The Outcast Earl (24 page)

With hardly a concern, he trailed the others outside, and even helped Margaret up onto the seat. “What game are you playing at now?” she asked him suspiciously.

“Never you mind, Margaret. I know you are complicit, if not instrumental, in Abigail’s lovely manoeuvres, but rest assured I have all under control. But be forewarned, I shall enjoy my revenge for this.”

Margaret sighed. “I do hope you know what you’re doing, Charles,” she said sternly. “Don’t you do anything foolish to actually risk her,” the woman went on. “At the end of the day, she’s much less experienced and much more innocent than you, and even though she might be twitting you over something, she’s acting with full trust and confidence in your good sense and restraint. So don’t let her down by completely losing your temper. Save that for something that truly matters.”

Charles allowed a small smile to show. “Yes, ma’am,” he answered, and, farewelling the others, turned and ran up the steps.

He’d given her plenty of time to escape the drawing room with her aunt and, yes, they’d fled.

Just as he wanted.

* * * *

“Do you need anything else tonight, my lady?” Annie asked, quickly straightening up the room.

Abigail smiled, satisfied. She was dressed in her own nightdress and dressing gown, and, despite the embarrassment and rush of the morning, Annie had assured her that not even Mrs Carlton had disapproved of the morning’s evidence, saying only that the master never had learnt to be patient.

Abigail had found that amusing, especially as that master had spent a very long hour conspicuously ignoring her.

It had taken her a frustrating twenty minutes to work out his tack. After that she’d relaxed on the sofa with her tea and contemplated what she might do to soothe the savage beast that was sure to emerge in the end.

His insistence that she and Betsy remain in the drawing room while he’d gone outside had been too much of an opportunity to ignore. She knew very well he was as likely as not to turn up at her door in the night—she was still debating whether he would find the door locked or not.

Annie answered that question quite innocently. “Do you know what morning gown you’ll want, ma’am? I’ll bring it with me in the morning so it’s all ready.”

“What?” Abigail let out the word before she realised. Her mouth opened, then closed. “What have you been told?” she finally asked.

Annie gulped. “I’m sorry, madam—”

“No, no, never mind, just tell me.”

“It was Mr Grady, my lady. Before he took the teacart into the drawing room, Mr Grady came below stairs and said to me quietly as to how I should come up an’ wait for you, ‘cause you’d be up ta’ your room soon. I didn’t see as how ‘twas likely, since you never came up last night, but that’s what he said. And then he said as to how I should plan to be in your new room—the Frenchie one—”

“
Boudoir
,” Abigail pronounced for her.

“Yes, that’s it. Anyhow, Mr Grady said as how I should plan to be there by half-past seven tomorrow, and that you’d meet me there so as you didn’t have to ring for me in the servants’ hall where everyone could see, unless you managed to give the master his comeuppance again. And then Mr Grady said as how you was the only one who could be a-talkin’ back to the master, an’ ‘twas a good thing, even if it puts him in a terrible temper for a few more days.”

Abigail narrowed her eyes. “I may very well do that—give the earl his comeuppance again,” she said softly. “All right then, come to this room first in the morning. If I’m not here, I’ll want my lilac muslin gown, with slippers and stockings and petticoats to match.” She paused. “If this door is locked, though, just go back downstairs and I’ll ring for you to bring up my water when I’m ready.”

“Very good, ma’am.”

Abigail locked the door behind her and took the key from the lock. He could damn well convince her to open it by whispers through the door—surely his commanders had not taught him lock-picking skills. She looked around the room, then sat down in the chair between the fireplace and the window and stared at the wood portal.

How long would she have to wait? And what would he say to convince her to unlock it quietly? Abigail knew he would remember Aunt Betsy was across the hall. Despite the fact that her aunt clearly knew Abigail expected a late-night confrontation, she hadn’t warned or cautioned Abigail against it. She’d only asked if Abigail knew what she was doing.

“No,” the girl had answered honestly. “Tempting fate, I suppose, or fighting a battle I’m fated to lose. But I can’t back down and just wait for him to stomp all over me, metaphorically I mean. Otherwise I’ll be backing down my entire life.”

“I understand,” Betsy had sighed. “We need to have a chat tomorrow, child. I’m too tired for it tonight, but you had better plan to come and join me when I’m having my breakfast.”

