Forged by Love: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 4 (23 page)

Shock arced through Virginie. How many housekeepers were there whose name was Deirdre?

With a shaking voice, she asked, “What did the housekeeper look like?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Harry was worried. Virginie had behaved as normal in saying farewell to the Simpsons, and travelled back to the house talking about the weather and the garden. Harry wished he had not requested the open carriage.

As soon as they arrived back, he took her upstairs to the drawing room and ordered tea. When the maid delivered it, he dismissed her. The tea tray remained by Virginie’s side, untouched as she gripped his hands and met his gaze.

“It’s my mother,” she said. “She did this.”

The story came out haltingly. While Harry listened, barely interrupting, he was trying to make sense of the story.

The footman, the unfortunate father of Rhea’s children, had been poisoned. Rhea had been poisoned. Someone other than Eros had enchanted him and Virginie.

It made awful sense. He ran through the possibilities of these incidents being unconnected. That the footman had poisoned himself, that he and Virginie had been bespelled by someone else, that—no. He didn’t believe in coincidences.

Virginie was right. But before they took action, he wanted to be sure.

“A housekeeper would have access to a stillroom, and the skills necessary—” He broke off.

“Yes, she would. And she knew me, all of me. Who I am.” Virginie spoke by rote, her voice dead.

If he didn’t act, he would lose her. Sitting on the sofa holding hands wouldn’t help her, so he drew her into his arms, heedless of the fine silk he was crushing. Equally heedless, she came, resting her head on his shoulder. He kissed her, softly and undemandingly. “We need to be sure.”

“Yes,” she said tonelessly. “But it seems likely.” She swallowed. “She may have enchanted the duc. I always wondered why he married me. He said he was in love with me.” She frowned.

“No.” He stopped her mouth with another kiss. “I was not enchanted when I married you and I’m not enchanted now. I know it. But
I
will enchant
her
.”

“What?” She would have sat up, but he held her firmly.

After he’d told her what he meant, then he’d let her go. “I can ensnare her. When we return home I will spend some time in my smithy. You understand?”

The god of iron-working could snare magic. Iron was an ancient weapon and Harry was its master.

“What will you do?”

“Make a trap. She has to tell the truth once I do that. Tonight I’ll send a messenger to d’Argento. I want him present as witness. And, perhaps, Stretton.”

From her wide eyes and the way she swallowed he didn’t have to tell her why. Stretton could send her mother into herself.

Privately Harry wondered what they were taking on. To enchant them, surely Deirdre had to be more than a mortal. Even if her skills with potions and such was more than they had supposed, she couldn’t have enchanted her daughter and himself by that alone. Surely she could not!

They set out for their home the next day.

It took a day to reach the house, and when they did, they had a fraught interview to face and lies to tell. Harry had held Virginie all night, but they had not made love. For the first time he’d learned the pleasure of simply sleeping with his wife in his arms. She’d cried, broken at the thought that her mother could be responsible for the devastation that had been wreaked on the Simpson family, and he’d soothed her. Even in that he found pleasure, through the piercing sorrow that a parent was responsible. He’d considered his mother as a suspect. She had killed his father. But she had done that for him. She had no reason to kill Rhea Simpson.

It was not certain. They only had a name. But they both knew they could discover more. Had Deirdre done more elsewhere that they didn’t know about? In the years of Virginie’s first marriage, had she moved around Britain for a reason other than to elude the Duke of Boscobel?

The sooner they found out, the better. But it would take him time to build his trap. He planned it as she slept, knew exactly what he’d do with the iron and how he’d trap her. Mortal or immortal she would have to tell the truth, once he had her. But she must suspect nothing until he had completed his task. It would take at least three days, he calculated. Three hard days’ work, putting his power into it.

“What will you make?” she whispered in the dead of night. He’d thought her asleep.

“A net. A trap she won’t escape. She will tell the truth and then we’ll know.” To soothe her, he kissed her, and made her a promise. “I will make one for you, if you like. A different kind of net.”

“What kind?”

