Marrying Winterborne Read online

  She shook her head, mystified.

  “Helen,” he said with growing impatience, “I haven’t been chaste since the age of twelve. If I tried now, I would probably end up killing someone before the week was out.”

  Perplexity wove across her forehead. “When we were engaged before . . . how were you planning to manage? I suppose . . . you were going to lie with other women until we were married?”

  “I hadn’t considered it.” At that point, it might not have been entirely out of the question. But now . . . he was appalled to realize that the thought of trying to substitute someone else for Helen was repellent. Bloody hell, what was happening to him? “It has to be you. We’re bound to each other now.”

  Helen’s gaze slid bashfully over his bare torso, and by the time her eyes returned to his face, she looked flushed and a little shaken. With a hot stab in the pit of his stomach, he realized she was aroused by him.

  “You’ll need it too,” he said huskily. “You’ll remember the pleasure I gave you, and want more.”

  Helen looked away from him as she replied. “I’m sorry. But I would rather not marry while I’m still in mourning.”

  Gentle as her tone was, Rhys heard the underlying intractability in it. After a lifetime of bartering and bargaining, he had learned to recognize when the other party had reached the point at which they would not yield.

  “I intend to marry you in six weeks,” he said, making his voice hard to mask his desperation, “whatever the cost. Tell me what you want. Tell me, and you’ll have it.”

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing you can bribe me with.” Looking sincerely apologetic, Helen added, “You already promised me the piano.”

  Chapter 6

  THE ELEGANT UNMARKED CARRIAGE came to a halt at the porticoed side entrance of Ravenel House. An afternoon rain had descended from the January sky, swept along by brisk icy breezes that whistled through the streets of London. As Helen had peeked through the carriage’s window blinds during the ride from Cork Street to South Audley, she had seen pedestrians clutching wool coats and capes more closely around their bodies, heading to covered shop doorways to stand in tight clusters. The shower of raindrops, heralding worse to come, had imparted a dark shimmer to the pavement.

  But warm yellow light poured through the glass-paned doors that opened onto Ravenel House’s spacious double library, filled with mahogany shelves and acres of books, and heavy well-cushioned furniture. A shiver of anticipation went through Helen at the thought of returning to her cozy house.

  Rhys slid a hand over both her gloved ones, giving them a slight squeeze. “I’ll call on Trenear tomorrow evening to tell him about the engagement.”

  “He may not take the news well,” Helen said.

  “He won’t,” Rhys replied flatly. “But I can handle him.”

  Helen was still concerned about Devon’s reaction. “Perhaps you should wait to call until the day after tomorrow,” she suggested. “He and Kathleen will be weary from traveling. I think they’ll receive the news more easily if they’ve had a sound night’s rest. And I could—” She paused as a footman began to open the carriage door.

  Rhys glanced at the footman and said brusquely, “A few minutes.”

  “Yes, sir.” The door closed at once.

  Turning in his seat, Rhys leaned over Helen, toying with the folds of her veil. “Go on.”

  “I could explain things to Devon before you arrive,” she continued, “and try to pave the way.”

  He shook his head. “If he loses his temper, I won’t have you bear the brunt of it. Let me be the one to tell him.”

  “But my cousin would never harm me in any way—”

  “I know that. All the same, he’ll be picking for a fight. It’s for me to deal with him, not you.” Carefully he adjusted an edge of her collar that had folded over. “I want this settled by tomorrow night, for both our sakes. I can’t bear to wait longer than that. Will you agree to say nothing until then? And let me take care of it?” His tone was not dictatorial, but rather concerned. Protective. He paused before saying with gruff unwillingness, as if the word threatened to choke him, “Please.”

  Helen stared into his coffee-black eyes. This was new, this feeling of being looked after and wanted. It seemed to spread inside her like delicate tendrils.

  Realizing that he was waiting for an answer, she replied with a touch of impishness, “Aye.”

  After a blink of surprise, Rhys hauled her up into his lap. His eyes glinted with amusement. “Mocking my accent, are you?”