“Yes, Aunt.” Abigail had smiled, kissing the elderly woman’s cheek.

She waited precisely five minutes from Annie’s departure. It was as though he’d been watching and had timed it. And he didn’t whisper through the door—he just unlocked it with a spare key.

Abigail stared as the door swung open, silent on the hinges. She’d heard the tumblers fall but they were too quiet to be heard across the hall. He was garbed in black breeches and vest, and his white shirtsleeves and open collar seemed a little piratical.

It was a role Abigail did not need to imagine him enacting. She took refuge in her righteous outrage. “You have a
key
? Am I to have no—?”

He was across the room before she had finished the sentence, his mouth fastened on hers with every possessive inclination she’d ever felt from him.

It was a long time before he muttered, “I said you were to spend the night in our bed, you disobedient little vixen.”

“I knew Margaret Danvers was coming early. I had to be ready, and not trapped underneath an earl I am not yet married to.” She licked her lips. Why did she feel obligated to explain—to excuse her perfectly reasonable behaviour? “Besides,” she added with a sniff, “I was cold. You don’t know how to share a bed.”

Meriden let out a hiss that might have been frustration or indignation. Abigail wondered which it was, but he said huskily instead, “You could have said. You had the time and opportunity before I carried off my precious spoils of war.”

Abigail shivered. “I didn’t remember then,” she confessed. “I was distracted. By you, I mean.” Her voice gained strength as the swelling in her lips subsided. “And it was no more than you did yesterday—”

He cut off her words with another kiss. Dimly, while the stars glittered in her mind, she felt him lifting her into his arms. Only when they were in the corridor did he look up, then back down to her lips. If he continued with more kisses like that, her lips would be bruised by morning. In the darkened empty hall, his voice was husky. “Now, tell me before I distract you more, Abby-heart. What do you have planned for tomorrow morning?”

Abigail licked her lips again and answered, her voice low and warmed again by his mouth, “Aunt Betsy wants to see me for breakfast in her rooms. And then there’s a list of things—”

“You’ll be in time for breakfast. Until then, your sweet little body is mine.” With that outrageous announcement, Meriden stopped and fastened his mouth on Abigail’s again. She moaned in her throat, gripping his ears and hair, while her mouth could do nothing but appease him.

Beneath her, she felt him kick a door open, then she was being lowered onto the bed.

The bed?
Abigail gasped and her eyes popped open and she tried to push on his head.

Meriden allowed it, but shackled her wrists in his hands and pressed them over her head to the pillows, lowering his body to trap her beneath him. She shivered violently at the hardness of his muscles and the harder length of him pressed against her softness.

The room was lit—more than she expected from a fire. And the bed was stripped down to its bottom sheet. And what was he doing with his free hand?

She squirmed.

“Abby-heart, when I say that you belong in our bed…” He growled, capturing her attention, then continued, “I mean it. And every night I find I am more and more insistent about it. So, instead of arguing with you, or waking up in a damn cold bed, I’m just going to have my own way.”

Abby shivered violently again, and Meriden groaned.

“Why do you call me that?” she asked, then bit her lip. “No, never mind that. What do you mean by you’re going to have your own way?”

His thighs slid around hers and he lifted his chest off her so he could rest on his forearms, his face coming down until their noses touched and eyes met. “I am the conquering warrior, remember?” he murmured. “And I’m not even close to done despoiling.”

Abigail closed her eyes for a moment and gathered a deep breath before she spoke, but his mouth fastened onto hers with as much ferocity as the first drawn-out exchanges. Desperately, she wanted to wind her arms around his neck and pull him closer, but her hands didn’t seem to follow her directions. She tugged, then gasped under his mouth.

Meriden had tied her. Whatever was wound around her wrists was soft, and pulled tight around her wrists. She moaned through the kiss in aggravated frustration.

By the time he had finally drawn back, she’d forgotten what she wanted to say. He licked her lips for her, and said, without an ounce of contriteness, “Long strips of velvet, Abby-heart, so they won’t hurt your wrists while I’m punishing you.”

“P-p-punishing?”

“It’s either that or fuck you,” he growled.
Growled
.
Again.
Abigail was intimately aware of the pressure exerted against her belly. His breeches, her dressing gown and her nightdress did nothing to diminish the forceful presence, though she suspected it did shield the heat she sensed emanating from him. “Right now you’re still a virgin—
my
sweet virgin, that is—and, as God is my witness, I refuse to be brutal with you the first time. So it’s got to be punishment, instead of fucking, this time.”

