Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
T hree hundred and thirty-six hours—the amount of time in a fortnight. Thirty-eight hours—the amount of time Isabella had been inside Hestia. Not all at once. The hours were cut up across the days, a few one day, an entire block another, each minute she roamed his halls ticking away in his brain, which apparently had developed two new talents—the ability to know precisely when she arrived and when she left, and the ability to find her immediately no matter where in Hestia she hid or what she occupied her time with.
Thirty-eight hours of complete distraction. It seemed too many. And too little. He kept himself well hidden as he watched her, and his fingers well stuffed in his pockets or occupied with tasks… other than tracing along the line of her spine or over the curve of her hip.
A hellish thirty-eight hours. A hellish fortnight. Because added to the intensity with which he felt her presence in Hestia was the question of when the Barlows would contact him with another invitation to the Blue Sheep. Until that happened, he’d keep his distance from Isabella, watch her from the shadows. Only Mr. Barlow’s summons would give him permission to step close and link his arm through hers.
She’d bewitched him.
His entire body seemed to growl for her, to demand her, and he’d sliced half-moons into his palms in an effort to stay away. Best to keep his nails as short as he could to avoid further injury.
His study door creaked open, and his secretary, Mr. Poppins, slipped inside. Tall and broad of shoulder and belly, he was a beast of a man with an impossible personality. His brown hair always seemed meticulously kept, and his thick eyebrows perpetually raised over cynical pale-brown eyes. “The mail, Mr. Trent.” He slapped a pile of folded epistles on Rowan’s desk before bracing a hip against the desk’s edge. “If you do not mind me saying, sir, you look like a fresh pile of horse—”
“I do mind you saying.”
“Yet, I feel it should be said, nonetheless. Perhaps a cup of tea will perk you up. Or coffee.” Mr. Poppins flicked a careless glance toward the windows. Rowan had inherited Poppins when he’d bought Hestia. He suffered the man’s insolence because he usually offered excellent advice. “Or to open the shrouds and let in some light.”
“Curtains, not shrouds.”
“If you say so, sir. But saying so does not make it so.”
“Please look to your own logic, Poppins. They are curtains.” Rowan reached for the letters.
“The maid who is not a maid is here again.”
Rowan froze, his fingers a scant inch above the first letter. “I’m aware.” This time he’d seen her come in, a hurrying shadow through the back door, her face flicking up toward his window for a scant moment before she’d disappeared inside.
“They have a betting pool downstairs. About why you’re giving her free roam of the place.”
“I’m not interested in servant gossip.” Rowan snapped up the top letter and tossed it aside. Then the next.
“Your loss. Better entertainment than Vauxhall, I say.”
Rowan flicked the next letter to the side, then the next. But the fourth he snatched up, ripping open the seal as soon as the rough paper brushed his fingertips.
“Something of interest?” Poppins asked.
“Yes. The Barlows are coming.” Rowan frowned. They were supposed to invite him to Stevenage, not invite themselves to London, and—“Hell. They’ll be here today.”
“Good thing the maid who’s not a maid is here. Convenient, yes?”
Terribly. Rowan bolted for the door.
“Some say you’ll toss her in the Thames when you’re done with her,” Poppins called after him.
“I’m not going to kill the girl.” Rowan threw on his jacket and threw open the door. Where in hell was she?
Fast footsteps behind him. “Some say you’ll give her a permanent position at Hestia.”
“Being your employer, Poppins, I’m well aware of what other work you have to do. Are you?”
“Quite. Hold on, though.” The secretary swung Rowan around, reached for his cravat. “You’re a damned mess.”
Rowan swatted his hands away. “That hardly matters. Find a drawing room—on any floor—that is uninhabited. Prepare it for tea and lock it so no one makes use of it before we do. If you have your choice of situation, choose the one with the best view and the newest furnishings. We’ll host the Barlows there. I’ll find Miss Crewe.”
“She’s in the large third floor sitting room, sir.” Said with too much of a chuckle.
It took Rowan less than three minutes, according to his pocket watch, to find her. Kneeling. In the corner behind a folding screen. Cleaning up a spilled chamber pot with only half of her attention. She’d pressed her ear to a crack between the screen’s panels. A small group of men occupied a table across the room. She was eavesdropping on them no doubt, though what she could hear at this distance, he couldn’t tell.
“Isabella.” He kept his voice low.
She peered up at him, squeaked. “Mr. Trent!”
He grabbed her upper arm and hoisted her to her feet. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Nothing now.” She glared at the empty pot, the soapy puddle on the floor, and the discarded cloth. She glared through the screen at the men across the room .
