And Then Comes Marriage (20 page)

Armed with poetry and a handful of stolen blooms from neighboring gardens, Poll waited outside Miranda’s, keeping his patience as evening waned and night fell. At last he saw the light of a candle in the window of her bedchamber.

He’d spent his long wait well. Using the light from the sputtering streetlamps, he’d plotted every step of his climb. He knew her window, and he knew from conversing upon the weather that she rarely shut it entirely. Did she enjoy the cool draft stirring across her body, chilling her ivory skin?

He’d best not think on that. Climbing would be hard and dangerous enough without an erection. He’d feel a right fool for dying with newssheets shouting things like ERASED BY ERECTION! or DIS-MEMBERED!

The very real possibility of falling did much to cool his heated blood—there would be plenty of time for
that
once he got up there. He stuffed the bouquet into the front of his weskit and started up.

The climb wasn’t so bad. From the railing of the steps, he could reach the ledge at the top of the first-floor window. There was a decorative stone detail over the door that gave his next foothold. Then it was a quick clamber up onto the classical portico over the front door and up to the next story window. The decorative stone ledge below provided his path. Two windows down from that was the one leading into Miranda’s boudoir.

Very well, it was hard and terrifying. At any given moment he would not have given great odds of his own survival. He would definitely be leaving by the door, thank you very much.

Sliding his feet along side by side on the narrow ledge, he started to wonder what the bloody hell he was thinking.

Do I love her this much? Or do I just hate to lose?

Both? Poll decided it was both and continued the precarious journey down the ledge.
If I survive this, I promise a long life filled with good acts. I really do.

At last he reached Miranda’s window and leaned gasping on the framing for a long moment. Then, trying to look as though he’d merely dropped in whilst in the neighborhood, he began.

“Miranda!”

Her name came out a bit rough, probably due to the sheer terror lingering in his heart as he contemplated the sheer drop behind him. He cleared his throat and swept the bouquet high.

“Miranda! ‘O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound—’”

The draperies were pulled back swiftly. The flame of a candle held high blinded Poll instantly.
Oh. I might have thought of that.

Blind, he clung desperately to the stone frame of the window embrasure. “Ow.”

“Cas?”

He blinked rapidly. “No. It is I, Poll.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Poll! You’re going to fall to your death! Shift to your left so that I can open the window!”

Poll slid one foot, then the other, thinking that the phrase “dying for love” was just about the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.

The window opened with a creak and he felt a rush of warmed air come from the bedchamber. Blinking, he managed to look past the fading glare in his eyes to see Miranda standing before him in her dressing gown with one hand outstretched to him.

“Let me help you in,” she urged. “You idiot.”

Poll, who had been quite willing to crawl into her room and lie quivering on the floor for a while, instantly rediscovered his spine.

Instead of putting his hand in hers, he thrust the admittedly less-than-fresh bouquet into her hand.

O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound

And crown what I profess with kind event

If I speak true! if hollowly, invert

What best is boded me to mischief!

Poll wobbled a little on the sill. Miranda, who had begun to smile at his antics, gasped and clasped the bouquet close in alarm.

Catching himself, Poll valiantly went on. “‘I / Beyond all limit of what else i’ the world / Do love, prize, honour you.’”

He finished with another flourishing bow, this time leaning into the room, by God!

Miranda looked an adorable combination of worried for his sanity and secretly thrilled. Poll grinned at her. It was a combination he could work with.

“Pray, a kiss for my labors?”

Miranda frowned at him and threw her hands wide in exasperation. “Then will you come in off the windowsill, you idiot?”

Poll wiggled his eyebrows. “Kiss me and find out!”

She made a frustrated noise, tossed her bouquet down on a side table, and advanced on him. Poll grinned in satisfaction—that is, until she fisted both hands in his surcoat and dragged his mouth down to hers, even as she yanked him into the safety of the room!

Chapter Seventeen

Cas knew they imagined themselves invisible, for the room behind them was dimly lit and the hour was very late. He knew his brother had not accounted for the glow of candlelight behind them, nor of the shimmering incandescence of Miranda’s beautiful skin. Poll most certainly could not have dreamed that someone might be standing in the park below, someone who happened to be carrying on his person an expandable spyglass.

Through it, Cas saw every smile, every shape her lips formed as she received Poll’s ludicrous performance.
I could have recounted Ferdinand’s speech to Miranda. I know that damned play backwards!

He saw Miranda take the flowers. He saw her reach for Poll.

He saw Poll fall upon her for a long kiss, and then another. Then the two of them turned away into the darkness of Miranda’s bedchamber.

