Trouble at the Wedding (14 page)

“Annabel, wait.” He started to follow her, but then he stopped, remembering just in time that this room was for ladies only.

The door closed behind her, then opened again a second later. “Well, come on,” she urged, frowning at him. “What are you still doing out there in the hall?”

He pointed to the placard, but she didn't seem impressed. “Don't be silly. There's no one in here. Not at this hour. Besides, what do you care?” she added, leaning forward to grab him by the ends of his tie. “You're not the kind of man who plays by the rules anyway.”

He couldn't argue with that, especially not when she smiled that gorgeous smile of hers. He'd never been very good at resisting temptations, and he wasn't her damned chaperone. When she pulled at his tie again, he followed her inside, pushing on the button for the electrical light as he entered the room.

The ladies' Turkish bath was a bit different from the one used by the gentlemen. Its floor, ceiling, and walls were not covered in crisp blue and white tiles, but shell-pink ones instead. The potted palms, ferns, and wicker chairs were similar, but dark pink cushions and pots of orchids and African violets made this very much a ladies' sanctuary. The two brass radiators and two pedestal sinks were identical, as were the taps.

“So what are you supposed to do?” Annabel asked, glancing around.

Christian, were he really as bad as his reputation, could have reminded her that Turkish baths were best enjoyed while naked, but instead, he proved he might have a shred of redemption left in him, tossed his jacket onto a chair, set the bottle on the tile floor, and turned to reach for the taps above the radiator nearest him. He turned the taps, and almost at once, steam began pouring into the room. Nodding to the wall behind her, he said, “Turn those.”

She did, and within moments the entire room was filled with steam. Laughing, she lifted her face to the jets overhead, holding out one palm as mist swirled all around her. “Good Lord,” she said, “this
is
just like church in July!”

He laughed, watching her. She was so different from any woman he'd ever met before, and he'd met many. Her determination and stubbornness were formidable, but they concealed what he knew now to be a very vulnerable heart.

Not that he found her heart the most important part of her anatomy, a fact he proved to himself by slanting a glance over her. The steam was making her loose-fitting tea gown cling to her body, demonstrating that her voluptuous curves were not formed by a corset, since the damp satin showed quite plainly that she wasn't wearing one. Or much of anything else, for that matter.

She didn't seem to realize what the steam was revealing to his gaze. Still laughing, she reached for the bottle and took a swallow of moonshine, but when she set it back down and looked into his face again, she froze. So did he, lust washing over him in a wave.

“We should go,” he blurted out, and wanted to kick himself in the head. “Right now.”

“I suppose we should. Tomorrow—” She ducked her head. “Tomorrow is my wedding day.”

He did not want to think about that, and he opened his mouth to try one last time to talk her out of it, but then, she lifted her head again.

“Christian?”

He took a breath. “Yes?”

“Do you really think Bernard would just step aside if King Edward were to . . . to want me?”

Saying yes would help his cause, and yet, he hesitated, suddenly wanting to tell her not what was convenient, not what was exaggerated, but what was the truth. He considered for a long moment before he gave her an answer.

“Yes,” he finally said, “Yes, Annabel, I think he would.”

“You might be wrong,” she whispered.

He thought of the courtesan at the House with the Bronze Door. “I don't think I am.”

Christian took a step toward her, then stopped before he could take another. “We should go,” he said again, getting a bit desperate, fully aware that what he felt would be blatantly obvious if she were to look down.

“What about you?” she asked.

“Me?” God, why was it so hard to think? He raked his hands through his hair. This moonshine seemed to have turned his brains to flotsam. “I don't understand what you mean.”

She moved a bit closer, clasping her hands behind her back, a move that pushed her breasts out and forced his gaze downward. When he saw the hard outline of her nipples against the thin layer of blue satin, his throat went dry, and the desire inside him threatened to burn away the tight leash he had on his control. “Annabel—” He stopped and swallowed hard. “I don't think—”

“Would you do it if it was your wife? What if I was married to you, and King Edward came after me? What would you do?” She moved another inch closer, and the tips of her breasts brushed his shirtfront, making him imagine the satin slick against his bare skin. “Would you step aside?”

“No,” he said hoarsely, every muscle in his body thrumming with lust even as he looked into her vulnerable, upturned face. “I'd thrash him within an inch of his life.”

“You would?” Her voice was an incredulous whisper, and when she smiled, he felt like some bloody knight in shining armor even as he wanted to rip her clothes off.

“Yes. But—” He lurched back, making a belated attempt to retreat to safer ground, his befuddled male brain desperately grasping for control over his aroused male body. “I doubt I'd have the chance. You'd probably have thrashed him yourself, gagged him, and tied him to a chair before I even heard what happened.”

