Forged by Love: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 4 (21 page)

“Now watch me,” he said. For the last few weeks they had entered their own worlds when they—fucked. She wasn’t used to using that word, but it had accurately described how their actions in the bedroom had deteriorated recently, as their addiction to the act rather than each other had grown.

His happiness was as important to Virginie as hers. “Yes, yes,” he whispered. “I could stop now. I truly could. But I won’t because I don’t have to prove it to you, do I?”

“No. No, you don’t.”

He drove hard into her, and she moaned, the remnants of her orgasm fluttering around him. No, she was wrong; he was driving her straight into another. She let it happen, instead of chasing it, and he watched her, his mouth open as he panted for breath and thrust into her relentlessly.

She cried his name, then he came with a mighty roar. She arched her back, rubbed her breasts against his chest as all his muscles tightened and his cock pulsed inside her heated body.

Half laughing, he slumped over her, causing her to lose her breath.

She had to push his shoulders, but he was already moving away, wrapping his arms around her to take her with him. They lay, close together, and he snagged a corner of the sheet and pulled it over them.

“We don’t need that,” she said, laughing.

“It’s instinctive.” He paused. “Virginie, I love you. The woman, the lovely, vibrant, clever woman that you are.”

“I love you too.” She didn’t have to hesitate. The emotion rose, as natural as breathing. It spread over her, the perfect enhancement to their lovemaking, a feeling that would last long beyond the bedroom. Encompassing everything he was, she was sure.

“Then we must strive to keep this.” He kissed her, cupping her cheek with one hand. She held him tightly and spread her palm over his back, tickling his shoulder blade. “We will keep it.” He smiled into her eyes and she smiled back. “Love is something that dies if it isn’t nurtured.”

“Then we will nurture it. Is it like an addiction, then?”

“Not at all. Nothing like it. I want what we just did. The last time I can remember being so affected was when you went on your knees and taught me that my leg does not define me. It is part of me, but not all of me, and you showed me how to live with that.”

“It just is.” She snuggled closer. His side of the bed was always the right, so he could lie comfortably on his side. She draped her leg over the thigh of his left leg, resting her heel on his calf. The hard, twisted muscle felt like Harry. Felt like him. “It exists because you do, so I cannot be sorry for it.”

“We are getting philosophical. Surely we should sleep, or perhaps just rest before we make love again.”

“Are we doing it again?”

“Do you doubt it?”

Chapter Twenty-One

He proved it again and then once more as dawn broke. They elected to stay in bed that morning, risking the opprobrium of the household. “Rich folks, lying abed,” he murmured to her, chuckling as he twined a lock of her disordered hair around his forefinger. Her hair was as silky as her skin, but a different texture. Fascinating. Everything about her fascinated him. Today felt as if he was learning her from the beginning. He’d never known her when she wasn’t enchanted.

He stilled, her curl still twined around his finger like silk on a skein.

Her eyes widened. “When we married, the urge to mate subsided and became desire. I thought it would die naturally, but instead, you joined me in the contagion.”

After gently untangling his fingers from her hair, to prevent himself hurting her, he rose on one elbow and gazed down into her face. “If it was still Eros’s enchantment, it should have died. His enchantment did not affect me. Does that not seem odd to you?”

“Yes. Very odd. It felt the same, but—not quite.” She frowned, but he kissed the lines away. “It commuted, changed, as if it was adapting to new circumstances. Eros infected me with temporary lust and I assumed it would die once I allowed it to. But it didn’t, did it?”

He shook his head. “It spread to me, like an illness. I wanted you anyway, so I assumed what I felt for you was simple desire. Like someone who denies an addiction, I refused to allow it to be anything else.”

He loved the way her hair clung to the pillow in long curls. Even more that she cared so little about it. The notion distracted him momentarily, something that never happened in the usual way of things. He accepted that it was happening now and moved on with this thoughts.

Their wedding night should have signalled the beginning of the end of the enchantment. Instead, it became the start of a new one, more virulent and feverish. Perhaps because he was already in love with her.

He could admit it now. Free of the contagion now, his love had remained, pushed aside only temporarily. “We can agree, then, that it was not Eros’s spell that captured us.”

“Yes.”

“It was like a net,” he said, remembering the thrall. “A golden net, bedecked with jewels, and we could see no further than its confines.”

She touched him, spread her hand over the right side of his chest, his nipple beading at the contact. “So who wanted us to see no further? Someone who wanted to drive us into madness? Or someone who wanted to confine us?”

He followed her thought. “Or someone who wanted us not to see what they were doing?”

She nodded. “So we have to discover who that person is. It has to be someone capable of wielding such power. To trap two immortals, especially two such as us, would take a great deal of power. Even if he or she took us by surprise.”

