Wicked, My Love (10 page)

He released a strangled groan. “I want you,” he muttered, resting his head on her shoulder. “I want you so desperately. Oh God.” He exhaled, long and deep, and slowly pulled away.

“No!” The word came like a reflex from her mouth—unthinking, primitive. She grabbed his hand, returning it to her breast, moving desperately under his fingertips. “Don't stop, Randall. Don't. It feels
so amazing.”

“Woman,” he hissed, kissing her jawline and giving the pert tip of her nipple a tiny squeeze. She tossed her head back and cried out.

Bam!

The door swung open and hit the wall. She jum
ped away.

Standing in the threshold was the landlady, her hands on her hips, her brows scrunched.

“What's going on?” poor blind Isabella cried.

“It's the innkeeper.” He quickly shoved her behind him, shielding her.

“Is this man molesting you?” the woman demanded.

“Molesting?” he scoffed, trying to sound casual even as his heart thundered. He made a quick lean to the side, snatched a blanket from one of the chairs, and passed it to Isabella. “We—we were just playing a little game.” He attempted to muster his Mr. Randy voice.

“I'm asking
her
. My daughter said you were be
ing molested.”

“Um, that's right, we were playing a game!” He could hear the panic in Isabella's voice as she gripped his shoulder. “You see, he's…he's my b-brother.”

“Oh God,” he muttered, sliding his hands down his face.

“Brother?” the innkeeper snapped. She began to shake her head and a finger in slow tandem. “I knew there was something wrong with you,” she told Isabella. “I knew it when you said you didn't like Miss St. Vincent's book. Overly sentimental? Unrealistic? Well, maybe if you had listened to her wise advice, you wouldn't have to sell your body to any old—”

“What!” Isabella cried. “You think I'm a…a…”

“A trollop who mistakenly believes she can ply her trade in my respectable establishment.”

Isabella gasped. “Well, I will have you know that I just happen to be Miss S—”

“Don't you call my s-sister a trollop!” he interceded.

The innkeeper put her fists on her hips and moved her head in a half circle around her neck. “If she's your sister, then I'm the lord mayor of London. I want both of your sad likes out of here in five minutes.”

“Let's just forget the little bathing incident ever happened,” Isabella said, slicing her flattened palm through the air. The inside of the train station was dark except for the blue shadows cast from the giant silver moon peeking through the window like a nosy neighbor and a candle that Randall had thought to pack that sat burning on the floor in a tiny pewter holder. The evening air had cooled, and a breeze whistled through the platform.

They were the only people in the building. Isabella wore her cloak backward, like a blanket, and sat at one end of a long wooden bench, as far away from him as she could get. Her hair hung down her back, loose and wet. Beneath her dress, she wore only a chemise and a poorly laced corset. With five minutes to dress, she'd had to forgo petticoats, drawers, and
matching stockings.

“And please stop staring at me in that dazed, stupefied way,” she barked. She covered her flaming face with her hands. “I can't believe you saw me au naturel and I let you…you…kiss me…and that thing you did with your thumb. What is wrong with me?” She cringed even as her nipples grew hard at the memory of his touch.

“We were naked and—”

“No,
I
was naked,” she corrected him. “You were fully clothed.”

He tugged at his cravat. “Well, dear, if that's the problem, I can remedy it right now.”

“Keep your clothes on,” she cried, covering her eyes. “I don't want to see your naked body!” Nonetheless, she opened two fingers and snuck a peek at him. He pulled his cravat free, and her sacred female parts were throbbing to press against him again, this time on his bare skin, his hard member exposed, ready to “take her” as he had said, on this bench in the middle of the train station. Oh Lord, she was losing her mind. “And I don't want to talk about it.”

“But what if
I
want to talk about it?” He edged closer to her.

“Stay on your side,” she snapped.
Or
I
might
explode.
“We despise each other, remember? You shouldn't be attracted to someone you like about as much as a visit to the dentist.”

“We were overcome with desire. Lust has nothing to do with how we feel, either about each other or dentist visits. I was upset about the Powers affair and Harding, and you were beautiful, and I was… My God, you were ravishing. And dammit, how could I have not seen it all these years?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “You mean my parts other than my face were ravishing.”
He
thinks
I'm beautiful! He thinks I'm beautiful!

“No, your eyes are dark and luscious pools.” Despite her injunction, he slid closer, getting perilously near, his sweet, woodsy scent filling her nose and making her nipples crave his attention and strain against the thin fabric of her chemise. “And your lips when you kissed me were—”

“I didn't kiss you!” She shot across the room and hid in a cold, dark shadow in the corner.

