Mina Wentworth and the Invisible City (7 page)

“But you didn’t bed them.”

“They wouldn’t have me. My odor wasn’t any better. So I settled for a wife who smells like bilgewater.” His grin appeared when she laughed, then softened as he took another long look at her. “Have you had a chance to eat?”

“We stopped by Newberry’s flat for our dinner, but wine would be welcome,” she admitted. After his horrifying loss of sense when they’d once been drunk together, Rhys never took any alcohol, but Mina enjoyed a glass to smooth the edges of a long day. “So would enough warm water that I can wash my hair.”

Rhys relayed that to the housekeeper as soon as they passed through the door, and a moment later, maids were scurrying to comply. He turned to face Mina, his gaze meeting hers before he stepped away. “I’ll bring the wine up to you.”

That also wasn’t something a duke did, but Mina understood that he didn’t want to be interrupted after he joined her upstairs. That suited her perfectly, as well.

In her dressing room, she stripped off her jacket and trousers, suppressed the thought of hanging them outside the window to air, and tossed them in a basket to be laundered instead. It was still so strange, not having to think of ways to save the maid any extra work. It was strange to have a clean uniform for every day of the week, and many other finely made dresses, besides. It was strange to have a rich husband and a salary that was completely her own, with no reason to pinch pennies—though after years of frugality, she still did. A few times since her marriage, Mina had gone through deliberate bouts of spending, reminding herself that she
could
 . . . but they’d all been followed by crippling guilt and weeks of hoarding her pennies. Perhaps one day she would be able to carelessly throw away money like a Manhattan City duchess, but apparently she’d require several years to work up to it.

Like Foley, Mina knew what it was to worry that her household staff wouldn’t eat, that her family wouldn’t be able to pay them. She knew what it was to wonder whether letting them go and allowing them to pursue other opportunities of employment would do them more good than staying in a poor household—or a failing manufactory, where the work was dangerous and the wages low.

In that situation, there was never any good choice. How could anyone know whether they’d be better off staying or going?

Still in her short pants and chemise, she heard the door close behind Rhys, followed by the rasp of the lock. The familiar, excited tremble started in her belly as he crossed the room toward her. He stopped close enough to touch. She took the wineglass, sighed in pleasure as he moved behind her, his hands sliding into the hair coiled at her nape in search of pins.

She let her head fall forward, closing her eyes. “Have you ever met Foley?”

“No.” His fingers threaded through her loose hair, pushing the long black strands forward over her shoulder. His mouth pressed to her nape, sent a shiver racing through her. “What was your impression of him?”

Mina forced herself to think—never an easy task when he was touching her. “New World automation is putting him out of business, so if he doesn’t install the machines, he’ll lose the factory. But I think he’d have wanted the automation, anyway. It will be safer for the workers he’ll have left.”

“Yes.”

His gruff reply made her realize that he might have had to make that impossible decision, too. Though primarily a shipping merchant, Rhys had interests in many areas—and now that she thought about it, Mina seemed to recall conversations between him and Scarsdale that might have referred to manufactories that he owned.

“Do you have many? How many would lose their jobs if you automated all of yours?”

“Three thousand. Fifteen percent of them children.”

Sweet heavens. She turned and looked up at him, searching the hard lines of his face. There were more people than that dependent upon him—many more—yet she’d never heard even a portion of them condensed into a number.

But she knew they were more than a number to him. Rhys saw himself as captain of a very, very large ship—and part of his duty was to watch over the crew that labored for him. After someone entered his employ, if they put in even half the effort that he did, Rhys wouldn’t easily toss them away.

“Will you have to automate, too?”

His mouth tight, he nodded. “Eventually.”

“How do you bear it?”

“By searching for other options to give them.”

Not just hoping that they’d find something better.
Creating
something better. “What will you propose?”

“To start with, building schools similar to the Crèche. If the children don’t have to work to eat, if they don’t need a job, that’s already a lot fewer who might lose a position as more of my factories install automated machines, and a lot fewer jobs that are needed overall. Then I’ll put books in front of them, so they can grow up and invent ways to make more money for me.”

