Wicked, My Love (7 page)

Wham!
The carriage door flew open and a brown leather bag went flying past her, hitting the opposite wall. Randall leaped in just as the train lurched forward. “Good morning, love.”

“W-what are you doing?” she cried, the great plan that she'd spent the night weaving suddenly torn to shreds. “You're supposed to be getting your black heart shackled to some beautiful nincompoop.”

“You didn't really think I was going to let you
go alone?”

“No, of course not,” she stammered, feeling stupid. Why was she so terrible at understanding subtle meanings? She took everyone at their literal word. She should have known better from that slippery snake of a man. After all, he
was
a politician, and a good one, in a profession not renowned for its honesty
and forthrightness.

He sat himself down beside her, his woodsy scent clogging her nose and setting her nerves alight. She switched to the opposite seat. “And don't sit next to me. I don't want people to think we're lovers.”

“We're lovers?” He shot her a sly glance. “Did you get me foxed out of my poor wits, take advantage of me in my defenseless state, and then not have the courtesy to tell me? Did I enjoy it?”

She refused to dignify that bit of lunacy with a direct answer. “Your mother, Judith, everyone thinks that I l-love you. Oh, my throat hurts for uttering such moronic nonsense.”

He extended his legs, cupped his hands behind his head, and let a charming smile laze on his lips. His blue coat molded to his lean, flat belly and the contour of his sex bulged in his brown trousers. “Naturally they think that,” he said. “What's not to love?”

She averted her eyes, determined not to look at his male part. However, the generous, manly swell in the fabric was now emblazoned on her brain. “I really don't have the time to discuss all the things that I don't love about you. The list is quite long, and I'm a bit upset. I didn't get any sleep, and now you are here to complicate everything. I just…just want to read.” She unfurled her journal and bowed her head, hoping he would take that as a cue to be quiet.

She gently rocked in her seat, as if it were a comforting cradle, trying to keep her curious eyes from roving back to his lap as she read and reread the first paragraph in an article about interest rates in the banks of Holland. She had almost made it to the second paragraph when she felt his shoulder rub against hers, sending an annoying tingle through her sacred feminine vessel.

“Just relax,” he said, settling next to her. “We're not lovers. I detest you as much as you detest me.”

“I don't
detest
you,” she corrected. “I just don't like you some—well, most of the time.”

“I certainly despise you, no question about that. Now that we have our mutual dislike for each other clarified, I think we should play a little game.”

She looked at him askew. “The
our
bank
fails, we lose all our money, and our names and reputations are ruined
game? I hear that it's great fun until they cart us off to the poorhouse.”

“No, it's the let's-invent-false-identities-so-as-not-to-cast-suspicion game.”

“Oh.” It made sense. She hated when Randall made sense.

“And I get so tired of being the responsible Lord Randall. People's livelihoods…railroads…hanging on the most casual slip of my tongue. My every move criticized in some paper.”

“I can't believe you just called yourself responsible.”

“And I help govern a country. Shocking, isn't it?” He gave her a gentle nudge. “Come now, don't you ever get weary of being you?”

She gazed at her hands. Her fingers were bare except for a small ruby ring that once belonged to her beautiful, graceful mother. “All the time,”
she whispered.

“So, let's say you're Izzy May.”

“Izzy May? I'm Izzy May!”

“You look like an Izzy May.”

“What? Frumpy and provincial?” When he didn't argue but flashed a knowing smile, she shot back, “Then you can be Mr. Randy—as in Randy the Dandy. We can be siblings. I'm the older, wiser sister, and you're the pesky little brother whom nobody wants around.”

“I think we should be husband and wife. We don't look related unless our mama was a bit loose with h
er favors.”

“No one will believe we're married. The repulsion radiates from us.”

“In that case, love, everyone will assume
we're shackled.”

