Some Like It Wicked (9 page)

He gently flicked his thumb over the rigid little bud nestled at the crux of her curls and for a timeless moment she hung suspended between heaven and hell. Then a shattering wave of rapture broke over her and she went tumbling head over heels into the abyss with only his arms to break her fall, only his lips to muffle her soft, broken cry of ecstasy.

She was still clinging to him, lost in a haze of delight, when her bedchamber door came thumping open and a shrill voice raked across her tender nerves. “Have you seen my pearl hair combs, Catriona? I should have known better than to lend them to you. You have no appreciation for the finer things in life. You’d have probably been just as happy with some filthy plaid ribbon or a…” The voice trailed off.

While Catriona lay frozen, her eyes as big as saucers, Simon gently tucked the sheet around her, then rolled over to face the intruder.

Grinning like a housecat that had just been caught with canary feathers in his teeth, he flexed his muscles in a feline stretch and said, “Good morning, Agnes. Have you come to bring your cousin and me some breakfast?”

C
atriona’s scheme was a smashing success. Alice’s outraged shrieks roused the entire household, including one poor underfootman who rushed upstairs, kitchen ax in hand, convinced that murder was being done. By the time Catriona’s aunt and uncle came stumbling through the door of her bedchamber, wearing nothing but their rumpled nightclothes and dazed expressions, over a dozen servants were standing elbow to elbow, gaping at the bed in dumb astonishment.

Catriona supposed she and Simon must have made a very convincing pair. Especially with her hair all atumble and her cheeks rosy with both mortification and the afterglow of the pulsing, wondrous pleasure he had just given her. She probably would have remained frozen in place until she perished of old age if he hadn’t slipped his arms around her shoulders, propped her up against the pillow like a dressmaker’s dummy, and brushed his lips against her hair.

“You!”
Alice breathed. Her elegant cream chiffon dressing gown rippled around her as she stabbed an accusing finger at Simon. “I know you!”

He smiled pleasantly at her. “Not as well as you might have if we hadn’t been interrupted all those years ago.”

Uncle Ross’s face went scarlet. His eyes bulged as if he were about to drop dead of an apoplexy right there on Catriona’s bedchamber floor. He would have looked even more forbidding if the tassel of his nightcap hadn’t kept flopping over one eye as he trembled with rage.

“What is the meaning of this, young lady?
” he thundered. “Who in the devil is this man and why is he in your bed?”

Catriona hadn’t anticipated how much it would sting to have her uncle believe the very worst of her. It was worse than having Alice denounce her as a savage Scot without an ounce of manners or good breeding. Worse than Aunt Margaret’s exasperated sighs as the maid struggled to work a brush through her unruly hair. Worse than the footmen’s snickers whenever she had shoveled her peas onto the blade of her knife instead of using the delicate two-pronged fork beside her plate. Her first instinct was to draw the blankets over her head and quail in shame.

But then she remembered just what was at stake should their ruse fail.

Disengaging herself from Simon’s arms with as much grace and dignity as she could muster, she slid out of the bed and to her feet, draping the sheet around her as if it were the toga of a Greek goddess. Since Aunt Margaret didn’t faint dead away, she could only assume she had left behind enough blankets to cover Simon.

Lifting her chin, she looked her uncle dead in the eye and boldly proclaimed, “His name is Simon Wescott and he’s my lover.”

The servants gasped as one.

“Oh, my!” her aunt exclaimed, swaying on her feet. A fresh-faced little parlor maid rushed forward to steady her.

Catriona didn’t realize Simon had risen to stand behind her until his husky murmur caressed her ear. “If they’d have held off for a few more seconds, angel, that would have been true.”

As his hands settled on her shoulders, she could only hope that their audience would mistake the color creeping higher in her cheeks for a flush of triumph.

“Leave us,” her uncle barked.

For a dazed second, Catriona thought she and Simon were to be banished in disgrace like Adam and Eve being cast naked out of the garden, but then she realized he was addressing the servants.

They all stood paralyzed with shock until he bellowed, “
Go!
Get back to your duties immediately and don’t breathe a word of what you saw here this morning or you’ll be dismissed without pay or references.”

