Vanquished (29 page)

She had to believe that Hadrian had felt it too, that force of nature connection that had run between them like electrical current, uniting not only their bodies but their minds and souls, too. How else could he have touched her with such tenderness, such
care,
as though she were made of Dresden china rather than flesh-and-bone? For her part, never before in her life had she felt such a compulsion, an absolute need, to touch another person. Afterward when he'd walked her out to the main street and flagged down the sleepy-eyed hansom driver, it had been very hard to leave him. With her face shielded by the hood of her evening cape, she hadn't been able to resist one last reckless kiss. Weary as she was, already her busy brain was engaged in plotting how soon she might break away and be with him again.

In the interim, there was the afternoon tea with the Stone-vales to be got through and then the long anticipated meeting with Lord Salisbury the following day. Even on an ordinary morning, her routine was to be washed and dressed and downstairs by seven. She would help herself from the sideboard and then take her place at the table, forking up her buttered eggs and sipping her three cups of strong black coffee while skimming her stack of daily newspapers in quick succession.

But this morning she had the rare notion of being good to herself. So even though her thoughts were racing far too fast and furious for sleep, she stayed put in bed. Curled up like a cat beneath the patchwork quilt, she lay there reliving the past hours with Hadrian--his tongue teasing her breasts, the stroking fingers that had driven her wet and wild, the delicious pressure when he'd entered her, filling her completely. The knock outside her door startled her from her dreamy thoughts.

Thinking it must be her aunt--and certainly Lottie was far too canny to have believed her headache excuse for so much as a moment--she pulled herself up on her elbows and called out, "I'm awake. Come in."

The door opened and Jenny breezed inside carrying a breakfast tray and wearing her customary smile. "Good morning, miss. Your aunt thought you might fancy breakfast in bed. On account of your being out so late last night," she added with a wink.

"How lovely," Callie said. Fighting a blush, she waited while Jenny set the tray on her lap and then plumped the pillows.

Breakfast in bed was a delicious decadence usually reserved for special occasions like her birthday, but then knowing how thoroughly modern Lottie was when it came to matters of the heart, she'd likely reckoned that Callie's taking a lover after ten years of abstinence was as worthy of celebration as any holiday.

Jenny busied herself with tidying the room, including shaking out the crumpled evening gown with a giggle and murmured exclamation of "My, my," confirming Callie's suspicion that both the maid and her aunt knew full well what time she'd got in. Averting her eyes, Callie surveyed the contents of the tray where all of her very favorites were assembled: a basket of oven-warm muffins and scones, a succulent hot house peach and a pot of creamy chocolate in lieu of her customary coffee. When Jenny assured her she'd be back directly with her newspapers, Callie hesitated for a moment and then told her not to bother. There would be plenty of time later to hear all the spoiling news. For one morning out of her life she wanted to linger over her breakfast and let the world feel fresh and full of newfound possibilities.

The door clicked closed. Once more alone with her thoughts, Callie tucked into her breakfast. She hadn't realized how ravenous she was until she took her first bite. Then again she had missed supper the night before albeit for the very best of reasons.

Hadrian. Chewing, she asked herself what word he'd used to describe her figure. Oh yes,
generous.
At the time she'd rather thought he was the one who was generous but now curiosity compelled her to have a look for herself. Licking the butter from her thumb--and really, why not when there was no one about to see--she set the tray to the side, kicked back the covers, and got up. Barefoot, she padded across the floor to the mirror, reached up and pulled the flannel nightgown over her head. Tossing the garment over the chair, she took a deep breath and stared into the mirror.

The wide-eyed woman with the mussed hair trailing her back wasn't a sylph by any means but nor was she the hulking beast, the
milcher,
she'd imagined ever since the night of her engagement ball. Her breasts were full--all right,
large
--but not particularly bovine. They were, if anything, firm and rather nicely shaped. Moving on to examine her middle, she had to admit that though her waist wasn't exactly narrow, at least it cinched in where a woman's waist ought. Were she to bear children, it would likely thicken, but that would be years away, if indeed it ever happened at all. Her legs were long, her thighs and calves firmly muscled, not unlike the photographs she'd seen of the music-hall girls in their fishnet stockings and shortened skirts. An image of herself similarly clad for an audience of one, Hadrian, flashed through her mind, and she felt her face heat even as a giggle tickled the back of her throat. That left her posterior, the last but hardly the least of her. She took a bracing breath and turned sideways. Not small there either, not by any means, but also not nearly as hideous as she'd envisioned.

Yet for so many years she'd viewed her body as ugly, the enemy. Starting today, this very moment, she was calling a truce with her physical self. More than a truce, she meant to make her peace with the past, lay to rest her old insecurities and fears once and for all. Hers was a woman's body, neither grotesque nor goddess-like. It had its good points and its bad, but it was healthy and she could appreciate the inherent beauty in that, in herself. For the first time in more than ten years she saw what others saw, what Hadrian seemed to see: a healthy still-young woman with a healthy young woman's needs and desires.

Desires which last night he had fulfilled beyond her wildest imaginings, her most secret fantasies. Even so, she wanted more from him than the mechanics of mere physical release. She wanted him to be her lover in every sense of the word. She wanted not only his body, glorious gift that it was, but his mind and soul, too.

If we go to bed, it won't be long before you'll want something more from me, something permanent. And I'm telling you now, Callie, I'm not capable of giving you or any woman more than this.

