When She Said I Do (15 page)

There weren’t many true dressmakers in any nearby towns or villages, so she had a bit of custom from the surrounding areas and not a great deal of competition.

However, with no lady in the manor and with even Mrs. Nelson, dear girl that she was, inclined to pinch her pennies until they squealed … well, it was all a widow could do to survive in such times. She hadn’t counted on the way women in the country did for themselves, trimming their own bonnets and refashioning their gowns every year for a new look at a fraction of the price of new!

So when a strange little man rode up in an extraordinary little pony cart, entered her shop and offered her a thick wad of banknotes to abandon her post for a long holiday in Brighton … well, Penny had kissed him upon the top of his balding little head and dropped her shop keys into his palm without a tremor of guilt. It would all keep until she came back … if she ever came back!

*   *   *

He was following her again.

A hunter upon the scent.

More like a hound after its mistress.

It wasn’t as if he had anything better to do. Amberdell Manor was losing its brooding appeal, room by room, as Hurricane Calliope swept through it. How was a bloke supposed to lurk properly in rooms full of light and flowers and the smell of beeswax polish?

Positively irritating.

When he had first come to Amberdell Manor, it had been shut up for more than a year already, silent and dark. Ren had never thought to look beneath the dustcovers in most of the rooms. It turned out he had a very fine house, indeed.

She was doing something else today. At first he’d thought she was headed back from the village again, but she’d turned aside at the bridge and was following the riverbed, picking her way down the bank, turning her head from side to side. Had she dropped something? If she were looking for some of her lost possessions, she might wish to look downriver instead of up.

Suddenly she exclaimed and bent to pluck something from the ground.

She was picking flowers. Again.

Ren didn’t think the house needed any more.

Yet Callie didn’t seem to want a bouquet. Instead, she stepped closer to the river and carefully washed whatever it was she had found. Then she crossed to a higher bank and seated herself in a patch of sunlight. Her basket apparently contained a sheaf of papers and a pencil.

She was drawing.

Bemused, Ren continued watching from the rise behind her, allowing his mount to drop his head and graze the hillside. There his bride sat, upon the damp ground, her stack of paper on her knee and her pencil in action. She made a pretty picture, a shapely girl sitting on a grassy bank on a sunny day. He only regretted being too far away to see what it was that fascinated her so.

Chapter 12

It took Callie several tries to recapture her onetime ease with the pencil. Drawing was nothing like writing. She most flagrantly used up sheet after sheet, covering them on both sides with tiny beginnings of a leaf, or a petal, or a root system.

Then, suddenly, she had it again. The pencil seemed directly connected to her eyes, with no awkward hand in between. Each stroke pulled detail from the carefully arranged specimen before her. Not just the shapes, mind you. Botanical drawing wasn’t simply a pretty picture. The illustrations had to represent, truly, every scientific aspect of the plant.

Yet Callie also wanted to capture the way the tiny yellow flowers made her feel. She wanted someone looking at the drawing to understand her joy at the burgeoning spring about her, and in her discovery of a perfect example of this common little sprout, this harbinger of warmer rain and longer days. Spring wildflowers seemed brave to her, chancing a bloom that might yet be struck down by frost. She loved the summer flowers, as well, with their lush abundance and fragrant blooms, often bent heavy with bees drinking their fill of the nectar within.

She adored even the seed pods formed in late summer and bursting in fall, flinging out hope for the next season, assurance that even if this plant did not survive the cold weight of snow, there would be blooms in the years to come.

She would have to come back after the seeds set …

Her fingers moved faster and faster, her mind already filling in the colors of the petals, deeper in the center, and the way the underside of the fuzzy leaves gleamed a silvery tint.

*   *   *

Ren watched her for over an hour. He had dismounted and crept closer, stretched out on his belly like a boy watching ants. The front of his coat and trousers became damp in the grass, but his back baked warm in the sun, the dark wool drawing it in, relaxing the muscles of his aching back and shoulders.

