Marry the Man Today (37 page)

"Lady Maxton," she said, sharing an embrace with the woman, "how delightful to see you again. Thank you again for giving the charity ball. Definitely the talk of the entire season.
"

"As we knew it would be, my dear. And just imagine! I've brought you a new member.
"
Lady Maxton touched the young woman's shoulder. "Miss Preston, I'd like you meet Lady Blakestone. A woman of many miracles."

Would that were true! But Elizabeth smiled and offered her hand. "Welcome, Miss Preston."

To the rest of your life.

To the rest of her own life.

And this wayward marriage to the most confounding man she'd ever met.

Grousemeade Cottage had been a blissful paradise. Their own private South Seas island where their controversies couldn't find them. Where there weren't any fearful wives, or embattled embassies, or heartbroken old men.

Where Ross had been the ideal husband.

A paradise where she'd come to love her handsome privy counselor for his humor and the goodness of his heart.

And, blast it all, if they were ever going to put this marriage on the right course, they'd have to return to Grousemeade Cottage immediately.

Tonight.

And what better way to be sure that her husband would come find her than to return to their paradise without him?

That is, if the lout knew what was good for him.

******************

"Hell and damnation!" Ross cursed all the way from the Huntsman into the livery in Hampstead where he hired a mount and rode off toward Grouse
m
eade Cottage.

Cursing the darkness.

Cursing the Russian ambassador and the Austrians.

Cursing his wife's stubbornness.

Her bloody independence.

And this driving need to hold her in his arms at any cost.

He arrived at the cottage reeling in the saddle, exhausted from the lack of sleep. And certain that Elizabeth would be waiting for him on the doorstep, ready to do battle.

But the cottage was dark, save for a few low-burning lamps, the main floor quiet.

And his wife lying stark naked and fast asleep in their bed.

Her hair was spread across the bank of pillows in the moonlight, the counterpane dipped to her waist, revealing the soft perfection of her breasts.

His heart full, and pumping hot fluids to every corner of his body, he leaned over her gentle breathing and whispered softly against her ear, "Elizabeth?"

A dreamy smile flickered on her mouth, but she only drifted deeper into sleep.

Hardly a fit opponent for the hostilities sure to come. And Lord, he was sleepy. Compelling him to remove his clothes and slip in beside his wife, where he could hold her through the night and join in her dreams.

Knowing that the battle would come tomorrow.

But having no idea that it would come with the first rays of dawn and the smack of a pillow against his head.

"Ross Carrington, how could you!"

He sat upright, opened his bleary eyes and found himself face-to-face with his wife's lovely navel.

Dangerously close to her inviting triangle of curls, his groin already fully distended under the blanket.

"Well, my lord?" She was standing over him, spread-eagle and delicious, her eyes wide and filled with fury, the pillow hiked over her shoulder, ready to come across his head again.

"How could I what, wife?" Risking another swat for his insolence, he leaned back on his hands to enjoy the tempting view. All bobbing breasts and flashing eyes.

"First I worried that you were hurt. Then I worried you weren't coming at all. I waited up all night for you. I shouldn't have bothered."

"
So eager for me, love, you fell asleep."

"When did you get here?"

"Last night. Just before ten." That brought the pillow down on his head again, but with half the force of the first blow and a good pouting afterward.

"After everything that happened yesterday, you didn't wake me up?"

"I tried, sweet. You were snoring."

"I don't snore." He got the pillow again.

"Then you drew me into your dreams, love." He wrapped his arm around her knees and buckled her sideways across his lap, sending the pillow over the side of the bed.

"And you left me standing in the middle of a strange courtyard without a by-your-
l
eave."

Just as he'd hoped, she swung around in his lap to face him with her fierceness, her bottom pressing against his thighs, her cleft just inches from his raging hot erection.

"I left you under the care of Pe
m
bridge." A lot of good that did.

"That's all the trust you have in me, Ross? After I helped you save mankind from a terrible war?"

"No . .. well, it'
s
—" Habit perhaps. Though that might not be the most politic answer. "You said it yourself, Elizabeth, you didn't know where you were. I thought Pembridge could help you find your way back through the Factory."

She narrowed her eyes at him, setting her jaw in suspicion. "What happened to the princess?"

So that was the source of her ire, that he had finished up her secret operation on his own. He needed to step gingerly here.

"Just as you had planned, Elizabeth. We pulled up in front of the embassy. Drew opened the rear of the wago
n
—"

"I didn't see Drew get into the wagon!"

"Because he was already waiting there when we arrived." The benefit of a well-oiled system of messengers and private telegraph stations. "A moment after he set the princess on her feet on the sidewalk in front of the embassy, our wagon was disappearing around the corner, and the phalanx of Russian guards were just realizing that we'd dropped off someone."

"So Princess Lenka was all right?" Elizabeth seemed entranced with his story as she drew the end of the counterpane up over her shoulders like a tent.

And he was enjoying every moment of anticipation. The sight of her shapes, the sound of her wonder, the shifting of her hips, bringing her warmth closer and closer to him.

"Her Royal Highness seemed right as rain an hour and a half later when Drew and I were standing in the Russian Embassy with Lord Clarendon, offering our official sympathy that the princess had been kidnapped by a local mad man."

Her eyes few open. "She didn't recognize you, did she?"

