Love and Other Wicked Games (A Wicked Game Novel) (21 page)

Mandy sighed, and looked at Amelia, lightly laying a hand on her face. “Now, don’t get me wrong, I respected my late husband greatly, and I love my children with all of my heart, but my life was a difficult one because I wasn’t strong on my own before I took it all on. But it doesn’t have to be that way for you, or for any woman. Look at Ellie here. Most women her age are married with several children already. I was and that was the problem. I didn’t have time to cultivate who I was as a person on my own. Ellie’s parents made certain she had that time. And so when she finally decides to marry—” Mandy smirked lovingly and raised a brow at Ellie, “—
if
she decides to marry—then she will be strong enough not to break. You, Amelia, deserve that too.”

“Oh, Mandy. What a beautiful wish for the women of this world. You’ve captured my feelings, exactly,” Ellie’s mother added from the doorway. The three women in the room turned to look at her as she entered. Angela then went to each of them, even Mandy, planting a kiss squarely in the middle of their foreheads. “You never fooled me for a minute,” she added as she kissed Mandy’s forehead once more. “I knew there was a big heart in there.”

For the second time ever, Ellie saw Mandy blush. “Thank you, Mrs. Wilson.”

“No. Thank
you
for staying here so I can return home.”

“All is right then?” Mandy’s mouth twitched. “As right as it can be anyway?”

“As I suspected, the only thing wrong with the dowager’s dress is the dowager herself.”

Ellie and Mandy both let out a small chuckle, but it was only once Ellie’s mother was gone that they realized Amelia had not moved or uttered a word. Ellie didn’t know how long that Amelia stood there, uncharacteristically silent, jaw slacked and mouth gaped. Ellie and Mandy looked to each other curiously as if they feared they may have trigged some mysterious switch and broken her forever. But just before they began to feel truly worried, Amelia snapped out of her trance and dove in Mandy’s direction, wrapping her arms around the woman and holding her tight.

“That is the kindest most wonderful thing anyone has ever said to me. My own mother was never so kind.”

After a moment of stiff reluctance, Mandy returned the affection. She slackened her arms around Amelia and patted her on the back before sniffing and wiping her hand across her face.

“Mandy?” Amelia questioned pushing herself away.

“Oh, look what you’ve gone and done now.” Mandy waved her hand and turned her head away, wiping her eyes again. After a moment she turned back to Amelia and pointed her finger. “Now don’t think I’m going soft on you now because you went and made me cry. If anything, it’s just cause to make me push you harder because now I know you have some real human feelings that don’t come from books.”

“Hey now…” Amelia pouted her lips and crossed her arms but Ellie could detect a smile of intense appreciation and affection lurking just below the surface. She could tell that Mandy recognized these feelings as well.

“Alright, then,” Mandy said eventually, smoothing her skirts and turning back to their preparations. “Shall we continue?”

Ellie nodded and began to help Mandy again, but after a moment both women realized that Amelia had not joined them in the preparations. They slowly turned their heads to see that she was still standing behind them, arms crossed, but now she was biting her lip.

“What is it, now?” Mandy asked with a heavy sigh.

“Well, waiting to marry is all fine and good, but what if I don’t want to wait for… well, that’s to say—” Amelia cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. “There are other parts of me that are not as keen on waiting for my mind to catch up.”

“
Amelia!
Are you asking what I think you’re asking?” Ellie found herself whispering with a hint of admonishment. But to say that this reproach was anything other than a cover would be a lie. Amelia wasn’t the only one pondering forbidden feelings and Ellie found herself savagely excited with her own. Ever since they left the shop, Ellie had been trying to ignore the fire taking hold of her body but she was no longer able to do that and she didn’t want to. Amelia’s questions were feeding that fire, causing it to rage and expand. And Ellie let herself secretly relish in it.

“I’ve told you before, dear, that life is not like those books you read…” Mandy’s voice did not hold even a hint of surprise at the question. But that didn’t meant she was going to dignify it with the sort of answer Amelia wanted. “You’d be best suited waiting for your mind to catch up with…
everything else
because you’re in for quite a surprise if you’re expecting a man—”

“Oh, I’m not just talking about any old man. I’m talking about a man who understands women. A man like the ones here. A gentleman—”

“That title is a conundrum.” Ellie remarked offhandedly. “Gentlemen are not necessarily prone to gentleness, if that’s what you’re thinking…”

“Perhaps I don’t want gentleness—”

“Here we go again,” Mandy mumbled with the roll of her eyes.

