His Wicked Dream (Velvet Lies, Book 2) (31 page)

The next morning, Eden woke to a stream of sunshine and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Her husband, impeccably dressed in his ebony broadcloth, greeted her with a breakfast tray. It was laden with muffins and fruit, a vase of wild poppies, and two roundtrip tickets on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad.

"We shall have our wedding tour in Louisville," he announced, his gaze warm with approval as it caressed her tumbled hair. "I've arranged for old Doc Perkins to come out of retirement and handle all medical emergencies for the week. He grunted only once at the prospect, which I took as a sign of pleasure."

Michael's grin was uncharacteristically boyish. She was so smitten by the expression that she nearly forgot herself and let the quilt slide off her nakedness.

"But Michael," she whispered, her vision growing misty as her heart turned over with love for him, "you spent a fortune on me yesterday. The picnic basket—"

"Was purchased to benefit the orphanage," he finished for her firmly. "You are my wife, and you shall want for nothing as long as..." His smile wavered almost imperceptibly. "For as long as we are man and wife."

She might have missed his fleeting melancholy if her ears hadn't pricked to the sound. She swallowed, forcing brightness into her tone to match his good spirits.

"If you keep spoiling me like this, I shall come to expect it," she said, stretching her hand for a muffin.

He swept the tray out of her reach, a thoroughly wicked gleam lighting his eyes. "One must work up an appetite before one eats breakfast in bed."

"Is that a fact?"

"Doctor's orders."

He lowered the tray to the floor and tugged at the quilt, peeling it playfully from her breasts. "Considering our shortage of time"—his teeth flashed, more feral than civilized—"we may be eating breakfast on the road."

He wooed away her morning shyness, taking special delight in leading her down new paths to pleasure. In her innocence, she had never considered that lovers might tease each other with poppy petals. She had certainly never dreamed that she would ever be licking whipping cream off... well, a male's virility. He must have waked unusually early to set the love traps that waited for her in scandalously public corners of the house.

At nine o'clock, their panting echoed like tribal tom-toms in the stairwell. At eleven o'clock, he had her writhing so ecstatically on the kitchen counter, that the unwashed muffin pans bounced to the floor. They might have made the one o'clock stage, if he hadn't grown so insidiously helpful with her garters and stays. Not until three o'clock was she finally hurrying, flushed and giddy with romance, on the heels of her husband's ground-eating stride.

As they raced up the stage depot's porch, he gripped her hand firmly, his carpetbag flung over his shoulder, her portmanteau swinging from his fist. She marveled that any man who was robust enough to romp until late afternoon, who carried two sets of luggage as effortlessly as if he were toting sacks of feathers, could be gravely ill. What was wrong with his doctors, that they could hypothesize such rubbish? Surely Michael was too healthy to be knocking at death's door.

And yet she knew, from painful experience, how quickly an illness could strike a man down.

She wanted to rail at the sheer unfairness of it all, of losing her heart to a man who might not live to see the new year. Wasn't it enough that she'd lost Mama, Papa, and Talking Raven?

But she didn't give in to the grief. She refused. Michael was still alive, and as long as there was breath in him, there was hope.

* * *

Louisville proved a refreshing change from Blue Thunder's bygone architecture and Puritan minds. Eden breathed a sigh of relief when they disembarked from the train that had whistled through the rolling bluegrass country during the last leg of their journey.

Modern gas lamps held the dusk at bay along cobbled, dogwood-lined streets, while gaily lit windows lured weary travelers to sample continental cuisine. Against the imposing iron edifice of the museum, a billboard announced the arrival of some mummified pharaoh from Thebes, while the windows of the playhouse gleamed a fiery topaz, bearing testimony to the popularity of the Kentucky Rattlers Minstrel Show.

Eden was particularly impressed to know that the hotel Michael had chosen boasted all the modern conveniences: piped hot water, indoor privies, electric lighting, and a telephone that rang in the office of the town's most venerated physician. She couldn't help but wonder, with a pang of unease, if the telephone service had cinched Michael's decision to lodge there.