She grinned. Rhys took care of his people, but it couldn’t be said that he was driven by altruism. “Is that your plan for next session?”

“Yes.” He slipped the wide straps of her chemise over her shoulders, down her arms. “But if I can’t convince Parliament to pay for it, I’ll do it myself. I’m already drawing up the plans.”

With a soft sweep of his thumbs across the tips of her breasts, her nipples hardened into beads. She drew a ragged breath. “You haven’t said anything.”

“It took me a while to get to it. There are a lot of problems to look at, everyone demanding that we solve them now, but all of these children growing up without an education or a crèche will be one hell of a problem in ten or fifteen years if we don’t do something about it soon.” His hand flattened over her stomach. “I promised that I’d make this a better place for us, for our children—and for Anne. It was after knowing her, seeing what the Crèche has managed to do, and speaking with your father . . . I finally had a better idea of how to go about it.”

Could she possibly love this man any more than she did? It seemed impossible. Yet her heart, already so full, seemed to stretch infinitely bigger again. It didn’t matter that, at the root, his motivations were only to fulfill a promise to her, only to benefit him. She knew he would cross any line for her. He’d killed, he’d burned cities—and at a word from her, he’d do it again.

But this was more than that. Now Rhys fought for something that he never had before. He was willing to change the world for the better . . . simply because he loved her.

It was incredible—and humbling. But he wasn’t humbled. Rhys was arrogant enough to believe he
could
change the world, and was determined to actually do it.

Arrogance and determination. He could have ruined her with them. He loved her instead, and used them to make everything he touched a little better.

Rhys moved behind her. “Where were you hurt this morning?”

Of course he hadn’t forgotten. “Beneath my right shoulder.”

His hands gentle, he turned her so the lamp on the bureau illuminated her skin. His silence weighed heavily in the room.

“Is it bad?” She didn’t think it would be. She hadn’t felt so much as a twinge for hours.

“It’s almost completely gone.”

Which meant it
had
been bad enough that the bruise hadn’t yet disappeared. When she faced him, that terrible tension filled him again, whitening the edges of his lips, tightening the skin over his cheeks.

She could wash her hair later. Mina put her glass aside.

His lips found hers, softly at first but quickly demanding, taking.
Oh.
This what she’d waited for, but now that he touched her, the anticipation only sharpened. Her fingers pushed into his hair, her thumbs running over those small gold hoops that drove her mad whenever she saw them. With a hungry growl, Rhys lifted her against his broad chest. Mouth fastened to hers, he carried her across the room, pausing once to collect a square parchment envelope from the vanity. His tension never receded, and she knew that this time would be fierce, hard—pure possession.

By the blue heavens, she couldn’t wait for it.

Rough fingers stripped away her short pants and chemise. Face rigid with control, he laid her, naked, on the edge of the bed. Standing, still dressed, he pushed between her thighs, spreading them wide. His left hand tore at his breeches while he glided gentle fingers between her soft folds. Already so wet, so ready, his touch electrified her. Panting, she rocked her sex against his hand. His fingers breached her entrance, and her slick channel contracted around him.
Oh, blue.
Mina cried out, her head falling back. Over the pounding of her heart, she heard his tortured groan.

Parchment crackled. He smoothed the oiled sheath over his thick length, pressed the broad head against her burning flesh. With a heavy stroke, he pushed deep.

Sweet heaven.
Her body bowed with the force of his possession, hands bunching in the coverlet. They froze together, locked in the moment—as they had every time since they’d married. No matter how frantic their coupling, the moment he was fully embedded, Rhys looked down, as if capturing her, and she looked up at him, taking in his stark beauty, his rough need. She had the barest second to realize that he hadn’t even tied the sheath, but held it on with his fingers wrapped at the base of his shaft, as if his need to come into her had been so great that every triviality had been tossed aside. His hands trembled now as he tied the strings, each tug teasing the sensitized flesh stretched around him, making her wetter, hotter, making it almost impossible to remain still until he finished. His callused thumb stroked over her clit. Urgent pleasure stole her breath. Her body tightened.

