Blackstone's Bride (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

“We will not quarrel for the greater share of blame annexed to that evening . . .”

—Jane Austen,
Pride and Prejudice

Blackstone returned Violet and Frank to Hammersley House and watched as servants spilled from the entrance, colliding with one another in their eagerness to do something for Master Frank. When Frank had been carried off with painstaking care on a bench that arrived from below stairs, Violet came to stand at Blackstone’s side and reached up a hand to his face.

“I must go and be with him now, but I must see you soon.”

“Meet me tonight, Violet.”

She leaned into his chest, and he let himself hold her close. Then she pulled back. “Oh dear, we can’t meet in Frank’s room. He’ll be in it.”

“The long gallery then. Where we began.”

“Yes, where we’ll begin again.”

He nodded. “Right. Now I’ve got a patient to tend to as well.”

He gave her a brief kiss and turned to care for Wilde. He still had to look as she ran lightly up the steps to her door.

* * *

Violet met Blackstone in the long gallery sometime after midnight. The house had settled into quiet rest. Everyone performed amazing exertions from the moment she and Frank had arrived. The physician found himself with a half dozen helpers more than he needed at any given moment, but he’d seen at once that all needed to be employed, and had suggested ways that Frank’s comfort could be assured. There was now a quantity of ice on hand and towels and shallow basins, enough to ice a dozen injured limbs.

The doctor had done all he could for the present and would return when they had the swelling down sufficiently to set the bone.

Blackstone rose from a couch, which Violet instantly recalled had been a favorite of theirs before they had progressed to more earnest lovemaking. He offered his arms, and she stepped into them, laying her head against his chest.

“Papa is with Frank. He’ll be there all night. It feels miraculous to have him back. We owe it all to you.”

“Don’t thank me, Violet.”

“Oh, but I must, and I must beg your forgiveness, too. I think you will tire of the regularity with which I do both.”

His arms tightened around her. “Violet, you are wearing a wrapper, and . . .” He shifted and slid a hand inside her wrapper to cup one breast. “And a nightgown.”

“Yes.” She spoke to his chest, right above his heart. “I thought perhaps it was best, after all, if you simply came to my bedroom.”

She felt his heartbeat change at the words.

“Ah, so that the thanking and the pleas for forgiveness can begin.”

“Exactly.” She laughed softly against his chest, and lifted her head and took his hand, leading him on through the dark house he knew as well as he knew any place on earth.

In her room they lit a brace of candles and faced each other and took time undressing and studying one another.

Blackstone had returned to London over a month earlier, but now he knew that he was home. When he pulled the tie on the rose silk wrapper and pushed it from her shoulders, and reached to cup both of her breasts in his hands and lift them for his kiss, and when her hands in turn clung to his waistcoat so that she might steady herself and catch her breath, it was home he breathed.

And when she tugged at his neckcloth and unwound the white linen from his throat and found all the buttons that needed releasing so that she might free him from waistcoat and shirt, it was home that touched him.

For a time they were content to stand in the flickering light and press against one another and savor the meeting of all the points—soft and smooth and round, rough and hard and flat—that could express their longing. Hands stroked, lips met and clung.

When, belatedly, he freed her hair from its braid so that it fell around them, a more urgent tempo drove them to a final hasty shedding of garments and a laughing retreat to fall upon the bed.

When they were well and truly naked, warm skin pressed to warm skin, he said, “I’ve missed this.”

“You said you never thought of me.”

“I lied.” He rolled them so that his body covered hers.

Violet welcomed the long, lean strength of him, the smooth symmetry and the rough places, the soft texture of hair on his arms and chest and on his legs where they twined with hers. She took hold of his hips to feel the flex of muscles as he came into her.

Then they met in the movements they knew so well, that made them gasp and strain upward towards a distant sun of pleasure, until it burst in a bright shaft of joy that left them heated and shuddering in each other’s arms.

Violet closed her eyes and let tears come, not tears of hollow ache but of fullness, of joy brimming over. Blackstone caught them with his thumbs and tasted them. “I love you, Violet.”

“I love you, Blackstone.” She pushed herself up on her knees, and kneeling over him, she began to explore. She found and kissed all the purpling bruises the day had raised and saw the way his time in Greece had worn his belly thin. She traced lines and angles and claimed for herself with her touch all the parts of him that seemed the most wonderful because they were him and not her.

He moved to pin her under him again, and when they had had a second fill of one another, she let him take her back against the pillows in the circle of his arms, their hands twined together. “I changed my room, you know, because of you.”

“I guessed that when I saw it. It shocked me, shocked me out of my side of our quarrel. I felt my responsibility for the change in you, my fearless friend.”

“I thought changing the paper would help me to banish thoughts of you. I could not look at those walls without thinking that you had been here with me.”

