When She Said I Do (26 page)

“Oh, Button.” She blushed, thinking of what she would look like in it, of the way the neckline—heavens, it was nearly a waistline!—would show off her breasts right down to her nipples.

Mr. Porter had seen her naked—but he had never seen her
more
than naked! She laughed out loud and spun a bit, making the shimmering skirt flare out around her. “Oh, Button, you are a naughty fellow.”

Button smiled indulgently. “A man might forgive a woman anything, wearing that gown … well, perhaps we should call it a negligee … a boudoir gown.”

Callie shook her head in wonder. “I only fear it shall be rags on the floor when Mr. Porter has had his way with it.”

Button folded his hands in saintly approval. “That is its sole purpose in being. Just a little something for a bride to wear at home.”

Callie stroked wondering fingers down the clinging fabric. “Happy honeymoon to me.”

*   *   *

When Ren returned from his search, he found the house quiet. At first he thought Calliope must be resting, but she was not in her room. When he’d searched her usual haunts, the kitchen, the library, even his own study, he was beginning to worry until he saw candlelight shining from beneath the door into the dining room.

He pushed open the door to find the table set, the room warm from a flagrant overuse of coal in the fireplace, and one end of the dining table set for two. It was a very long table. Ren was not entirely sure he’d ever really seen this room without the dustcovers. He had a very grand dining room.

Then he rounded the table and saw her. She sat in one of two chairs by the fire, clearly waiting for him … until she’d dozed off. With great relief, he moved to wake her—then his mouth went dry.

She was wearing something new. Not the simple blue and not the ruined ivory, either. This was a confection of deep pink, a color that reminded him of the inside of a conch shell … or, quite frankly, of the inside of Calliope.

He wondered dimly if that were intentional, for the gown seemed designed to inflame him.

It was doing a bang-up job of it.

She wore that hot, sexual invitation of a gown and yet sat most demurely, with her ankles crossed and her hands folded in her lap. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a messy, just-rolled-in-the-hay style. His fingers itched to take it down. Her head tilted into one of the wings of the chair and her lips were parted sweetly. Except that anything a woman did while wearing a gown like that was not sweet, it was suggestive in the extreme.

Ren could see her bosom, even to the upper aureole of her nipples. He could see her skin shimmer beneath the sheer fabric, just enough to understand quite thoroughly that she wore not a thing beneath it. The gown was obscene. Ren liked it very much.

He cleared his throat … because if he touched her he would take her.

She lifted her head and blinked at him sleepily.

“Was I asleep?”

Ren nodded. “Were you expecting me for supper? I didn’t know.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the set table. “Oh, yes, well … I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“You succeeded in surprising me.”

She stood and shook out her skirts. She seemed to not even realize the extreme vulgarity of her gown. Her poise made it less so, yet, perhaps, more so as well. It was if by behaving normally, she made him the one who was stealing glimpses of luminous ivory flesh, and not the other way around.

Clever. And very alluring.

When she turned and passed before the fire, Ren got a bit dizzy. It was just a flash, just a moment … when the gown became all but invisible and her entire luscious body became outlined in fire. It was maddening. He nearly swallowed his tongue. He’d seen her naked before … although the treat of it had not become mundane in the least, it did not throw him sideways like this play of silk and light on skin. Where had she obtained such a gown?

“Mr. Button brought it over, as an advance on my order. Do you like it?”

Mr. Button was either a genius or an instrument of evil. Possibly both. Nearly blind with lust, Ren followed Calliope to the table and obediently seated her in her chair. He then seated himself, without ever taking his gaze from her plump pale bosom. In the corner of his vision he noted a covered silver dish on the table. Calliope leaned forward to lift the cover. One pink, rigid nipple slipped free of its home. Ren forgot how to breathe. Then she leaned back and the little culprit disappeared again. It was with an effort that Ren managed to tear his eyes away to look at the dish. It was a simple supper, a cold concoction. It was laid out in simple rings of ham, cheese, fruit—apples!—and small leafy things that Ren did not recognize. It was quite beautiful. A work of art in food. He glanced sharply at her. “Did you do this?”

