Marry the Man Today (25 page)

Pembridge blinked at her. "If you're sure then, your ladyship ..."

"Absolutely sure."

Then he blinked at Ross. "Shall I keep the news to myself, my lord?"

"For the time being. Thank you."

"Excellent." Pembridge poured two steaming cups of tea, then muttered his way to the washroom door. He opened the panel with a nod to Elizabeth, then muttered his way back across the room, where he finally made his most elegant exit.

Leaving his bride to stare at him, a dozen questions in her eyes.

"An old family retainer?" she asked, looking thoroughly vulnerable as she reached behind her head and loosened the pins from her hair, as though she meant to stay.

"A savior, actually. Showed the three of us how to dress, how to eat, where to live."

"Your workhouse friends?"

"Jared and Drew. You met them at the Adams."

"You mean Hawkesly and Wexford?" She dropped her hand and her hair fell in a soft, auburn curtain around her shoulders. "Aren't they both earls?"

"With a few more titles amongst us."

"How?"

"Let's just say that we've all come a long way in this world."

"As I thought I had." That realization seemed to take her down, shook her from the easy banter they had been exchanging. "So what happens tomorrow, Blakestone? And the day after." She huddled her fingers around a sip of tea, casting her gaze over the top of the cup. "And the day after that. I have responsibilities."

Here it came. Sooner than he'd hoped. Like a storm off the sea. Ready to blow up onto the shores and flatten everything in its path.

"And so do I, Elizabeth." He would have to stand firm on the matter, make her understand from the outset. Else they would both end up in jail. "From this day forward, my dear wife, your responsibility must be to me. Because the law holds me responsible for everything you do."

She took her time lifting her cup to her lips again, savored the taste overlong. "Ah, yes, wasn't there a saying? 'He that keeps a woman is like he that keeps a monkey; he is responsible for their mischief.' "

Ross refused to take the bait. Let her vent her anger, let her storm.

"Believe me, my lord, I'm painfully aware of your legal rights and responsibilities." The cup clattered as she set it on the tray. "They are the very reasons I never wanted to be married. But when you took on this monkey, you took on my responsibilities as well."

"Yes, I know. The Adams, the bookstor
e
—"

"I can't afford to neglect them for a moment. But since they belong to you now, what do you plan to do about them? Along with my income of ten thousand pounds per annum, which also now belongs to you. You're going to be a very busy man, my lord. What with your duties to the Foreign Office and the Admiralty and who knows what else."

The room had became tinder dry, the air prickly with her spent anger. Her blanket had long ago fallen from her shoulders, and now she was clutching her hands around her arms, trembling all over.

"Indeed, wife. But I'm exhausted. As you are. It's too late to decide such matters tonight. If you want a bath, you'd best go take it while you can still stand."

She glared at him for a very long time and finally huffed at him. "Where do I sleep?"

He nodded into the bedchamber. "In there beside me."

Inches from him. Tormenting him through the night with her heat, with her scent. It would serve him right.

"And what will I wear to sleep in, sir? I completely forgot to pack my wedding trousseau before my little trip to jail."

He turned away and tried not to smile as he pulled a nightshirt out of the bureau and tossed it to her. "Take your time, Countess."

She snatched the nightshirt out of the air, then glared at him for a moment as though digesting her new title. Then she spun on her heel, tromped into the washroom, and closed the door with an overloud clunk.

He stood there in the silence for a long moment, feeling roundly chastised for merely being a man.

A bridegroom without a wedding ring for the bride. Let alone a blasted home.

He listened for her beyond the door until he was satisfied that she hadn't climbed out the window to escape him. He went to the table and was about to pour himself a cup of tea when he heard a sighing sound, like an autumn wind blowing through dry branches.

A murmur so low, so restrained, he'd nearly missed it. He went back to the washroom door and listened again. And heard exactly what he didn't want to hear.

His fearless bride who had declared war on him, on injustice, on the entire male population of the world, was quietly weeping, alone, trying not to let him hear.

Bloody hell.

******************

Elizabeth had barely shut the washroom door before she collapsed against the paneled wall, bending over to force her sobs into her ba
ll
ed-up apron.

But they just kept coming and coming and coming. Rolling out of her chest.

In a single stroke of a pen she'd lost everything she had worked so hard for.

Her ladies' club.

Her bookstore.

Her friends.

Her freedom.

I'm so sorry Aunt Tibbs! Oh, Aunt Clarice! I've lost it all.

But that's what came of reckless impatience. Of taking foolish chances with the lives of others.

Now they would all be forced to rely on the conceits of the Earl of Blakestone. Her husband. Her jailer. What would he do about dear Jessica and Skye and Cassie? She'd promised them a home for as long as they needed.

Blakestone would doubtless close down the Adams and the bookstore and then watch her like a hawk for the rest of her days.

And what about Lydia? How would she get the poor woman safely away from that despicable husband of hers? Or the next woman who knocked on her door?

There must be more than one way to divert Blake-stone's attention from her most clandestine activities. She might have to go deeper underground. Apply more cunning and guile. Take fewer but more significant risks.

Perhaps things wouldn't change so much after all.

What had Aunt Clarice always added to all that talk of independence and determination? Something about there being many roads to a single goal, about taking time to reconnoiter the bumps and ruts along the way.

Well, there could hardly be anything in the world more bumpy than Ross Carrington, the Earl of Blakestone.