“—and what’s wrong with that?”

Ellie smiled to herself as she let the fire spread out through her limbs. “Oh, I never said anything was wrong with it…”

“And just how, exactly, do you know that?” But before she had even finished the sentence Amelia’s eyes were wide with excitement and curiosity, and Ellie realized her secret smile hadn’t been so secret after all. “I knew it. You
are
still seeing him. You have to tell me everything.
Everything!
”

“Why do I even try? Why do I even try?” Mandy mumbled again as Ellie found herself exceedingly grateful that her mother was already gone.

As much as Ellie was bursting to spill every feeling and thought and sensation, she didn’t want to talk about that right now leading into a busy night, and she wanted to talk about it with Amelia even less. And then there was another part of her that didn’t want to share any of it at all, a part of her that wanted to keep it secret to herself and to him. Every moment they had spent together—the things they talked about, the feelings they shared, the memories they made—those belonged to them. They were special and intimate and real and precious. And they were theirs. No one else’s.

Ellie was not a selfish person and she never had been, but in this one thing she wanted to be the most selfish person who had ever lived. So she decided that she would be. And she delighted in her avariciousness.

Amelia was not so delighted and continued to pry and poke until her wits were raw. But Ellie gave nothing, burning brightly inside, until sometime later the dowager finally made her appearance and the topic was dropped. At least for the time being.

“What did I tell you?
What did I tell you?
” Lady Rivenhall exasperated as she turned so quickly in a circle it seemed she might take flight. “It’s not working. It’s just not working.”

Mandy put her hand to her mouth in a contrived manner as she looked over Lady Rivenhall. To the dowager it probably seemed as if Mandy was deep in thought about how to salvage this dress, and thus the dowager’s very life itself. But Ellie could tell Mandy’s hand placement was actually being used to prevent her from laughing… and thus saving her own life.

“Well?” Lady Rivenhall’s eyes were bulging and bloodshot.

Mandy looked her over once more, but only as a means to compose herself because it was very clear to everyone except the dowager exactly what the problem was.

The dowager pulled at the tight hem of the sleeves and the small puff at the top, before attempting to shimmy the plunging neckline up to a more conservative position. The fitted sleeves and low cut bust line accentuated every harsh angle of the dowager’s frame, and flattered her even less than the pale purple silk of which it was made. Despite the fashionable nature of the dresses’ design and construction it did nothing at all for the aging woman, being much better suited for a woman of Ellie’s or Amelia’s years. Per usual, the dowager had insisted on the design and the fabrics, against the advice of Ellie’s mother. She succeeded in looking nothing more than an old woman in children’s clothes.

Yes. As Ellie’s mother had assessed, the only thing wrong with the dress was the dowager, and no amount of sewing, readjusting, or cutting was going to fix that. Unless the cutting was somehow able to cut forty years off the dowager’s life that was, and since that was just about as likely as the dowager ever taking their design advice, the three women knew there was only one thing left to do. Lie.

They would make a few superfluous adjustments, add a ribbon or two, sew in an unnecessary stitch, and then they would tell her she was the most beautiful woman in all of Manchester. And when she walked out into the main hall to greet her guests they would tell her the same… as they always did anyway.

Mandy went to work on the erroneous seams, coddling the dowager as her fingers worked. But when she began to sew on a piece of decorative lace, the dowager wanted nothing of it.

“No. No!” She bellowed as she lightly slapped at Mandy’s hand.

Ellie saw Mandy’s eyes narrow and for a moment she wondered how a gaze like that didn’t actually burn the dowager and light her dress on fire. But Mandy set her jaw, while Ellie and Amelia bit their tongues, and calmly asked, “What’s the matter, ma’am?”

“I have a cameo brooch that is just darling. Much more darling than this—this—” She scrunched up her nose and batted her hand at the lace like a dissatisfied cat.