  “No.” A breathless giggle escaped her. “I like it. Very much.”

  “Do you, then?” His tone had deepened. “I’ll have to send you inside, now soon. Give me a kiss, cariad. One to make up for all the kisses I would have had from you tonight.”

  She pressed her mouth to his, and his lips parted, letting her explore him with little flirting tastes. Realizing that he was letting her take the lead, she nudged him more fully open, enjoying the firm silken texture of his mouth. Tentatively she changed the angle of the kiss, and the fit was so lush and delicious that she locked her mouth onto his. She wanted to stay like this forever, caught in his lap with the mass of her skirts bunched all around them, her bottom sinking into the space between his muscular thighs. Gripping his shoulders, she hugged herself closer to the hard contours of his body.

  His chest moved in a forceful breath or two, like pumps from fireplace bellows, and he broke the kiss with a groan. A shaken laugh escaped him as her mouth continued to seek his. “No—Helen—ah, how you please me—we have to stop.” He leaned his forehead against hers. “Before I take you here in this carriage.”

  Befuddled, Helen asked, “It can be done in a carriage?”

  His color heightened, and he closed his eyes briefly, as if he’d been pushed to the limit of his endurance. “Aye.”

  “But how—”

  “Don’t ask me to explain, or I might end up showing you.” Clumsily he set her back on the seat beside him, and leaned forward to rap on the carriage door.

  The footman came to help Helen descend, first placing a movable step on the flagstone tiled ground, then extending his gloved hand for her to take. Before Helen reached the French doors, she could already see the twins through the paned glass, their slim forms practically vibrating with eagerness.

  “Milady, shall I carry this inside?”

  Helen glanced at the cream-colored box he held, approximately the size of a dinner plate, tied with a narrow matching satin ribbon. She realized it was the box containing a selection of stockings from the store. “I’ll take it now,” she said. “Thank you”—she tried to remember what Rhys had called him—“George, isn’t it?”

  He smiled at her as he opened the door. “Yes, milady.”

  Immediately upon entering the house Helen was beset by the twins, who danced around her in excitement.

  She cast one last glance through the glass panes, watching the carriage depart.

  “You’re back!” Pandora shouted. “Finally! Whatever took you so long? You’ve been gone for most of the day!”

  “It’s almost teatime,” Cassandra chimed in.

  Helen smiled, nonplussed by their wildness.

  The twins were nineteen, soon to be twenty, but one could be excused for thinking they were younger than their actual age. Raised in an atmosphere largely devoid of authority, they had run free on a country estate with few diversions other than those they created for themselves. Their parents had spent much of their time in London society, leaving their daughters in the care of servants, governesses, and tutors. None of them had been able or willing to take a firm hand with them.

  To be certain, Pandora and Cassandra were high-spirited but also affectionate, intelligent, and endearing. And they were as beautiful as a pair of pagan goddesses, both of them long-limbed and glowing with health. Pandora was perpetually disheveled and full of energy, her dark hair falling from its pins as if she’d just been running through the woods. Cassandra, the
golden-haired twin, was more compliant and romantic in nature, more willing to abide by rules.

  “What happened?” Cassandra demanded. “What did Mr. Winterborne say?”

  Helen set aside the cream-colored box. After tugging off a black glove, she held out her left hand.

  The twins crowded close, wide-eyed with wonder.

  The moonstone seemed illuminated, glowing with shimmers of green, blue, and silver.

  “A new ring,” Pandora said.

  “A new engagement,” Helen told her.

  “But the same fiancé,” Cassandra said with a questioning lilt.

  Helen laughed. “One can’t simply go shopping for one of those. Yes, it’s the same fiancé.”

  That set off a fresh burst of enthusiasm, both girls whooping and jumping without restraint.

  Perceiving there was no use in trying to curb them, Helen stood back. Noticing movement at the doorway, she turned to find the housekeeper waiting at the threshold.

  Mrs. Abbott tilted her head and regarded her expectantly, asking a silent question.

  Helen beamed and nodded.

  The housekeeper sighed with what appeared to be an equal measure of relief and worry. “May I take your things, Lady Helen?”