He'd planned numerous outings during their stay: an auction of thoroughbred yearlings at Churchill Downs, a paddlewheeler cruise past the Ohio River's falls, a hot-air balloon exhibition at the University of Louisville, and a box-seat vantage for a sold-out performance of
Shenandoah.
When she asked that they take time to visit his physician's office, he grew dark and silent.

"Michael," she said more gently. "I'm your wife now. Whatever you face, we'll face together."

His jaw twitched as he stared past her to the burgundy bombazine that draped the breathtaking river view from their hotel window.

"I have told you all there is to know."

"Michael, please. Maybe your doctor overlooked something. Maybe all you both need is a fresh perspective..."

When those cinder-hot eyes at last locked with hers, she realized she was treading on dangerous ground.

"Your intentions are honorable, I'm sure. However, you do not possess sufficient medical knowledge to understand such a complex malady."

She wanted to box his ears. "Try humoring me. Isn't your life worth saving?"

"That is a question I cannot answer."

She gaped. He'd stunned her so thoroughly, she couldn't rally her wits in time to keep him from changing the topic.

Although the doctor issue was far from settled, Eden decided to drop the subject. She didn't want to spoil their outing to the museum.

But as they strolled out the hotel's main door, he surprised her, announcing he was taking her instead to Madam Letitia's Ladies Shop.

"M-Michael," she stammered. Never in her life had she worn a gown that wasn't home-sewn. "I don't need any new—"

"Wednesday night, you'll be sitting in the theater box that President Lincoln reserved when he came to town. I think the occasion warrants a special frock."

He arched an eyebrow, as if challenging her to defy him, but she'd already lost. When he spoke in that smoky, chest-deep rumble, her mind sighed in surrender and her knees turned embarrassingly weak. She supposed she'd have to learn to resist that provocative drawl—someday.

In the meantime, she marveled at her husband's largesse. Although Sera had never wanted for anything as long as Michael had been her guardian, Eden had seen, with her own eyes, the patches in the soles of Michael's black boots and the crack in the glass of his silver-plated pocket watch.

Her husband, it seemed, gave generously to everyone but himself.

Unused to baring her corset and bloomers to strangers, Eden blushed for nearly the full two hours that Madam Letitia's assistants fluttered around her with green satin taffeta, measuring sticks, and pins.

In all honesty, though, the heat lapping over her skin had been kindled by her husband. While she stood awkwardly on her stool, her composure challenged by the half-circle of mirrors that surely magnified her every freckle, he lounged in the velveteen chair directly across from her, his off-center smile an earthy enticement. She couldn't help but think that Michael had made an astounding change since his arrival in Louisville. Perhaps she simply hadn't known him well enough, but the man who sat watching Madam Letitia's legions strip, swaddle, and pin her, was certainly not the man who'd ducked his head and hurried past her on the sidewalks of Blue Thunder. If the young assistants hadn't been so flirtatious, Eden might have reveled in the pleasure Michael took in his voyeurism.

Unfortunately, the girls' interest in her husband was painfully clear: she received a pinprick each time Letitia's assistants cast hungry, covetous glances his way. One even called him "Mick."

Later that afternoon, while Eden was walking arm and arm with him through the commercial district, he sidestepped her question about the nickname, explaining instead that the girls had been raised in Lydia Witherspoon's orphanage, and that he'd convinced Madam Letitia to apprentice them.

He wasn't quite as artful about avoiding her "Mick" question the second time.

They had no sooner crossed the street to head toward a French restaurant, when a beautiful brunette in a crisply starched apron rushed out of the nearby boarding house.

"Mick? Oh, Micky, it
is
you!" she squealed as he turned in reflex. She hurried down the sidewalk, her dark eyes warmer than melted chocolate, her porcelain cheeks blooming a captivating pink.