She nodded serenely. “Oh, yes. Most of it is from our larder, but the greens—”

“You were supposed to be resting! What of your ankle?”

She dimpled at his scolding tone. “Much better, thank you for asking. And I did not leave the house. Mr. Button kindly braved the cellar for me. The greens I gathered the day before yesterday. I had them in water in the larder, keeping cool.”

He blinked down at the platter. “We’re eating your specimens?”

She laughed. “Please, don’t worry. I shall be able to gather more when I’m better.”

Gingerly Ren reached out to take a leaf. He nibbled at the tip, tasting lemony and sharp, but quite nice actually.

“That is sorrel,” she told him. “When we get a proper staff, I’ll have it put into the garden if you like.”

She wanted to hire a gardener. She wanted to put in a garden.

The moment struck Ren with the force of a blow. He was sitting at the supper table with his wife, discussing servants and gardens and … and the future.

He felt his breath coming fast.

The future was not a thing he’d dared think about before. He’d not dared dream of, not since he’d waked in the dark room in a strange place and realized what he had lost. A future … the weight of that took his breath, made his heart pound, sent shocking spikes of sensation up and down his spine. A future meant things he’d lost faith in, things like hope. Things like love. Risky things all to dangle before a dying man.

He wanted to flee. He wanted to howl. He wanted … he wanted to live.

Abruptly, he pushed back from the table and stood. “What are you about, Calliope?”

She looked down at her plate. “I thought you might like to call me Callie … again.” Her voice was soft, tentative. Hopeful.

He could not bear it. He could not allow her to hope, could not allow himself to hope.

“I told you … I told you I am dying. You know that.”

She raised her hazel eyes to meet his gaze. “I know you believe that. I know why you believe that … but I’m not sure I do.”

He backed away from her. “Do you think this is just some mad fantasy of mine? Do you think I created this fable of death to amuse myself?”

“No, I think some idiot doctor told you you were in very poor health. I think some idiot doctor dwelled a bit too much on that and not enough on the future. I think some idiot doctor decided that he had all the answers and foretold your ruin.”

Ren flung out a hand. “Stop it! You don’t know what you speak of! I was beaten, broken, stabbed—left for dead! Do you think a man can simply come back from that? That he can go back to being the man he was before?”

“No, I don’t. I do think a man can go
on
from that. He can become another man, a changed man. The man he is now.”

She lifted her chin. “Once, a long time ago, my father took a very bad fall. True, he should not have been clambering about the balcony of the Globe Theater, but he wished to research a scene from Juliet’s perspective and the balcony was necessary. He slipped and fell to the ground below. We thought he would die. A doctor told him he would certainly never walk again. My mother nursed him. I nursed him, even though I was but a child. He still feels pain, and in bad weather he likes to lie abed and smoke a bit of opium, but he does walk … and dance and occasionally play Othello to Mama’s Desdemona.” She folded her arms. “So that’s what I think of doctors and their portents of doom.”

Ren wrapped his hands about the back of his chair and gripped it until his knuckles turned white. “A death sentence cannot be commuted simply because you wish it!”

She regarded him somberly. “No … but perhaps it can … if
you
wish it.”

He stared at her. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I do not wish to die!”

“Really?” She raised a mocking brow in challenge. “Because I have seen little evidence that you wish to live!”

He stared at her, dumbstruck by her cruelty, her obliviousness—didn’t she realize what he would give to stay with her, to grow old in her arms, to die aged and wrinkled and happily hers—

With a roar he flung the chair down and strode from the room. His gut roiling, his mind on fire, he bolted up the stairs and strode to his room. At his door he paused, struck by a realization. He’d bolted up the stairs. The stairs that little more than a week ago, he’d only been able to climb stiffly and with great care.

In the past week he’d walked for miles, ridden for hours, made love to a beautiful woman night after night.

His back … yes, it ached, from his day in the saddle. His shoulder pained him a great deal … but he could move it—and had been able to since the day he’d caught Calliope in her fall. Somehow, that old scar tissue that had ratcheted his shoulder down tight had loosened or broken, that day. It had hurt, he recalled, quite a bit, but he’d been so distracted by her sweet body and her soft voice and the way he’d looked forward to sunset like an addict to his pipe …

What had she done to him?

