Desire Me More (19 page)

“What has you so . . . jovial,” she asked as she took his arm so he could assist her off the desk.

As she stood, she was suddenly aware that her drawers were soaked. Wetness covered her core, her inner thighs, even the bottom of her buttocks and anus. The faster she escaped him, the faster she could clean up.

Nick apparently had other ideas in mind, because he came at her, caught her up in his arms, and headed for the door. She fought to get down. “You can't be serious. Everyone in the household is still awake.”

“They won't bother us.”

“Nick,” she admonished, “you have to put me down.”

He was nearing the door. She could fight to get out of his hold, but then they'd likely both end up on the floor.

“I already admitted that I am embarrassed, and your hauling me out of here like some barbarian crusader is not helping matters. I seemed to have had . . . ” An issue? How did one describe a bodily function delicately?

“I'll make you do it again,” he said as he hitched her up higher in his arms and pulled down the door handle. “In fact, it's my mission tonight. I will conquer your body so thoroughly that my whole bed will be soaked with your juices.”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

He grinned. “Shush now. You don't want to draw anyone's attention to us as I steal you off to my bedroom like a Viking marauder.”

She pinched her lips tight. It was no use arguing with him once the door flung open without a care of its hitting the wall it flew against. She inwardly cringed. Thankfully, not one member of the household was to be found.

When they were in Nick's room, he set her down just inside the door. “I'll draw you a bath.”

She could do no more than look at him wide-eyed, feeling heat crawl up her whole body.

He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her lips. “You're thinking right now that you pissed while I fucked you.”

His words did nothing to calm her, and she felt herself panicking. Her breath pushed in and out of her lungs so rapidly that she suddenly felt . . . faint. Nick backed her up against the door. “Far from it, love. You gave me a gift instead. A different kind of orgasm. I intend to repeat that performance, or die trying. So a bath is in order, because there will be no sleep until I accomplish my new mission.”

Thankfully, there was no repeat of the episode that had happened in the study. But that didn't stop Nick from trying repeatedly to replicate the outcome.

They didn't sleep. Maybe an hour between bouts of lovemaking, but other than that, eight in the morning came too soon for both of them.

Amelia felt better about where she stood with Nick going forward, but everything could still go to hell before they could make something of their newfound appreciation and honesty with each other. And that scared her more than anything.

A
melia had opted to go with Nick to gaol. He was to bear witness to the punishment of the wharfinger for stealing from him, something he'd agreed to do instead of a public lashing that would ruin the man's future prospects of finding work, should he be recognized.

She wasn't sure what to expect; she'd never been inside a prison. But she wanted to be there with Nick to gather a better understanding of what he faced when someone tried to profit on the side and steal from him when he was a generous employer. He'd told her she couldn't go a hundred times, but she'd finally worn him down and made him change his mind. She had to take the good with the bad, she'd told him. And she wanted to understand some of the uglier side of his business. See firsthand what he had to deal with.

Huxley hadn't been thrilled about her attending either. He had told her it was no place for a woman, which was typical of Huxley. When she'd pointed out that she had visited the city's dead house to identify her brother's body, they'd lost the argument, and it had been the end of the conversation. Though she couldn't say she was a victor in this.

She did have an ulterior motive for coming. Nick told her his past was too dark to reveal the truth about his scars. What better way to understand what he'd gone through than to watch the details of today unfold. If she could do that without flinching, how could Nick continue to hold himself back from her?

That she thought the prison yard would be a sight better than the dead house was the only shock she got on arriving.

The surgeon of the prison discussed sentencing with Nick and Huxley for the wharfinger's crime. Amelia sat on a bench on the inside of a tall stone wall, looking around her. The place was abysmal and gray, almost as lifeless as the dead house had been.

She couldn't hear what Nick said to the surgeon, but she sat a stone's throw from the man who had stolen a good percentage of the profits for the past four years. It was a place where the public would sit to witness lashings. The man accused of the crime was filthy—though in a cleaner state than the rest of the prison. His shirt was untucked and smeared with dirt, his hands shackled and chained to the wall. He was older, in his midfifties by her estimation. He had a gray beard and balding head. His eyes were dull and empty.

She wondered if this was the sight of a man who had given up. A man who had nothing left to live for. She couldn't help the twinge of sympathy she felt for him.

He called out to her. “Psst.”

She focused on his brown eyes, ready to listen—she knew not why—to what he had to say. All she knew about this man was that he had a problem with gin and whores and didn't seem to have any family to support.

“Ne'er be seein' you 'round here 'fore.”

Should she answer? She could politely ignore the man, but seeing as he was in line for a lot of painful lashings, she said, “You've committed a grave crime, sir.”

“Mebel. Theys calls me. Mebel, miz.” He smiled, showing her why his accent was hard to make out . . . at least half his teeth were missing, the rest rotting in his mouth.