She laughed, that dazzling smile lighting up her face, and Christian knew if he couldn't make her see that marrying Rumsford was an idiotic thing to do, it wouldn't take long before she didn't smile like that anymore. Something tight twisted inside him, like a fist squeezing his chest until he couldn't seem to breathe, making him realize that, despite rumors to the contrary, he had a heart, because right now it hurt. For her, for Evie, for all the girls like them who couldn't accept the most basic truth about men.

Rakes don't reform.

“You can't do it.” He reached out and grasped her arms, wishing he could shake sense into her stubborn brain, knowing he couldn't. And even if he could, it probably wouldn't stick. How the hell could he make her understand what it would be like? What it would do to her? What she would become? “You can't marry Rumsford. If you marry him, you'll be making the biggest mistake of your life, trust me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I just do.” That wasn't a reason, but he didn't know what to say. He couldn't tell her about Evie, how unhappy Evie had been with him, with England, with the harsh reality of their marriage once her eyes had been opened. He couldn't tell her Evie had hated the rain, the dull tedium of English country life, and him. She'd hated him most of all. For being a deceitful, lying cad and for breaking her heart. He couldn't explain that he hated himself for the same reason, and because he'd been off gambling his way across France when Evie had lost the baby, and because he hadn't arrived home in time to stop her from walking into a pond when she didn't know how to swim.

He couldn't tell Annabel any of those things, but he could tell her about Rumsford. “You can't marry him because he doesn't love you. Because he's a fortune hunter, and he's an ass. Because he orders your food for you without consulting you, without even considering that you might want something different. Because he'll wear you down, him and his sisters and his mother, and all their relations, molding you and shaping you and changing you when there isn't a damned thing wrong with you and you don't need to be changed. Because he doesn't respect you, because he acts as if you're lucky to have him when he ought to be down on his knees thanking God he's lucky enough to have you. And because . . . damn it all . . . because there are things you'll never know with him, things he'll never be able to make you feel.”

She groaned and started to pull away. “There you go, talkin' 'bout love again. If you mention love one more time, I swear I'll—”

“I'm not talking about love. I'm talking about something else, a feeling I'd wager my life Rumsford has never given you.”

“What feelin' is that?”

He let go of her arms and cupped her face in his hands. “This one,” he said, and kissed her.

Chapter Eight

S
he ought to stop him—in the vague, hazy recesses of her mind, Annabel reminded herself that she was engaged to another man and Christian's mouth on hers was wrong. She should turn away, step back, do . . . something. But she was too shocked, too dazed, too dizzy to break free, and it wasn't all because of the moonshine. She was intoxicated, yes, but it wasn't the alcohol that was making her feel this way.

Almost without realizing what she was doing, she parted her lips, turning the warm press of his mouth against hers into a lush, openmouthed kiss that sent shimmers of pleasure throughout her body, pleasure so startling she cried out.

He touched her tongue with his own, deepening the kiss, and as if her body had a will of its own, Annabel grasped fistfuls of his jacket and rose up on her toes, responding to the caress of his tongue with a passion she'd vowed she'd never let herself feel again.

Eight years since she'd experienced the glorious sensation a man's kiss could bring, so long since she'd felt this hunger for a man's touch, this desire for a man's body, and everything within her demanded more. She let go of his jacket and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her body against the hard wall of his.

He made a rough, ardent sound against her mouth. His hands slid from her cheeks down the sides of her throat, over her collarbone, to her breasts. He paused there for only a second, just long enough that he must have felt the beat of her thudding heart through the thin satin of her gown. Then he wrapped an arm around her waist and yanked her upward off the ground, bringing her hips against his.

The feel of him, hard and aroused against her, brought her back to reality with painful force. She tore her mouth from his, gasping, and brought her arms down between them to push his aside as he set her down. Wrenching herself free, she stepped back.

He was breathing hard, watching her, and she stared back at him, wordless, as arousal, shock, and dismay coursed through her blood.

Oh Lord
, she thought wildly,
I never learn. I never, ever learn.

That awful admission had barely crossed her mind when suddenly the floor seemed to cave in beneath her, opening up to send her falling down into a dark abyss, and her last thought before everything went black was that she was in serious trouble now.

“A
nnabel?”

She sat up, sucking in deep gasps of air, her heart thudding like mad in her chest, as if she were a wild rabbit on the run from a hungry wolf.

The room was dimly lit by the oil lamp burning on the table beside her bed, but the pale gray outline of light around the closed draperies of the window told her it was morning.

“Annabel?” her mother's voice came again, followed by a knock on her door. “Annabel, are you in there?”

A dream
, she thought, and the sound of her mother's voice sent relief washing over her in a flood. Praise Jesus. She pressed a hand against her pounding heart.
She'd just been having a dream.

