Corbin's Fancy (21 page)

Fancy shivered with a sort of delicious dread. No matter how many more Merediths she had to face, no matter how intimidating the august “Corbin House” turned out to be, she did have the unsettling comfort of knowing that Jeff would soon be loving her, with his body if not his heart.

As if to acknowledge these unspoken thoughts, Jeff casually squeezed her knee. An anticipatory jolt went through Fancy and he seemed aware of that, too.

The inside of that carriage fairly crackled. Blessedly, Meredith hadn’t noticed; her chatter went on and on, and Fancy, looking ahead to the night, paid scant attention. She wondered how Hershel was faring in the compartment, but not with much interest. She was too conscious of the man sitting next to her for that.

“Yes,” Meredith went on, her words finally penetrating Fancy’s distracted and bedazzled mind, “I know just the dressmaker for you, Frances. She’ll take you in hand and you’ll be presentable in no time!”

Presentable! The word struck Fancy with the force of a blow, but she had no time to respond to the remark because Jeff beat her to it.

“My wife is already ‘presentable,’” he said, putting a cold and measured emphasis on the first two words.

The carriage was lurching and shifting up a steep hill. Fancy found herself hoping that Hershel would throw up in the luggage compartment.

Meredith was quick to regroup. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she said sweetly.

The lie was obvious, but Fancy didn’t see a need to point that out. Jeff’s glare said he knew it already.

“Well, you did ask me to help her along!” Meredith wailed, sounding put upon.

Fancy was suddenly rigid, her gaze boring into Jeff’s face. He wouldn’t look at her, and his jaw was rock-hard, imperious. “You asked her to what?!” she demanded.

Now, Jeff met her eyes. His face was taut and his gaze freezing cold. “Meredith is familiar with Spokane,” he replied reasonably, “and you are not. Therefore, I thought it would be a good idea if she introduced you—”

“If she ‘helped me along,’ you mean!” Fancy broke in, seeing the warning in his face and ignoring it all the same. “You can’t have me going around witlessly buying more dresses with stars stuck all over them, now can you?!”

“That,” Jeff said evenly, “will be enough.”

Remembering Meredith and how gleefully she would recount this episode, Fancy subsided. “I will deal with you later,” she said, with tremulous dignity.

“Not in the way you think,” Jeff replied.

Meredith was fairly bursting, but she tried to look as though she hadn’t heard any of the conversation. In fact, she spoke as though the entire incident had never
taken place at all. “Blue would be a wonderful color for you, Frances—”

“I hate to be called Frances,” Fancy put in. It was a small defiance but the taste of it was sweet.

She felt Jeff’s gaze touch her; it seared her flesh and then, conversely, raised goosebumps. One very long minute later, the carriage lurched to a sudden halt and Herbert was jumping down to open the door.

“I’ll thank you to remember your principles,” Fancy said to her husband in a terse whisper when they had both alighted and Jeff had reclaimed Hershel.

“Good-bye, Frances!” sang Meredith, from the interior of the carriage. “I’ll see you tomorrow!”

Seething, Fancy put out her tongue at the retreating vehicle.

“You’ll thank me to remember what principles?” Jeff drawled furiously, as he gripped her elbow in one hand and propelled her toward a sprawling two-story frame house with green shutters and windows spilling squares of golden light onto the lawn.

Fancy knew that she was on dangerous ground, but the knowledge that Jeff had thought her incapable of buying clothes without Meredith’s advice stung so badly that she didn’t care. “What principles, indeed?” she snapped. “I’m quite sure you don’t have any!”

“Some of them are a little strained at the moment!” Jeff snarled back, settling Hershel’s cage down on the front porch and turning the bell knob with a furious twist of one wrist. “Particularly the one about beating you!”

The front door swung open before Fancy could reply and a middle-aged woman filled the golden gap, peering out in surprise. “Jeff? Good heavens, is that you?”

“I think so, Miriam,” Jeff replied crisply, “but, at the moment, I’m not entirely sure.”

Miriam laughed delightedly and stepped back. “Walter!” she shouted, as Jeff literally flung his bride over the threshhold. “Look who’s here! Little Jeffrey!”

Despite the obvious perils of such an act, Fancy couldn’t help laughing. “Little Jeffrey,” she mimicked, giving the giant beside her a scornful look.