  After giving her hat and gloves, Helen said quietly, “You and the other servants must not worry, even for a moment, about the consequences of my outing. I will take full responsibility. All I ask is that the staff refrain from saying anything to Lord or Lady Trenear when they arrive tomorrow.”

  “They will hold their tongues and go about their work as usual.”

  “Thank you.” Impulsively Helen touched the older woman’s shoulder, patting it softly. “I’ve never been so happy.”

  “There’s no one who deserves happiness more,” Mrs. Abbott said gently. “I hope Mr. Winterborne will be half so deserving of you.”

  The housekeeper departed through the main library room, while Helen went back to her sisters. They had settled onto a leather-upholstered settee, staring at her eagerly.

  “Tell us everything,” Cassandra urged. “Was Mr. Winterborne upset when you approached him? Angry?”

  “Was he confuming?” Pandora, who liked to invent words, asked.

  Helen laughed. “As a matter of fact, he was terribly confuming. But after I convinced him that I sincerely wished to be his wife, he seemed much happier.”

  “Did he kiss you?” Cassandra asked eagerly. “On the lips?”

  Helen hesitated before replying, and both twins squealed, one from excitement and the other from aversion.

  “Oh lucky, lucky Helen,” Cassandra exclaimed.

  “I don’t think she’s lucky at all,” Pandora said frankly. “Fancy putting your mouth on someone else’s—what if his breath is nasty or there’s a wad of dipping snuff in his cheek? What if there are crumbs in his beard?”

  “Mr. Winterborne has no beard,” Cassandra said. “And he doesn’t dip snuff.”

  “Still, mouth kisses are revolting.”

  Cassandra looked at Helen with great concern. “Was it revolting, Helen?”

  “No,” she said, turning scarlet. “Not at all.”

  “What was it like?”

  “He held my cheeks in his hands,” Helen said, remembering the touch of Rhys’s strong, gentle fingers, and the way he’d murmured You belong to me, cariad . . . “His mouth was warm and soft,” she continued dreamily, “and his breath was cool with peppermint. It was a lovely feeling. Kissing is the best thing lips do other than smiling.”

  Cassandra drew up her knees and hugged them. “I want to be kissed someday,” she exclaimed.

  “I don’t,” Pandora said. “I can think of a hundred things better than kissing. Decorating for Christmas, petting the dogs, extra butter on the crumpets, having someone scratch the itch on your back that you can’t quite reach—”

  “You haven’t tried kissing,” Cassandra told her. “You might like it. Helen does.”

  “Helen likes Brussels sprouts. How can anyone trust her opinion?” Curling up in the corner of the settee, Pandora gave Helen a shrewd glance. “You needn’t worry that we’ll let anything slip to Devon or Kathleen. We’re good at secrets. But all the servants know you went somewhere.”

  “Mrs. Abbott promises they will hold their silence.”

  Pandora grinned crookedly. “Why is everyone willing to keep Helen’s secrets,” she asked Cassandra, “but not ours?”

  “Because Helen’s never naughty.”

  “I rather was today,” Helen said before she thought better of it.

  Pandora glanced at her with keen interest. “What do you mean?”

  Deciding that a distraction was in order, Helen retrieved the ivory box and handed it to them. “Open this.” She sat in a nearby chair, smiling as the twins untied the ribbon and lifted the lid.

  Inside, three rows of folded silk stockings had been arranged like bonbons . . . pink, yellow, white, lavender, cream, all of them with stretchy lace welts.

  “There are twelve pair,” Helen said, enjoying her sisters’ awestruck expressions. “The three of us will divide them evenly.”

  “Oh they’re so beautiful!!” Cassandra reached out with a single finger to touch the tiny embroidered forget-me-nots bordering a lace top. “May we wear them now, Helen?”

  “Only take care that no one sees them.”

  “I suppose these might be worth a kiss on the mouth,” Pandora conceded. After counting the stockings, she glanced quizzically at Helen. “There are only eleven.”

