The Courtesan's Daughter (39 page)

“I shan’t let you do anything to me,” she said icily, watching as he grew stiff under the loose gap in his trousers. “Besides, you’ve changed the subject again, which you always do.”

“I have not,” he said, checking his wound. It had scabbed over, messily, and was almost completely closed. “You seem to think that I go about popping women’s breasts out of their bodices, or worse, let myself be purchased with a marriage license and bit of blunt. I can assure you that this is my first marriage and I entered into it willingly. Now, lift your skirts like a good girl. I am going to thrash you with my nice, long stick.”

“Ash!” she gasped. “There is no call to be vulgar!”

Her stomach dropped another three quarters of an inch. Exactly.

“Was I being vulgar?” he asked, lifting his gaze from his wound to pierce her with his blazing blue eyes. “I thought I was merely being obvious. I suppose you would prefer it if I lifted your skirts, but I am wounded you know, and on your behalf. I thought you might”—he shrugged, the muscles in his shoulders bunching and rolling deliciously—“like to help.”

“I’ll do no such thing. And especially as I am not at all convinced that you wanted to marry me for myself.”

Ash paused and looked at her, really looked at her. She tried very hard to let him see what she had hidden from view all her life. It was not always easy being Sophia’s daughter. In fact, it was never easy.

“I did want to marry you,” he said softly. His hair was tousled and falling into his eyes. She tried very hard not to let it distract her. This was very important, and she was very tired of having the same argument with him again and again, the same fear chasing her.

“You didn’t act like it,” she said in an undertone.

“I suppose that’s because I didn’t want to want to,” he said.

“Because of my mother.”

“Partly. But mostly because of my father.”

She sat on the edge of a large upholstered chair, kicking off her battered shoes and tucking her dirty stockinged feet under her skirts. Ash moved forward slowly until he stood in front of her, his blue eyes mournful. He grabbed a footstool and sat down at her feet.

“He wasn’t a kind man,” Ash said, staring at the hem of her skirts. “To my mother. To me. I’ve told you that he made me his tool, his method of revenge on your mother for rejecting him.”

“She rejected him?”

“Oh, he didn’t tell me, but one hears things. Get some of the old ones at White’s drunk and you hear all sorts of stories,” he said, reaching out and under her hem, finding her left foot and pulling it out. “I heard the stories about the Indian bit; didn’t know what to do with that bit of doggerel.” Her foot rested in the palm of his hand. Her stockings were filthy. She was mortified.

“You heard about my mother,” she said.

“You don’t have to be at White’s to hear about your mother,” he said, smiling.

Caro didn’t smile back. She felt queasy, her stomach in rebellion from being yanked about so often. Always Sophia, never Caroline. Her mother had grown children and she was still the most talked about, the most desirable woman in London.

“I suppose not,” she said softly, keeping her eyes down. She had a smear of dirt on her skirt exactly two inches long. That seemed important, somehow.

“My mother,” Ash said. “I think she loved him once. I don’t know why, but sometimes she’d speak as if she did or had or remembered something about him no one else saw. He drove it out of her. By meanness, by coldness, by isolation. He left her alone too much and wouldn’t let her come to Town, except once. Once she came to Town, and it broke her completely. I don’t know what happened, what he did, but she was never the same.”

Whatever it was, it had probably involved Sophia. Why else the war between them all these years?

“That’s when he began talking to me,” Ash said. “About her. Always about her.”

No need to ask who
her
was. Ash was caressing her foot, his index finger tracing the arch, the ankle, the instep. She tried not to shiver and failed.

“He’s a hard man,” Ash said. “Driven in his need for revenge. It seemed noble to me as a boy, but now I’d call it an obsession. Once I met Sophia, I understood.”

Caro pulled her foot out of his hand and tucked it back under the shelter of her skirts.

Ash looked at her and she steeled herself against the anguish in his blue eyes. She’d done quite enough damage to herself because of those blue eyes.

“You may not realize it, having been with her all your life, but she’s an unusual woman.”

“You don’t say?” Caro said coldly.