With frightening speed, Jeff wrapped one arm around her waist and lifted her off her feet. Once again, she found herself pressed sideways against his hip. Fancy was mortified and she gulped miserably as he started toward a nearby stairway, his strides ominously long.

“Jeffrey Allen Corbin,” Miriam interceded with crisp dispatch, “you put that young lady down this instant!”

To Fancy’s eternal surprise, Jeffrey obeyed.

Chapter Twelve

F
ANCY WAS A LITTLE UNCERTAIN ON HER FEET, AND SHE
looked anxiously from Miriam to Jeff. Saying anything more could only get her into trouble again, so she bit her lower lip and remained silent.

“Now,” said Miriam, imperiously, her hands on her box-shaped hips, “what’s going on here?”

Jeff looked furious, but he answered in civil tones. “Miriam, this is my wife—Frances.”

“Fancy,” dared said wife, though only in a whisper.

“Wife!” Miriam literally clapped her hands. “And all this time we thought you were married to the sea! Walter! Walter, Jeffrey’s married!”

Jeff rolled his eyes heavenward and Fancy permitted herself a giggle. Walter, a white-haired man with a marked limp and clear blue eyes, stumped into the entryway. “What’s that you say?” He paused. “Why, it’s Keith!”

“No,” corrected Miriam patiently. “This is Jeffrey. And here’s his pretty bride, too! Isn’t she a sight for sore eyes, Walter?”

“Bride!” boomed Walter with glee. “See, Miriam? I told you the Corbin boys was all too much like their daddy to stay single!”

Fancy stifled another giggle, but she couldn’t resist darting one sidelong look at Jeff. He was fuming.

“We’re hungry,” he bit out, taking Fancy’s elbow in a firm grip and double-stepping her toward the stairway. “Please prepare something immediately.”

“Certainly, Jeffrey,” sang Miriam, clearly unintimidated. “Land sakes, imagine you married.”

“Imagine,” muttered Fancy, grinning.

Jeff’s grasp on her arm grew more forceful. “It is amazing, isn’t it?” he hissed, in retaliation. Then he squired Fancy up the stairs, into a hallway, then through the open doorway of the grandest room she had ever seen in her life.

The bed was a gigantic four-poster and there were three floor-to-ceiling windows covered by blue velvet draperies. There were bureaus and armoirs and two beautiful, fan-shaped rattan chairs facing a small, ornate ivory fireplace.

Best of all, though, behind a gilt-trimmed changing screen, there was a bathtub. Not one that had been carried in from the kitchen or storage shed, either, but an impressive marble affair large enough to accommodate not just one person, but several.

Fancy blushed and turned away, only to collide immediately with an amused Jeff.

“Watch,” he said, and then he strode over to the tub, knelt on its tiled edge, and bent to secure a plug in the bottom. That done, he turned two faucets simultaneously
and steaming water began to flow from an elegant spigot.

Fancy was enthralled. Temple had a tub like this in Port Hastings, but she’d never used it, of course, nor had even seen it in operation. The Evanstons, the people she’d worked for right after leaving home, had only aspired to such luxury. Even Keith’s house in Wenatchee boasted nothing remotely comparable.

Jeff idly began to unbutton his shirt. “Will you join me, Frances?” he asked.

The temptation was too great. Hot water, and all she wanted of it. Were those bath salts, those pink granules in that apothecary jar on the tub’s broad edge? “Of course I will—Jeffrey.”

Jeff paled slightly. “Don’t start calling me that!”

“Why not? You insist on calling me Frances.”

“That’s different!”

Fancy turned, so that he could help with the fastenings of her dress. “Is it? Why?”

Jeff gave Fancy a little push instead of an answer and then announced, “You’d better hurry, my dear, unless you want the devoted Miriam to come prancing in here and find us in the altogether.”

“She’d do that? Walk right in?!”

“Of course she would,” he replied, stripping off his shirt and trousers before Fancy had even progressed to her underthings. He climbed into the wonderful bathtub and sank, with a sigh, to his chin.

Fancy scrambled to join him. His steady regard made her uncomfortable, so she turned away, kneeling in the deliciously hot water, to add some of the pink bath salts. “Ummmm,” she said, drawing in the floral scent.

“My sentiments exactly,” drawled Jeff.

Fancy cast one look at him over her bare shoulder, and realized that the anticipated ‘tonight’ had finally arrived … with a wallop. “Don’t you dare think what you’re thinking!” she hissed.