Ducking their heads to avoid their master’s eyes, the servants silently filed out of the chamber. Despite her uncle’s threat, Catriona trusted that news of her disgrace would still reach London by nightfall. The backstairs grapevine, tended and watered lovingly both in country kitchens and on back stoops all over the city, was notoriously hardy and nearly impossible to eradicate.

Breathing through his flared nostrils like a bull about to charge, her uncle looked Simon up and down. For a man wearing nothing but a lazy smile and a blanket tucked around his waist like a loincloth, Simon looked remarkably composed. But he’d probably had ample experience staring down furious fathers and jealous husbands, Catriona thought, plagued by an unbecoming flash of resentment.

Her uncle shifted his glare to her. “How could you do such a thing? After I welcomed you into my home and treated you like my very own daughter, how could you shame me and your aunt by sneaking this…this…”—he waved a hand at Simon, at a loss for a word vile enough to describe him—“this
stranger
into my house and your bed?”

Simon spoke before she could, his hands gently rubbing her shoulders. “We can hardly expect the two of you to understand such irresistible passion when you don’t even share a bed.”

Her uncle’s face went from scarlet to purple while her aunt clapped a hand to her breast and exclaimed, “Well, I never!”

Simon’s expression softened as he winked at her. “Forgive me for contradicting you, my lady, but you did at least twice or you wouldn’t have Georgina and Alberta here.”

“Alice,
” Catriona’s cousin hissed. “My name is
Alice
. And I don’t know why you’d be surprised by any of this, Papa. You always said Catriona’s mother was nothing but a common Scots trollop who seduced my uncle Davey into marrying her and then got him killed.” She sniffed derisively. “With a mother like that, it’s no wonder the little baggage has the morals of an alleycat.”

As her mother’s loving smile and sparkling eyes rose up in her memory, Catriona took an involuntary step toward Alice, her hands closing into fists. “Oh really? Then what’s
your
excuse?”

Simon caught her by the upper arms and hauled her back to his side. Although his smile never wavered, his voice whipped like a cat-o’-nine-tails through the room, sharp enough to flay flesh from bone. “If I were you,
Abigail
, I’d think twice about how you address my bride.”

Catriona shot him a startled glance, realizing for the first time that he might make a dangerous enemy. Perhaps even more dangerous than Eddingham.

“Your bride?” Alice echoed, going as pale as her dressing gown.

“Your bride?
” her uncle roared.

“Oh dear,” Aunt Margaret said, sinking into the nearest wing chair and pressing her ever-present handkerchief to her trembling lips.

Simon offered her uncle a conciliatory bow. “I pray you’ll forgive my boldness, my lord, but from the first moment I laid eyes on her across a crowded ballroom, I knew your niece was the only girl in the world for me. All other women seemed to pale in her shadow.”

While her uncle continued to glower, unmoved by the tender declaration, Simon tugged Catriona around to face him. He gently clasped her hands, his gaze caressing her face as his thumbs played tenderly over her knuckles. “I fell in love with her courage, her spirit, her beauty, and could think of nothing and no one else. If I were a better man, I would have resisted the temptation to sample her charms. But my hunger for her was so great that no power in heaven or hell could have stopped me from making her my own.”

Simon’s green eyes were no longer sparkling with mischief but smoldering with passion.

Alice had gone slack-jawed with shock and Aunt Margaret was using her handkerchief to fan herself.

Catriona was equally flummoxed when Simon dropped to one knee before her and pressed his lips briefly but fervently to the back of her hand. He gazed up at her, his expression both earnest and beseeching. “I can only pray that she’ll forgive me for taking such ruthless advantage of her innocence and will allow me to make amends by doing me the honor of agreeing to share my life, my future…and my name.”

Catriona’s own mouth fell open. She had dreamed of this precise moment for so long that she almost wanted to beg Alice to pinch her just to prove she was awake.

Despite the warning bells sounding an alarm in her heart, she was tempted to believe his every syllable.

But that way lay madness…and heartbreak.

