When She Said I Do (12 page)

Ren could not get enough. He slid his hands down her smooth back to grasp her bottom hard. Lifting her, he sat her upon the vanity to more easily avail himself of those lush, white mounds. He moved between her widened knees in order to feast upon her.

His bride tasted of salt and rosemary, of sweet creamy virgin and wicked temptress. Inflamed, he squeezed her bottom hard, making her gasp and wiggle in his gasp. God, he wanted to devour her, to consume her, to engulf her until there was nothing left of him.

Bending, he dropped his mouth down to the soft pale curve of her belly, to the saucy flare of each hip, to the peach-and-cream perfection of her open thighs. There was no stopping.

Almost kneeling before her now, he kissed his way up from each knee, her skin getting warmer as he moved higher, warm and damp and then the sweet-salt taste of her desire upon her inner thighs.

No, he dared not. If he plunged his starving tongue into that sugared, tangy delicacy, he would not stop until he’d ravaged her body in every imaginable way. Twice.

Dizzy lust almost overwhelmed him at the thought.

No. He was too hot, too wild tonight. Control … he’d meant to exert control.

So, with agonizing restraint, he planted one fervent, promising kiss upon the short damp curls of her mound, and then he took a single agonizing step back.

Oh, no. Not again.

Chapter 9

Callie couldn’t believe it. Again Mr. Porter brought her to such a damp and throbbing arousal and again he meant to leave her like this?

I am going to make him pay for this somehow.
Gone were her sympathetic leanings. She was near tears of sheer frustration.

Mr. Porter, I’m going to make you moan and ache and writhe … and then I’m going to step back and let you sit cold and empty and alone!

The door closed. Callie opened her eyes. The first thing she noticed was that he’d knocked the little shell bowl from the vanity in his want. Her pearls were spilled across the floor. Two pearls. She opened her mouth and removed the third.

When exactly did he plan to consummate their bizarre bargain? Perhaps upon the tenth pearl? The twentieth? A celebration of the first hundred?

Oh, blast, what a terrifying thought.

*   *   *

Ren strode down the hall, cursing himself and her and then, abruptly, rejoicing in the memory of the taste of her sweet flesh.

Bloody hell, he’d never wanted someone so, not even his fiancée, Lisbeth.

Odd. He’d dwelled upon the pain of Lisbeth’s rejection for so long … and yet in this moment, he could not quite put a hand upon that formerly ready pain.

He’d been so enamored of Lisbeth’s doe eyes and shy smile … although she’d not been shy at all, he realized now. He’d been too young and stupid to know then that he was being hunted most professionally. She’d laughed at his poor jests and beamed up at him with those large soulful eyes, and when he really thought about it, she’d never really said much about herself, never really said much of anything, except how wonderful/brave/interesting he was.

Nothing like his bride. Irritating Calliope wouldn’t shut up. All she did was talk about that bloody family of hers.

Except when he put a pearl in her mouth. Then she became something else, something soft and malleable in his hands. At that moment she wasn’t his outrageous, outspoken, unconventional bride, she was … she was whatever he wished her to be.

Every man’s dream, no doubt. And he’d created this creature. He’d designed it.

He was beginning to hate it.

How could he have been so witless? If a man wanted nothing more than willingness, he could pay for it—although Ren couldn’t bear the thought of a whore’s reluctant exercises whilst hiding her revulsion.

But Calliope’s willingness was based on something strange and wrong. He’d extorted this from her, taking advantage of the impossible position her family had put her in. That he had put her in, damn it.

This twisted perversion of passion wasn’t good for her. He only hoped he hadn’t ruined her forever.

Perhaps the only way to break her from this strange enchantment was to shock her out of it? She was so compliant … what would it take to make her push him away?

Suddenly, bitterly, perversely, he felt the need to discover that limit. She would leave him someday soon anyway.

Why not discover what would really drive her away from Amberdell?

*   *   *

The next morning, Callie had scarcely reached the bottom of the stair when the knocker on the great door startled her into flinching.

Goodness, she’d nearly forgotten there were other people in the world!