He surged forward. Again, again, his hands braced beside her shoulders and his mouth devouring hers, until she cried out, convulsing around him. He raised her knees alongside his ribs and drove harder, pushing away reason, pushing away every sensation but the heat of his skin, his thick intrusion, her clamping flesh. He pushed until she shook uncontrollably, ecstasy wringing little sobs from every breath—until he was shaking with her, and the tension finally left him.

Then he shed his clothes, came up on the bed, and savored her slowly again.

Chapter 4

Mina loved mornings. She
loved waking up to Rhys’s furnace of a body against hers, to his exquisitely slow possession. She loved reading the newssheets over breakfast with him, loved talking with him—and usually, she loved teasing Anne, whose surly scowl in the morning was only matched by her mischievous grin after she’d fully wakened. She loved riding with Anne to the Blacksmith’s in the Narrow, and then loved her time alone as she traveled the remaining distance to headquarters.

This morning, Mina kissed Rhys farewell over an early breakfast eaten hastily in bed. She climbed into the waiting steamcoach alone. Traffic was light, and the steamcoach made good time—good enough that she could first stop at Leicester Square, and see Anne before she and Mina’s father left for the day.

Though Mina visited her parents often, even after eight months she still couldn’t decide whether to knock or to walk through the front door. This time, she chose to walk in. A new wind-up butler waited in the foyer, as tall as her shoulder—and naked. Her mother must not have been satisfied with his performance yet, and had left his gears exposed so that she could tweak and adjust him as necessary.

A new blue rug ran the length of the hall. After her parents had paid off their debt to the Blacksmith, her mother’s automatons had provided a large and steady income, supplemented by her father’s position at the Crèche—but like Mina, they found it difficult to spend, fearing that it might all disappear again. Aside from hiring another maid and an assistant for Cook, they’d barely undertaken any improvements to their home, and had only made the most critical repairs.

The rug told Mina that some of their fear must have eased.
Good.
Perhaps within a year or so, when she learned to throw away money like a duchess, they would let her spend Rhys’s money on them, too.

She heard a noise from the top of the stairs and looked up. Sally had paused to glance over the banister, her dust rag in hand.

“Good morning, Sally.” Mina smiled up at the young maid. “Are they still at breakfast?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

It still felt odd to be addressed as “Your Grace” in this house. At the mansion, everything felt new, and the “Your Grace” had been a part of that newness. But Sally liked to say it, and took pride in knowing that her inspector was married to the Iron Duke, so Mina wouldn’t stop her.

She continued on to the dining room. Sitting close together, her mother’s pale blond hair against her father’s dark, her parents glanced up from the newssheets as she entered. Mina’s smile faltered.

No place had been set for Anne. Even if the girl had already finished up and excused herself, the servants left the plates until the family had all departed the room.

“Oh, dear.” With mirrored eyes made from mechanical flesh, her mother read her face too easily. “Tell us what has happened.”

Nothing.
Please let it be nothing
. “Anne hasn’t come down?”

Now her father stilled, carefully watching her face. “Anne?”

“She spent last night with you.”

“No.”

A tight knot formed in her stomach. Fear? Anger? Mina didn’t know. “And the night before?”

“We haven’t seen her since Saturday,” her father said.

Their regular day to visit the Crèche together—three days past. That left two nights unaccounted for.

Why?

Her mother said quietly, “Anne told you otherwise?”

“Yes. She sent me a gram, and I didn’t . . .” Mina hadn’t verified the truth of it.
Should
she have verified it? She’d expected that Anne might have different ideas about living with a family than Mina did. But this meant Anne had
lied
. Why? Was she in trouble? “Did she seem all right on Saturday?”

Her father nodded. “Perfectly well.”

With a sick ball of worry in her gut, Mina turned to go. “I need to look for her.”