“But I'm terrible at playacting,” she protested. “Remember the annual Christmas play? You got to be the wise man and say ‘I followed a star and brought the baby Jesus frankincense. For he shall be a great leader.'” She mimicked younger Randall. “And the vicar always gave me the nontalking sheep part. Every year. I sat there baaing and sniffing, my eyes running because you know I have that reaction to hay.”

“Yes, but then your reputation, your wealth, your everything wasn't on the line in that puny sheep part, was it?”

He had a salient point. They really couldn't knock on the door, introduce themselves, and say, “By chance, have you seen our errant bank partner running about with our operating capital and a passel of fraudulent stock certificates?”

He took her silence as agreement. “So when we board the next train, we'll be man and wife until the recovery of funds, Powers's arrest, or the poorhouse do part us.” He unbuttoned the bottom of his waistcoat and began to tug at his shirt until it hung untidily over the waist of his trousers. Then he popped off his cuff links.

“Are-are you removing your clothes?” Did he think that they were going to consummate their pretend marriage? She couldn't deny the little throb between her limbs at the thought.

“Ey, you're just wishin' your man would do that for ya,” he replied in a hard cockney, then added a belch. “I'm getting meself into me part.”

“Oh Lord.”

He opened his leather bag and began rooting in it, pulling out an ugly, worn coat that looked as if it had spent a great deal of its existence lying in the dusty street while being trod on by horses. “Ain't you going to pretty up for yer man?” he asked. “Where did you put those little jellyfish things?”

“I can't believe this is happening,” she thought aloud, pressing her fingertips to her throbbing temples. “My bank is going under, and I'm saddled with
a lunatic.”

“Don't talk about your 'usband that way, woman.”

***

When they stepped out of the carriage to switch lines, Mr. Randy, now clad in the ratty coat, an equally appalling hat, which he kept pulled low, and boots that must have spent several years in service as doorstops, insisted they practice their marital roles. He snatched her bag from her hand, determined to be “good 'n' husbandlike” and carried it to the ticket line. There, he set it down, groaned, and pressed his hand into his lower back. “What did you put in heres, woman?” he quipped in a loud voice. “We can't go nowheres without ya packing up the entire crib.”

“Yous just let me carry it,” Isabella hissed, her cockney stiff and uncomfortable on her tongue. Why in Hades did she agree to go along with Randall's madness? Hadn't this gotten her in enough trouble as a girl?

“No, I said was I chivalrous-like, and chivalrous-like I am, even if me wife wants to break me back.” He turned, nodded to the young couple behind him. “Good morning to you. You look like a right 'appy couple. Recently noozed, are ye?”

The well-dressed man drew the petite woman behind him, as if to protect his delicate flower from the rough miscreants. “We've been married but a week,” he said curtly.

“Ay, I used to be like you.” Randall winked and rambled on. “All 'appy and 'opeful.” He jerked his head at Isabella. “Me and the missus 'ave been shackled for going on nine years now. All the fire's gone. What, after seven little sprouts, not even a tiny flame to warm ourselves. No 'ope, no 'appiness.”

“Now you stops bothering the fine folk.” Isabella yanked Randall forward to the ticket window.

“Two third-class tickets?” the clerk asked.

“Third class!” Randall huffed, indignant. “Only the best for me Izzy May. Second class, my good man.”

“No!” Isabella cried, not playacting. She didn't want to spend the next few hours in a cramped,
open carriage.

“See 'ow she henpecks me,” her pretend husband bellowed. “Nothings is good enough for the likes of 'er. You gives her the moon and she nags you fer the sun. Always complaining about me, she is. I just provides 'er a roof over 'er 'ead and chow for 'er seven young 'uns.” He dropped their tickets in his pocket and lifted her bag with a heaving grunt. “She's tryin' to kill me poor body, I swear it.”

They started to walk away. Isabella bit her tongue, biding her time until it was safe to tear into him about the importance of remaining serious and inconspicuous, when she overheard the delicate young wife say to her husband, “My dear, promise me that we'll never be like that when we've been married a lo
ng tim
e.”

