When She Said I Do (20 page)

“I think the yellow is off.” She sighed. “I wish I had my own paints. I scrounged these from the nursery.”

I have a nursery?
Ren resolved to get her better paints on the next coach from London.

“Well, I’m glad to see you so recovered from your ordeal yesterday.”

She glanced at him, then blushed. He tilted his head. “What is it?”

She fiddled with her little weed. “This morning … there was a pearl.”

Ren kept his tone offhand. “Yes. Did you mind?”

She shook her head quickly. “No, not at all. It’s just that … well, I think I woke once … were you…?”

“Was I what?” Damn, she was going to say it. She was going to writhe and blush and ask him if he’d slept naked wrapped around her and then he was going to have to kiss her …

“Nothing.” She lifted her chin. “How are we going to find out who locked me in?”

He drew back. “I believe we know what happened.”

She brightened. “Oh, excellent. Who was it? What are you going to do about them?” Her brows drew together. “I don’t think you should punish them too harshly. It was only a prank—”

“You locked yourself in and then panicked because the door stuck just a bit.”

Oh!
Callie couldn’t believe it. Mr. Porter had the nerve to stand there and—

She whirled, pacing to the fireplace and back. “It stuns me that you persist in denying that something is going on here! First the ladder…”

“You were very careless to endanger yourself with that ancient ladder.”

“… and now with the cellar door. I told you how I braced it with the log!”

“I’m sure that while you sat in the dark you wished you’d thought of that…”

“Oh!” She stalked back to the fireplace again. “You unbearable lout!”

Offended, Ren folded his arms. “Now you’re just being silly. I admit I didn’t realize I had such a serpent problem, but they have been cleared out and you’ll see no more of them. Perhaps if you’d used a bit more forethought when venturing into the cellar—”

The peculiar noise she made, something between a shriek and a growl, was drowned out by the ringing sound of a sword being drawn. Ren realized she was arming herself with one of the ornamental sabers that were mounted, crossed, over the mantel.

She swung about, pointing the sword at him. “You insist on calling me a liar or labeling me a fool!
En garde!
”

Chapter 16

At the sight of his dainty bride wielding a sword, Ren laughed out loud. Then he heard the whistle of steel in the air and the top button of his weskit flew away, landing with a pinging sound on the floor halfway across the room.

“What?”

His dainty bride returned to a quite proper fencing stance. One delicate eyebrow rose. “Arm yourself, sir, or lose every button you own.”

She tossed him the other sword. He caught it automatically, shaking his head. “You realize that now I will be compelled to tie you up and lock you in the attic, like all the other mad wives of legend.”

Her smile was equal parts sweetness and poison, like treacle syrup laced with cyanide. “You, sir, shall be too busy crawling about the floor looking for your buttons.”

Ping
.

“Bloody hell.” This time it was from the arm of his surcoat.

He went
en garde
. The battle was on. She was rather good, he realized, as she blocked and parried and almost managed to rob him of another button. “You’ve been trained.”

“My aunt Clemmie trained us all,” she said nonchalantly. “Dade is better than I, but not by much. He had no one to practice with. You see, being older than his brothers gave him such an unfair advantage.”

“But no unfairness in your being female?”

Swing. Block.
Clash, clang
—oh, bloody hell!—
ping.

“At first he quite bullied me, I admit. I didn’t give him a truly fair fight until I realized that while he had the reach on me, I was just a hair … quicker.”

She flew past him.
Ping
.

Ren felt good with a sword in his hand again. He was an accomplished swordsman … or at least, he had been. Now he feared his spritely bride was about to debutton him most ignominiously. Perhaps a distraction?

When next she whirled by him, he twitched his saber.
Ping
,
ping
,
ping
.

Three tiny buttons disappeared from the back of her dress.

“Oh!” She glared at him. “You rat!”

Now that she was distracted by her damaged gown, Ren managed to get in past her defenses once more.
Rip.

The seam of her tiny cap sleeve parted. The left side of her bodice began to slither most interestingly downward. “My gown!”