For the first time since leaving his bed, she felt her euphoria dim. Rationally, she knew she ought to be content with whatever little of himself he was willing to give. Fair was fair, after all, and it wasn't as if he hadn't warned her. Yet now that she'd had this taste of bliss, how could she possibly go back to her old ways, her old life?

Always wanting more, hadn't that ever been her fatal failing?

Callie wasn't the only one to spend a sleepless night. Hadrian had spent the hours since depositing her in the hansom walking the London streets. Eventually his rambling footsteps led him to Gavin's door.

When Gavin's manservant showed him into the flat's small dining room, he wasn't surprised to find Rourke there. The two men looked up from plates heaped with deviled kidneys, buttered eggs, and toast when he entered.

"Harry, by God, you look bloody awful." Impeccably dressed though it was scarcely nine o'clock, Gavin rose from the head of the table. "Have a seat and some breakfast before you keel over."

Ignoring the sideboard of silver-covered rashers, Hadrian pulled out a chair and sat. "Got anything to drink?"

From across the table, Rourke shook his head. "I dinna think he means coffee. Here lad, this'll wake you up." Rumpled shirt rolled over muscular forearms, Rourke handed over his flask. "The finest Scotch whiskey. No true Scotsman would think of leaving home without it."

Hadrian accepted the flask and downed a fiery swallow. Replacing the stopper, he handed it back. "Better, thanks."

Gavin studied him, expression thoughtful. "For a man who disappeared before supper last night with the lovely Caledonia in arm, you look less than glowing."

"I took her home, end of story."

"Aye, but to who's home, hers or yours?" The Scot shot Hadrian a conspiratorial wink.

Mindful of his promise to Callie he'd not tell another living soul, he asked, "How went it with Lady Kat?" Anything to turn the subject from his own sorry self.

Gaze sobering, Rourke shrugged. "She'll come 'round. I'm growing on her, mind."

Hadrian winked. "Like a vine of poison ivy, no doubt."

Rourke reached across the table and dealt him a good-natured cuff upside the head that brought him back to when they were boys.

Pouring more coffee for them all, Gavin interjected, "In point, we were just discussing the nature of love when you walked in. Our flinty friend here"--he nodded toward Rourke--"maintains it either doesn't exist or exists only as a form of temporary lunacy. I, on the other hand, am a proponent that every soul has its one perfect life's mate." Ignoring Rourke's snort, he went on, "By way of a case in point, my parents were deeply, passionately in love. When my mother defied her family to marry my father, she walked away from absolutely everything--her family and friends, standing in society, and yes, money--and not once did I hear her utter so much as a word of regret. In retrospect the walk-up where we lived was a dreary place, but they made it more of a home than most grand mansions will ever be."

His voice dropped off and he made a show of stirring sugar into his coffee, no doubt carried back to the day when, as a boy of ten, he'd returned to his family's East End tenement to find the building ablaze. Both of his parents and baby sister had perished, leaving Gavin orphaned and with a lifelong need to save everyone and everything in trouble that crossed his path. Even as a boy, Gavin had exuded an ethereal quality that had set him apart from other children. "Saint Gavin," they'd jokingly called him, although as far as Hadrian knew there weren't any saints by that name. Though Hadrian loved him as a brother, he'd never really understood Gavin in the way he understood Rourke.

Unstoppering the flask, Rourke poured a generous measure of the spirit into his cup. "That's a verra touching story, and perhaps your parents were the rare exception to the rule, but I still say 'tis an addle-pated man indeed who'd let himself fall in love with the likes of Kat Lindsey, or any woman. All I want of Lady Kat or any wife is for her to warm my bed, birth my bairns, and grace my dinner table, and I'll consider the bargain well met. Right, Harry?"

Hadrian hesitated. A few weeks before, he would have found himself agreeing with his friend wholeheartedly. But since Callie had come into his life, things had changed.
He
had changed. For a man who'd grown up thinking of sex as a service, something done to earn one's keep, making love with all his mind and body and yes, heart engaged was a life-altering experience on par with Saul's journey on the road to Damascus or Daguerre's discovery of a method for fixing the images from a
camera obscura.
Miraculous. Wonderful.
Terrifying.

But because he'd come too far to turn back now, because he'd sooner let Dandridge have him torn apart limb by limb than see so much as one hair on Callie's head harmed, he swallowed his pride and admitted, "I'm in trouble."

Gavin and Rourke looked at him and then exchanged worried glances. Never one to waste words, Rourke said, "Go on with you, then. Out with it, man."

Without sparing himself, he recapped the chance meeting with Callie in Parliament Square, the episode in the alleyway with the two gaming-hell henchmen, and finally Dandridge's visit to his shop and the terms of the bargain they struck.

He'd scarcely finished when Rourke slammed his beefy fist atop the table, sending plates and cutlery bouncing like rubber. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what were you thinking, man? I would have loaned you the tin. To hell with loaned, I'd ha' given it to you outright. I
will
give it to you outright. Give Dandridge back his blunt and tell him to go to the bluidy devil."

Hadrian shook his head. "If only it were that simple. I know too much for him to allow me to live. He's as good as threatened to off me, not that my life at this point is worth terribly much. But if I don't come up with the photograph he's after, it'll only be a matter of time before he finds some other way to get at Callie,
vanquish
her as he cares to call it. If this suffrage bill of hers makes it to a third and final read, her life may be even more in danger than mine."

"Bastard!" Jaw blanketed with reddish-brown stubble and hair still bearing the imprint of last night's pillow, Rourke made a ferocious sight indeed. "We could go to the papers."