“Yes, you did, and you know it,” he called after her. “I wasn't the only one doing the kissing.”

Releasing a long, uneven breath, she told her brain to be rational, but her body was undermining her best efforts. It throbbed, pulsed, thrummed, dampened, and tingled all over. What had Randall done? “I-I don't want to talk about it.”

“Maybe you
need
to talk about it,” he said quietly. “Stop holding everything in and admit that you're confused and scared.”
And
your
body
is
out
of
control
, she mentally continued.
And
if
that
innkeeper
hadn't interrupted, you would have ripped off Randall's clothes and made him do something about that ache that is driving you mad.

“I just…I just have these feelings all the time.” Her voice cracked. She edged deeper into the dark corner, safe from those penetrating eyes of his that glowed in the candlelight.

“Feelings?” he asked. “What kind of feelings?”

She didn't want to talk about it. She should have kept these things to herself, but her words burst out, years of silent desire and repression rushing forth. “This urgency to…to…touch a man. And it's getting worse. It occupies my thoughts. I can't stop thinking about
it
. All day, I just think and think and imagine and…ugh! Even now, when I'm about to be ruined, when my life is in chaos, I can't help wanting to feel, to see, to
know
a man. I'm so desperate in my desire that I actually found
you
attractive. But of course, you are attractive, just not to me. And I shouldn't feel this way about you. It's wrong.”

“Oh, love, it's natural. If it makes you feel any better, I understand your desire. It's been…it's been a long time for me as well.”

She peeked out from her corner. “Twenty-
nine years?”

“Well, not that long.”

She approached him, her hands clasped tightly across her cloak, which covered her wayward breasts. “So can we agree that what happened was an egregious accident driven by desperation, never speak of it again, and continue going on as enemies?”

He didn't respond but tilted his head. The candlelight accented the bones of his jaw and cheeks and the crook of his cleft chin.

“No,” he said.

“No!?” she wailed. “Why not?”

“I'm going to continue speaking of it. I just can't turn off my emotions and thoughts like you. For one, why are we enemies?”

“Why must you make this difficult?” She flung up her arms, dropping her cloak. “Oh, f-f-fudge! Can't we just go to sleep?” She snatched her mantle up. “Well, I'm going to sleep.” She crossed to the bench, curled up, and rested her cheek on her hands.
“Good night.”

“Now, Isabella, you have never found it difficult to express how much you dislike me before.”

She pulled the cloak over her head.

“Stop hiding like an ostrich and tell me why you detest me so. I can almost hear your brain buzzing away under there.” He waited. “Not going to tell me? Well, I guess I'll just sit here and sing a little ditty while you try to sleep—

There once was a curate from Dover,

The fair ladies he liked to bend over,

He'd pull out his—”

“Be quiet!” She tossed the cloak off her face and glared. “Because I embarrass myself every
day! Satisfied?”

“No, I'm more confused. Why does embarrassing yourself have anything to do with me? Well, except that time in Bath and that other time at Easter, but I swear I didn't know that pig liked plum jam.”

“Every day I say or do something peculiar and people stare at me as if I were a moonling dropped on the earth. It's like everyone else has this extra sense, you know, as though on top of seeing, hearing, feeling, and so on, they also know the correct thing to say or do. Well, I'm missing that.”

“No, you're not.”

“Admit it, I'm awkward and clumsy. I might as well speak an entirely different language—the language of the odd, ungainly people. It contains a hundred different ways to say ‘Oops, I'm sorry.'” She studied the swelled moon peering through the window, its surface lined with tiny gray lines and spots. “I remember years ago in Lyme Regis, you called me abnormal, cracked, and freakish, and said that you only played with me because your father made you.”

He closed the space between them. “For God's sake, I was a stupid little boy who deserved a whipping. I'm sorry I said those things.”

“Why?” She sat up again. “It's true. And you're perfect. You're handsome. You're charming. Everyone loves you. You always say the right things.” She gazed at his face; his eyes were tensed, crinkling at the edges. “I've always been jealous of you. I guess that's small of me.”

“You're not small, and I'm not perfect.” He clasped her hand, setting off tiny sparks under her skin.

“My father thought you were. He was always saying that I should be more like you.” Her throat tightened. She was dancing too close to something painful. She drew her fingers away. “I don't…I don't want to talk anymore. I really just want to go to sleep.” She gave him a nudge, hoping to move him away. He didn't budge but stared at the ceiling.

Outside, an owl hooted. The candle on the floor flickered, about to drown in its own melted wax.