The parcel she was given at the door was a gift, a great jar of crystallized ginger. “Oh, dear,” Callie murmured. There was no signature on the card, although the handwriting seemed familiar.

“I despise candied ginger,” Mr. Porter said dismissively. “You may have it.”

Callie gazed at the giant jar with dismay. “I can’t say I care for it, either,” she murmured to no one, for Mr. Porter, who had only emerged for a moment when the unaccustomed sound of voices in the hall had roused his interest, was already gone. Of course, the insufferable lout had waited until the post boy had left, taking Callie’s last penny with him.

Now the silence of the house descended once more and Callie fought an unbearable urge to flee the place.

Eyeing the ginger with her nose wrinkled, she let out a breath. “There must be two pounds of it in there, at least. A shameful waste.”

Her gaze slid to the brilliant spring day visible through the open door. Another waste, that lovely day …

Worthingtons were never wasteful.

An hour later, Callie had on her spencer and her best bonnet and her feet under her. It had been quite fun, tying up portions of the gifted ginger into pretty little muslin packets and tying them with odd bits of ribbon from her workbasket. They made a cheery pile in the basket she carried over her arm and an even better excuse to visit the village and introduce herself there.

It was more than a mile to the village. The day was crisp and sweet-smelling and the lane stretched out before and behind her. The great house was long out of sight and the village not yet near. Callie was entirely alone. No clamoring family. No brooding bridegroom.

A short laugh of delight burst from her lips. To test the surety of such an unheard-of moment, she picked up her skirts and did a twirl in the middle of the lane.

Heaven. It was as if she were the only person in the entire world!

She dipped a deep, ironic curtsy to no one at all.

Go on, fellow, grab your girl.

Take her hand and let her whirl!

If she comes back, then dance you on.

If she don’t, then hell, she’s gone!

Take the next one, she might do.

If she won’t, then take you two!

Callie was none too sure of the words of the bawdy country dance but once upon a rainy evening, Cas and Poll had entertained them all performing such dances. Poll had looked most fetching in Callie’s old dress, although Ellie had later complained that he’d distorted her best bonnet by shoving it down on his big fat head.

Now Callie spun and dipped and curtsied to her happy solitude, laughingly mangling the bawdy song until she had to stop, gasping and grinning in the sunlight.

“Idiot,” she admonished herself fondly. When she’d caught her breath, she spared a moment to pin her hair back up properly and to brush some of the dust from her hem.

Then, very lady-of-the-manor, she made her way sedately down the lane. The only remaining sign of her silliness was a small, beribboned packet fallen deep in the high grass on the bank.

Slowly, at a pace guaranteed not to catch up to a strolling pedestrian, a horse’s giant black hooves clopped down the lane. When they reached the bright bauble left behind, they stopped.

Ren gazed down at the pretty parcel, but in his mind all he could see was the woman, skirts picked up high to reveal sweetly turned ankles and calves and the occasional maddening glimpse of ivory thigh, dancing and laughing in the light of day.

Callie’s high spirits did not last past the first glimpse of the village of Amberdell. It was a pretty enough place—the quintessential English spot, just prosperous enough to be proud, but not a center of industry. The nexus of activity was of course the high street, with its handful of essential shops and a smithy.

It wasn’t the village itself that drained Callie’s good cheer as much as it was the way everyone in the village seemed to turn and gaze at her in the selfsame instant. Callie became abruptly aware of herself in a way she’d never quite felt before. It was as if she were being examined beneath a convex glass, the way Orion would magnify plants and insects for study. In London, the Worthingtons were considered eccentric, but that was genially tolerated due to their long acquaintance with, well … everyone. Callie was accustomed to a rather blithe disregard for opinion, bolstered by old family connections and the simple fact that in her family, she was considered quite unremarkable.

Now, she realized, as the new lady of Amberdell Manor, the finest estate in the area, she was anything but unremarkable. Although the lingering stares felt like an icy wind upon her skin, Callie pasted on a friendly smile and strode on into the belly of the bea—the center of town.