As for the man being rutt
y
—
w
ell, wasn't that just another word for lusty?

And wasn't her husband simply shimmering hot with lust? Steaming with heat. Smoldering with something else that seemed to spark from his eyes when he looked at her. That arched from his fingertips when he touched her, and played in the corners of his deeply sculpted mouth.

In his voice.

In the sultry way he said her name.

"Elizabeth?" A soft rap hit the door just inches from her.

She leaped to her feet and landed in the center of the room. "What?"

There was a pause on the other side of the panel, and a gentleness that gripped her stomach. "Are you all right?"

No, Ross. I'm terrified. I'm angry. I'm lost.

"I'm fine, my lord. Thank you."

Or she would be fine as soon as she could reconnoiter the man's bumps and ruts.

"How's the water? Warm enough?"

"Thank you. Yes."

"If you need to warm it further, just turn the tap with the red cap. Oh, and pull the plug when you're finished." She heard the firmness of his footsteps as he walked away toward the bedchamber.

Toward the beginning of a marriage that she had feared might happen all her life.

A shadowy cliffside with a precipitous drop-off and a crumbling footing.

Was there such a thing as an independent wife? If not, she would just have to make up her own rules as she went along.

Teach her husband to follow them, without him noticing.

Mr. Pembridge's bathwater was perfect; warm as an exotic ocean current, the enamel tub itself huge enough for her to float in. Right-sized for a ta
l
l man with shoulders as broad as her husband's.

Which brought forth a sudden image of Blakestone standing naked in front of her. At least the way she envisioned him to be.

Bronze and dark and well-endowed with masculine vigor. In full rut. That fabulous rod of flesh doing whatever it did when it rutted.

Not frightening in the least.

Exciting.

A dangerous venture. But something she could definitely do to distract her husband whenever he came too close to her intrigues.

Her skin was tingling as she dried off; her nose sensitive to the faint scent of him caught up in the nightshirt he'd tossed to her.

Which made her wonder what he was wearing, or wasn't wearing, just beyond the door.

"Ready ... or not, my lord," she whispered. Exactly the tumbled state of her mind. Ready. Not ready.

But she certainly wasn't ready for the sudden shiver of nerves when she found the sitting room empty and dark, with nothing but the soft light from the window powdering the paisley of the carpet. The only other light gleamed from the bedchamber beyond.

The lair of a wolf. Her wolf, whether she liked it or not.

Her husband was just dousing a globe lamp on the bedside table when she found him, his hair mussed and overlong. He was larger than she had ever realized, wearing a dark, silken robe that flowed to his ankles and was belted too casually at the waist, revealing a striking slice of his bare chest.

He was surely naked under there.

The very thought made her smile and blush to her bones as she draped her clothes over the back of a chair.

"What are you smiling at, my dear?"

Caught. "You, my lord. You look very .. . domestic." Very rutty.

He canted an eyebrow, the picture of a pillaging pirate. "And you, madam, look far too tempting for a man to get a good night's sleep on his wedding night."

"What do you mean?" Surely he wasn't going to leave her alone tonight. That suddenly didn't feel at all right.

"Only that it's going to be a long night."

"Why, because I'll be in your bed? I don't think I snore."

"Because you'll be in
our
bed, wife." He started past her toward the door to the sitting room. "And I've promised not to touch you."

"Ever?"

"Tonight."

"Does that mean you're leaving me alone here?" She took hold of his silky sleeve, catching a hint of his warmth beneath.

He looked down his aquiline nose at her, a quizzical slant to his brow. "Do you want me to leave?"

What a trap of a question that was!
"
After all, this is your room."

"And yours."

"But you shouldn't have to give up your bed just because you ..."

"Because I stole myself a wife tonight."

"You didn't steal me."

"I carried you bodily to the registrar."

"You swept me off my feet."

He laughed and cupped her chin in the palm of his hand. "Now, there's a good one to tell our children."

Children. Dear Lord, she'd never allowed herself to imagine herself a mother. A family of her own. A real one.

"Then you will tell them that I went with you, because I agreed to it." And his hand was so warm against her throat, her nape. "Because, my lord, I won't have anyone feel sorry for me. Especially not you. I wouldn't have said yes or signed the papers if I hadn't wanted to."

"Very well, then." He gestured toward the huge bed with its inviting pile of bedclothes. "Now, if you know what's good for you, for us, wife, you'll get yourself to sleep before I come back."

"From where?"

She wondered if he knew just how devilishly seductive his smile was. "The bath."

Then her husband was gone, disappearing into the darkness of the next room, taking his warmth with him.

Another glance at the bed took her up the step stool and under the sheet and the silky counterpane. She plumped herself up against the cushiony wall of pillows and settled back to wait for his lordship.

Blakestone.

Ross.

Her husband.

Which made her, irrevocably, a wife.

A lover.

Responsible for making a success of a marriage she hadn't wanted.

Now, if she could only remember what she'd so innocently written in
Unbridled Embraces.
Something about practice and desire . ..

"Ah, yes! 'Put into practice what makes him cry out with desire for you and he will come back for more.' For more."

She could easily see a man like Blakestone coming back for more. And more.

" 'Be creative.'" Now that was still a puzzle. Since she hadn't really seen him close up, hadn't had the nerve to part his robe for a good look.