“It was pretty paper, Violet.”

“But those vines and flowers had seen you love me and leave me. They missed you, too, and I couldn’t bear their reproaches.” She turned his hand to see the bold Blackstone signet on it.

He withdrew his hand from hers and pulled off the ring. “Maybe I should not have felt so bound by that promise.”

“No.” She took his hand again and restored the ring to its proper place, turning to face him then, easy in her nakedness with him. “The ring is you,” she said solemnly. “It is your loyalty and your honor.
You
wear it now, and it means you, not him, nor any other man.”

“Is this where you ask for my forgiveness again?” he asked hopefully.

“Will you forgive me again?” She settled back against his chest with his arms wrapped around her, under her breasts.

“I denied myself the pleasure of thinking of you, which makes me all the hungrier now. I told Rushbrooke—”

“You told Rushbrooke about this?” She twisted up to look at him. He kissed her, and kissing her was like drinking from a cold rushing stream, so that for a time he was lost in it. Then he moved so that they lay side by side.

“I told Rushbrooke that when you were my bride, I would keep you in bed no more than eight hours of the day, so that you could continue your charitable works.”

“You didn’t!”

“I did.”

“He must have choked.” Her eyes flashed with amusement, and he remembered the moment on the
Redemption
when he wanted to see that flash again.

“Nearly. But I don’t think I can honor that promise. I may need you to be naked for a longer period of each day.”

Naked was how he liked her best, lying soft as snow beside him. He let his hand drift over the smooth, rounded hills of her, over the deep dip of her waist, and down the long slope from her hip to her knee. She shivered under his touch and a laugh shook her. Her laughter, like a bracing draft of winter air he drew into his lungs, made him laugh in answer and know he was alive.

“We could talk all night, but I need to kiss you again, Violet.”

“Do you? Then I propose a bargain, because I need to touch you, all the parts I like.”

Chapter Twenty-three

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

—Jane Austen,
Pride and Prejudice

“Congratulations, lad. You got the lot of them and Frank Hammersley. I don’t think a professional could have done a neater job.”

Blackstone set the paste ring Violet had returned to him on Goldsworthy’s vast paper-strewn desk. He was conscious of what Goldsworthy was not saying, and he was not sure how much Goldsworthy knew of Blackstone’s plan to free Frank whether it served the government or not.

Goldsworthy picked up the velvet box. “That’s a good thought. You’ll want to buy Miss Hammersley the real thing now.”

“When I finish my year and a day, you mean.”

“No need to wait on us.” Goldsworthy waved a dismissive hand. “You want to marry the girl now, marry the girl. No reason you can’t be married and working for us.”

“I can’t see myself living apart from my bride or betraying her.”

Goldsworthy rose to his towering height. A laugh shook him, like a tree in a sudden breeze. “Not necessary.”

Blackstone was missing something, some piece of the puzzle still eluded him. He let his gaze take in Goldsworthy’s office, the grand scale of the furnishings and their martial simplicity and the concealing canvas curtain. “I thought you chose me for my scandalous name. Blackstone, the charming rakeshame.”

Goldsworthy looked grave for once, the knowing gleam in his eye quiet. “I can’t change your reputation, lad. London has a long memory for scandal, but I didn’t choose you because you made fodder for the print shops in your salad days.”

Blackstone was once again glad to be sitting. An encounter with Goldsworthy had a way of unsettling a man, like a ship dropping in a trough of the sea, or a minor earthquake rattling the china in the cupboards. “Why did you choose me then?”

“Why? Because you went to Greece to save your brother. You managed Vasiladi for near a year and kept your head and the heads of those captives of his, too. Now that was a piece of work. Had to have you, don’t you see?”

“How do you know I have a brother? I’ve never told anyone.”

“Now that is a club secret, lad. I can’t be telling you how I know things. You may be bound to secrecy, but other people aren’t. Now, you go, marry the girl, move into Hammersley House, if you like. Somewhere here, I’ve a draft for you, a first installment on our bargain. It should help you take care of your mother and sisters until you finish your time with us.”

Once again Blackstone watched Goldsworthy disturb the piles of paper on his desk. It took a great deal of rustling before the right document emerged from the disorder, time in which Blackstone could rearrange his thinking about the big green man and his role in their lives.

“Aha!” Goldsworthy lifted the draft for which he’d been searching, like a magician producing a hare from a hat. He stuck out his hand, and Blackstone rose to take it.

He didn’t fully understand the club and its workings, but he knew one thing. “Hazelwood’s got it all wrong.”

Goldsworthy gave a slow shake of his great head. “The lad’s a hard case, but we’ll get to him. We’ll set him straight in time.”