How he wanted her. Even standing there astonished at his own voyeurism, he wanted her. He wanted to be the one falling hard into her bedchamber. He wanted to be the one she dragged down for a deep kiss.

Cas clenched his eyes shut and his hands into fists.

She had first been Poll’s. Cas ought to have known he could not wipe those weeks of advance courtship away from her mind.

He forced himself to turn away. He would not wait, would not watch, would not
know.

Two steps later, he turned back, unable to leave. The ache for her grew the longer he watched. He was breaking his word being there, was breaking the very law by peering into a lady’s bedchamber, yet he stayed.

*   *   *

Poll fell willingly into Miranda’s room, his arms already going around her, catching them both before they ended up on the carpet.

We’ll get to you later, carpet.

He pulled her close to him and bent his face over hers, his mouth on her soft one.

Hmm. Umm. Well.

It must be his close call with Death on the Cobbles that was interfering.
Get your mind off your own funeral!
He cleared his throat and went in again.

This time she tried harder as well. She parted her lips, although he felt her flinch when he slipped the tip of his tongue between them.

Her body stiffened. Alas, his body, despite the weeks of anticipation, did not.

Er. Ahem.

He pulled away from her and straightened. His mouth felt decidedly odd, his body completely uninvolved, his libido running in the other direction. It was almost as peculiar as if he’d mistakenly kissed Callie or Elektra.

However, he would never upset Miranda by letting on for one moment that he found her anything less than devastating.

Forcing a smile that he feared resembled a manic smirk, he bowed deeply once more. “Thank you, my lady! I could not have asked for more.” She’d tried, poor thing. She’d really given it a go. It wasn’t her fault that he had lost all interest in her charms.

“Yes, well … you’re welcome.” She returned his smile with a vaguely bewildered crease between her fine brows. “Ah, it is very late, Poll.”

He bent his head. “Of course! Absolutely!” After that alarming revelation, he couldn’t get out fast enough, truthfully. “Ah.” He gestured at the window. “Shall I—?”

“No, for pity’s sake, Poll! No need to take that absurd romantic notion any further!”

Well, no, that was obvious—although not very nice of her to say so. Still, he was deeply relieved to be able to leave like a man and not a monkey!

He politely ignored her swift puzzled touch to her lips as she turned to walk him to the door. A gentleman ought not to notice such things, after all.

*   *   *

Carved into granite stillness by his longing and his jealousy, Cas waited in the dark long after Miranda and Poll had turned from the window and left his view. He waited until he saw his brother leave the house by the front door and trot wearily down the steps.

Cas waited until the last candle went dark, until the last servant went to bed.

The night settled upon the street again and still he waited in a dark so complete that he felt blinded by it.

*   *   *

On the other hand, there is Cas. By turns maddening and breathtaking, he twists my thoughts every moment I am with him. He is exhilarating.

I think of taking him as a lover and the notion thrills and alarms me. Will he overwhelm me with the strength of his need and challenge me to admit the power of my own? He sends my head spinning and my heart leaping and my body—sweet heaven, what he does to my body!

*   *   *

Miranda sat at her dressing table, running her brush through her hair. Even to herself in the mirror, she looked confused.

I do not understand.
She closed her eyes briefly.
I fear I have ever understood nothing.

A kiss was a kiss. One man kissed her and she melted. Another, identical man kissed her and she congealed.

Well, that first kiss was a long while ago. Maybe I’ve lost whatever aspect that existed then. Perhaps I would not like a kiss from Cas now, either.

Somehow it didn’t seem likely.

When a tap came at the bedchamber door, she called, “Come in,” without stopping to think.

A heavy tread on her floor made her turn around in surprise. She gasped at the large shadowy form in her dim room … then gave a shaky laugh. There was no ready smile, no easy laugh.
Cas.

Her heart leaped. She pretended to ignore it. “Mr. Worthington, you startled me.”

He tossed down his hat and pulled his coat from his shoulders to drape over the chair by the fire. His movements seemed odd, deliberate. A shiver went through her belly at his strangeness. Was he … angry?

She stepped back a tiny step and then another one. “Mr. Worthington, why did my manservant not take your hat and coat when you entered the house?”

He slid his gaze away. “I didn’t see him.”

She swallowed. “You let yourself in? That was a bit presumptuous, perhaps?”

He turned to face her. His handsome features were set, unsmiling. “Am I wrong?” He moved toward her. “Am I unwelcome?”

There was an edge to his voice. He seemed larger than his brother somehow. He came closer still, slowly stalking her across the carpet. Her back came up against the wall next to the window. He kept coming.

“Mira, I have waited long enough.” He reached out and slowly pulled at the belt of her wrapper. “I want to see you.”

