Chapter Eight
C aroline’s husband was repulsed by her. It did not take a genius of observation to come to that realization. Evidence? She had much.
He’d sent a footman at the age of seventeen to kiss her when she’d asked him to.
He’d not kissed her on their wedding day.
He’d not kissed her two days ago when she’d done her best to encourage him in that direction.
He’d fled like a cat with a fleet-footed hound on its tail.
Humiliating to be the dog in this situation. Something else, too. Some deeper emotion, hollow yet hurting. She felt like a fifteen-year-old girl crying in a dark garden, alone and unwanted.
Caroline shook the girl away, held steadfast to the woman who knew a thing or two about life.
First fact—she did not want a husband. Not one she could see and touch at least.
Second fact—she especially did not want Felix for a husband of the seeing and touching variety.
Third fact—Felix would run for London if she tried hard enough.
She’d done her best yesterday and the day before, wearing a gown with a precariously low bodice when they met for their meager dinner.
Not that he noticed. Not the gown or her obvious touches—his arm, his neck, his shoulders.
She let her fingers rest against him as often as she could.
He’d shivered or stiffened every time. Only once had she managed to produce a stronger reaction in him.
She’d pulled a ribbon from her hair as he sipped on his wine at dinner.
She’d tied it around his wrist, caught his eye over the top of his wine glass and winked.
He’d sprayed the entire mouthful across the table.
Red drops everywhere, a massacre. He’d cursed and tried to clean it up before jumping to his feet and running from the room.
More evidence she repulsed him. He’d probably tossed her ribbon in a fire somewhere.
Yet… at other times he did not seem at all disgusted by her. In certain moments, she caught him watching her, his thumb stroking back and forth across his full bottom lip, eyes dark and hazy. Then, she’d wanted to suck that thumb between her teeth, and—
No. No, she did not want that. Too painful to want a man who would only run, screaming, as far from her as he could get.
Time for him to leave. And if three nights on a moldy old tick was not enough to scare him off, she’d have to increase her efforts.
No more coy touches. No more flirtatious bodices.
She marched into war in nothing but a shift, hair loose, and…
a faint ache between her legs from the shadowy dream she’d woken from mere moments ago.
Shadowy and lusty, a faceless man with a strong body wrapping her up tightly, whispering in her ear, scraping fingertips across her skin until she shivered.
She shivered now but steeled herself and pushed into the chamber Felix had occupied as his own.
Empty.
Empty?
She peeked into every corner, not that there was any space for hiding. Mattress abandoned. Everything barren.
“Damn you, Felix,” she whispered. “Where have you gone?” Perhaps he’d left early this morning, and she’d not have to seduce him away. Seduce him away —an oxymoron?
She made for the stables, bare feet padding quickly against warm ground, the summer sun already lifting bright across the horizon.
Troy and Helen, in separate stalls, whickered at her when she swung inside.
“Oh. You’re still here,” she said to Felix’s thoroughbred.
“How disappointing.” She stroked his neck.
“But only because that means he’s still here.
You’re a dear, aren’t you? And where is your master?
” She fed the horses an apple apiece then headed back to the house, the sweet, shadowed avenues of the twisted garden calling to her.
Improving the garden was high on her list of chores.
It would be an invaluable haven at Hawthorne, and she’d hire a gardener after the house was clean and well—but simply—furnished.
She would have fixed the windows sooner, of course.
Had she known the men in the village would refuse to work for her when she’d drawn up her renovation plans, she would have asked Chloe’s husband to make time to visit early in the project.
She should have rearranged her plan once she’d realized the problem, but once she made a plan, she could not simply change it.
Plans tamed chaos, erased it. If plans could be so easily changed, then… what good were they?
She knew the windows were priority.
“I was working on it,” she grumbled, but when she reached the garden, one deep inhale of fresh greenery, damp with dew soothed her irritation, smoothed it out entirely like a hot iron on a swath of linen.
Until a scream spiked through the air.
She ran, following it. Another one, lower, quieter, but somehow more pitiful, and this time she recognized the voice. Felix. He seemed to be near the folly behind the garden, but when she ran up the circular structure’s marble steps, she could not see him.
Another low moan. From inside. She tried the door between two marble columns, and it gave easily beneath her hand.