She flew at him, fury redoubled. His weskit hung open now, and his sleeve dropped down over his wrist, entirely parted at the shoulder.

“Brat!” He gave her bottom a sound swat with the flat of his sword as she danced past him.

She repaid him by turning his cravat into a handkerchief. Ren’s eyes narrowed. She’d been going for the hood!

Damn it. She was going to get past his defenses. He could not manage a full frontal assault with his shoulder damaged and she wasn’t holding back in the slightest. Indeed, she seemed to be relishing it.

He needed to tire her out, or make her careless, distract her … he grinned beneath his shadowed covering.

Whish
. The other sleeve of her gown parted. With no buttons to hold the bodice high, she was now fighting half exposed, her left hand clutching her shredded gown to her bare bosom.

She looked like a goddess on the run. He wanted her so fiercely he could scarcely take a step for the ache in his groin. She noted his arousal, her glance widening as she understood just how the stakes were rising.

“Calliope,” he growled. “Drop your sword … or drop your gown.”

She regarded him with a cocked head for a moment, then boldly released the bodice of her gown, letting it fall. It slipped down, past her waist, leaving her standing topless, wielding a sword, wearing only a sheer pair of pantalets.

She looked like a pirate’s dream.

Ren’s coat fell off in three pieces. Damn. She’d distracted him with all that luminous ivory flesh. God, didn’t she look delicious against the setting sun, naked in his library—surely he’d suffered some sort of fever dream. Surely he did not have this nimble creature, eyes flashing, sword swishing through the air … oh, hell.
Quick!

He disarmed her with a twist of his wrist and some bloody good luck, though he would never admit it. It was quite validating, the way her sword spun away to imbed its point into the opposite wall. Startled, her eyes wide, she held out both hands. “I surrender, Mr. Porter. That was well…”

Snick. Whish.

The ties of her pantalets were no more. Her undergarment fell to the floor to tangle about her ankles. She gasped and stumbled back, falling on her bottom on the carpet.

Ren advanced upon her. She tried to scramble away. He went down upon one knee, planting it upon her ruined pantalets, pinning her in place, with the fabric tight about her ankles. Looming over her, he put the point of the sword just below her chin.

“Say it.”

She gazed at him through wide eyes. “I … I surrender.”

He lifted the sword away, then used his wrists to part her knees wide. Then wider still. “Say it.”

Her breath began to come fast. She lay back upon the floor. “I surrender,” she said softly.

“Close your eyes and reach your hands above your head.”

She did so, crossing her wrists and immediately becoming his maddest, wettest fantasy come to light.

He traced the cold flat of his blade down between her breasts so gently there wasn’t even the hint of a mark left behind. “Do you grant the field?”

She inhaled sharply, her breath a shiver, her breasts quivering. The cold steel touched her belly. She sucked another shuddering breath. “I grant the field,” she whispered.

Ren laid the sword aside and covered her labia with his hands. “This field. Is it mine?”

Callie lay trembling, her eyes closed, her hands clasped tight above her head, her ankles tethered by his weight. She felt open, helpless, conquered. “Oh, yes.”

There came the familiar rustle of his hood being removed. Then his mouth—hot, seeking, unerring—

She cried aloud at the pleasure. It was mad, wicked, outrageous to taste her there … she’d never known. Never …

In an instant she was his, aroused, swollen with lust, damp with it, and he took it. He spared her nothing. Lips, tongue, teeth, nibbling, licking, oh, sweet heaven, licking and teasing and delving deep to taste the inside of her …

She cried out recklessly, in total abandon, spread before him on the carpet like a madman’s drunken feast. There was no end to his mouth, it was everywhere, she could not bear it.

“Screaming will not aid you,” he growled into her wet, throbbing flesh. “Although you should feel free to try.”

She screamed. She howled, she begged, not knowing what she begged for …

He thrust a large finger deep into her and she came apart, shuddering as great wicked waves of pleasure stole her breath. He thrust his finger again and again as he used his mouth on her like a well-wrought weapon. She gave way before him, laying down arms, surrendering completely. She writhed, she bucked, she undulated at his every motion, yet it was not enough for him. He took her again and again with his mouth. He made her rise and come again and yet again, relentless, turning her into a shivering, sweat-soaked shell of a being, with nothing to say but hoarse moans and helpless whimpers.