He nearly fell asleep in the sun, like a lizard on a rock, listening to birdsong and the burbling of the river and the crunch, crunch of his horse cropping grass behind him.

She was singing again, absently, in tune but without much thought, simply repeating a few phrases of that country dance tune she’d sung in the lane as she pared away at her pencil with a tiny penknife. Sometimes, when she seemed to be concentrating particularly hard, her bonnet bent low over the paper, she would simply hum the melody. Then it blended with the birdsong and left him with the drowsy impression that he’d been hearing her accompany the birdsong all his life.

Except for the last few years. He’d not heard a single note from a bird since waking from the deep unconsciousness of coma. He’d not noticed, not precisely, yet he’d missed it all the same.

Where had the birds gone?

The birds are where they’ve always been. Where did you go?

I was locked in my own mind, following the spiral of pain and anger.

That swirl of loss and agony seemed to have slowed, allowing him to dismount that unbroken steed and set foot on the earth and the sun-warmed grass once more, just for a moment.

However, he was beginning to ache in this unfamiliar position and clouds had risen to cover the sun. Callie nearly lost her stack of drawings to a sudden gust of wind and Ren spent several moments admiring her lithe form as she chased down the errant leaves.

The disturbance seemed to bring a halt to her enthusiasm for the moment and he watched her pack up her basket and shake out her skirt. He allowed her to get ahead of him, for he feared it would take some time to pry his aching bones from the ground and remount his horse.

The breeze blew a sheet of paper past him and he caught it reflexively. It was a simple practice sheet, covered with unconnected leaves and petals and wiry lines he realized were roots. Even in the quick sketchy manner he could see the skill.

A good cook, a superb housekeeper, and a talented artist. And yes, a rather attractive person, especially naked in the candlelight.

How such a girl could have sprouted from the madness of the Worthington soil he could not imagine.

Well, he would send her home rich enough to bring her ease, and when he died she would easily find another husband with the fortune her widowhood would bring her. No longer would she be wasted tending that ungrateful mob.

As he peeled his reluctant limbs from the damp ground, he scowled at the thought of that other husband. The bastard had better treat her properly.

*   *   *

Ren arrived back at the house to find Callie’s spritely pace had returned her long before he’d walked his aching bones home on his bored horse. He’d pushed himself to properly stable the gelding, but now he stood in the front hall, leaning on the newel post and wishing he’d remembered that he was a dying man, not a spry youth who could lie about in a meadow and pay no price for it.

With his eyes closed, he realized that the scents of flowers still filled his senses. Flowers and … beeswax. And drifting up from the kitchens came a hint that she was doing something delicious to ham and potatoes.

Before she came, the house smelled of dust and tobacco and, during some of his worst weeks, him. Before, it had smelled of solitude and despair.

Now, Ren stood in the hall of his fine house and drew in deep breaths of life … and woman … and home.

Any woman could have improved this place. I could have hired a housekeeper and been living like this all along.

He opened his eyes and let his gaze follow along the wall until he found the source of the fresh flower scent. His lips twitched. She had taken a priceless Ming dynasty vase and stuffed it full of nondescript weeds. It was like dressing a charwoman in satin and putting her on a throne.

Yet the motley bouquet smelled spicy and lively, bringing spring inside the house in a way he’d never before experienced. So, not just any woman, then. Only Calliope would choose flowers for their scent and not their blooms.

On the two-hundred-year-old commode that had lived in the homes of kings, next to the vase, there also lay a stack of drawings and a tiny stub of pencil … and a fist-sized chunk of Cotswold limestone, just the right size to keep paper from blowing in the wind.

Ren smiled slightly, ignoring the pull of scar tissue in his cheek.

No, there was only one Calliope.

His smile faded. It was truly going to hurt when she left him behind. The house would go stale once again, reeking of dust and tobacco.

He ran a hand through his hair, dislodging a bit of grass there. He crumpled it in his fist with a snarl. Rage rose within him—rage at himself for allowing that damned family to take refuge in his house and at her, for bringing life and laughter and flowers, and then bloody taking them away again!