The heat coming from his large male body was beginning to weaken her knees. Mr. Worthington obviously had a bit of a dark side.

Her heart raced. Her mouth went dry. Terror made her belly shiver—except it wasn’t terror at all. She made no move to stop his untying.

When the belt fell away, he slowly slipped the wrapper from her shoulders. It pooled at her feet. She now stood before him in her lacy nightdress. It was a mere wisp of a gown.

She’d received it from Mr. Button last week and had also been given several other things that maidens had no use for and wives needn’t bother with. This gown was made for seduction, filmy and fine and barely there. It clung like spiderweb to her skin, leaving nothing to the imagination.

His jaw clenched to see her in it. “You look like a courtesan.”

She reveled in his reaction. She inhaled strategically. “Yet I am not for sale.” Goodness, she was becoming quite the seductress. How interesting!

He reached out to brush her hair back over her shoulder.

“Mr. Worthington, what are you dong here?”

He twitched slightly, shaking his head as if shaking off a dream. Then he turned away. “My apologies. I don’t know what I was thinking. I shouldn’t have come.”

She stepped forward. “Tell me, sir, what of your mood this evening? I would know what it is that has made you so angry.”

He looked down at his hands. “I’m not angry.”

She folded her arms. “No, you are furious.”

He didn’t try to deny it again. Instead, he gazed down at his hands. “Empty,” he murmured. “Why didn’t I bring flowers, too?”

Miranda went very still. “How did you know Poll brought me flowers?”

Startled, he cast a glance about the room, but she’d not kept the tattered bouquet at all, for it was a strange and uncomfortable reminder of that very odd kiss. Since he could not easily gesture toward the invisible flowers and declare himself merely observant, she knew that he had watched Poll arrive.

She lifted her chin. “Did you see him climb the wall?”

He shot her a glance like green fire. “Yes.”

“Ah. Did you see him recite
The Tempest
to me?”

His jaw worked. “Yes, damn it.”

“Did you know that I hate that play? Prospero is a bully and Miranda is a twit.”

One corner of his mouth twitched. “Such vehemence.”

She snorted. “What if your name were Ferdinand? How would you like that?”

He lifted his head to fix her with his eyes like gateways to a deep and dangerous forest. “Then you would have loved me at first sight.” Surprise crossed his expression, as if he’d not meant to say any such thing.

Her heart stuttered at the aching depths behind that arrogant facade, clearly visible to her. How could the world not see how he burned, how he writhed within, how he fought back the pain with all his might and mind?

“How do you know that I did not?” The whisper escaped from her lips before she could stop it.

He drew back from her, from that confession, physically stepping back from the words that hung in the air between them.

“No.”
The word slipped from her mouth in a whisper, a shout from her soul to his. “Stay.”

Cas closed his eyes at the word. He was not that man. He did not stay. He never stayed. Miranda would learn soon enough that he only broke hearts, not awakened them.

He would likely destroy her, for she was no jaded Society woman, accustomed to a string of lovers just to interrupt the tedium of the rich and idle. Miranda was good and genuine, a creature of sincerity and decency.

She was doomed if she fell in love with him.

He was damned, for he didn’t care. He ached for her as he’d never ached before. Before he could stop himself, he reached for her, his hands closing over her shoulders as he pulled her close to press against his body.

A startled sound escaped her lips before he covered them with his. He fell, hard and spiraling, into the wet, sweet wonder of her mouth.

Miranda’s mouth had powers the like of which he’d never known. Kissing Miranda felt like flying, like falling, like spinning out of control and never wishing to land.

Miranda’s mind went dark with the shock of her complete and total arousal as his hot mouth took ownership of hers.

A kiss, it seemed, was not simply a kiss, after all.

That was her last coherent thought as Cas pressed her back hard against the carved bedpost and kept her pinned there with his big body as his hands swept over her, spreading, kneading, pulling, and invading as his mouth ravaged hers.

She could only gasp and cling to his weskit as he stripped her nightdress from her, rendering her naked against his clothed body. He held her there, the kiss going on and on, as his fingers slid down between them and found her slit.

No one had ever touched her there but herself. Even her husband had meticulously kept his hands to himself, gingerly positioning himself without touch.

Cas did more than touch. He delved, he stroked, invaded, all the while his tongue and lips took her mouth, nibbling, sucking, driving her onward so forcefully, she fought for breath, fought for sanity, fought to give back to him—until she abruptly melted into him, yielding completely to his skilled and unrelenting stimulation.

She had mounted this runaway stallion with a single word. With her capitulation, she devoted herself to riding him out, taming him, subduing him with her very surrender.

Immediately his urgency slowed. His hands turned to ease and warmth, his mouth gentled, though he still owned her lips and tongue with his.