After her third orgasm, she lay limp and exhausted. Her mind slipped sideways. Her only coherent thought,
Will he take me now? Will he make me his at last?

He did not. Instead, he withdrew his wet hand from her and gently urged her parted knees together. She rolled to her side, gasping and dizzy. She wasn’t truly aware of him walking away from her. She merely felt chilled and abruptly alone. She opened her eyes.

On the carpet a few inches from her nose lay a single pearl.

And there were hundreds to go …

I shall not survive this.

*   *   *

Ren left the library at a near-run, lurching down the hall to the stairs. He leaned on the newel post for a long moment, fighting back the impulse to take his wife hard and fast on the carpet, plowing her in the library like a couple of randy servants. Calliope. She was delicious, so sweet and abandoned and willing, and he was a bastard, making a twisted game out of her first adventures in lovemaking.

Yet, he wanted her so badly that the thought simply pounded through him like his own pulse. He ached for her, ached for release, ached to be touched, to be held, to be … to be loved. The answer should have been to fill her with such lust that she’d be willing to tolerate him, but now he wanted more. He wanted her. He wanted her to want him. Not for pearls and not for wealth, not even for pity.

If only he were still a man.

As he was, he might be able to make her cry out at his touch. He might be able to ignite her body, but there was more … so much more … to sweet Calliope than simply her lovely body.

Damn it to hell, he wanted it all.

He ran a shaking hand over his face. His beard scratched at his palm. He’d scraped her skin with it, as well. Her thighs had been afire with the abrasiveness of his beard. He’d only grown it out of indifference. What did it matter if he shaved, when no one saw him without the hood?

Now he had a reason to return to a smooth face. It wasn’t as though the beard did much to hide the scars anyway. Surely it only made him look wilder and less human.

When he’d stood in the doorway of the library he’d realized that he liked her. Could it … would it ever be possible for her to like him?

Yet, why should she? What had he ever done to deserve her good favor?

It was a strange and chilling realization, to understand how restricted he’d become, how selfish. His thoughts scarcely ever left his own doom.

Callie baked him cake and washed windows and wrapped up bloody ginger for the village, disastrous though it might be for them. Callie took care of her ridiculous parents and her outrageous siblings and now she took care of him.

The gears of giving were rusty with disuse, but Ren resolved to think about what he might do for Callie, not simply to make her like him, but because it was high time someone did!

*   *   *

Callie spent the first part of the next morning repairing her damaged gown. Sitting in the sun-drenched window seat of the library, she painstakingly stitched up the torn sleeves and replaced the buttons. The search for those had cost her many minutes of crawling about the carpet.

She’d done that already once, when he’d startled her in her room the other night. By all rights, she ought to have been furious at the damage, but even as she bent over her sewing, she could not keep a small smile of remembered pleasure from tracing her lips. What a ridiculously wicked night it had been. At the thought of cold steel on her skin she shivered.

I’d certainly like to do that again sometime.

It wasn’t the sword fight or the way he’d sliced her gown from her—although that had been exciting indeed, like something from a very naughty pirate story!—it was him, Mr. Porter, and the way he made her feel when his hot hands shook with longing and his voice dropped low with need.

I wonder if it is possible to love someone you’ve never seen?

The sunlight made her feel sleepy and the thoughts of pleasure and sewing and wonder began to mingle in her mind.

There was more to the act, she knew it. Which meant he’d fled her again, just when she’d been quite willing to welcome him into her body to slake his own desire. He’d given her so much bliss, she was beginning to feel a bit guilty about having the lion’s share of the fun.

Yet, was she truly ready? She had no sentimental attachment to her virginity, other than the need to remain respectable for the sake of her family. What could be more respectable than to consummate her marriage with her husband? Yet in so many ways, Mr. Porter was still a stranger to her. How could she give herself to someone when he would not even show her his face?