“She’s strong,” Ash said, reaching out to trace her two-inch smear of dirt.

It just so happened that the stain was directly over her curled knee. It also just so happened that no matter how put off she was by Ashdon’s words, she had yet to be put off by his touch. It was crushingly illogical. It was a good thing she had given up on logic. Raw emotion was going to be her guiding force now.

It was also, by pure coincidence, a good thing she found his touch emotionally pleasurable or she would have kicked him in the face.

“It’s what so infuriates my father, I think,” Ash said. “I wasn’t worried, not for her. It was when I met you that I started to worry.”

“I beg your pardon?” Caro said, shifting her weight, moving the dirt smear. It was now positioned over her upper thigh. Fancy that.

“I didn’t think you were like her,” he said. “I mean, why should I? She’s the one everyone talks of and she’s the one who arranged for your marriage without consulting you. I thought that you were just another proper girl who had been subjected to a proper education and would submit properly to the proper husband. And then I met you,” he said, looking up at her. “And then I knew.”

“Knew what?” she whispered. He sounded … almost besotted.

“That I had to protect you from him, from Westlin, what else? I couldn’t ruin you, which was his plan from start to finish, and I couldn’t marry you, couldn’t bring you into my life and into his. He hates Sophia. He wants to destroy you just to punish her.”

“Destroyed? I hardly think so,” she said, leaning her head back against the chair.

“Yes, I came to that conclusion as well,” he said, letting his other hand slip under her tattered hem and slide along her foot to her ankle to her calf. “You’re just like her, just as strong, just as compelling.”

“You certainly didn’t seem very happy about it,” she said, pretending to ignore the fact that both of his hands were under her skirt and that he was slipping her garters down her legs. Her stockings soon followed. She was past caring if her feet were clean.

“Because I wasn’t,” he said bluntly. Her eyes, which had been drooping, snapped open. “I saw what he did to my mother, what he tried to do to Sophia. I’m his son, trained to be his heir in all things. His tool, Caro,” he whispered hoarsely. “Do you think I wanted that for you?”

Caro’s head lifted from the cushion and she studied Ash’s face in the candlelight.

“You were afraid that you would bully me as he bullied your mother? You were afraid of what you would do to me? Afraid of what you would become?”

“Yes,” he said, lowering his head, avoiding her eyes. “I want to protect you from that. From me.”

Her heart broke into a thousand points of pain. He’d been trying to protect her. He’d run from her, pushed against her, avoided her, pointlessly, because he was afraid he’d hurt her.

“You would never do that to me,” she whispered, inching forward on the chair and wrapping her arms around him. He was hot to the touch, smooth and firm.

“I appreciate your confidence,” he said, kissing her neck, tugging at her bodice.

“But that’s not what’s important, is it?” she asked. “It was something else that convinced you.”

“It was you who convinced me,” he said, lifting her skirts to her hips, wrapping her legs around his hips. “It was you.”

“What did I do?” she said, kissing his shoulder, the line of bone, the soft skin of his throat. “I’ll do it again.”

“I like the sound of that,” he whispered as he kissed her. She opened her mouth beneath his, swallowing his passion and his need for her, devouring him, savoring him. He was delicious.

“Tell me. What did I do?” she said, pulling her mouth from his. He was not going to get out of declaring himself that easily. Not again.

“It’s who you are,” he said, his mouth nuzzling the swell of her breasts. She was never going to wear a fichu again. “You fought me at every turn, demanding your due, fighting for what you wanted. If I tried to do to you what Westlin did to my mother, you’d kill me for it.”

“I’m not at all clear on what Westlin did to your mother, but I can state truthfully that I have a list of things which I will kill for,” she said with a crooked smile, a tear fighting for release from her right eye.

She was not going to ruin this moment with tears. She was going to revel in it, remembering it for all her life. Remembering every shadow of emotion that flitted across Ash’s lovely face. Remembering the exact moment when Ash declared his overwhelming, undying, illogical love for her.

He loved her.
Her.
Not Sophia’s daughter. Not the means of a little revenge. Not a way to fill his purse.

“You have a list?” he asked.