*   *   *

When Callie had prepared a simple potato hash with onions and ham for her supper, she automatically filled a plate for Mr. Porter, as well. Then she gazed perplexedly at it. Would he join her? He’d certainly been nowhere to be seen all day. Would he find it in the larder eventually? It seemed a shame to let the steaming treat chill and congeal.

With a small smile, she put both plates on a tray and picked it up and, with a candle in her other hand, made her way through the dark house to Mr. Porter’s study. She tapped on the door with the back of one hand, juggling the tray and candle. No answer.

She pressed the latch and opened the door. “Mr. Porter?”

But the somber, masculine room was dark and cold, not even an ember in the hearth. The man wasn’t even home.

“Fine,” Callie muttered. “Enjoy whatever the mice leave you in the morning.” She plunked his plate down on his desk and stomped out of the room.

Really! She cooked and cleaned and played willing virgin every night—the man could at least have the courtesy to come home for supper!

Callie stopped halfway up the stair, halfway through a truly satisfying grouse. Sweet heaven, she sounded like someone’s wife!

She looked up the steps into the shadowy floor above. “I am someone’s wife.” In that moment, the entire matter seemed entirely surreal. Any moment, one of her family was surely going to pop out and laugh about the good trick they’d played on her.

But the house remained dark and silent and entirely Worthington-free. Which was what she wanted. Truly.

Suddenly very weary from her busy day, she trudged up the rest of the stairs while chewing thoughtfully on her bottom lip.

I am alone. I wanted to be alone. I used to ache for just an hour of solitude.

At that moment, she couldn’t for the life of her remember why.

When she got to her room, she entered listlessly and set her candle and tray with her own supper on the vanity. She leaned a half-turn away from it and put her hands behind her back to undo the buttons of her gown.

Her candle went out.

The room was plunged into total darkness. Callie’s small gasp was drowned out by the sound of something moving toward her, fast. Before she could inhale to scream, she felt a hard arm go about her waist and was lifted from her feet.

The darkness whirled around her, then she found herself on her feet with her back pressed to the chill plaster of the wall.

He was on her like a starving beast. Big hands dug into her hair, pulling it from its pins, dragging it down over her shoulders, then sliding down her shoulders to wrench at the tiny buttons behind her even as his hot mouth descended upon her bare neck. As he ground his body into hers, he growled with lust and need.

It was terrifying. It was wild and animal.

Callie found she liked it very much. Her heart pounded. Her breath caught. She stood completely still and allowed every second. She could have stopped him if she wished. Five brothers, after all.

He had trouble with her buttons, so he flipped her, pushing her bosom against the wall while he stripped her gown open down the back.

She could feel the hardness of him behind her, feel the heat from his body, feel the urgency of his desire in the urgent roughness of his big hands on her skin.

Oh, yes. Mr. Porter was beginning to lose control.

Callie was glad the darkness hid her satisfied smirk.

Then he took both shoulders of her gown in his hands and pulled it down to her waist in a single hard motion, trapping her elbows tightly at her sides and baring her breasts to the chill plaster of the wall.

She’d wanted to break through to him … but now she feared she would be the one to break.

*   *   *

Ren could scarcely think for the hot blood coursing through his veins. His cock was so rigid it was painful to be trapped against her soft bottom … fantastically, outrageously exquisitely painful. He could not resist the urge to thrust harder against her yielding flesh. Her response was to gasp softly … but though she held no pearl in her mouth, she gave him no protest.

She didn’t know. She thought him a man. She thought she wanted him but she’d never seen him, not really. He was a broken, ruined thing, a creature that should be kneeling at the feet of a vibrant healthy beauty such as hers.

She thought she knew him … when she’d never even seen him in the light of day.

This darkness now, this suited him. For all that he craved to see her he felt freer in this blackness than he’d ever felt even in the safety of his hood.

Coward.