Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
When Milton arrived at the Winthrop residence, no footman greeted his knock. In fact, the front door was slightly ajar, which set his hackles up and his hand to his hip, where he always kept a blade. He slipped this to his palm and pushed the door in with a faint groan, his senses on high alert.
The house was eerily silent, enough to prickle his skin. He should return with more men, yet return to what? If trouble had come, his servant Marty would have sent word. Unless Marty were in trouble, in which case Milton would not leave his loyal footman here alone. Or Ginny. Christ.
She’d be in Annabelle’s room, upstairs.
He trod the carpeted staircase light as a cat, steps faintly creaking under his weight. He scanned the empty hallway on the landing, his nerves increasingly on edge. No house should be this quiet so close to midday’s chime. He should turn back; he was no fool. Or had he grown soft in wealth?
He’d faced worse with less; he’d not leave now.
Methodically, Milton pushed open each door he passed, knife drawn as he peered inside for signs of life.
Door after door he opened in slow succession, revealing nothing but empty rooms, until the last one opened to Ginny, bound and gagged in the bed, shaking her wide-eyed head in a warning that came two seconds too late.
The ceremony at Gretna passed: Annabelle had become Mrs. Arthur Harris with hammer to anvil, bang. Her new husband left her standing before the forge, staring blankly into the hot coals, as he signed the blacksmith’s book, then bid her do the same.
She did so in a daze, whereas Mr. Harris looked altogether relieved. He declared her now safe and announced he would find them lodgings for the night, trade their team for fresh horseflesh.
She blankly followed him from stable to inn, where she finally took note of her surroundings, of how pleased Arthur seemed, arms crossed, as he surveyed the room he had just procured them for the night.
Her wedding night.
Annabelle gulped, the boisterous, bawdy noises filtering up from the downstairs tavern dragging her back to the dilemma she now faced.
Though she was too exhausted to care where she slept.
She dismissed the room’s solitary bed frame with barely a blink and greedily eyed the bath being filled instead.
While maids continued to haul in buckets of steaming water, their driver appeared, handing Mr. Harris something.
“Come, wife, I’ve a gift for you.” Arthur played groom and Annabelle played along, though her situation was no game. She was good and truly married, she realized with shock, her shock greater still when Mr. Harris slipped a gold band onto her ring finger.
“A goldsmith melted me coin t’ forge this.” He cocked her a smile, an errant blond lock falling over one eye. “I hope it’ll do.”
Annabelle’s heart inexplicably ached. “I—thank you.” She hiccoughed back tears. Ridiculous.
“Sit with me a moment, luv. It’s been a rough journey, I know.” He led her to the room’s bed and pulled her to his lap, where tears suddenly streamed unbidden down her cheeks.
“Better, miss?”
“Yes.” She gulped. “I don’t know what’s come over me.”
His thumb traced soothing circles at the back of her neck. “Yer nerves’re wrought, no shame admittin’ that.”
She loved his drawling accent, so different from her own, the vowels more melodic, the consonants dropped. “You are kind to indulge me, Mr. Harris.”
***
“’Tis but common courtesy.” Harris buried his nose in Bella’s neck, not caring he took that liberty now she was, in name at least, his wife. The minx snuggled closer on his lap, making one part of his anatomy painfully aware of the lady’s plump posterior.
She adjusted her seat and looked down in dismay. “Have I hurt you, Arthur?”
“No.” He winced. “’Tis not hurt, exactly.”
“You mean I—” She shifted again. “Oh!”
Harris braced himself. “Don’t move.” He was desperate to keep her from brushing his poor rod more.
She pursed her lips. “Arthur Harris, as I am now your wife, I wish to know.”
“Know what?” He refused her any more wiggle room on his lap—for her own good.
“I wish to know what it is like, one’s wedding night.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Arthur, I merely wish to know, I do not wish to endeavor.”
“You wish me to describe to you, in detail, how a man deflowers his bride?” His prick was even more aroused.
“Yes. It is not fair ladies are kept in the dark while gentlemen know all, and given that I am now legally married, I feel entitled to educate myself. You are clearly experienced, so—”
“Woman, do you honestly wish to kill me?”
She chose that moment to shift her seat again, making him curse anew. “Damn blast it, Bella, stop movin’!”
“But why, Arthur?” Her innocence was stunning. “This is precisely what I mean. You order me about because of your, well, manhood, yet I’ve not the faintest idea why it hardens so in my presence.”
“Lord have mercy,” he muttered as he physically removed her from his person and scrambled off the bed.
She stared directly at the bulge at his crotch, making him curse her only more in his head.
He turned from her sightline. “Take yer bath, woman, whilst I exit this room fast. I’ll not be teased nor tempted into seducin’ you, wife or not. I’ll return in half an hour, an’ you’ll bolt this door while I am gone. We clear?”
“Yes, Arthur.”
He was already halfway out.
“Only Arthur…”
He stopped.
“I did not intend to tease. I am in earnest. I respect your efforts to protect me from Mr. Finch.”
He refused to look at her.
“Which is why I trust you, of all men, might be willing to share with me what others deny in explanation.”
He groaned, letting his forehead sink to the doorframe. “Annabelle, I beg you, stop talkin’.” And with that he hastened downstairs for a pint or ten to clear his head and loins of the lust she’d just unleashed.
Tucked in bed, Elizabeth tossed and turned, unable to sleep.
Milton had not returned home for dinner, and though she knew he was a man of business, she did not know exactly what that business was.
In fact, she’d never asked how he’d amassed his fortune, though she assumed it was through dubious means: gambling, investments, backroom deals.