“One you can break whenever you wish.” He would. In the times when he couldn’t work on the deadly trap, he’d fashion something else. He’d planned it some time ago, but now he would make his dream real. “Virginie, I swear I will love you and care for you all the days of my life. You know that, don’t you?”

She turned, her eyes gleaming in the near dark. “I want to know. Now, I know what they mean when people speak of shifting sands.”

“Don’t think of it. Please sleep.”

“Only if you do too.”

After that they did sleep, and they didn’t get underway until eight the next morning, when they’d planned to start at six.

They decided to break their journey this time. Or rather, Harry did. He didn’t want Virginie as exhausted as she’d been when they arrived in the north. Although not due entirely to travel, he sensed her weariness. Even though they were only twenty miles from home, he called a halt at a good coaching inn and spent the night there, to ensure Virginie had all the rest she needed.

Except that after they’d climbed into bed she turned to him and kissed him, and after that he was lost. How could he resist? Although he tried to be gentle, she pulled at his nightshirt that he’d donned in a vain attempt to urge her to sleep. He dragged it off, then helped her off with her own.

“They’ll hear us,” he warned her. “You scream.”

“I can be quieter.”

“Don’t.” He loved her scream when she came, the abandonment of the sound. He didn’t care who heard, he had only thought of her.

But she urged him on top of her, her hands caressing him, her legs spread as wide as she could manage as if she wanted to encompass him completely. Happy to oblige, he slid over her, settling between her thighs. She lifted her knees, hugging his abdomen. His cock nudged her folds, gathering her juices, bathing in them. “You’re ready for me.”

She laughed. “Obviously I can hide nothing from you, husband.”

“Least of all that you love me.”

“Least of all that.”

He kissed her as he entered her, pushing his shaft steadily into her. The restraint he used sent him wild, but he remained ruthlessly in control, forcing himself to go slowly. She tasted divine, sweet and seductive, slightly different every time so he always hungered for a taste of her. Her breasts pressed against his chest, her nipples hard, even though he hadn’t taken the time to caress them.

Lifting away as he withdrew, he remedied that oversight. While he used one arm to support his upper body, he put the other to even better purpose and caressed her. He could bend and lick her nipples, which he proceeded to do at length, while he drove in and out of her, keeping his strokes regular and steady. She sighed, her breath stirring his hair.

If he could help her to forget their troubles no other way, he had this. Not that this was why he wanted to love her, to demonstrate the emotions burgeoning in his heart. He sometimes found difficulty expressing himself in words, but in this he could show her his love again and again.

He watched her, but didn’t insist she watch him in return. Sure of her love, he spent his time savouring her beautiful body, caressing and kissing her. When he kissed her mouth she responded with all the passion he could ever wish for. She thrust her tongue into his mouth, accepting his, letting him taste her, while he continued to drive them both steadily higher.

As they moved closer to each other, understanding one another a little better each day, their lovemaking improved. She knew how he liked to take her, and he knew the exact position of the spot inside her that drove her wild. He teased her, just touching it, then moving past it, until she squirmed and he laughed before giving her what she wanted.

She grew wetter, easing his way. His balls hit her soft flesh every time he thrust into her, until they lost time. The night flew past in a welter of stars, dark clouds and thick, black intimacy.

Until they came, this time together. He gave her his soul when she tightened around him, and he jetted into her, the pulses draining him of more than his seed. He would give her everything. Except her freedom.

When they’d done, he rolled off her, curling an arm around her so she rolled with him. Almost automatically she lifted her leg to lay it across his and nestle her body as close as it could get.

“You screamed,” he said, before he kissed her. “I love you.”

She stifled a yawn. “I know. To both. You are incorrigible, my lord.”

“Then you’ll have to keep
incorriging
me.”

She poked him for his appalling joke. “How can you, after such a wonderful experience, jest so dreadfully?”

“Maybe I’m happy.”

And he was.