Her first encounter, aside from the suspicious gazes and behind-the-hand whispers, was with the proprietress of a shop signified by gold figured lettering as
MDM. LONGETT
,
DRESSMAKER
.

Callie had no intention of ordering a gown, really. She had several at home, waiting to be shipped here. She’d simply ducked into the nearest recognizable refuge. She could not afford a bootlace, much less a new frock.

This sanctuary revealed itself to be a trap. Callie found herself in a shop absolutely filled with titillated gazes. A full dozen persons of the female persuasion occupied the room.

She felt like a mouse suddenly introduced to a boxful of cats.

A woman in a dressmaker’s pinafore whom Callie assumed to be Madame Longett surged forward with a frozen smile. She was rather stout and plain and ruddy faced. Not at all like the exotic presentation on the front window. Still, Callie smiled back.

“Hello. I am—”

“Mrs. Porter!” Teeth still clenched in the unconvincing grin of greeting, Madame wrung Callie’s hand. “How … um, charming to meet you … er, at last…”

At last. Callie had been in the area precisely four days. Apparently that—and an admittedly short courtship, and wedding a man who was never seen without a hood—was all that was needed to cause a storm of gossip and speculation.

Yes. Well. Rather.

Callie tried to smooth matters over by pretending that she’d come especially to see Madame herself. “I’m in dire need of your help, Madame. I’ve just come from London and I find I’ve nothing suitable for the country.”

Callie had simply meant that she was in need of some practical walking dresses, which she wasn’t, really, but even as the watching eyes narrowed in resentment she heard the words falling from her lips.

“—like she’s trading silks for flour sacking.”

The hostile murmur sounded quite clearly in the awkward silence. Gasps and horrified giggles were the group response.

Callie raised her chin and valiantly forged ahead. “A muslin, I think, for the warmest days. Have you anything in a stripe?” She’d find a way to pay for it somehow.

It was no good.

“Naw, we ignorant country folk haven’t progressed to
stripes
yet.” Again, the snide murmurer had the room in repressed stitches.

Madame was obviously torn between alienating her usual custom and obtaining the patronage of the new lady of the manor. Her eyes conveyed desperate pleas to Callie.

Come back later.

Or possibly,
Come back never.

You have a basket of gifts on your arm. Use them
.

As what, defensive projectiles?

She had a fine right arm, for a girl, Dade claimed. Callie pictured the invisible murmurer with a face full of lumpy ginger. The absurdity allowed her to turn to the wolves—er, ladies—with a cheerful smile. Reaching into her basket, she pressed a packet into each reluctant hand.

“Just a small token of greeting, so nice to meet you all, do hope you’ll call…”

It wasn’t working. Blasted country imperviousness! In desperation, Callie heard herself uttering dangerous words.

“We’re hosting a ball soon, you must say you’ll come—”

What? No. Oh, Sweet Charlotte’s Arse, what am I doing?

“Such a fine, large house, I can’t wait to fill it with guests—”

There was no hope for it. Her mouth, apparently, belonged to someone rather more impetuous than she.

“Oh, soon, I should think. Mr. Porter is most eager to greet the village at last—”
Not impetuous. Suicidal.

Somehow, Callie escaped the dressmaker’s having promised a ball and, without really knowing how, having ordered half a dozen muslin gowns in the “latest style,” whatever that was.

Callie practically ran from the village, blindly thrusting packets of ginger into the hands of everyone she encountered, stammering, “So nice to meet—really must come—what a lovely day—”

Once out of sight, she sat on a grassy hillock near the lane and buried her face in her hands.
I panicked, I plead insanity, I don’t know what came over me …

What were the chances Mr. Porter would merely chuckle indulgently and pat her on the head and say, oh, where’s the harm in a little gathering, just the nearest and dearest …

Entire village. I invited the entire village to a ball.

I invited the blacksmith to a ball.

And quite possibly his dog, as well.

Oh, no, sorry. That was his mule.

Hysteria bubbled up inside her, carrying with it the thought that this, indeed, might convince Mr. Porter that she ought to be sent home at once …