Chapter Seven

Patience descended the post coach at the last inn, bonnet ribbons twirling in a spring breeze. Finally, she was most of the way through the journey.

Choosing not to go meant choosing to forever forgo exploring a part of her she could never acknowledge existed, except with Lord Ashcroft. A part of her others might never believe existed, even if she submitted proof. If average-size women weren’t supposed to have desires, large women were especially not supposed to have desires.

Load of muck, that. She had more desires than she knew what to do with. Others might hurl insults, think her disgusting. That would not hold her back or make her live in fear. From here onward, if she didn’t agree with a rule, she wouldn’t follow it. Simple as that.

Of course…there were degrees of behavior. Obstinately flouting a rule in front of her parents to stand—and die—on her new principle didn’t seem like a good idea.

She scanned the freshly swept yard. Straw had been scattered to cover patches of mud to keep guests’ shoes clean. Stable boys rushed this way and that. Servants came from the building to attend the passengers, many of whom would be staying the night on their way to more northern climes.

So many people. So many possibilities.

The marquess had changed how she viewed the world. What they’d done in the library had set her imagination alight. Fantasies, too vivid for daylight, danced through her mind. She studied each place with a new eye, imagining how people might couple there. The carriage seemed awkward, but plausible. The butler’s pantry risky, but exciting. A hayloft dirty, but—knowing what she now did—it was sincerely doubtful one would notice such things when trysting with a person who set her blood going like the marquess did.

No mistake, seeing the world in an entirely new way was torture, plain and simple. Her mind was never going to relent, not until she knew what it was like to be with a man.

She’d followed the marquess’s instructions to the letter. Twenty pounds to the maid—more than double what Frances made in a year—for a promise to take the secret to her grave and enjoy an unplanned visit to her mother, while Patience traveled to the next coaching inn and met the private conveyance arranged for her.

“Mrs. Warrington, I presume?”

As per the marquess’s instructions, for the next ten days, Patience was Mrs. Warrington. A gold band on her finger completed the fiction. Patience nodded to the coachman, holding her hem to step over the mud in the road that the horse’s hooves churned continually, day in and day out.

While he helped her up the steps, the coachman—a dumpy man with wobbly jowls and a shining bald head—wore one of those looks on his face. The type she knew too well. It spoke the surprise he did not voice, saying that although he hadn’t known what to expect, a woman of such…volume wouldn’t have counted among his guesses.

Patience ignored him. Her worth would not be dictated by whether or not she fit into a narrow definition of what a woman was supposed to look like. Supposed to. Ha! What a load of dog dirt.

She wouldn’t apologize for her existence, and that was the end of it. Size wasn’t going to hold her back any longer. Especially not when flirting with heart-stopping scandal. She needed this more than anything.

A small box tied with a blue ribbon rested upon the bench in the coach. Folded in two and slipped under the knot was a bit of paper inside of which her name was written in a florid script.

Never had the simple letters been more beautiful. The swirls began delicately, thin as spiderwebs. But at the down stroke of the capital P, the line grew wide and bold.

The marquess had written it. He’d had his mouth between her legs and he’d made her come. This was simply her name. How could it be more intimate? A pen, a paper, and black ink. All so very ordinary.

She tugged the ribbon free. Lying in a silk nest sat a peculiar item. A jewel, a sapphire, maybe, but not in a familiar setting. It was uncommonly large, almost vulgar. But it wasn’t a ring, a brooch, a necklace, or any other recognizable item. From the back extended a long shaft, about the width of a large man’s middle finger. It bowed slightly. The highly polished gold gleamed with secrets.

Secrets it would be keeping. Was it a hair ornament? Surely the end would be pointed were that the case. What would a man like the marquess give her? Something deliciously wicked, no doubt.

She studied it as they jostled up a narrow road late the next afternoon. Dappled light spilling through the trees lining the road made the jewel glint and glitter like it possessed a life all its own.

Several hours later when the coachman informed her they were drawing near, she glanced out the window at something looming in the landscape, and her mouth fell open. It wasn’t a hill they were approaching, but a castle.

The marquess waited for her at the front steps with more servants than she’d ever before seen in a single place. Any moment now, heat would climb her neck and suffuse her cheeks.

The blush didn’t come.

The carriage stopped. He opened the door, fixed the step, and held out his hand. She rested her fingers in his and allowed him to help her down. Wind met her face—a light breeze suffused with the scents of the country. Grasses grown long in the fields where sheep had yet to graze. Flowers on the cusp of blooming. And newly turned earth where yeoman farmers in the immediate vicinity were making ready to plant their late crops.

The marquess was perfectly groomed, the curling ends of his hair carefully artless around his face as if he’d styled it on a particularly romantic late-period representation of Alexander the Great.

Patience’s courage quavered. This was foolishness. The risk was enormous.

“Welcome to Glenrose, Mrs. Warrington.” Ashcroft’s smile was full of knowing, his lips tilted at a dangerous angle—slight, but unmistakable. They were curved just so. A bit of a slope here. A curve there. And a perfect dip following the shape of the sensual divot running the line between his nose and mouth.

A sensation like warm butter made her knees wobble. She’d opened her legs for this man. He’d put his mouth on her there. Those lips had opened for his tongue to work on her. Pleasure her. And he’d reveled in every moment. How long until he’d do it again?

He didn’t release her hand. Instead, he turned and presented her to the waiting servants. His shoulders were straight, his back long, his chest high.

He was proud of her. And when he looked upon her, eyes glowing, he only strengthened the impression.

The breeze picked up a stray curl and teased it against her cheek. The marquess reached up to brush it away, the back of his fingers light upon her skin.

The flood of heat came. But not the heat of embarrassment or nerves. The heat of anticipation, burning away the motes of doubt as the flames licked her insides.