Upon that conclusion came another. She didn't feel well. Her head hurt, her throat was parched and cottony, and she felt slightly sick to her stomach.

“Annabel?” Her mother knocked again, louder this time.

“I'm here, Mama,” she called back, and as her door opened, she started to push back the covers to get out of bed. But then she caught the glimmer of pale blue satin, and a vague memory of why she was wearing a tea gown instead of a nightgown flashed through her mind, along with a pair of smoldering blue eyes and swirling gray mist. At once, she jerked the covers back up, barely managing to cover herself before her mother entered the room.

“Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” Henrietta said, bustling in. “Today is your wedding day, remember?”

Annabel stared at her mother, and her wedding was the furthest thing from her mind because she was realizing with horror that she hadn't been dreaming at all. She really had sat in the Ford last night getting drunk on moonshine with Christian Du Quesne.

“Why, Annabel Mae,” her mother exclaimed, coming to a halt at the foot of her bed, “you're as white as a sheet. What's wrong? Are you sick?”

Sick? Annabel put a hand to her head, which was aching fit to split. “I don't feel well,” she mumbled. “Get me headache powder, Mama, would you, please? And some peppermints?”

“Of course, darlin'.” Henrietta departed in search of the requested remedies, and Annabel jumped out of bed. Frantic, panicky, she yanked off the tea gown and tried to recall the events of the previous night as she put her nightclothes back on.

She hadn't been able to sleep last night, she remembered. She'd gotten out of bed, taken one of George's bottles of home brew from the liquor cabinet in the sitting room, thinking it would help calm her jangled nerves and make her sleepy, and she'd gone for a walk. She'd gone down to the cargo hold where she'd thought sure she'd be unobserved, and she'd sat in the Ford for a while, imagining herself motoring along England's country lanes with Bernard. She'd tried to envision herself in her new life as his countess, hoping to restore her confidence about her decision to marry him. And then . . . and then . . . Christian had shown up. That, of course, was when the trouble started.

He had followed her down there, which was aggravating enough, but even worse was the incomprehensible fact that she'd let him stay. Christian Du Quesne, the cause of her cold feet, her insomnia, her doubts. She'd let him stay. What had she been thinking?

Annabel strove to remember more. He'd given her his coat to put on, and they'd sat in the car, talking. About the Ford, about love, and . . . oh Lord.

She'd told him, she realized in horror, her hands stilling on the sash of her robe. She'd told him about Billy John.

Annabel groaned, pressing a palm to her forehead, her cheeks burning. She'd confessed her most humiliating moment, spilled her most secret shame to that man. Why?

Taking a deep breath, she shoved aside pointless questions. She had no time for those. All right, so she'd talked water uphill and revealed things even her best friend, Jennie Carter, didn't know to a man she'd just met. What concerned her wasn't what she'd said, anyway.

What had she
done
? Annabel began to pace back and forth across her stateroom, striving to remember the rest of what had happened, trying to ignore the sick certainty in her guts that with moonshine and that man involved, she might have done just about anything.

They'd left the cargo hold together, she remembered that. They'd started back to A-deck, and then, somehow, they'd ended up in the ladies' Turkish bath, of all places.

He'd kissed her. Annabel halted in dismay and shock, wondering what all had happened to her common sense. The night before her wedding, another man had kissed her. And she'd let him do it.

Impelled by that awful realization, she started pacing again, forcing herself to recall other embarrassing details. She remembered feeling faint—from moonshine, she told herself firmly, not from his kisses. She remembered her knees sinking under her, him lifting her in his arms and carrying her back to her room, laying her on the bed, and leaving. And that was all.

The door opened, interrupting these memories, and Annabel turned, pasting a nonchalant look on her face as Liza entered the room. She was carrying the wedding dress draped carefully over her arms, two maids behind her bringing the long cathedral train.

“Good mornin', Miss Annabel,” Liza said in her cheerful Irish brogue, giving her a wide smile. “Are you ready to go downstairs and say ‘I do'?”

She felt another jolt of panic at that question, and she pressed a hand to her mouth, working to think clearly. She'd done nothing wrong last night—well, not much anyway, she amended, forcing down a pang of guilt. There were more than a hundred people downstairs, waiting to watch her marry the Earl of Rumsford, a man she still wanted to marry. Yes, Scarborough had kissed her, but what was she supposed to do about it now? Call off the wedding because of one night of madness? Humiliate a man she was genuinely fond of by abandoning him at the altar? Ruin all her hopes and her sister's future and relegate her family back to the status of social outcasts because of one kiss from a man she'd known less than a week?

Not a chance. Annabel lowered her hand and drew a deep, steadying breath. “I'm ready, Liza,” she said, and tried to mean it. “I'm more ready than I can say.”