Yet, had it all been her? He’d been hiding out here in this house for years, drinking and brooding and waiting for his death. Wouldn’t any man feel poorly after such a bout of self-pity?

It was an odd notion, but perhaps the last few years that he thought he had spent dying, had he perhaps spent them healing?

Death was inevitable, the physician had told him. Yet, was not every man’s death inevitable? Did not Ren, in fact, yet live?

Could it be so? Could he be healed?

Could he seize life again? Could he have that life with Calliope?

With a growl he flung open the door to his bedchamber. In another moment he was pounding down the stairs once more.

Chapter 22

Calliope sat quietly in her chair at the table, her face sad, her eyes downcast—a disappointed goddess of temptation. When Ren entered she looked up in surprise.

Without speaking, he flung out his arm and a great shower of pearls scattered over the table, rolling down the great cherrywood expanse of it, bouncing into the plate of food and flowers, spilling into her rose silken lap. She gasped and caught a few pearls in their flight, then turned wide eyes to him.

“I want the entire night,” he rasped. He came to stand before her. “I want it all.”

She smiled up at him with that single taunting brow raised. “Well, I want to see you … all of you.”

Appalled, he took a sharp step back. “You have seen me. You found me quite horrible, if you recall.”

“Of no consequence.” She waved a careless hand. “And unfair. I’d had a long and trying day … and you were assaulting me,
if you recall.
”

He looked down. She had a point. But to do this …

Callie waited, her heart pounding, her hands shaking with tension. She dared not let it show. She would only frighten him if he knew what this meant to her. So she kept her fierce desire under wraps and only gazed at him coolly.

“Well? Those are my terms.” She held up a single pearl between forefinger and thumb. “One command, one pearl. No negotiation.”

Ren could not do it. He couldn’t watch her smile fade and the light in her eyes go out, and even if she could bear to stay in the same room as him, like Henry, she would never look at him again …

Yet he was tired. So bloody tired. Tired of hiding in the shadows of this house, in this hood, so bloody tired of hanging on to the past and the loathing and betrayal. This girl, with her sweet mischievous smile and her stubborn, valiant heart … perhaps this girl would not reject him.

Callie waited. This man, this wonderful, good, heroic, dismal, hopeless, injured man … how could he believe she could reject him? How could she possibly resist such a man?

She stood, her position bringing her next to him, almost upon him. If he could not do it, she would help him. Always. She held the pearl up for him to see, then tucked it into his weskit pocket. Then, trying hard to seem confident, but in reality with shaking hands and tremulous heart, she slid her hands up his chest, over his weskit, up to where the edge of the cowl nearly covered his cravat. Her fingers touched the hem, yet he had not protested nor moved a muscle. He was, she suspected, not even breathing.

The feeling was mutual.

First, she slid her fingers beneath, following the cravat knot up to his collar, up past it to his throat … on to his jaw—

He had shaved! Gone was that tangle of neglected beard! Her fingers twitched at the urge to touch his cheek.

Gone was the bristly brush of his beard scraping upon her skin. Instead there would only be smooth-shaven cheek upon her flesh. His mouth would be all tantalizing heat and his lips would be teasing and his teeth would be softly nipping and his cheek would be so smooth against her thighs …

She lifted the cowl just a bit. She’d wanted for so long to see his mouth. She loved his mouth on her, loved the way his lips felt warm and firm.

It was a beautiful mouth, even tugged slightly awry by his scars. She could understand why it had felt so good on her. His mouth was made for kissing.

She went up on her toes and kissed him, her first kiss … their first kiss.

She felt him take a sharp breath, felt him shudder, as if some fierce inner tension had released itself, the snapping of a taut bowstring of fear.

He at last began to kiss her back softly. Oh, it was lovely. Her lips parted in her eagerness. His tongue flicked out, dampening the seam of her mouth, dipping, teasing … that tongue that had driven her wild, that he had used on her body more than once … she slid her own naïve tongue to meet his, dipping it between his perfect lips.