"Not
a flicker."

"They didn't wonder about who had rescued her?"

"Ambassador Brunnov speculated that it was a secret Russian agency that watches out for Russian royals."

"That's silly."

"Yet the very idea seemed to please not only the delegation, but Princess Lenka herself." He slipped his hands around her hips, wanting desperately to pull her forward and bury himself inside her. But the anticipation was too sweet and he was burning way too hot for her.

"What about the Austrians?"

"I paid a visit there and found the place eerily silent and nearly paralyzed with what seemed like a plan gone terribly wrong. I made sure that Prince Rupert understood how grateful Queen Victoria was that her cousin had been returned to the safety of the Russian Embassy."

"Do you think he was a part of the conspiracy?"

"Don't know. But when I lied and told him that Scotland Yard was on the case, his face went pale."

"He must know something. What were they hoping to accomplish?" She drew the covers more tightly around her shoulders.

"What matters is that they won't be trying it again. A ransom demand was never made, therefore no clues to trace, no pointing fingers. A clean slate. Thanks to you, Elizabeth."

"Thanks to me?" She drew back, her rosy mouth pursed in skeptical pout.

"I hate to admit it, my love, but without your help, Drew and I would still be in the Factory analyzing your clever red herrings. And Scotland Yard would be spinning in circles."

Elizabeth wondered if her husband would be so generous with his compliments when she confessed her many other sins to him.

Though she hoped he didn't pull away from her; the flex of his thighs beneath her bottom, and the ramrod sight of his penis, were just too thrilling to forfeit.

"Actually, Ross, I really couldn't have done my own work without a lot of help from the Factory." Without a lot of help from the man himself, though she hadn't realized it at the time. He looked the restive saytr just now, leaning back against the dense bank of pillows, bare-chested and ready to spring.

He raised that decisive, accusing brow. "Then yesterday wasn't the first time you were there?"

The scar across his shoulder looked darker this morning, more ragged, in need of her hands. She leaned forward and began to massage the thick muscle beneath, drawing a groan from him.

"You see, Ross, I've been borrowing your telegraph machines."

"Have you?" His growled question became a deeply rumbling moan. He leaned forward and dropped his head against her shoulder.

Might as well get it all over with, while she had the beast distracted, if not tamed. "And I've used the small handpress in the print shop. We needed a certain train ticket for Lady Hayden-Cole."

"Anything else I should know about?" His palms were hot against her hips, his fingers spread so wide that his thumbs nearly met across her belly, kneading slowly there.

Making it very difficult for her to think beyond the sizzling feel of his hands.

To remind herself that she still had a thriving underground to operate. That she had to tell him about it. As well as her determination to keep it moving.

"We've also borrowed a few pieces of clothing, now and then. And, my, but you have a marvelous archive of newspapers and the like."

"By 'we' you mean your three wily assistants?" He turned his head against her neck and
 
nibbled a slow path to her ear, took the lobe between his teeth and made love there and at her nape.

"Just them, Ross." Oh, my, he was making this difficult. "But while I'm confessing, and I really must confess all, before we continue a moment longer ..." Before he drove her mad with his fingers toying with her nipples, stealing her breath away and all of her will.

"Keep talking, wife. I'm listening."

But
she
wasn't, not well. Not with him sliding her toward his thick erection, fitting her cleft hot against the full length of his penis, making her throb against him, when she wanted him to be inside her, thrusting.

"Ross! Oh, my!" Now she was writhing wantonly against him and he was chuckling while they both really ought to be paying attention. "You might as well know that the Bank of England has more than the fictional Adelaide Chiswick on their books."

"What?" He stopped rocking, stopped dallying and straightened, narrowed his eyes at her, dark fires suddenly flickering deeply beneath his long lashes. "You've opened other fraudulent accounts?"

"The devil was in the details. I set up the Adelaide Chiswick account as a test to see if I could do it as a wobbly old widow and not be recognized by the bank clerks."

"Why?"

"So that I could help other women open their own bank accounts, using false names."

"False names?"

"And disguises, so their husbands wouldn't find
o
ut."

"Elizabeth ..." He closed his eyes as though she'd just punched him.

"Oh, and by the way, Ross, I carry an excellent collection of French letters in the back room of the bookstore."

"That's contraband, Elizabeth." He shook his head at her. "They have to go. No privy council discussion about it."

She'd just have to find another way to distribute them. Maybe in the Adams itself. Or as part of a workshop. But contraceptive devices were the least of her worries.

She could only hope that he would understand the strength of the convictions that drove her.

"Then there's Lydia Bailey."

"Who?" Though his hands were planted firmly on her backside, he was once more focused and listening, and all she could do was hope for the best of his understanding.

"I've made arrangements for Lydia's abduction to happen on London Bridge three days from now."

He pulled back and stared at her. "You must be joking."

"And I believe I'll be arranging a similar disappearance for another young woman very soon. Lord Stopes's fiancée."

"No, no, no, Elizabeth." He was shaking his head at her. "I won't allow it."

"That's between me and Miss Preston and the other women who help them along the way to freedom."

"You can't, Elizabeth, because Scotland Yard will learn about it immediately. From me."

"You'd actually tell them? Risk unleashing Lord Stopes's brutality on his helpless fiancée? Risk him battering her face and breaking her bones because nobody will stop him?"