He allowed her to move away from the cold, rigid bedpost and lay her down upon the bed. At last he pulled his mouth from hers, but only long enough to strip off his clothing.

She watched his body emerge as she lay quivering, unbearably aroused. He was beautifully made, from his narrow hips to his wide, rippling shoulders. His skin gleamed more golden than hers in the candlelight, sunlight to her moonlight, smoldering heat to her cool glow.

His clothing a pile upon the floor, Cas turned back to find Miranda demurely curled up on the coverlet, tugging a fold of it to cover her breasts, her tucked-up legs attempting to hide her furred mound. Cas ached at the sweet shyness of her, though he knew her to be wet and ready for him.

When I am through with you, Mira, you will flaunt your lovely body like the jewel it is.

When I am through with you.

He would be through, probably soon. He would leave her behind, likely devastated and shattered at his betrayal.

He didn’t care. He had to have her and he had to have her now.

He wanted to be a gentleman and ready her, to gentle her into her own arousal, but he’d been hard for hours thinking of her.

He rolled her over in one motion, parting her thighs with one knee, spreading her wide open with the other. Wider, until her lips parted in surprise.

“Darling, I—”

He kissed her hard, before she could utter a protest he would have to heed. His erect cock jutting hard forward, it took only a slight motion to center himself in her wet heat. He drove his cock into her, forcing himself slowly into her soft, damp body.

She gasped into his mouth and writhed under him, around him, impaled and helpless as she clung to his shoulders.

Yet she did not stop kissing him, did not pull away to let a breath of protest pass her lips. He loved her so at that moment, loved the depth of her willingness.

He left her lips and raised himself onto his hands, tried to give her a moment to adjust to the length and width of his all-night erection, but she kept twisting and writhing against him. She wanted more, wanted
him
.

The surge of possessive lust had him withdraw sharply and thrust hard yet again. She keened and panted and let her nails bite into the skin of his shoulders. “Please … again!” she gasped.

His amazing Mira. He drove himself into her again, then a slow torturous withdrawal that had them both groaning, followed by a single plunging thrust that made them gasp with the intensity.

She turned her head and bit his wrist. “Again,” she begged.

He did, again and again and again. The bed shook with the force of his thrusts. She whimpered with each torturously slow withdrawal. Each one was met with her heated, writhing response. She begged for more, pleading with him to go faster but he refused. He wanted to stay inside her forever and he knew that once he reached orgasm, he would have to dress and leave—leave so that Poll could come back in a few hours.

He kissed her hard, silencing her. She whimpered into his mouth and dug her nails into his skin. On the next deep, hard thrust, she came, hot and tight and throbbing around him—

Need swelled within Cas. He could not bear such need. The only way he knew to conquer it was to conquer her.

She wasn’t passive. No, she was an eager and ardent participant in her own transformation. Once sweet and naïve, she was now a wild creature in his hands.

Yet he had yet to reach the limits of her openness, of her honesty. What she wanted, she did not hide. Instead, she reached for it, for him, with her arms open and that smile in her eyes.

And he could not get enough.

There must be an end. She must have a limit, a rule, a distance that she would not journey. Cas knew if he met that distance, then his obsession with her would ease and wane.

He felt the urge to push her onward. He wanted to press her, even as he stood in awe of her, even as he feared that wonder within him. If her open being had no walls, no bottom, no limits—might he simply fall forever?

She sighed, inhaling as another shudder racked her body. Her eyelids fluttered as she rolled her head on the pillow. Then she opened her eyes of endless sea and stared at him in wonder.

Her smile ruined him.

He moved over her, into her, feeling her body give before his. With one hand he wrapped her braid around his fist until her head dropped back, exposing her long neck. He took a small bite of that neck, worrying her with his teeth until she sighed a whimper.

Hovering over her lips, his fist tight in her hair, he growled, “Mrs. Talbot, we have only begun.”

She turned to warm wax in his hands. Her acquiescence whispered across his lips in a wordless sigh.

It disturbed him. Memory seared him, the sight of her pulling Poll through the window. Madness burned hot through his blood to think of her in Poll’s hands.

The window … it was a dark and unworthy thought, to put her on display, to claim her before the world. Yet he could not help himself. He lifted her damp, quivering body into his arms and carried her across the room, ignoring her sound of inquiry.

When he pinned her to the window, feeling her shiver at the chilly glass, feeling her tremble at her wicked exposure—he thought surely then that she would draw back from him. Miranda was a lady, a respectable woman regarded well, if indifferently, by Society.

If even one person outside saw her, she would be an instant scandal. The thought of this ought to have made her pull away, to refuse him.