Lightheaded and definitely out of her depth at the intensity she’d unleashed, Abigail whimpered.
What was
fucking?

She actually saw his nostrils flare and his teeth grit at the noise she’d released. Beneath her, impossibly, the hardness against her seemed to grow. Her eyes widened perceptibly.

In the next instant he was off the bed. She watched, fascinated, as he stripped off his boots and waistcoat, stock and short stockings, leaving him in only his shirt and breeches. He had obviously prepared to bring her here, to be intimate with her. The counterpane and blankets had been stripped from the bed. The heavy curtains that hung around the bed had been tied firmly back. Lit candelabras sat on small tables at each side of the wide headboard, throwing golden light over Abigail.

Her breath caught in her throat when he stalked back towards her, a short knife held easily in his hand. It seemed to fit into his fingers in a familiar grip and she was shaking her head violently even as he stood at the end of the bed and considered her. He raised an eyebrow and she kicked her feet in a futile objection. Surely he wouldn’t
cut
her?

“Silly girl,” he answered her unspoken thought, his voice deep as his free hand captured one of her ankles and held it against the mattress. “After all the time and care I’ve taken to capture you, and all the freedoms and privileges I allowed you today, do you think I’d cause any true damage now?” He blinked and smiled, a little too intently for it to be comforting. Instead, Abigail’s nerves tightened more. “Will I cause you momentary pain? Yes, of course. But actually injure you? Mark that gorgeous, silken skin with an impersonal bit of metal, when my hands and mouth can do it so much more pleasurably? Absolutely not.”

She swallowed heavily. “Wh-what are you going to do with that, then?” she whispered anxiously.

“Ah, my beauty, you broke several rules tonight, you know,” he said conversationally, putting one knee at the foot of the bed. “And that’s just since bedtime. Tell me what you did that was disobedient. Now.”

Abigail’s insides lurched. She felt the strange wetness between her legs that always seemed to form in his presence begin to traitorously leak from between her labia. The little nub of pleasurable nerve endings that he’d so carefully cultivated with his tongue the night before vibrated as though he were already stroking it. “I, ah…” Her gaze fixed on the knife. It had a lovely hilt of ivory inlaid with jewels. It was more than a simple knife, it was a treasure. An heirloom? “I didn’t come to your room?”

“Our room. You sleep in our bed. From now on, every night, you sleep here in this bed, or at least whatever bed I’m expecting to sleep in. This is your place now, mine. And every time you try to escape that fate, you can expect to be captured, put into
our
bed and punished.” He climbed up on the bed, kneeling between her ankles while she bit her lip, but his eyes never left hers. “Tell me you understand me. Now.”

Was the knife just to threaten her with, then? He’d said he wouldn’t damage her. Did she trust him to keep that promise? What choice did she have, other than screaming her head off in blind panic and waking the household?

It was a nonsensical thought, to think he’d truly harm her. She knew deep inside that he wouldn’t. He’d protected her, cared for her, claimed her in public and in private, even sacrificed—and without complaint—financially to make their marriage a reality. She swallowed. He wasn’t asking her to promise to obey him. He was asking if she understood his ‘rule’. “Yes, I understand,” she whispered.

Meriden reached out to stroke the skin of her shins and calves beneath the twisted hem of her dressing gown. “Second,” his low voice demanded, “you do not lock doors against me. Against the servants, fine. But never think that a lock will keep me away from you, because it won’t. Not here, and not anywhere else either, mine.” Cradled expertly in his right hand, the knife teasingly stroked the wispy edge of Abigail’s dressing gown.

Again, Abigail noted the phrasing. He wasn’t asking her to promise to submit to his every demand. He wasn’t using his prospective role as husband or even his already established role as her protector and defender to assert his rights. Meriden was making his demands based only on their personal interactions. He was insisting she understand his private expectations. He did not have to be so noble. What English lord didn’t expect his wife to be available to him whenever he wished? She nodded, decisively, even as she inwardly acknowledged that she ought to be pointing out they weren’t married yet. But in this mood, with the intense emotions she couldn’t identify vibrating off him, she didn’t want to contradict him. She’d save that for another time, once she’d learnt more about what he was feeling, and how to both stoke and soothe it. “Yes, I understand.”