He was lying on the floor. Hurt? No…asleep. He had a blanket over him and one under him. And he was dreaming, apparently. Hair tangled, limbs stiff, eyelids fluttering as if chased by some phantom demon in his sleep.
Chest bare.
The top blanket had fallen beneath his hips, which appeared—thank God!—clothed still in trousers. But above those layers of linen and wool—heaven help her. Because that chest was hard with muscle and as decorated with experiences as well as with crisp, golden hair.
And by experiences she meant scars . Injuries sustained, likely, through all his daring deeds.
She’d heard of his support of the Luddites.
The fool man added his body to their number on noiseless, moon-high nights.
And who could forget the curricle races reported in gossip columns, late nights in dangerous boroughs, or, apparently, food-desperate hikes across the lake lands.
Danger had carved up his body like a knife craving marble.
Or, more precisely, like a master sculptor carved beauty into stone.
Yes. Terrible beauty, each muscle hard and sharp, shoulders broad, and skin smooth. Golden beauty and brutal muscle. Skin soft and tempting stretched across a body that could break a man, break the world. Break her heart.
A line of hair trailed from navel to the blanket, the trousers, which hid all of particular interest.
Interest? No. Of course not. But…
Her body pulsed, even as his lips parted with another frantic moan. Not a lusty moan like that which had slipped out from between her lips that morning. A despairing one.
Her friend suffered.
She hit her knees beside him, brushing hair off his sweaty forehead.
His eyes sunken, and eyelids pale. Cheeks pale, too, beneath the bruised skin beneath his eyes.
He was not sleeping well. What was he doing out here?
Surely the hard marble was no better mattress than the old tick upstairs.
Likely less odiferous, though. She winced, already planning to ask Polly to clean it.
When she placed a hand on his shoulder, it was taut and warm, and yet she shivered, rubbing her thumb without thought over the smooth skin. What if… what if she brushed her fingers down his scruff-heavy cheek to explore the tendons of his neck, the fullness of his fine, firm lips.
They’d almost kissed.
How many times now? Too many to sustain her pride.
Each time, he’d leaned forward, gaze riveted on her lips, his hot interest making her squirm because she’d never been the focused interest of a man like him before.
A man like him. Her friend. Only that.
Despite being her husband.
A detail. Merely an insignificant detail .
Such a liar. He was a man made for pleasure. His own pleasure. And that of whatever woman gained his interest. His focus.
Not her.
Which was exactly why she’d gone looking for him. To take advantage, to seduce him, make him go away from here. A plan born out of a heated dream with a faceless—
Oh.
Oh no. Not so faceless after all.
Felix had found victory in her dreams. Over her lips. Over her body. Felix had left the spot between her legs pulsing with need.
He moaned again. A different tone this time. Less pain. More pleasure. His eyes opened, blazing green. Feverish. He moved like a snake, striking with his hand around her nape, his big muscles bunching.
His lips consuming hers.
A kiss.
Finally .
Ten years in the making, countless shadowed dreams survived and forgotten in an instant, a meeting—mouth against soft, warm mouth.
No one could blame her for giving in, letting go…
She lost balance, tumbled forward, but he cushioned her fall, slowed it, his big arms taking her weight and holding her close. His lips never left hers. Not once. They slanted, they parted, they bit. Her bottom lip his means of breaking his fast.
No idea what to do, how to respond. The few kisses she’d had before this nothing like, no relation whatsoever to the way Felix devoured her.
She’d wanted to trust this man to her first kiss, and he’d pushed her away, thrust a stable hand at her, but now…
now this kiss might as well be her first. Felix banished all others as sun banished morning fog.
“Open for me.” His lips hot against her ear before returning to her mouth.
What did he want? “Ope—”
His tongue slipped between lips.
Open for me . He’d wanted entrance. She’d given it unknowingly.
She didn’t dare rescind the invitation now.
Couldn’t think how to. He’d stolen her speech, stolen her thoughts, stolen her breath.
Each sweep of his mouth across hers taught her new how to do these things.
Speak in husky whispers —his name, more , yes .
Think of how to keep his body beneath hers forever. Breathe his exhalations.
He bent his knee, parting her legs, hiking her skirts, pressing the hard muscle of his thigh against her pulsing center.