* * *

Miranda had never ventured into the living quarters of the club. It was unthinkable that such a male place would admit a female visitor, but now Lord Hazelwood was breaking the rules. He was leading her up the servants’ stair to see Nate Wilde. “The cub needs cheering, Miranda, and you’re the one to do it. He’s lower than a coal cellar. Thinks he failed some grand test.”

Privately, Miranda could not imagine Nate Wilde low. He was impudence itself, sure of himself when he had no right, born in the Seven Dials, better at lifting the coins out of person’s pocket than earning a penny to put in his own. But Lord Hazelwood had taken her hand and told her how pretty she was and promised that Nate Wilde would heal in a flash if he could just see her face looking at him instead of seeing the sawbones.

When Lord Hazelwood asked her to go as a favor to him, Miranda could not say no. Still she held back a little at the door, so that Lord Hazelwood turned to look at her with a knowing look. “You’re not shy, now, are you, Miranda?”

She shook her head.

Lord Hazelwood knocked.

A muffled voice, groggy and low-spirited, answered.

“Wilde, are you decent?” Lord Hazelwood called, pushing the door open a crack. “There’s someone who wants to see you.”

Miranda glared at Hazelwood. She wasn’t the one who wanted to see Nate Wilde. But Lord Hazelwood only grinned at her with that lazy smile of his. He pushed the door fully open and bowed her into the room.

Nate Wilde wore no shirt.

Miranda had assisted her father countless times as he measured the young lords of Mr. Goldsworthy’s club, but they had not been shirtless. She dropped her gaze at once from that smooth white breadth of shoulder. But the impression had been made. A wide linen bandage crossed his chest and held his right arm in a sling. There were contours and muscles and an interesting valley down the middle of his chest. She had seen, too, in the glazed eyes, that he was in pain. She didn’t move.

“Now then, Wilde, say hello to your visitor.” Lord Hazelwood found a chair and pushed it up near the bed. “Come, Miranda, have a seat so you can visit.” He took her arm and propelled her into the seat. She cast him a look of appeal.

“I’ll come back for you in half an hour. Don’t tire him out. The gudgeon won’t take the drug.”

Miranda couldn’t look at him. She let her gaze wander the room. She had not imagined that he kept his room as neat and ordered as the shop itself. The narrow bed had a hessian coverlet in dark blue and green. Beside the bed was a small chest of drawers with a lamp, a book, and a glass of some liquid. To the left of the door stood a tall walnut wardrobe and next to it a brown wicker standing screen. To her right was a dormer window and a writing table under a pair of shelves neatly filled with books. Miranda could not read the tiny gold titles, but the books had plain, dull colors—rust and dark green and blue. It was all plain and manly.

She could feel him looking at her. “You’ve seen it all,” he said.

“Why won’t you take the medicine?”

“It makes me sleepy. If I take it, I can’t read.” He pushed himself more upright, exposing more of his chest and ribs. His face tightened with some twinge of pain.

“How long will you have to stay in bed?”

“The sawbones says another week. I’m not to move till then.”

“You have a great many books.”

“I like to read. Are you surprised?”

“No.”

“You are. You think I’m going to say
cawfy
and
tyke
and drop every
h
and
g
. I might have been born in the Seven Dials, but now I can be who I want to be.”

“Then why do you tell me I can’t be who I want to be.”

“It’s just teasing. I like your airs, Miranda.” He leaned his head back against the pillows, and his eyes fell closed, and he drifted off, just like that.

Miranda bent over her sewing. A few minutes ticked by, and she glanced at him again, and an odd thought struck her that she did not know the color of his eyes. How could she not know the color of his eyes when they had met and talked nearly every day for a year?

She did not care what color Nate Wilde’s eyes were.

The door opened and Miranda looked up to see three fine, handsome gentlemen, two with dark curls, and one with an angel’s golden hair. They were as fine as Mr. Goldsworthy’s gentlemen. One of the dark-haired gentlemen stepped forward.

“Whelp, what have you done to yourself?” The gentleman asked.

Nate Wilde came back from wherever he’d drifted off to with a smile. “Devil, what are you doing here? Sir Xander, sir. Daventry!”

“We’ve come for two reasons, but it looks as if you’re in good hands. Are you going to introduce us?”

“Miss Kirby, Sir William Jones, Sir Alexander Jones, and Lord Daventry.”

Miranda stood on shaking legs and dropped a deep curtsy. The gentlemen smiled. She hoped her knees would not crumble and embarrass her. The laughing gentleman winked at her and went to the head of Nate Wilde’s bed. “Don’t let us interrupt, but we’ve come to take you away, Wilde. Our wives insist. The fair Helen won’t take no for an answer. She’s going to be the first to nurse you back to health.”

The second gentlemen spoke next. “But, I assure you, Wilde, that Lady Jones, and Daventry’s lady are equally determined to have a share in healing your wounds.”