They had agreed to pretend to be in the throes of the enchantment. That way Deirdre would not be suspicious of them or try to set the spell again. Since love had overtaken them, that did not prove difficult once they’d returned home. However, the need to touch, take, and the way they used to excuse themselves early to couple frantically in any available place had gone for good. They both recognised their actions had become more risky recently and would have led to social disaster sooner or later.

Not now. Feigning that led to unexpected laughter, as they held each other in a small closet that held old linens destined for the ragbag. Virginie made Harry admit that he had discovered some unusual nooks and crannies in his house that he would never had dreamed existed before. Then he tickled her and forced her to remain silent, except for the moans and sighs the servants would hear and report back to her mother. If they could trust one thing, it was that servants gossiped.

They heard from d’Argento—by pigeon, naturally. He was on his way and would arrive the next day. How he travelled so fast remained a mystery, but he duly arrived.

The dowager received d’Argento graciously. Especially when he brought a sizable retinue with him and arrived dressed in a perfectly designed green riding coat and breeches, with white embroidered waistcoat.

“I wish my Harry would wear something more suited to his station sometimes,” she confided with a sigh. “He is so very plain!”

D’Argento shot an amused glance at Harry. “Indeed he dresses plainly, although I know many people who would consider him far from plain.” He addressed Harry, “Since you were kind enough to invite the Marquis of Stretton, he has sent a message. He will be here directly, probably in a day or two.”

Harry was working in his forge most of the time. The forge stood about half a mile from the main house. A sensible precaution because of the fire risk. The path between the two was broad and easily walked. Consequently, two days after d’Argento’s arrival, when he was busy escorting their mothers in the garden for a gentle walk that he promised Virginie would last at least an hour, she set out to view Harry’s progress. She had a surprise for him.

The forge was hot, so she’d worn the fewest clothes she could get away with and still appear respectable, and kept them to dark colours. Her fine dark blue silk would not pass muster in London, since she was wearing it without hoops. She had no intention of displaying huge skirts that would waft the flames and catch any stray spark.

Her mother had not seen her leave. One of the servants had, and smiled so knowingly it had made Virginie want to strike it off her face. So much for respect. That servant would be leaving. In fact, she had plans to replace most of them. She found them far too loyal to their previous mistress, and when this business was done, she would go about making this house her own. Or another, and leave the dowager here, but she liked this one and preferred to keep it.

Entering the forge, she stood by the open door. She watched her husband, holding a finger to her lips to hush the boy who stood by a bucket of water, ready to do his master’s bidding.

Desire licked at her. Not in the frantic way it had before. But in a way that gave her time to appreciate the man she had married and fallen in love with. They might not have that desperate desire as before, but nothing said that they had to keep all their amusements to the bedroom. And she wanted some lightness in her life, something to remind her that not everything was bad.

He wore coarse woollen breeches and shoes. That was all. His bare chest gleamed with sweat, enhancing the heavy slabs of muscle that flexed with powerful ease as he hammered a piece of iron on the anvil. He worked to a rhythm so steady that Bach could have written a fugue to it and incorporated it into one of his elaborate counterpointed pieces.

The breeches were dark, singe marks their only adornment, and they were well-worn. Harry could be any blacksmith, busy at his trade. Except that he was
the
blacksmith, Vulcan. The piece of iron he was working must have started at nail-thickness, but he’d worked it to an impossible thinness. Only he could have achieved that without adding a tempering metal, to make the iron more flexible. But only the night before he’d told her he was making the net from pure iron. It would have no contaminants, because that way it would be as strong as he could make it.

In the confines of the stone building, heat roared around them. Virginie let it encompass her, adjusted her breathing and her movements to it, and then forgot the thick miasma. She would need to do that in order to harness her deity’s powers.

Taking a breath, ignoring the heat threatening to sear her lungs, she stepped forward. His attention caught, he rested his hammer on the anvil and looked up at her. More heat flamed in his eyes. Without looking away, he jerked his head at the boy, who glanced at them both and left.

“My lady,” he said low.

“My lord.” She stepped closer. “Are you nearly done?”