Eden tried not to stiffen as the woman, her demure brown bodice straining over a pair of breasts that would have made a eunuch salivate, checked herself just one footfall shy of Michael's arms. Although Eden stood at Michael's elbow, the brunette didn't seem to notice. She was too busy clasping her hands and smiling with unabashed adoration at the man she'd called, "Micky."

"You've been away so long," she chided in an alluring alto. "And you sent no word of your return. Shame on you! Did it ever occur to you I might have filled your bed?"

Michael reddened, and jealousy spiked Eden's chest. She wanted to believe the brunette had been referring to a long-term lodging agreement; even so, Eden couldn't help but mark the double meaning in the woman's words. Had it been intentional?

"I've taken a room at a hotel, Sofia. With my wife."

Shock widened Sofia's eyes. "Your wife?" she repeated thinly. At last forced to acknowledge Eden, she managed a weak smile. "Oh. I see. That's... understandable, of course."

Sofia didn't loiter much longer. With a polite smile and a half-hearted invitation for dinner, she excused herself and headed back to the boarding house.

Eden made a concerted effort to keep the accusation out of her voice. "Let me guess. Sofia's another orphan."

He slid her a wry glance. "No. A widow."

She took the elbow he offered her. "And... you were one of her boarders?"

His dry smile didn't reassure her. "Briefly."

They walked several more paces in silence. The restaurant was a quarter-block away, and she sensed that he was using its proximity as an excuse to end their conversation. "You're not going to tell me, are you?"

"Tell you what?"

"What she meant to you. And why she calls you 'Micky'."

The gaze that met hers resembled a blue-black twilight. "Am I to be interrogated about every female acquaintance I've struck up over the last thirty-one years?"

She raised her chin. "You say that as if you have something to hide."

"I do. All men do. Premarital skeletons are best left in their closets, away from doting young brides. But if it eases your mind..."

He lowered his voice to a dark, throbbing murmur.

"While I was still at the university, Sofia became a young immigrant widow, desperate to feed two toddlers and appease her husband's creditors. When one of them gave her... an infection, she was too ashamed to visit a doctor. I only happened to deduce her condition, because one of the"—his voice dripped acid—
"gentlemen
had been bragging about their liaison in the saloon. Shortly afterward, he returned from the privy complaining of... difficulties there. So I looked up her address and took my valise. She was in a bad way."

Eden swallowed, and those dusky eyes pinned hers.

"When she was strong enough to work, I convinced the boarding-house owner to hire her as a cook so she could pay her debts and keep a roof over those babies' heads." Michael halted, reaching around Eden for the brass handle on the restaurant's door. "Satisfied?" he demanded softly.

She nodded, feeling the heat of his stare to her bones.

Reflecting back on that conversation, Eden found another reason to love her husband. He was willing to champion anyone who needed him—widows, orphans, raccoons—and yet he shunned all praise for himself. His kindnesses were surely the best-kept secret in Kentucky. Why, half of Louisville seemed to owe him some debt of gratitude. The moment the train conductor had recognized Michael, the man had marched them straight up the row of Pullman cars, insisting that they take the plushest compartment at no extra cost because Michael had once set the man's broken leg so well that he'd suffered "nary a limp."

Then there'd been the paddlewheeler's captain. He'd invited them onto the bridge of the ship, chattering enthusiastically about his son, a university student now, but a ten-year-old when Michael had saved him, diving into the murky waters of the Ohio to breathe life into his lungs.

At the hotel, the wealthy owner had arranged for fresh fruit and flowers to be brought to their room every afternoon with a gratuitous bottle of champagne. Apparently Michael had counseled him not to take his own life following a crushing loss at the racetrack.

Clearly, Michael was well loved in this town. He grew less guarded and more lighthearted under that affection, as if the dark cloud of Blue Thunder had finally rolled beyond the horizon. Eden wondered how much this new, easygoing Michael owed to six days of relaxation and romance, and how much he owed to Louisville itself. If the city represented to him all that was curious and carefree, then surely Blue Thunder was his prison sentence.