T
he moonshine bottle was empty.

Christian frowned, turning it upside down, watching as one last drop of the clear liquor fell to the carpet beside his bed.

For a man who didn't care for the stuff, he seemed to have polished off quite a bit of it during the past few hours. He hadn't drunk enough, however, to blot out the memory of kissing Annabel Wheaton.

The skin of her cheeks was like silk. He could still feel it, warm against his fingers. Her mouth, so soft, like velvet, tasting of the moonshine they'd drunk.

He fell back against the wood-paneled wall behind his bunk, closing his eyes, still able to feel her body pressed against his, smell the scent of her hair, taste her tongue in his mouth. He could still hear their hard, labored breaths afterward mingling with the hiss of steam taps and radiators. And he could still see the desire in her eyes, desire he'd found quite gratifying.

Until she passed out.

He'd caught her before she hit the floor, and even though she'd woken up, she'd had some difficulty standing on her own. He'd carried her back to her rooms, torturing himself during every step with the knowledge that she hadn't a stitch of clothing on under her gown. He'd gotten her back into her suite and into her room—at least, he'd hoped from the empty berth that it was her room—and how he'd managed that particular feat without waking any members of her family still baffled his alcohol-hazed mind. He'd laid her in the sleeping berth without taking even a single peek under her skirt, and sadly, his imagination had been trying to picture what he'd missed ever since.

No, as much as he'd had to drink, it wasn't enough to make him forget all that. Obviously, he needed another drink.

Christian tossed the empty jug onto his bunk, left his room, and retrieved a bottle of whiskey from the liquor cabinet in the sitting room. Not bothering with a glass, he took a couple of generous swigs straight from the bottle, but that didn't help much, either.

His body still ached with desire, ignited by her stunning smile and perfect body and soft vulnerability, desire he'd never be able to act on. And he knew he must truly be an idiot because that fact bothered him a hell of a lot more than losing half a million dollars.

He returned to bed, taking the bottle with him, but he didn't sleep. Instead, he drank, and imagined, and listened to the traveling clock on the shelf behind his head tick away the minutes.

He knew when Sylvia got up, he heard her ring for her maid in the room next door. He thought of ringing for his valet, but then changed his mind. Going to Annabel Wheaton's wedding, watching her chain herself to the Earl of Rumsford for the rest of her days, was the last thing he felt inclined to do.

When Arthur had first approached him, he'd deemed it a perfect, heaven-sent opportunity, but as the minutes ticked by, he also knew what hell it was going to be now that he had failed. He'd planned to be in town for the season, and the possibility of encountering Annabel, of seeing her on the arm of that pompous-ass husband of hers, was a god-awful prospect, one that if he wasn't already drunk, would soon impel him to be. In fact, he might find himself spending the entire London season in a state of perpetual intoxication.

He tried to look on the bright side. He didn't know yet that he had failed. Perhaps some of the things he'd told her had penetrated, and she'd cry off at the last minute. He hadn't been formally invited to the wedding, but the faint possibility that Annabel had come to her senses and that he could see her jilt Rummy at the altar was too irresistible to be ignored. He had to see for himself, and to hell with the niceties of etiquette.

Christian sat up, twisting his head around to look at the clock, which seemed insistent upon dividing itself in two, but after concentrating hard for several seconds, he was able to determine that it was still a few minutes before ten. He swung his legs over the side of his bunk and stood up, a move that had him reaching for the edge of the nearby table, where he held on until everything stopped spinning.

Moving carefully, he bent to retrieve his jacket, which was lying in a huddled heap on the floor by his bed, and as he put it on, the hazy thought crossed his mind that he probably looked the worse for wear. A glance in the mirror of his bathroom confirmed that he looked even worse than he thought. In fact, he looked like hell.

The face that stared back at him showed not only his lack of sleep but also his unshaven face and uncombed hair, and probably his inebriated state as well. He ran a hand over his cheek and grimaced at the sandpapery feel of it, but there was nothing he could do about it. Being late to a wedding was worse than being unshaven and badly dressed.

He did what he could. He splashed cold water on his face, raked his fingers through his hair to comb the unruly strands into some kind of order, and smoothed his wrinkled tuxedo. He also tried to re-form his tie into a bow, but though he didn't know how long he spent on that particular effort, eventually, he was forced to give it up as a lost cause. Letting the ends of his tie fall, he turned away from the mirror, and left his stateroom.

The wedding was already in progress by the time he arrived, and a glance around revealed that there were no empty seats. Annabel seemed determined to go through with it, and he leaned against one of the faux-marble columns at the back of the room, resigned to watching what was sure to be the greatest mockery of matrimony since his own wedding. A few minutes later, however, Christian discovered that it would have been better for everyone if he'd just stayed in bed.