“I’m very organized and highly logical. I’m surprised you haven’t noticed.”

“I’ve been too busy noticing other things.”

He’d got her bodice loose, not such a feat considering the general condition of her dress. His teeth brushed against a nipple and she gasped softly. Very softly. She had not forgotten that Anne was in the very next room, most likely talking to either her mother or Lord Staverton. Possibly both.

“You’re completely besotted, aren’t you?” she said.

“Completely,” he said, ripping her skirt with both hands so that she lay naked to the waist.

“You can’t live without me, can you?”

“Can’t and won’t,” he said, thumbing the core of her desire and making her groan and arch under his hand.

“You do know that I’m still angry that you wagered on me. Very presumptuous. Highly irregular,” she said, pressing against his hand, clenching her teeth against her moans.

“I made five thousand pounds, Caro. Aren’t you happy that I finally won?”

“Five,” she gasped as his finger entered her, stroking, “thousand? Are you still in debt?”

“Only by eight hundred pounds,” he said, licking his way across her breasts, his finger plunging into her, his thumb doing wicked circles within her folds.

“Eight hundred,” she gasped, her head thrown back against the upholstery. “That’s a lot of money. How will you earn it? You’ve married as many women as you’re allowed.”

“True,” he said, “and also true that I married the only woman that I want.”

“But when did you make the bet, Ash? After the pearls or before? Did you make a bet that you could and would ruin me?”

“Cal made the bet. After the pearls. After the carriage and the vicious and premeditated attack of your breasts on my resolve. When I knew I couldn’t live without you. That’s when,” he whispered.

And with that, he plunged into her, holding her legs around his waist as she balanced on the edge of the chair. It was molten, a fire of longing met and married. He held her against him, pressing her to the edge of reason and then pushing her over into the abyss of passion. She fell freely. She had already decided that reason was vastly overrated.

“Are we ever going to make love in a bed, Lord Ashdon?” she said, panting against his neck, feeling the damp curls of hair on his nape, breathing in the scent of him.

“Eventually.”

“Am I ever going to be able to toss off a really good scream? I feel quite certain I could deliver a good one if there weren’t so many witnesses always about.”

“Definitely.”

“And are you ever going to be able to make a wager that will match that eight-hundred-pound debt?”

“I could,” he said, ripping through the rest of her dress so that she lay naked amid the ruins of her gown on her brother’s bedroom chair, “make a wager that you will deliver a child nine months from now.”

“To the day, Lord Ashdon? ” she said, sprawled before him.

“To the hour, Lady Wife.”

She pulled him to her by the growing-before-her-very-eyes sign of his affection and regard. Some things were just too obvious to be argued against.

“Ashdon? Make the bet.”

Epilogue

DINNER had been a late affair, due completely to the fact that Caro and Ash simply could not resist having at each other on any available surface. Charming, to be sure, but one did like to eat at regular intervals. It would all be so much easier when they were ensconsed in number nineteen Curzon Street. They could ruin their own furniture to their heart’s content.

What had happened to Markham’s bedroom chair was simply beyond repair.

Sophia, sitting in the white salon and sipping a solitary cup of tea, smiled in satisfaction. Things were going quite well there, as she had known they would. Caroline quite had the gentleman in the palm of her hand, and there was no better nor happier place for dear Ashdon to be. Such a lovely boy. He had turned out quite well considering the depth and vigor of Westlin’s rather annoying influence.

Markham had, as predicted, announced his determination to go to America with John and the boys at the first opportunity. First opportunities could be arranged or disarranged with comforting precision. She hadn’t quite decided when his first opportunity should arise.

Sophia, to meet his expectations of her on the occasion of his declarataion, had protested and expressed the sorts of doubts that were common to mothers. In the face of her objections, he had been more determined than ever to go. Naturally. She hadn’t yet decided if they should leave before the Season was over or not. She wasn’t at all sure what John’s reaction would be to having his sons in town for a London Season. And she wasn’t at all sure she cared what John’s reaction would be. It might, after all, do his sons some good to meet and mingle with the aristocracy of England.