“Someone else can do that. I’ve need of you.” He pulled her toward the door.
She hurried to keep up, lifting her too-long skirt. “Oh! Has this to do with the Barlows?”
“They’re arriving today. A surprise visit.”
“Today?” She sounded breathless as he bustled her up the stairs.
“I estimate we only have a few hours before their arrival.”
She glanced at the door of the sitting room, where he’d caught her cleaning, and pulled her arm out of his grasp. “I was rather busy with something else.”
“You’re busy with this now.” His hand felt empty without the weight of her slender muscle wrapped up in it. He shook it out, tried to shake the need to touch her again off his fingertips like water droplets. “This is more important than spilled piss.”
“You’ve no idea how important what I do is.”
“Mr. Trent!” Poppins ran down the hall toward them, huffing and doubling over to slap his hands on his knees when he reached them. “No… rooms.”
“Pardon? Stand up straight and speak plainly, Poppins.”
Rowan’s secretary did as he’d been asked but with an inhale to suck up all the air in London. He exhaled it in an equally heavy breath, then said, “All the sitting rooms, parlors, coffee rooms, private dining rooms… all occupied. We’ll have to host the Barlows in a bedroom.”
“No.” God, how awkward to take tea with an older couple right next to a damned bed. “We’ll not do that.”
“Then you wish me to toss out the occupants of one of the parlors?” He threaded his fingers together and rolled his palms outward, cracking his knuckles.
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Well then, Mr. I Demand Miracles, what do you expect me to do?” Poppins’s arms dropped to his sides.
Isabella cleared her throat. “Don’t you have an entire suite of apartments at the top of the Hestia?”
“I do.” Rowan tapped his foot. They were running out of time. “What of it? ”
“There’s your solution. Use your private accommodations to host the Barlows. Frankly, you should have thought of it yourself.”
Poppins laughed, the sound echoing off the stairwell. “His private rooms? Do show her, Trent. And let me watch as you do.”
“You”—Rowan stabbed a finger toward Poppins—“go tell Cook we need a hearty, warm repast for the Barlows. And you”—he brushed past Isabella and set his boot on the first stair—“follow me.” He slouched up the stairs. Let her think he did not care what decision she made.
But he did care, and he thanked God when, after a brief caesura of silence, her rapid footsteps followed him upwards. She climbed close behind him, her heat singeing his back, and when he threw open the door to his personal rooms and stepped aside for her to enter, her arm glanced against his. The most minor of touches, a single bell’s toll that set off a symphony of noise inside him.
Inside his personal drawing room, the air was dark and heavy, and she dragged her gaze from one side of the room to the other.
“It’s empty,” she said finally. “You’ve nothing here. Are you redecorating? Wait… these aren’t your rooms. They can’t be. I thought they were. We’re at the top, but—”
“This is my personal sitting room.” He pointed to a door on one side of the fireplace. “Through that door is my bedroom.” He pointed to a door on the opposite side. “And through that one is my study. Across the hall are a few rooms I do not use at all.” Not entirely true. In a small closet tucked into the back of one of the rooms, he kept his iron floor safe locked up tight. But no one knew about that but for Poppins.
“And you use this one ?”
“Well, no, not really. I sleep in the bedroom and work in the study and—”
She strode across the room and threw open his bedroom door. “A bed. A tiny table. And a washbasin.” She placed her hands on her hips. “I don’t even see a chamber pot. Where do you keep your clothes?”
“Clothes are across the hall in an unused room, and the chamber pot is under the bed, naturally. Speaking of chamber pots…” He touched her shoulder, a light brush that electrified him and brought he r around to face him. “You shouldn’t be cleaning up those sorts of things.”
She shrugged. “It’s what I do when necessary. No one notices a maid involved in such activities.”
“And then you can gather gossip to your heart’s content, yes, little mouse?”
“Precisely, and it is a constant mystery to me that you allow it.”
“It is no gift, Isabella. It is an exchange. I’ve given you air to listen in, and now you must do your part. Will you help me?”
She wandered away from his bedroom and into the middle of the empty sitting room with a sigh, her shoulders rounding. “I suppose I shall have to. You need so very much help, after all.” Her hands found her hips once more, bunching up the fabric of her gown. It was much too big for her and hung off her frame like a sack. The prim little white lace cap all Hestia maids wore had tipped sideways on her head, and the coil of her golden hair at her nape had begun to produce wisps, strands straining to escape whatever magic she used to keep them secure.