“So why did you do it, Mebel? Hasn't Mr. Riley treated you well and given you a fair wage for the work you do?”

“Don't know no other way. Lost me wife eight years past, me child not long after. Thought it was easier an' all.”

“You could have talked to Huxley. He might have helped.”

“Didn't want no help. I'd done too many wrongs by then.”

“What do you think your punishment will be?”

“Lashings is what I'm set for. They whip thieves here. Make sure they're too broken to be bothered doin' much but get lost in drink to dull the pain afterwards.”

“You said you lost your wife?” Amelia felt something crack inside her. She couldn't help it; he was genuine, and there was no lie to his words, though she could be mistaken in her assessment.

“I did. Was in a workhouse. Didn't see her much, as men weren't allowed. Conditions were poor for living, and she got herself sick. Consumption is what the doc told me; daughter followed her to the grave a week later.”

And that was when her heart did break for this man she didn't know. Despite the wrongdoings, he was nothing more than a lost soul.

Nick came over before she could say more to the wharfinger. She stood as Nick drew near, placing a hand on his arm. “What will happen to Mebel?”

“I saw you talking to him, Amelia. You can't be so forgiving of his crimes after talking to him for even a few minutes.”

“Did you know his wife died?”

“I did. He worked his way up from warehouse laborer to wharfinger. Don't think I haven't given him the opportunity to fix his circumstance. He went behind my back and stole product from my inventory to feed his addictions. I might have looked the other way, had his intentions been noble. But they weren't. He's a criminal and unlikely to change his ways.”

Amelia turned away from both men and gulped in a steady breath of air, hoping for fortitude for what she'd agreed to witness. She didn't want to give Nick any reason to regret allowing her to attend.

“I didn't want to bring you here,” he reminded her, “but you insisted. You also promised not to interfere.”

“I'm not meaning to interfere.” His words seemed to give her enough strength to stand taller and face his steady gaze with her own. “What will his punishment be?”

“Forty lashes.”

Her breath audibly caught. “He won't survive it. You can't possible agree to that.”

“It's the surgeon's suggestion.”

“Well, make another. You don't need this man's death on your hands. Surely you have contacts here as you do with the bobbies. Won't someone take another suggestion? Can't you at least spare his life?”

Nick squeezed her arm before leaving her to join the surgeon and Huxley again. They talked for another ten minutes before he was at her side again, taking her arm and letting her lean against him.

“Ten lashings,” was all he said to her. “He'll be shipped to Australia next week to live out the remainder of his life.”

“I thought they stopped sending convicts over . . . ” But who was she to argue? It was better than the first choice of punishment.

“Only officially.”

“Thank you. You have a heart of gold.”

“You won't want to thank me after the lashings. I need to stay to witness the punishment. Huxley can take you back to the carriage if you've seen enough.”

“No, I will stay.”

“The surgeon doesn't want you here, Amelia. Women don't generally witness such things—sometimes the wives of the convicts but no one else.”

“Then tell him I'm not just any woman. I won't leave, Nick.”

He nodded succinctly in agreement and signaled to the surgeon that he was ready.

She just hoped she hadn't made the wrong choice. Nick had been lashed when he was only eleven, and there were far more than ten scars etched into his back. She wanted to know just how bad it had been for him. And while witnessing someone else's pain seemed intrusive, she felt it was the only way to understand Nick, as he didn't want to talk about what had happened to him.

The lashings were far worse than she could ever have imagined. The blood, the pain, the curdling scream Mebel let out by the time the fourth lash hit his back. Her stomach roiled with each draw of blood. There was so much blood. It ran in a stream and covered the man's trousers and the gray stones beneath him.

At one point—maybe by the sixth lash—she turned around and threw up on the cobblestone. Nick placed his hand at the base of her back and rubbed it in small circles. He didn't say anything, nor did Huxley, though a dark look came to Nick's eyes, and she could tell he wanted her gone from there. She wasn't sure how she watched the rest of it unfold and thought maybe at one point that Nick had put his hand around her waist to keep her upright.

That had happened to Nick. Some man who had wanted to feel superior had done that to Nick when he was only a boy.

As they left gaol, Nick took her hand in his and stopped in front of the carriage. “I'm sorry. I should have insisted you leave or at least have taken you out of there at the first sign of sickness.”

She shook her head. “I needed to see what it was like.” She closed her eyes, wishing the lash of a whip on skin didn't look so . . . awful. There really was no other word for it. She would never be able to scrub that image from her mind. And while she might not picture Mebel, she did picture a younger version of Nick, suffering through that same cruelty.

“Perhaps you'll be able to clear your head when we are in Highgate.”

