Chapter Eleven
H awthorne House was sleeping, but not Caroline. She paced the small confines of her bed chamber, ratty curtains open to let the moon wash the space in light.
Only there was no light. Clouds had rolled across the sky, casting the midnight world in total darkness. It would be difficult to find her way to the folly.
But that was this evening’s plan.
The plan for every evening after this, as long as she could get him to stay.
Unfortunately, the other part of this evening’s plan might send him flying back to London. That the worst outcome. The most likely that he would send her from the folly and be cold with her until he was able to replace the widow’s footmen with those loyal to him.
The best outcome? She didn’t dare imagine it, but she hoped…
She shrugged into her wrapper, descended the stairs, and creaked the front door open.
The path to the folly was dark, but she trod it with ease.
She’d followed it many times since his arrival, outfitting his chosen domicile with every comfort she could think of—blankets, books and candles, a tub, a rug, a mattress.
He should have a bed and a proper chamber, but…
She looked up at the house. Something here tormented him. Wasn’t sure she wanted to know what.
The moon still hid behind clouds as she approached the folly, but even in blackness its white marble glowed a dim light. Before she could climb the few steps to the top, the door opened, and Felix filled the frame.
“Caro?”
“You’re awake then?”
“I was coming for you.”
“Haha.” A nervous laugh. “I was coming for you .”
In two fast steps, he leapt from the folly and swung her into his arms. Cradling her, he carried her inside, slamming the door closed with a swift kick backward. He dropped her to the mattress.
Then she was lost.
As the clouds blocked the moon, so Felix’s strong body blocked out the world.
As the summer wind warmed her skin, so did his heat enflame her.
As doubts flickered always at the edges of her mind, so did his lips flicker on her lips.
Light little sips. Sweeter than doubt, banishing it.
Before she parted her lips on a moan and his tongue stole into the cavern of her mouth.
Stroke for stroke, she met him, played with him, mindless and lovely.
This what she’d been needing, what had fueled her pacing.
She clutched at his shoulders. Again, he wore no shirt, nothing but his buckskins.
His hand fit like a brand, high on the outside of her thigh, close to her bottom. Squeezing, nails digging. How had he crept beneath her shift so quickly? Without notice. Oh God, she was losing her mind. What had she come here for?
This .
His hand climbed higher, stroking her hip.
This.
He scratched his fingertips up her ribs and cupped her breast.
This .
No. No, no.
Something else. What else? She ripped her mouth away from his, panting. She pushed against his rock-hard chest. His heart raced as quickly as her breaths. “Wait. Please wait.”
He groaned, dropping to the mattress beside her and scrubbing his palms over his face. “You, Caroline Canterbury, are a torment.”
She rather liked that. Made her want to kiss him more. She sat on her hands instead. “I came here to tell you my plan. For Hawthorne. Why I need it.”
His arms dropped and with a groan, he sat up, leaning against the wall at the top of the makeshift bed. “There’s more? I thought you already told me all that.”
She nodded.
“Can it wait?”
She shook her head.
Another groan that sounded much like torment , then he pointed toward the other end of the mattress. “You stay there. If you’re any closer, I cannot guarantee I’ll continue to prioritize talk over other activities.”
No one had ever looked at her as he did. What power it gave her. How sultry it made her feel. Yes, remaining at the other end of the bed a definite necessity. She’d rip his breeches off otherwise.
She settled there, crossing her legs in front of her and smoothing her skirts over them. “We need a candle.” She wanted to see his face, needed to see his reactions.
He procured one, lit it, and set it on the floor next to the mattress before returning to his spot.
The space between them flickered to life in a golden glow.
Felix’s face flickered, too, torn between open curiosity and raw lust. As it wavered, so too did his gaze, dropping to her bosom then snapping back up to her eyes.
She almost laughed. Only nerves kept her from doing so.
“Well?” he demanded.
Impatient man. No reason to stall any longer. She took a deep breath and released the truth. “I plan to establish Hawthorne House as a refuge for women in need.”
The lust and curiosity drained from his face, replaced by… nothing .
She forged ahead. “Chloe and I devised the plan some years ago. In all our father’s work we saw women abused and forgotten.
Young girls abandoned because they’d sold their bodies to keep themselves alive.
