.”

  He released her wrists and dropped his eyes again. “Actually, no, your bed jacket st
ill offends me.”

  “He was in the Navy for more than half his life and he is only twenty-four.”

  “I think it would look better on the floor.”

  Oh heaven help her. “And now that he has been discharged, he does not know what to do with himself.”

  “Definitely needs to be on the floor.”

  He used only his fingertips to chase the bed jacket down her arms and over her hands, a touch so slow and delicate and tantalizing that she bit her lip to avoid crying out.

  He knew what he was doing to her, curse him. But what she had gleaned from Isaac mattered too.

  “I know what you’re doing, Joshua.”

  “Rescuing you from this ugly garment. I am very heroic.”

  “You’re avoiding talking about your brother.”

  The bed jacket slithered down her body, pooled at her toes. His fingertips rested on her hands like butterfly feet.

  “I am alone with my wife in my bedchamber,” he said. “Of course I don’t want to talk about my brother. You know, your nightshift is ugly too.”

  “He said you tried to keep them all together.”

  Her words hit a mark that she did not know was there. His expression turned cold and hard, like steel; his shoulders tensed and he dropped his hands. Already she missed him, missed his teasing and his sensuality, but she had to say this. She had to understand. She had to make him understand.

  “That when Papa came to help you, you wanted you and your brothers to stay together but they wanted to leave. You tried to stop them from going, you said your family had to stay together, but it was what they wanted, the Navy and India, but that’s no reason to turn your back on him now.”

  A tick of a clock, a beat of her heart, a pop from the fire—then he moved so quickly she did not know his intention until she was already tossed over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, her chin bumping his back, his arm an iron band around her knees.

  In only a few strides, he was back in her room. He hauled her off him and she flew through the air and landed on her mattress with a bounce. Her nightshift was tangled up around her thighs and she automatically tried to smooth it down.

  “Stop it,” he ordered harshly.

  She froze. But he was not looking at her legs.

  “Stop trying to fix my family,” he said. “You’re trying to fix your sisters and my brothers and me and—whatever it is you’re trying to do, stop it. It is very tedious and extremely unwanted.”

  She lifted her chin mutinously. “He’s going to stay here. I’ve invited him.”

  “Of course. Why shouldn’t everyone move into my house?”

  “It’s my house too.”

  He glowered at her. “And stop being so right all the time. Now, I’m going back through that door and you will not bother me again.”

  She scrambled up onto her knees. “But what about the other thing?”

  “What other thing?”

  “My bed jacket. And my wifely duty.”

  He buried his fingers in his hair and made a sound like a growl. “You’re trying to seduce me again. You and your wifely duty and your empty womb and your ugly bed jacket. I don’t have time for this. I have some very important work to do.”

  “It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

  “Then I have some very important sleeping to do.”

  No, he would not leave! She would not let him.

  Cassandra grabbed the hem of her nightshift and pulled it up over her head. And then it—Oh no! It caught on her hair and she yanked at it, yanked harder, feverishly aware that her whole body was exposed to him—she should never have done this, it was so brazen, and now she felt a fool—and she yanked again, and the shift came free, half her hair tumbling down her back after it.

  But his eyes burned as they roamed wildly over her nakedness, and she basked in the heat, unable to move.

  Not an inch of him moved but his eyes. Her ragged breaths were too loud in the silent night and her heart performed a drunken quadrille. She swallowed away her nervousness, and the sound of her gulp, so embarrassingly loud, made her unfreeze. She whipped the shift in front of her and clutched it over her breasts.

  “Perhaps I should not have done that,” she said, her voice strange, uneven.

  She watched, mesmerized, as he extended one arm, with slow, deliberate care, and flicked the door shut. His eyes were dark and liquid in the candlelight, and a matching liquid heat pooled in her belly.

  “Done what?” His voice was rough velvet caressing her anguished skin. “Taken off your shift, or tried to cover up again?”

  “Um.”

  He eased closer. The height of the bed brought their faces level. If she leaned forward, her covetous breasts would graze his chest. She pressed her arms more urgently over her breasts, not for modesty now, heaven help her, but because they needed to be touched and pressing them like this felt good.

  A gleam in his eye suggested he knew, or maybe that was her imagination, because how could he know, and why did he have to be so wicked, and why did she long for his teasing to continue even as she longed for it to stop?

  “I think you’ll find, my lovely wife, that both of those were a mistake.”