  Unable to think of an evasive answer, Helen was compelled to admit, “I’m already wearing one pair.”

  Pandora regarded her speculatively, and grinned. “I think you have been naughty.”

  Chapter 7

  WHEN RHYS AWAKENED THE next morning, the first thing he saw was a dark object on the white sheets beside him, a little wisp of shadow.

  Helen’s black cotton stocking, the one he hadn’t destroyed. He had deliberately left it next to his pillow, to forestall any fears that it might have all been a dream.

  His hand reached out to close over it, while his mind swam with images of Helen in his bed, his bath. Before taking her home, he had dressed her before the warm hearth. Choosing a brand new pair of stockings from a box that had been sent from the store, he had knelt before her and slid them up her slender legs, one by one. After pulling the knitted silk to the middle of her thighs, he had fastened the lace welts with elastic satin garters embroidered in tiny pink roses. With Helen’s naked body so close to his face, he hadn’t been able to resist nudging his mouth and nose against the juncture of her thighs, where the fine blond fleece was still damp and scented of flowery bath soap.

  Helen had gasped as he had cupped her naked bottom in his hands and let his tongue play among the tender curls. “Please,” she had begged. “No, please, I’ll fall. You mustn’t kneel like that . . . your leg is stiff . . .”

  Rhys had been tempted to demonstrate a far more critical stiffness than the one in his leg. However, he had relented and released her. He had continued to dress her, helping her into a pair of drawers sewn of silk so fine that they could have been pulled through the band of a wedding ring, and a matching chemise trimmed with handmade lace as delicate as cobwebs. There had been a new long-line corset as well, but Helen had declined it, explaining that she had to wear the old-fashioned shaped corset and bustle, or her dress wouldn’t fit properly.

  Garment by garment, Rhys had reluctantly covered her back up in heavy black mourning layers. But it had filled him with satisfaction to know that she was wearing something from him against her skin.

  Stretching and rolling to his back, Rhys toyed absently with the purloined cotton stocking, rubbing the little mended places against the pad of his thumb. He inserted a finger into the top of the stocking, and then another, stretching the soft fabric.

  He frowned as he recalled Helen’s insistence about having the wedding in five months. He was tempted to kidnap her, and ravish her all the
way up to Scotland in a private train carriage.

  But that probably wasn’t the best way to begin a marriage.

  Tucking all four fingers inside the stocking, he brought it to his nose and mouth, hunting for any scent of Helen.

  Tonight he would go to Ravenel House and ask for Devon’s consent to the marriage. It was certain that Devon would refuse, and Rhys would have no choice but to reveal that he had dishonored Helen.

  And then Devon would attack him like a feral wolverine. Rhys had no doubt in his ability to defend himself. Still, brawling with a Ravenel in a rage was something any rational man would try to avoid if at all possible.

  His thoughts strayed to the subject of Devon’s recent good fortune, which, according to Helen, had something to do with mineral rights on his twenty-thousand-acre estate. The portion of land in question had just been leased to a mutual friend, Tom Severin, a railway magnate who intended to build tracks across it.

  After his morning rounds today, Rhys decided, he would visit Severin to learn more about the situation.

  Keeping the stocking against his lips, he blew a soft breath through the fabric. His eyes half-closed as he thought of Helen’s lips parting for his kisses, the lightspun locks of her hair wound around his fists. The feel of her intimate flesh, tightening as if it were greedy for every inch of him.

  Kidnapping, he decided in a haze of lust, was still a possibility.

  AFTER RHYS MET with Severin at his office, the two men walked to a local fried fish shop for lunch, a place they both visited often. Neither of them was fond of having a long, leisurely meal during the middle of a workday, preferring the light refreshment shops that were to be found in every quarter of London. Well-heeled gentlemen and common workingmen alike frequented such establishments, where one could buy a plate of ham or beef, dressed crabs or lobster salad, and be done with the meal in a half-hour. Food stalls along the street offered fare such as boiled eggs, a ham sandwich, a batter pudding or a cup of hot green peas, but that was a dodgy proposition, since one could never be certain how the food had been adulterated.