“Why not?” replied Jeff in a husky tone born of utter contentment.

“Because—because Miriam is going to arrive at any moment, that’s why. You said so yourself.”

“Yes, but even she can’t see through that screen, and she’ll only be here long enough to leave our dinner.”

“And hear us!” flared Fancy, sitting down with a plop and stretching her legs straight out in front of her. Even then, her feet didn’t reach the other end of the bathtub.

Jeff laughed and pulled her backward so that she rested against his chest. She would have drawn away but for the fact that his arms closed around her, forestalling any such motion. “The way we heard Eustis and Isabella last night?” he drawled. The palms of his hands were on her breasts now, circling. Kneading. Claiming.

Fancy moaned. “I should have pinned up my hair,” she despaired. “Now it will get wet—”

Jeff’s fingers were attending her nipples, sending piercing shards of desire stabbing through her. “It will dry,” he pointed out.

At that moment there was a bold knock at the bedroom door and Fancy tried to sit up, only to be restrained again. Jeff continued to caress one imprisoned nipple, but his other hand glided under the water and over Fancy’s stomach. “Come in, Miriam!” he shouted good-naturedly, as though they were playing chess instead of sprawling, naked, in a bathtub.

There was a rattling sound and Miriam hummed, beyond the wide screen, busy for the most appalling length of time.

Meanwhile, Jeff was stroking Fancy, slowly, skillfully, into a fever of need. Helpless, she pressed her head back against his hard chest and submitted, her legs spreading wide of their own accord. Her hips began to rise and fall; she could not stop them. And still Miriam worked in the main part of the room.

Dishes and silverware chimed. The night was cool and Fancy heard wood being laid in the fireplace, a blaze catching and then crackling.

The motion of Jeff’s marauding hand accelerated and Fancy arched, biting her lower lip to keep from crying out in the first throes of a lengthy release.

“Just roll the cart back out into the hall when you’re finished,” Miriam sang out from somewhere in the spinning storm of sensation that surrounded and pervaded Fancy.

Jeff chuckled, still attending his shuddering wife, as a door clicked shut in the distance. “Are we finished, Mrs. Corbin?” he asked, in a wicked undertone that whispered past her ear.

Fancy hadn’t the breath to answer and he damned well knew it, the wretch. To express her rebellion, she clawed the length of his bare leg with her toenails.

He laughed and rose out of the water with a thrusting rush, like some great beast of the sea, hauling an unsteady Fancy with him. “Supper awaits,” he reminded her, after patting her tingling bottom once and then thrusting an enormous towel into her hands.

Red to the roots of her hair, she flung the towel back at him and stomped, stark naked and beaded with
scented water, around the changing screen. By the time he followed, the towel wrapped casually around his middle, Fancy was shivering before the fireplace.

Jeff arched one eyebrow and favored her with a mocking grin. “Eat,” he said.

Having had nothing since the hearty breakfast at Isabella’s, Fancy couldn’t afford to decline. She sat down in one of the big wicker chairs, took a plate from the rolling cart between them, and began to fill it from the covered dishes thereupon.

“You’re going to have a plaid backside, you know,” Jeff observed as she began to eat. When she didn’t reply, he went to the bed, took up one of the pillows, and extended it to her.

Fancy balanced her plate in one hand, grudgingly taking the offered pillow and tucking it beneath her. “You’d think rich people would at least put cushions on their chairs,” she muttered.

Jeff laughed and sat down to have his own supper. “You’re the mistress of this house, Fancy. If you want cushions, buy them.”

She ignored him, concentrating on adding a dollop of butter to her mashed potatoes.

“Why are you so angry?” Jeff asked after a long time.

Her hunger sated now, Fancy met her husband’s gaze, glaring. “Miriam was right here, in this room! And you just kept—you just kept right on—”

“She didn’t see us,” he reasoned patiently. “And she didn’t hear anything, either.”

“That was God’s own wonder!” spouted Fancy.

“You liked it. That’s what infuriates you. You can lie from now till the Second Coming, but you liked it.”

“I did not!”

Jeff set his plate aside with an ominous leisure. “Shall I prove that you did?”

“No!” cried Fancy, too quickly.

“Will you admit it, then? You might as well because your body has already confessed, Fancy.”

Fancy scowled at him; it was a defense and she knew it, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “Have you no shame? I swear, you’re as bawdy as Eustis and Isabella!”