  He tugged at her nightshift. She clutched it more tightly. He raised an eyebrow, wicked playfulness mingling with heated promise.

  “It’s only fair,” he murmured. “You saw me naked.”

  He tugged again, and this time she let him take the shift and drop it onto the floor.

  Chapter 15

  Joshua caught barely another glimpse of Cassandra’s exquisite breasts before she crossed her forearms over them, her hands on her shoulders. A thrillingly inadequate effort. Her hair was tumbling down around her face, her eyes were wide and dark, and she breathed in short, shuddering breaths that echoed his own.

  She was sheer perfection, and he was lost. What a fool he was to have started this. But he had, and here they were, and now he was nothing but need for her. Need and a faint clanging, somewhere in his brain, saying that he must not touch her. Because…Because…Something.

  Ah, yes, because if he touched her, the world would collapse.

  What utter nonsense.

  “I thought you didn’t want this,” she said.

  “I can stop any time I want.”

  “So why don’t you stop now?”

  “Because I don’t want to yet.” He hooked his fingers around her wrists. The world did not collapse. “Because first I want to look at my wife.”

  She allowed him to lift her hands away from her body, to rest them back by her sides. Her full breasts, rising and falling. The round curve of her stomach. The softness of her hips and thighs. The promise of the dark curls at that sweet juncture.

  His hands yearned to caress every inch of her. His tongue to taste her. His cock to fill her. Something of his thoughts must have shown in his face, for she gasped and covered her eyes with her palms.

  He chuckled unevenly. “I can still see you.”

  “Cannot.”

  “What a shame, because I so like looking at you.”

  He came as close as he dared, let his lips find her ear. Her hair tickled his cheek and he resisted the urge to bury his face in it. She kept her eyes firmly covered.

  “Do you like me looking at you?” he whispered, breathing in her scent, feeling it fill his veins. “Be honest now.”

  With a long shuddering breath, she said, “Yes.”

  Oh sweet mercy. “Would you like me to touch you?”

  “I…It’s my…I mean…Must you consult me at every step?”

  She did not even know what she wanted, still less how to express it. Could she imagine what he wanted? To trail his mouth and hands over every soft, fragrant inch of her, from those luscious breasts down to her belly. To part her thighs and touch her and kiss her until she lost all coherent thought. Until she forgot everything that she wanted except his touch.

  He had started this stupid game, and she had upped the ante, and now she did not kno
w the next play. His turn then: He would tease her and taunt her, torment her with her own desire, until she understood its power and would think twice before playing with him again. Risky? He took risks every day. And he could stop any time he wanted. He could always walk away.

  He retreated to a moderately safer distance. “The trouble with touching you is that you have no idea where it leads.”

  “I have some idea.” Her tone was dry beneath the breathiness. “Our wedding night, if you recall.”

  “Which you did not enjoy.”

  “I will do my—”

  “If you mention your bloody wifely duty one more time…”

  He trailed off. She needed to understand that playing with desire was like playing with fire. It wasn’t the only problem, it wasn’t the biggest problem, but it was still a problem.

  “I should not touch you, but if I do not touch you, you will never understand.” He dragged his eyes off her, looking around. A vase of roses sat on the table by her bed. Three roses, pink and half-opened. “What a conundrum. It’s a good thing your husband is an inventive problem-solver.”

  He eased a rosebud from the vase and turned back to her. With a yelp, she uncovered her eyes. Oops: Cold water had dripped down the stem and splashed onto her skin. A droplet of water, right there on the softest, roundest part of her thigh.

  “My apologies,” he said.

  “Now you find your manners?” she muttered. “Now?”

  He couldn’t help grinning as he used the heel of his hand to wipe away the drop, taking longer than he needed. She gasped, and he mustered all his will to haul his hand off.

  He wiped the stem dry on his clothes, then tilted the rosebud toward her, enjoying her confusion. He was a devil for teasing her, but how he loved this part too.

  “I shall touch you without touching you,” he said. “Aren’t I clever?”

  He brushed the rose over her parted lips, his eyes not leaving hers. Beyond the flower’s fragrance lay another scent, headier, more potent: the scent of her. He trailed the rose up over her cheek, back to her lips, over her chin, over her jaw. She arched her neck, offering her throat, and he accepted her invitation, dragging the petals down over her rapid pulse, the dip of her collarbone, down, down to one hard nipple. He sketched a circle around it, then brushed back and forth, his attention torn between the sight of her body and the sight of her face, and he wondered if he had gone mad.