She accepted this about her husband—she accepted a great many things, it seemed—but at no point in their brief marriage had he disappeared without word of his return.
She’d spent the afternoon at her desk continuing her brooding story, so engrossed in writing the dinner hour had snuck up fast. Afterward, she had answered correspondence and even penned Mr. Kilpert that letter requesting the tutor educate her husband in the art of formal dance.
Gerald had not known the master’s whereabouts, telling her only that Jasp was known to take off when in a mood.
Only her husband had been in a fine mood this morning, one more elevated than usual, jocular even.
Their congress last night had felt like more than mere procreating too, leaving her miffed Milton might seek comfort in another woman’s arms.
Li’s arms.
Though Mary Audrey’s words assuaged her some.
Li was Milton’s family, not his lover anymore.
Yet she had been, once. Elizabeth was tempted to await Milton’s return in his bed again but recalled his displeasure the last time she’d been so bold.
Blasted man, she thought. Just when she was warming to him, he had to go and disappoint. Disappear.
She grabbed Miss Austen’s Persuasion, said a silent prayer that Annabelle, please God, remain safe with Mr. Harris, then settled into bed. She read how bitterly Anne Elliot regretted her decision to decline Captain Wentworth’s hand.
Foolish woman.
When Harris returned, his wife unbolted the door and stomped off to curl herself into a ball beneath the bed’s thick coverlet.
Three pints downstairs had done him good, and the bath was warm enough he decided to slip his body in.
Soon, splashing water and spitting logs were the only sounds disturbing his thoughts.
That and bursts of laughter from the tavern below.
He soaked until the water grew cold, then shook himself dry, donned his smalls and shirt, and settled in beside the new Mrs. Harris. As a married man he had a right to soft ticking; no more floorboards for him, not this night.
“Arthur.” Annabelle’s soft voice surprised him. Why the hell was she not asleep?
“I wish to know.” She turned to face him beneath the bedclothes, an inch now from his nose.
“Leave be, Bella.”
“Please. I trust you to tell me.”
He rolled onto his back, groaning, as he willed his raging cock into obedience, an order his prick refused outright. She’d not relent till he supplied her with an answer, and the trouble was, a man did not describe such things, a man simply did them.
He ought to have ravished her the first night he’d spirited her away, for then he’d not now find himself in the unbearable position of being married to a temptress, legally entitled to a temptress, yet honor bound not to enjoy said temptress.
He cursed Jasper Audrey as he tried to wriggle his way out of this godforsaken moment. For if there were a God, the Rotten Bugger was testing Harris’s willpower like never before.
“Arthur.” Bella’s fingers lightly brushed his chest, then immediately withdrew. “Why won’t you tell me?”
“You want this, miss?” He roughly placed her hand at his groin, that she might know what she did to him and understand how unbearable it was.
“Oh…” She slowly exhaled, her hand frozen upon his poor cock, which twitched enthusiastically beneath her touch.
And then the witch began to pet him.
Harris choked, unable to speak.
“Please, Arthur, I shan’t do more. I wish only to explore.”
So he let her, sight unseen, fondle him through his smalls. Only his wretched body responded with need so intense, he died without the least bit of warning, shuddering his release.
She froze; Harris sighed with abject disgust.
“Goodness, I—” She removed her hand from the situation, but he trapped it atop his poor prick, insisting she witness its diminishment.
“Y’ wished to know what it’s like.” He remained cross. “Well, now y’ do.”
“Mr. Harris, I hope you do not think me—”
“I think you nothing short of remarkable, miss.” He meant it. “Y’ made me spill in me smalls like some virgin yob. Quite the feat.”
“Like a virgin?” She stilled. “Do you mean the first time you laid with a woman you also—?”
“Spent too fast?” His laugh hurt. “Somethin’ I’ve not done in years. That’s how little I can control myself with yer ladyship, which is why I begged you not to tease me with yer—”
“But Arthur, I never meant—that is, I did not always mean to flirt. I did not realize it might be difficult for a man to—”
“Withstand a woman’s charms? Well, ’tis. Damned difficult.”
Silence ensued. Something profound had changed between them.
“Arthur, I am sorry I frustrate, but I am not sorry for what just occurred.”
Not sorry? Harris was further stunned, for the only sort of educating a lady of her breeding ought to get was from her—
He groaned, for he now was her husband. Who better to show her what she could expect in marriage, nay, demand of her true husband one day?
Suddenly the situation took on an all new cast, because Mrs. Harris might benefit from a partial education in carnal relations. As, he realized, might he.
“Then you’ll not be sorry for what I teach you next, Bella.” He slid his hand up her leg as the whites of her eyes flashed at him in the dark.
Harris grinned. Mayhap he was just the man to shed light.
Elizabeth slept fitfully, but when there was still no word from Milton by morning, no indication that he’d returned at all last night, anger spiked her breast. She wasn’t jealous, for how could she be when her husband had bedded half of London already?
Yet he’d bedded those women before he’d married her, not since.
Had he sought one of Li’s girls last night? Or Miss Li herself?
She stewed through breakfast, Mutton’s head heavy on her lap.
The dear fellow would not quit her side.
His behavior was as out of character as her husband’s, especially with Annabelle absconded and the threat of Finch still looming large.
Especially after they’d made peace of sorts with one another.
Milton had revealed more of himself to Elizabeth in the last two days than he had in their week of stormy courtship, or in the weeks since they had wed. Why vanish now?
Something was off.
She’d visit LeBrecht’s and demand answers. Because if anyone knew where Milton was, Miss Li did.