So small and soft, smelling of sunshine (how?) and looking of pure determination. He took two melting, thoughtless steps toward her, hands twitching, anticipating.
Then she snapped her shoulders back and strode across the room. “Do not worry, Mr. Trent. We can fix this.” She flung open his study door and disappeared inside.
“Hell.” He chased after her. “What are you doing? That’s my personal—”
“When you have a wife,” she said, leaning over his desk, “nothing is personal.” A grin like an arrow to his heart.
“Not really my wife.”
“Don’t let the Barlows hear you say that. If they could at any minute, you must keep such thoughts to yourself and comport yourself in every way like a married man.” She pulled a blank sheet of paper from a drawer and picked up his quill pen. “From now until they leave.”
He should be demanding she stop rifling through his desk, but… it did not bother him. And when she sat down in his chair to set his pen to his paper, he should have barked at her not to take liberties with his possessions.
Instead, he came to her side and flattened his palm against the desk, tilting his head to see what she wrote. Difficult to concentrate with her impossible scent so near, so pulse rattling. The tip of her tongue appeared at the edge of her lips, and she leaned lower over her list.
“Sofa, chairs, table,” he read, “rug, pictures, fire screen.”
She waved her hand at him.
“You’re trying to shoo me away?”
“You’re distracting me.”
Oh, was he? Fascinating. “You say I must act in every way as if we are married?”
“Mm hm.” She put a flourish under one item and barreled onto the next.
“At all times?”
“Yes.” A sharp poke of the quill point into the paper splashed ink everywhere, and she cursed, dipped the quill into the inkwell, and started a new line.
“I think you’re right.” He leaned low and smelled her hair. The lace cap tickled his nose.
So, he found the dark pin securing it neatly against her curls and gently pulled it free. He put it in his pocket where it nestled against the ribbon he’d purloined from their previous encounter. The cap he let fall to the floor. Her hair uncoiled down her back, a few tendrils falling over her shoulders to swing about her face. She huffed and pushed them back behind her ears.
All concentration.
“I see you have a looking glass, there.” She glanced at the one by the door to the hallway. “Do you think we should procure one for the sitting room? No, perhaps not. But we’ll steal some of the embroidered pillows from the ground floor parlor. No one will notice them missing.”
As she, apparently, did not notice the finger he was trailing over the curve of her ear. He should absolutely not be doing this. But he seemed unable to stop himself .
Bent low over the paper, her nose almost touching as her quill, his quill, hovered in air beside her ear, she froze. “Wh-what are you doing?”
He drew his finger down the line of her jaw, and when he found the pointed tip of her chin, he nudged it upward.
The quill slipped from her fingertips, and her eyes shuddered closed. He brushed his thumb along her cheek as he continued nudging that fairy chin toward her shoulder, toward him.
“What are you doing?” Her closed lids still and fragile, her lashes, lush and golden.
“Acting as a husband would.”
“Oh. This is… We can’t… I mean… we are alone and should not—”
“Be ever ready. Is that not what you suggested?”
“Yes, but… why?”
“Because I want to. And I think you do, too.”
Her eyes popped open with the tiniest, cutest growl. “Dash it all. We cannot.”
Perhaps she had the right of it. But… “If we could, do you know what I would do right now? To you, feisty Isabella?”
“Kiss me?”
Bold beauty. “No. Tease you. Wait for you to kiss me.”
Her hands, limp across the oak and paper and ink, became fists. “Terribly frustrating.”
“I’d be a patient husband.”
“An annoying one.”
“The more quickly I annoy, the more quickly I get my kiss.”
A sigh carried the words, barely audible. “What would it be like? L-like in the closet? The other day?”
“More than that. Better. When you could no longer stand my teasing, you would whip around and take my lips as yours. Your entire body would thrum with impatience, and mine would riot with victory.”
Her breath hitched. “You would be insufferable.”
“No. I would be quite giving. And gentle. And when you parted my lips with your tongue, so very eager and willing, I’d battle for control only to slow you down a bit. Because I’d want to kiss you softly. It would feel right everywhere I touch you, everywhere you touch me. I’d want to kiss you for a long time, for forever. Husbands can, you know. They can lock the doors and ignore the world as they cover their wives’ bodies in their beds.”
She shook her head. “Husbands and wives can do that. Not us.”
A damn shame.
He nudged her shoulders until she faced him. Then he wrapped his hands around her waist and lifted her onto the desk, planted his hands on either side of her hips. As he leaned into her, she leaned back. “If I were your husband, I’d sit you up here without ever breaking that unhurried, eternity-long kiss. You would not lean away from me.”