Because he wanted to, he bent his head and kissed her. She responded sweetly, her lips clinging to his, but when he moved away, they were not taken with an animal urge to couple. He desired her, but he could
think
. For the first time since his marriage he could reason and rationalise without the ever-present spectre of lust getting in the way.

“Or they,” said his wife.

“Yes.” He gazed at her thoughtfully. “Or they. What do we do?”

He waited for her to speak. “We should pretend we are still in thrall to the enchantment,” she said. “Let whoever it is think we are still under their control.”

“Hmm.” He didn’t like the idea. His preference was always to head straight for a problem and eliminate it. Subterfuge went against the straight grain he lived by. But someone had used it on him. More unforgiveable, they had used it against his wife. He would see them punished for that.

If he had to call on Bacchus to drive the person insane, use his special skills to lock the person inside themselves, he would do it. Before, he’d considered that punishment too cruel, but accepted the sense in it. Because once dead, an immortal essence would pass to the next persons, the nearest unborn child. So killing an immortal was of no use unless they had someone they could trust, and the immortal entered the body. Sometimes immortals passed by and nobody was sure why. Boscobel had tried to control all the immortals he had killed, but some had eluded even him and the house full of pregnant women he’d amassed.

Grotesque to even think about that. But Harry had escaped, and his wife had too. Her mother had slipped away from Kronos’s grasp. His mother had walked, with her husband, one of Boscobel’s cronies.

Was his mother a suspect? She had to be. Even if she had not been in London. Even more so, because the enchantment had not hit all at once, but had crept up on them. It could have begun after they reached his house. That would put his mother squarely in the centre of whatever happened. Or one of their body servants.

He caught her hand firmly in his, needing the contact. “There’s something you don’t know about my mother.”

She stilled, waiting for him to speak.

“My father took my mother home, and when she came to term, they realised I was an immortal. They didn’t know which one immediately. They were both minor immortals, my mother a nymph, my father a wood sprite.”

“Was he small?”

“Smaller than me.”

She let her gaze wander over his body. When she returned her attention to his face, she was smiling. “Most people are.”

Ignoring the flash of heat her attention had brought him, he doggedly continued. “But something else happened at my birth. My mother recognised that I had inherited one of the principal gods. She felt it, she said, because of the maternal link. The others were waiting to see what I was. But she was in love with me, and she transferred her loyalty from her husband and the Titans to me. She cares nothing for the other Olympians or the cause or anything else, just me.” He would get the next part out before he balked. “She killed my father.”

He carried on, not letting her stop him. Her gasp told him she understood. “She arranged for an accident. My father did not ride well, so she—organised—a fall from his horse when he was alone. He died on impact. Then she told Boscobel that they were mistaken, that she had been unlucky. He came to visit, but she masked my mind, and he read only what she allowed. She would have died for me and she proved it that day.”

She nodded. “Mothers can be warriors in defence of their children.” She understood. Her own mother had been so. “We consider that we owe them a great deal.”

His mother’s constant picking and criticisms were his price. They might appear as nothing to others, but year after year they took their toll. He’d never been as sure of himself as his social façade and his size made it appear. His wife was the first person to see that. But what could he do, when she’d killed for him and lied to one of the most powerful beings alive?

Virginie showed no sympathy, no reaction outwardly, but drew closer and didn’t complain when he cinched her in a tight hug. Now she knew it all.

After a few minutes, she drew back. “So,” she said, watching his face. “The culprit could be your mother, my mother, or a body servant. Someone who could get close enough to us to cast it. Someone we trust.”

Her mind either worked alongside his, or he was sharing his thoughts. He sensed hers in return. She considered it unlikely that his mother had anything to do with it, but they had to consider the possibilities. His mother was devoted to him, so she surely would not have done this to her son? Strangely, the notion of such easy sharing did not worry him. It should have done—he’d always preferred to take the solitary path—but it did not, because the person was his wife. The one person he trusted with everything he had.

“It could be achieved with a potion or with a spell, or a mixture of both. We could be dealing with a witch.” He shook his head. “We can do no more today,” he said.

“I wouldn’t say that.” She laughed in delight, smoothing her hand over his chest. Growling, he caught her hand. “Any more of that, my lady, and our discussion will come to an abrupt end.”

Her laugh was unfettered, full. He kissed the last of it from her lips. “Be quiet, hussy.”

“The queen of all hussies,” she countered, and as he’d predicted, they got no further with their discussion.

Virginie’s temporary maid proved adequate, but she did not have Fenton’s magic touch. Darlestone could not even reach the level of Fenton’s assistant, who she’d also left behind. Virginie sighed. Reminded of Fenton’s possible implication in the plot to enchant them, she had to force herself to admit she might have to do without her excellent services, at least for a time. Clear of the enchantment, they should be able to tell who had done this to them. They could scan minds, watch and work out the possibilities.