“Lace?” Mandy prompted.

“Don’t interrupt me!” The dowager pulled at her dress again and then stood up straighter. “But yes. My brooch will do much better than this…
lace
. Can you sew it on here instead?”

“Well, yes. Of course I can, but—”

“Then it’s settled. Come.”

Mandy turned to Ellie and Amelia, rolling her eyes, and began picking up the items she would need to complete the dowager’s request. It made absolutely no sense at all but if it would please the dowager then Mandy would do it. Again though, the dowager was having nothing of the situation.

“I said ‘come!’” she barked with a brisk clap of the hands sending the ever composed Mandy into a tense frenzy. She exhaled loudly as she quickly followed the dowager, dropping a few items on the way. Just as the two women were nearly out of the room, the dowager turned sharply behind her knocking Mandy over. Her only acknowledgement of what she had done was to sigh heavily and tap her foot as if Mandy was somehow to blame, before she looked to Ellie and Amelia and gave them yet another instruction.

“I’ll be sending up a friend of mine, my escort for the evening. He’s devastatingly handsome…” she ruminated as her eyes momentarily glazed over, “But handsome or not, he’s torn a seam in his shirt and I can’t possibly be seen with him until it’s repaired. I trust you can handle men’s clothing as well?” But it wasn’t a question so much as another command. She quickly turned on her heel, leaving the room with Mandy not far behind. “And don’t get any ideas about seducing him!” Ellie heard the dowager call from down the hall.

Ellie and Amelia looked at each other and shook their head at the final caution.

“How young do you think this one is?” Amelia asked in a low voice once the dowager was safely out of earshot.

Ellie laughed, wickedly. “You were wondering that as well?”

“I bet he’s still in school… and I don’t mean University!” Amelia whispered leaning into Ellie as they turned back to their supplies.

“I bet he’s younger than me…” Ellie added. “Younger than you even!”

“I bet he can’t even shave yet!”

“And that he still needs his mother to pick out his clothes for him!

“I bet—”

From the doorway they heard the sound of someone clearing their throat.

Ellie and Amelia turned around quickly, with their heads facing the floor.

Oh, drat
, Ellie thought. They’d been caught poking fun at the dowager’s guest, and if he was even a fraction of anything like her then they were both in for a fair amount of reprimanding.

“No, continue on. I’d love to hear more about what else I need my mother to do.”

Ellie felt herself start. His voice shot through her like a bolt of lightning sending tingling sensations out into her extremities. Deep inside her belly the fire she’d been kindling all evening burst and raged into a feverish being all its own. She felt her breath come to her in small, short strokes. Her heart thumped stridently and heavily. She could hear the pulse of her blood in her ears. Anytime she was without this feeling she wished for it with such fervent need it made her ache. She was aching right now but she wasn’t sure if it was the intense desire or the ineptitude of timing. She gulped loudly, not sure what to hope for when she looked up.

But there was no mistaking it. She knew what she would find attached to that velvety voice, and she was having a difficult time processing the implications.

“Nothing, at all my lord. Forgive us,” Ellie murmured as she raised her eyes and looked full on at the man leaning against the door frame.

“No, need for any of that. I was only…” He cleared his throat and adjusted his collar, only now looking into the room. “Oh.”

And here we go
, Ellie thought. She knew he came from money, but she never imagined it was this sort of money. And she also knew he was still hiding something from her, but why hide this? Did he find her unsuitable? Was she merely a game to him after all?

But what was she even thinking? They hardly knew each other and it wasn’t as if they’d made some sort of verbal commitment… or any commitment at all for that matter. She openly acknowledged to herself that she didn’t understand what was happening between them. Nor, so it seemed, did he. She hadn’t wanted to make a topic of it for those very reasons. Because she savored in the small time they spent together, whatever the meaning or the end results. She didn’t know what might come in the future but she knew the present moments. In this present moment all she saw was him and all he saw was her.

In this present they belonged to each other.

They didn’t have to speak to know what the other was feeling right now. To know that they were feeling the same things. They didn’t have to make a verbal commitment to recognize that they were inexplicably tied to one another. Because they were, even though neither of them had ever said it or admitted it. They just
were
.