They were set to leave in two days. She nodded, though she wasn't sure anything could clear her head of those images. “Will he be all right?”

“He will. A doctor will tend to his wounds before he's shipped off.”

“Did you arrange that for my benefit?” She was talking about the doctor, because one hadn't been standing by when they were in there.

“In a sense.”

“I would have preferred you'd done it for you.”

“I did it for us, Amelia. I did it because I saw your heart breaking the longer you talked with him. I did it because I was stupid enough to agree with your being here today. This isn't a place for women.”

“Women are whipped with the same regularity.”

“Not women like you.” He opened the carriage door. “This isn't up for debate. Just know that Mebel will live out the rest of his days—short or long; it's up to him at this point.”

“Thank you.” Amelia looked around them. There were too many present for her to kiss him as she wanted to do, so she climbed into the carriage and tried not to picture Nick, bloody and broken, in chains and unable to help himself.

Nick studied her carefully. “Tell me why you wanted to be here.”

“To understand.” Perhaps she should have lied, but the truth felt right.

“I need you to be more specific.”

“You won't talk about it. You won't tell me what would make a grown man lash out at a child.”

“You cannot compare the two.”

“Yes. I can. Are you going to deny that you didn't go through something similar?”

“No. But I was young, and I was strong. I healed fast enough.”

“It doesn't excuse the behavior of an adult taking a lash to you. There is no reason good enough to do that to a child.”

Nick pulled her close, tipping her head down so he could kiss the top. “Everything you do makes me love you more.”

“And I you. I just hope nothing gets in the way of our happiness.”

“I'll keep you safe, Amelia.”

But could he? Shauley was still a threat, and the inspector who had practically interrogated her hadn't shown himself in days.

T
hey would be leaving for Highgate soon, and Nick hadn't been able to find Inspector Laurie. When Nick had shown up at the constabulary headquarters, he'd been told that Inspector Laurie hadn't been seen in days. Not since the day he'd last been at Nick's house. Nick chose not to reveal that tidbit.

“Nick,” Hart said as he came through the study door.

Nick stood hastily, shutting the door behind his friend. They would have a few minutes alone before Amelia came up from luncheon. And he didn't want her hearing this conversation.

“What has you dithering like an old maid?” Hart asked as he took a seat in one of the leather chairs.

Nick sat across from him. “Word got back to me that Shauley was to be arrested for indecency and sodomy.”

“You knew how to play that one.” Hart laughed a little, though the sound held no humor. “Bastard was caught with his pants down.”

“He's disappeared. Along with the inspector who accused me of murdering Amelia's brother.”

“The two are obviously working together.”

“I made that conclusion already,” Nick snapped. He rubbed at his eyes, hating that he had no control over either man.

Hart's usually carefree expression was wiped from his face as he leaned forward in the chair, elbows on his knees. “Then how can I help you?”

“I'm leaving for Highgate tomorrow. I need the bastards flushed out from whatever hole they're hiding in.”

“I'm not sure I can promise that.”

“Hart, you run half this town. I don't trust anyone else with this.”

“Huxley?”

Nick shook his head. “He's watching my sister's house until she joins us in Highgate at the end of the week.”

“I can put extra eyes on her.”

Nick nodded, grateful to his friend. Before they could discuss the issues further, the latch turned on the study door, and Amelia entered, hesitating when she realized Nick had company.

“And the most beautiful woman in the world couldn't have arrived at a better time.” Hart stood and walked toward Amelia. He took her hand and kissed it with an exaggerated flourish. “You are looking lovely as usual, Miss Grant.”

Amelia blushed. “Good afternoon, Hart. Can I have tea brought up?”

“No. I just came from lunch nearby. I had a few minutes, so thought I'd stop in for a quick visit. I have to be heading out or I'll miss my next appointment.”

“I'm sorry to have missed your company,” Amelia said with a sweet smile that Nick wished was reserved solely for him.

He got up from his chair and walked Hart out.

“I'll write of any developments while you're in Highgate,” Hart promised.

“Just keep those extra eyes on Sera.”

“It's done. We'll talk when you're back.” Hart put his hat on and skipped down the front stairs of Nick's townhouse, whistling a ditty as he went.

Nick rubbed at his eyes again. Something felt wrong about the situation unfolding. That he had no control only angered him more than the thought of Shauley and Laurie wandering freely when both needed to be questioned about their involvement with Lord Berwick. He wished he were so lucky that they'd disappear, now that their plan to frame him for Lord Berwick's murder had failed. This wasn't something he would discuss with Amelia, as he didn't want to unnecessarily worry her. He might not be a praying man, but he'd pray that nothing happened to Amelia by keeping her in the dark on this. He couldn't think of one good reason to enlighten her to the recent developments that would only worry her. And Highgate was a chance to escape the city and enjoy some time alone with each other.