After several long seconds, Randall spoke again. “So you're angry at me because you felt like your father preferred me to you?”

She hated when he used his words like a surgeon, making little incisions in her heart and memories, and peering inside. She followed his gaze to the ceiling. She remembered a large design painted there, but in the dark, she could only make out a tiny portion of it.

“‘Isabella, you need to stop your stammering and speak up,'” she mimicked her father's deep voice. “‘See how Lord Randall deports himself, with confidence? He's going to be a brilliant young man.' Or ‘Isabella, you can't get a husband if you don't learn to be more charming. Just look at how at ease Lord Randall makes people.' I couldn't live up to you. He always wanted a son, and he got me and something is wrong with me.”

“He had to be proud of you,” he whispered. “He had to be. You nursed him those last months. You ran his businesses and the bank. You were a devoted daughter.” He rested a hand on her arm. She debated whether to yank it away, but the touch that had excited her just seconds before now offered comfort.

She shook her head. “His ambitions for me—to be like my mother, the graceful and beautiful wife to a respectable man, have a well-appointed home, and give him beautiful grandchildren—never transpired. And now the one thing that I could do that made my father proud—uphold his bank—is in jeopardy. And I can't stop saying the wrong things and desiring the wrong men.” She smacked her forehead with the heel of her palm. “I should have been smarter, better, stronger. My father would have seen through Powers; instead, I wanted to marry him. I even named our unborn children.”

He studied her without speaking. Something in his gaze made her feel more vulnerable than when he'd touched her naked body and did those other things that she tried not to think about. She had never opened herself to anyone, and she didn't like the scary, unsettling feeling. She had to make it go away. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't say these things. I—”

“I think perhaps you misunderstood your father. Or he wasn't aware of the lasting pain his words caused. In fact, if anything, I should be like you.”

“Me?” She released a burst of laughter. “Don't say that too loudly or someone might hear and cart you away to Bedlam.”

“You're right. I'm perfect.” His voice turned low and gravelly. Her heart made a tiny, nervous flip. “I say the right things and charm the right people. I was born to the right parents. And on occasion I've been told I'm somewhat handsome.”

“You're the most handsome man in society. And that's not just my opinion, but every lady's in the village, and all of London according to the society columns in the papers.”

He gave a soft, scoffing snort. “When I first came to Parliament, I was enthralled with my power. My every word ended up in a paper. Balls were successes or disasters based on my attendance. It was like opium to be so admired and adored. I was the man everyone wanted to know. But now, I've realized how I was used.” He released a long exhale. “I wasn't supposed to have my own opinions; I was supposed to sell someone else's. And maybe my ideas aren't good. Maybe beneath this ‘perfection,' this charming façade, there's nothing.” He turned her hand over and began drawing little circles in her palm. “That's why I didn't like you. I couldn't charm you. You've always seen straight into my heart. And…there's nothing there.”

All playfulness vanished from his features. He looked older, weary, and tired. “I have no substance,” he whispered.

“That's not true! I say that as your greatest enemy.” She wanted to embrace him, tell him not to worry, but she was unsure of how to comfort him.

“You've called me the devil, minuscule-brained, and a lunatic, just in the last three days.” The side of his mouth hiked in a smirk-like smile—the old Randall she knew.

“I didn't mean them. I just…I just… I called you those things because…it makes me feel better about myself.”
Stupid
girl! How could you say that!
She covered her face in her hands. “I'm ashamed. I'm a ter
rible person.”

He drew her against his shoulder, her face still buried in her palms. “You're not.” He ran his fingers down her back. “You're unflinchingly honest. I adore that about you.”

She pulled back. “You adore something about me? Impossible! I've seen the ladies in your world. You know, those ‘visions of luscious splendor.' I don't hold a candle to them.”

His gaze drifted to her lap and then returned to her face; a light warmed his eyes that she couldn't decipher. “I think you do,” he said. “You're a little awkward, maybe, and yes, you do, at times, spout odd things. But what other woman would hike across a county in the summer, shove hay down her dress to pretend to be pregnant, hilariously compare love to economic theory, and then get mistaken for a bawd and booted from an inn? To top it all, you wrote a book that saved a woman's life, and you didn't even take credit for it.” He eased a tangled mass of locks from her face and anchored it behind her glasses. “No, Isabella, your father wasn't always correct. I should be more like you: smart, honest, and fearless.”

Her bottom lip quivered, so she bit down on it. Those were the nicest things anyone, outside of Cousin Judith, had ever said to her—and they came from Randall, her historic nemesis. Several awkward, fumbling seconds passed. Outside, the wind picked up, rushing by the windows.