Like Ruth. Married women with no legal self outside of a marriage that was destroying them.
Papa helped, but he was mostly concerned with the labor of men, injustice and the working classes.
Abolition, of course. Chloe and I began to realize that even though these causes should improve the lives of women as well, they did not…
look at women as a central concern. We were leaving their specific plights unattended.
Women are at the mercy of the men in their lives, and if they do not know kind men, like my father, forward-thinking men like you and your grandfather, they have few means to escape misery. ”
She dropped her gaze to her lap. Her fingers rested there. Rested. Because she did not fear telling him this. She was proud of her plan, proud of the work she’d done, the ends she desired, the good she might put into the world. And she did not fear he would find her or her plan lacking.
Lifting her chin, she said, “Hawthorne will become a house of hope, a haven for those who need it, a temporary resting place for those to find new lives and purpose. I hope that… whatever ghosts you know here will be banished. Or rather, put to rest. Perhaps your family’s souls would like to know the house will be doing good.
Or rather, that I will be doing good with it, since houses, themselves cannot do good.
Hell.” She was rambling, seemed unable to stop.
“I had planned to do it all alone. That’s why I sought a man—a husband—with a house he didn’t want.
So he wouldn’t interfere. Chloe and Garrett are supposed to help, of course, but not a husband of my own.
He was supposed to very conveniently never want to see me.
But you came after me right away and now, I’ve begun to wonder, to hope…
that perhaps you might stay. With me. Be here with me. ”
She inhaled deeply, waiting for his answer in the flickering candlelight and soft silence. Darkness claimed the edges of the small world they inhabited, and her words lay like a stormy ocean between them.
Then Felix moved. He crawled across the world-filled distance and knelt before her, cupping her face in both hands. “Has there ever been a better woman than my wife?”
She was going to cry. Her lip trembled and she rolled her eyes toward the ceiling to keep the sudden tears from falling.
“I am not.” Not the best woman. Not the cleverest or most beautiful.
“Stop that. You are and you always have been. It’s why you’ve been such a danger to me. When I’ve known you all my life, how could any other woman compare?”
She did cry then, tears falling with a huff of a laugh.
He kissed her tears away, lips landing on her eyes, her cheeks, the tip of her chin.
She wound herself around him and found the courage to whisper in his ear, “You do not think it… foolish? Silly? Too radical…or… dangerous?”
“Foolish? God, no. As for danger… I’ve always liked a little danger.” Still holding her face, he pulled away so she could she the intensity of his eyes, green flickering like the candlelight. “It’s perfection. You are perfection.”
She remembered now. Years of ire slipping away, years of self-doubt seeded by a single rejection. Before she’d decided to disdain Felix, before the footman debacle, she’d… she’d been a little bit in love with him.
Now—no little bit about it. Now, her heart burst open at the seams, too full of emotion to continue its humdrum daily life of beating gently second by second. She loved him quite fully. Quite foolishly and terribly.
He kissed each of her eyes. “Perfect Caro.” And he kissed the tip of her nose. “Perfect.” Each cheek. “Caro. Mine.” A hot whisper against her lips. “Perfect.”
She knew she was not, had always known it, but she found herself saying, “I believe you.”
He chuckled, laying her on the mattress and spreading her legs. He positioned his knees between them, and hands on her knees, he gazed down at her like a hungry wolf. “Trust your husband, Caro. In all things.”
She nodded, biting her bottom lip as the soft muslin of her shift slipped up her thighs to pool at her waist. She was open to him. Entirely. Pulsing and needy. She let her hand wander across her body, holding his gaze, rubbing against every part of her demanding attention.
He watched the path of her hand. “You’ve done this before.”
She nodded.
“With whom?”
“With myself.”
“You had a German suitor once. Grandfather thought you might marry.”
“I did not. He… bored me. I did this”—she slipped her hand between her leg—“better than he did.”
His eyes flashed with… jealousy?
She could soothe that. “I dare say you can do it better than I do.”
His hands skated down her thighs, fingernails digging into her flesh. “Damn right I can.” Then, with a wicked grin, he curled over her, dropping a kiss between her legs.
Tonight, Felix would worship his wife. He’d been courting danger all of his adult life, and this was the most dangerous thing he could do.