“What would I do?” A question both breathless and charming. And if her mind did not know the answer, her body surely did.
“I don’t know, Isabella. What would you do?” He had to know.
Her arms wound round his neck, her hands hesitant little cuffs at his nape, rippling shivers across his skin.
“Yes,” he managed to say. “Good. So very good.”
For several heavy breaths, they remained like that, her arms heavy velvet ropes securing him tightly. Their heavy breaths filling the air between them, taking from it, too, filling them both up with each other.
“Then.” He swallowed, his body hard, his cock and his throat tight. “Then I would tug your bottom lip between my teeth because I cannot control the impulse, because it’s a husband’s right to have his wife’s bottom lip.”
She laughed, her fingers curling under his cravat. “Oh, this is not good. We have very little time. What would you do next? If you were my husband?”
“I would kiss a line down your jaw.” Risking everything, he curved his hand around her hip. “I’d take a hammer to my pocket watch, chuck it out the window.” The metal curve of the device kept his day ticking away, but the soft curve of her hip shocked his heart into wild motion. He stepped between her legs, pushing her knees apart, wrinkling her already hopeless Hestia gown. “Then cup my hand about the back of your neck so I could deepen the kiss without you falling.”
“Falling? I would never. I can hold my own self up.”
She could. One reason he liked her so very much. He liked her? What a shock, but so entirely true. He almost smiled, and that shocked him more, so when he spoke again, it was slow, purposeful, as he chose each word with care, testing them out, looking for truth. “As your husband, I would like to pretend that you need me now and then, and you, being a benevolent wife, would pretend along with me.” Something much like truth, yes. Another shock, that.
“I suppose it’s only kind.”
Hands, neck, hips—they clung to one another, mouth to mouth and breath to breath.
He squeezed the gentle curve of her hip, itching to move higher. Not moving higher. If he did, he would not be able to stop. “I would slide my hand up your waist and cup your breast, find your nipple and tease it to hardness.”
“Hu-husbands are always teasing.” Each word seemed a difficulty for her. Her head fell back on her neck, her hands claws on his.
“I would kiss your forehead, your temple, down your jaw, and to that pointed fairy chin. Down your neck and to”—he lifted his free hand to crook a finger into the modest neckline of her gown, tugged it—“right here.” He slid his thumb along the ribbon edging the neckline and up the back slope where her shoulder met her neck. “You have a birthmark just here, and I’d tug and tug until I could see it.” He massaged the very spot, and when she whimpered, he lost control, burying his face in her neck and nuzzling that place where the birthmark would be. He breathed her in as her hand tangled in his hair and tightened.
“You are a… quite a thorough husband.”
“You have no idea how thorough I would be.” Control seemed a wild dog tethered to a frayed rope. Barely restrained, soon to snap. “I’d stroke your inner thighs until you shivered.” His hand at her hip ghosted down her leg to her knee, then back up, flirting with but not touching her gown there—at the apex of her body. “I’d ruck up your skirts around your hips and slip my hand between your legs.”
She shuddered, moaned.
“Don’t be shocked. A wife would not be. She’d know I love nothing more than tasting her there.”
“Shocked,” she breathed before giving a small, gusty laugh. She shook her head, a graceful, fluid movement. “We cannot. Rowan, we cannot.”
“I like it when you say my name. It sounds like a moan coming from your lips. Say it again.”
“Rowan.” A whispered moan this time.
The rope snapped, and the wild dog rucked up her skirts, revealing creamy thighs, a flash of silk stockings and pretty pale ribbons. His hands looked large and dark and beastly poised just above her skin, her sex a dark shadow between her thighs.
“A husband,” he rasped as his trembling hands lazily descended toward her torturously lovely legs, “would drop to his knees before you and—”
“We cannot.” Her voice held the clear ring of melancholy.
Of truth, too.
To hell with truth. He laid his hands on her legs, his fingers inches from that place he most wanted to play. “I think you should stop saying that, Isabella. We could . If we wished to, we could .”
“Yes. No.” She rubbed her palm over his shoulder and down his arm, stopping only on top of his hand. “I mean the list. We must attend to the list.”
She weaved her fingers with his and squeezed, then ducked under his arm, and slipped away, her skirts falling around her ankles once more. Her arm darted out, grasping at the paper she’d wrinkled under her arse and bolting for the door. Red cheeked and bright eyed, she waved it above her head. “Send Mr. Poppins and a footman to help me.” Her voice husky, lust-roughened.
He nodded, and she slipped out the door, and when it clicked closed behind her, he was surprised to find himself smiling.