She hated the necessity, but they needed to take an immortal as powerful as the one who had cast a net over them by surprise. Harry hated it more, she knew that, and she prayed for a speedy conclusion to the whole business.

Today they were visiting the Simpsons, discovering why they had taken no interest in their daughter’s death and if they wanted to claim Rhea’s children. They could never be heirs, but they could have property willed to them, if the Simpsons had no other relatives.

Virginie knew very little about this family. In common with many of the gentry, they kept their business local. Here they were important. The maids in the house had spoken of them with reverence when they had asked. They had considered asking Sir Samuel and his wife to dinner. But the Simpsons would be more relaxed in their own home, consider the visit from the great Earl of Valsgarth and his wife an honour. Or a necessity, depending on their level of awe and self-importance.

Together, she and Harry could prove a formidable couple, now they were clear of any enchantment. They had to stay that way. By going back to the house, they were walking into the lion’s den.

Harry had sent a pigeon messenger to d’Argento. She smiled that one of Mercury’s tools was something so ordinary, but it made sense.

When her maid pulled her hair too tight, Virginie put up with her tweaking. When she’d done, she made her loosen the style and pile her curls on top of her head in an ordinary knot. Only a few were allowed to escape in artful disarray. She wore a gown that was simple by her standards, but in her favourite blue and a fine watered silk. Only the hem was embroidered with her signature forget-me-nots, and a mere double ruffle of lace adorned her sleeves. She had ordered a fall of ribbons for her stomacher. Not the more elaborate lace or embroidery she would have customarily decided upon, to give a touch of luxury to her relatively simple gown. She stood, shaking out the skirts over her modest hoop. She had decided against face paint too. At the last moment, she succumbed and clasped a bracelet of cameos around one wrist. After all, too simple and their hosts might consider her appearance an insult.

She joined her husband in the hall. The weather was warm. Too hot for outer clothing. His smile showed her he enjoyed her appearance. They had spent yesterday in bed, catching up with their sleep and each other, but they had slept well. None of that feverish waking where they had to—
had to—
climb over each other, or die.

She felt altogether different. Free of encumbrances and in love.

Harry led her out to the carriage. He’d ordered a charming vehicle, a little like a barouche, but built higher in the body, so it wouldn’t scrape against the uneven roads. The coachman took the reins and they travelled into the village in style.

Like their house, the more substantial establishments in the village were built of grey stone, with darker grey tiled roofs. Next to the brilliance of the green hills behind them, or the blue lake the village bordered, the houses appeared almost dull. But they melded with the background more than other styles would. Virginie tried to imagine the half-timbered houses of fifty miles south, near Harry’s home, set here, and failed. They would not work as well.

She kept her hand tucked in his, even though they both wore gloves, in deference to the formal visit. She was happy. When had she last experienced that emotion in its purity? She could not honestly remember. Perhaps last summer, sitting in her garden in France, her head tipped back in a guilty enjoyment of the sun. Or—no, not her childhood. Her mother had done her best, but her upbringing had not been optimal. With their worries far from over, a simple carriage ride with the man she loved had given her a simple appreciation of the moment.

They drew up at the gate of a substantial house on the other side of the village. Harry stepped down and helped his wife to alight, before he turned, her arm tucked through his, to take her to the front door. To their surprise the door did not open. When they approached a door, they tended to magically open, operated by well-trained footmen. Harry glanced at her as he pulled the doorbell, one brow raised. So when a stout man in neat brown opened the door, she was laughing.

Dreadfully rude. Aware of her faux pas, she stifled the mirth his grimace had provoked in her and turned it into a polite half-smile. The man at the door waited.

With a grunt that Virginie knew signified his own quelled laughter, Harry reached into his pocket and drew out his card case. “Lord and Lady Valsgarth. I believe we are expected.”

“Of course, my lord.” The man took the card, bowed and at last stepped back, after, presumably, allowing anyone passing by to have a good look at them.

The entered into a hall with a black and white tiled floor. A staircase curved up one side, and doors opened either side of the square-shaped space. The size was much smaller than anything she was used to, but that very fact appealed to her. It was elegantly appointed, and the man stood ready to take their outer clothing. She chose to remove her gloves, although strictly she did not have to. But she wanted to appeal to these people she didn’t know. Perhaps take them off guard so that she could read the emotions in the air, their minds, a little.

The man—either a footman or butler, it being unlikely that a footman to a squire would wear full livery—took them upstairs. A formal salon, then.

He opened the door and announced them. Virginie went first, her society smile and mask firmly in place.