There was no turning back now. Sensible or not, Patience needed this. Him. The freedom to taste all that family, social mores, and religious teachings would deny her. All that was deliciously forbidden.

A slight hint of a bruise darkened the lower side of one cheek. Patience frowned at it. “Are you all right?”

“Never mind that, dear woman.” He smiled. “I think I have it.”

She paused, studying his bright expression, mentally grappling for purchase on the conversation. “Have what?”

“What the V stands for.”

“Oh?”

“Vesta.”

“Vesta?” She chortled. “Is that an honest guess?”

“It was until you laughed.”

They paused. He surveyed the castle. “Isn’t it magnificent? I have half a mind to persuade my friend to sell it to me. He doesn’t do aught with it.”

“It’s…rambling.” In her reticule she carried a scrap of paper and stub of pencil on which to jot notes for new chapters of The Haunted Tower. Details about the castle would be perfect to work into the story.

His tone dropped a notch. “It reminds me of you.”

A lifetime of defensiveness reared its ugly adder head, hissing and spitting. Patience mentally tried to decapitate the hideous thing. The marquess wasn’t like the others. He didn’t speak to her in insults, veiled or outright. “Oh?”

His eyes went warm but didn’t leave the structure. “Startling. Complex. The jewel of the landscape.”

Unsure what to make of the compliment and torturously aware of another mysterious jewel she’d tucked in her reticule, she turned. “Surely for our purposes we don’t need quite so many servants as this.”

“If I have a whim, I need it seen to.”

It would have been funny were he not speaking so matter-of-factly. “Need?”

“Need, Mrs. Warrington. Need.” The tenor of everything between them shifted in the low notes of his words. When he leaned close, she caught the earthy scent of him, perfect for his unabashed hedonism. “Being near you makes me hard.”

Patience nearly tripped over her own feet. How was she supposed to maintain any semblance of propriety with him around?

She shook her head at the absurdity. Lack of propriety was precisely the point. “You don’t waste time, do you?”

Thank all that was holy for that. She needed to be touched. Everywhere. She needed the entrance to her body filled. A man on her. A man in her, filling her and defiling her.

“Whatever time there is in the world isn’t enough now that you’re here.” He reached to finger a loose curl dangling down the nape of her neck, lazily swirling it around and around. “You blush so prettily.”

Her hand went to her face. Her heart skittered with delight that was anything but girlish.

“Tell me, my lovely…” They passed through the gaping double doors. It was a fitting metaphor for the start of her new life. His voice dipped lower. “Are you wet?”

“Don’t you think that’s something you ought to discover for yourself?”

A devilish smile flashed across his face, all eagerness at the promised carnality. “How I look forward to my time with you.”

Instead of leading her directly to the bedroom, he brought her to the parlor.

“You left something for me in the coach.”

He raised a hand. “All in good time, Mrs. Warrington.”

For a man who claimed to have no restraint, he displayed a frightfully irritating quantity of—for lack of a better word—patience.

“It’s odd being called Mrs. Warrington.”

“I considered Cockburn, but the visceral image was far more off-putting than whatever humor could have been extracted from the name. How do you take your tea?”

Unable to discern whether or not he was joking, she let the Cockburn comment pass.

“You’re…fixing me tea?” Who wanted to think about tea? He’d promised fucking. Where is the fucking?

She settled onto a chaise longue, body humming with unspent need. It was the same longing that came with anticipating summer’s first berries. Inhaling their fragrance, but not being able to touch them. Knowing that when she could, they would burst in her mouth, plump and juicy. Except this was about a thousand times more acute.

“I never stand on ceremony. Besides, nothing will stand between me and your pleasure.” He gave her an expectant look, pausing over the tea things. The smooth tones of his low voice stirred the want already impatient and needy between her legs.

“Strong and very sweet.”

The marquess inclined his head in a formal show of acknowledgment. She thanked him as she took the teacup and their fingers brushed. He slowed, holding the contact just long enough to heighten the tension between them to an unbearable peak. The moment went long. Taut. The heat in his eyes left no question as to the untamed nature of his intentions.

“Pardon me, a moment, if you would be so kind.” He rose and bowed to her, seemingly all courtly gentleman with no hint of the lurking bacchanalian. It was becoming apparent that he did everything with a special flourish, not just practice perfect penmanship or lick quims. That in itself was a mark of his nature—taking enjoyment in all he did. Taking pleasure. “I forgot to send word round to my mother that I wouldn’t be taking her to church this Sunday.”

Patience’s mouth dropped open. “You were going to take your mother to church?”

Now was not the time to be thinking of church or reflecting upon the sin running in her blood. If she was resolute upon making peace with what she was, it didn’t bear fretting about. Doing so would etch creases on her brow and give her mother one more thing to fuss over with pots of ill-scented creams and hocus-pocus pamphlets with recipes promising to restore youthful complexions. Which, if her mother’s face were any indication—lovely as it remained, although she wouldn’t accept any of Patience’s compliments—didn’t work.

Ashcroft left Patience with her tea and took a seat at the escritoire. He flourished his left hand as if loosening the muscles of his fingers before taking the goose quill and carefully dipping the tip into the ink pot. “As I do every Sunday.”

Patience stared at him as he wrote. He must have felt the weight of her focus, for he answered the unspoken question.

“I’m a sinner, Mrs. Warrington. I’m completely dependent on the good Lord’s forgiveness.” He blotted the ink. “Besides, other than what I’m going to do to you, there is little better than all that sweaty biblical fornication.”

“All that…” Heat burst over her cheeks. Just when she didn’t think the man could shock her any further, he proved her wrong. “I hardly think…well, there’s a bit more to the Bible than that.”

Folding the sheet, he cast her a devilish glance over his shoulder. “Not the way I read it.”