“We’ll be back, Wilde,” said the third gentleman, the serious golden-haired one. “I’ll see that no one jostles you on the trip.”

Miranda watched Nate Wilde grin. “Who am I to argue with the Jones women?”

The first gentlemen looked at Nate. “At the quarter hour then?”

Nate nodded. “Thank you, Devil.”

The three magnificences took themselves out of the room. Miranda took her seat again and began to fold up her sewing. “I guess you’re leaving the club.”

“For now. I’m not much use here at the moment. My friends will take care of me.”

“Your friends, are they?”

“They are.”

He said it with no pride. Miranda felt small. She knew she would boast of knowing such gentlemen, but she would cut her tongue out and feed it to a jackdaw before she would ask Nate Wilde how he came to know so many sirs and lords.

“Then I will wish you well and see you when you return.” She gathered up her sewing. It made no sense to her that he had such friends and yet he worked for Mr. Goldsworthy and served the gentlemen of the club. She didn’t understand him. If he could disappear into the care of the great and the rich, why would he return to her?

She looked at him. The white shoulders were just as a broad and beautiful as she had noticed at the first, and the eyes were glazed with pain.

“Are you going to kiss me good-bye?” he asked.

“Kiss you? Oh the fall has knocked your brains loose, Nate Wilde.”

“I think not. I think it makes me see things clearly. You want to kiss me, Miranda.”

“
I?
Want to kiss
you
?” The idea of it. But a voice whispered that no one would know. He would be gone.

“You do. So come here.”

She did. His eyes were blue, blue like birds’ eggs and summer skies. She did not know why she had not noticed them before.

* * *

Violet now spent most of her time at her brother’s side, but it was nearly a week before he could sustain any conversation. “You wanted to talk to me? How are you getting on?”

“I’ve been better, but the doctor doesn’t think I’ll lose the leg.”

Violet pulled her chair closer and sat where he could see her. He was able to stay awake for longer periods now than when they’d first brought him home. For days the regimen had been sleep and laudanum with Violet or Papa sitting at Frank’s side. Yesterday he had begun to wean himself of the drug. “I’m sorry we did not get to you sooner.”

“Not your fault, V. I thought I’d outfoxed them putting a false report in my valise and taking the real one off to . . .” Frank’s gaze shifted away with some thought.

“When did you realize what Dubusari was about?”

“Almost at once, but I couldn’t tell how far it went, or who else was involved at first. I didn’t know whether the prince was playing dumb . . .”

“Or if he just didn’t see what was right in front of him?”

“The money, of course, revealed the truth. I realized I had to show them a false report just to get out of the country alive. In Greece, I thought I could pass the real one along to our agent, but the fellow was dead when I got there.”

“Our friend, the countess. Did you realize she was involved?”

Frank shook his head.

“You tried again in Naples?”

“By then I was pretty desperate. I knew they must not ever see the real report, and I had to give it to someone they’d never suspect of British sympathies.”

“The person you went to see in Spain?”

“Yes.” Frank plucked at his coverlet.

Violet jumped up. “Is it too heavy for you? Is it bothering the leg?”

“No.” He held up a hand to stop her. “There’s something I ought to tell you.”

“Oh dear, a confession?”

“I’m afraid so.” His gaze met hers and slid away again. “Blast it, V, I don’t know how to tell you this.”

Violet smiled at him and sank back into her chair. “Directly and honestly will do.”

He laughed. “For you, yes.” He shifted once more, pushing himself to a more upright position. “I took the report to Blackstone’s former mistress. Only she never was his mistress.”

“I know. That is, I know now. I should have figured it out five years ago, but I wasn’t thinking then.”

“How could you have figured it out then? Everyone thought he was a rakeshame of the worst sort. That painting was in all the print shops. His ring was unmistakable.”

“On the wrong hand. But how did you figure it out?”

Frank studied the coverlet. “Did he tell you why he went to Greece?”

“No.”

“Well, he’s a stubborn, honorable fool. Anyway I learned his reason for going to Greece, and that got me to thinking about the past and what I’d been willing to believe of him. He was my friend. I never should have believed he would engage himself to you while he had a mistress.”

Violet stood and crossed to the window. She pressed her hands to her chest. She didn’t deserve to be so happy, but she was. The least she could do was tell her brother the truth. She turned back to Frank. “My turn to confess. I should have known that Blackstone was not the man in the picture because he had been with me so often and so . . . intimately that he could not have been in Royce’s studio.”

Frank was staring. “You mean I should have called him out.”

Violet shook her head. “I’m going to marry Blackstone next Sunday. It’s five years late, but it is what we intended.”

“Next Sunday?”

“We have such a dismal record of believing in each other and such a hopeless attraction, you see. There’s no other way.”