What he deserved was a round of wild applause, followed by an enthusiastic
Bravo!

Apparently he had learned more than just how to set off flash pots and look up the opera dancers’ petticoats during his years backstage at the theater. Why, he’d been born to trod the boards at Drury Lane right alongside the likes of John Kemble and Sarah Siddons!

When she continued to eye him warily instead of falling, weeping with joy and gratitude, into his waiting arms, his eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “What say you, my darling Kitty? Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

“Kitty?”
Alice snorted and rolled her eyes. “The last time I called her that, she put a barn mouse in my bed.”

Fighting the urge to hiss at the both of them, Catriona primly said, “Well, since you put it so prettily, sir, I suppose I have no choice but to accept your proposal.”

Simon surged to his feet, wrapping her in a passionate embrace that threatened to dislodge both sheet and blanket.

Alice stamped her delicate foot. “That’s not fair, Papa! He compromised me first! He should have to marry me!”

“I’d rather be hanged on the gallows at Newgate,” Simon murmured in Catriona’s ear.

“Good God, man!” Uncle Ross bellowed, glaring at him disbelievingly. “Just how many of my female relations have you seduced?”

“Well, I’ve yet to meet the fair Georgina.” Reclaiming Catriona’s hands, Simon offered Aunt Margaret his most wolfish smile. “Nor have I had the pleasure of spending any time alone with your charming wife.”

While Aunt Margaret tittered into her handkerchief, Uncle Ross snapped, “Nor will you, if I have anything to say about it!”

Shooting his wife a reproving look, Uncle Ross marched over and wrested Catriona’s hands away from Simon’s. His palms were hot and sweaty, a marked contrast to Simon’s cool, dry grip. He had never before touched her with anything resembling affection.

“Is this truly what you want, child?” He searched her face, his gaze far more penetrating than she had anticipated. “If it’s not, I’ll send you abroad until the scandal dies down.”

He swallowed with some difficulty. “If there are…complications, we can find a good home in the country for the babe. You’ll never have to see it again or be reminded of this terrible night. You can remain here under my roof for as long as you like. I won’t force you to marry this scoundrel—or any other man—if it’s not your wish.”

Catriona had managed to endure her uncle’s condemnation and her own shame, but his unexpected compassion was almost her undoing. She blinked up at him, genuine tears blurring her vision. “This is what I want, Uncle Ross.” She stole a glance at Simon. He was watching her with an oddly detached, yet intent, expression. Praying he would attribute the conviction in her words to a talent for playacting equal to his own, she said,

“
He
is what I want more than anything else in this life.”

Still squeezing her hands, her uncle turned a murderous glare on Simon. “Then, as God is my witness,
you shall have him
.”

Uncle Ross was as good as his word. By early afternoon of that very day, Simon and Catriona were preparing to depart for Gretna Green in one of the earl’s more modest carriages. Now that an unexpected wedding was afoot, the servants were buzzing with fresh excitement. Two footmen had been dispatched to retrieve Simon’s clothing from his Piccadilly lodgings, which meant that news of the scandal had probably already reached London. But now it would be embellished with touching anecdotes about how very attentive the prospective groom was to his bride and how adoringly she gazed up at his handsome visage.

“So where is my money, darling? Were you able to convince your uncle to hand it over?”

Simon murmured, bringing her gloved hand to his lips as they stood side by side in the crushed-shell drive, watching the groomsmen finish hitching a handsome team of matched grays to the carriage.

“Our
money, you mean,” Catriona replied sweetly, batting her eyelashes at him.

“Very well. Where is
my
half of
our
money?”

“All in good time, my love.” Tugging her hand from his, she beamed up at him and gave his waistcoat a wifely pat that made the watching maids simper with delight. “All in good time.”

As he narrowed his eyes at her, she turned to watch the footmen load a single large trunk into the spacious boot at the back of the carriage. She couldn’t very well order the maids to pack all of her worldly belongings. They believed she would return to retrieve them after an idyllic honeymoon spent in her groom’s arms and bed. They had no way of knowing they might never see her again.