Isabella and Randall exchanged glances, their lips trembling as they tried not to laugh.

***

The second-class train ride wasn't as horrible as Isabella had anticipated. The seats weren't cramped, and when the summer wind blew on her cheeks, she felt a temporary lift from her worries. She removed her glasses, closed her eyes, and let the breeze caress her face. Randall found her hand and laced his fingers through hers. She almost stopped him, for fear that people would see, but then she remembered that they were unhappily married. All her life, Isabella had preferred her own company, avoiding Randall—partly for the obvious reasons that he was obnoxious, annoying, arrogant, and privileged, but also because his easy manners and charm, which her father had admired and compared her against, made her jealous and bitterly self-loathing. But for once in the entirety of their unbalanced, antagonistic relationship, she was grateful that her enemy sat beside her, holding her hand.

At the train station in the village neighboring Itching-by-the-Ditch, Mr. Randy gave “me last blessed shilling” to a porter to keep their bags safe while he and Isabella ventured to Busby's, who, the porter had assured them, lived an easy afternoon's stroll from the village.

Randall had rarely heard Isabella use questionable language, but she uttered “oh, hang it” about mile two of the so-called “easy afternoon's stroll,” when she snagged her homely gown climbing over a broken fence. Around mile three, she wondered “Where in the Hades is this place?” when she stepped into a cow patty. A little after mile four, she complained “Oh fudge, my feet hurt,” when they were mucking about a freshly plowed field. Then she finally sank to the truly profane, stating, “Hell's fire, I think I have blisters on every blessed toe,” when they finally reached the oak-lined lane of Busby's drive.

He left her to nurse her poor feet by the protruding roots of a massive oak tree and ambled up the lane, approaching the stately white manor house that rose from the lush sheep fields. The dignified prospect of the home was diminished by the baby dolls hanging in nooses from tree limbs and the broken carriage wheels, baby carts, and articles of children's clothes scattered about the lawn.

Two angry girlish voices blared from a broken window on the top floor. “Those are my stockings. Put them back. All yours are torn, you idiot,
stupid, puddinghead.”

“Nurse said you weren't supposed to call me names anymore.” Then there was a scream and “Nurse, she's pulling my hair. Make her stop. Make her stop.”

An unsupervised infant boy with angelic blond locks, dressed in a stiffly pressed white frock, squatted by the shrubs. He scooped up a tiny handful of dirt, giggled, and shoved it in his mouth. Randall decided that the dirt-eater was too young to be of much use, and Randall focused his attention instead on the serious, older boy who was absorbed in painting what appeared to be a human study on the side wall of
the home.

“Excuse me, there, my happy young lad,” he said in his Mr. Randy vernacular.

The child gazed up at Randall with large green eyes and a sweet, girlish mouth, as blue paint dripped from the brush onto his trousers and shoes.

“Is this by chance Mr. Nicholas Busby's fine residence?” Randall asked.

“He's my papa.”

“Is he, then? Well, can you tell a good fellow if a Mr. Powers is visiting yer papa?”

He shook his head. “Mama said that lying, low-bred scoundrel isn't allowed under our roof anymore. That he's a bad influence on us.”

“Do you think your papa would know
his whereabouts?”

“My papa knows everything,” the boy declared in a definitive manner. “He's a scholar.” He picked up an expensive leather-bound volume that was cracked open on the soil by his feet and splattered with paint. “I'm painting the picture in his book. It's called”—the boy slowly sounded out the words—“B-b-ir-th
of V-venus.”

“Very fine there, young man.” Randall nodded and began to back away. “Keep up the good work.”

By the time he had cleared the third row of great oaks, he heard a young female scream “I hate you! You're the worst sister in the entire world.” He turned to find a girl scurrying across the front lawn, stockings flying like flags from her hands, while another girl pursued her, smacking her sister with a pillow.

A stout, broad-shouldered servant, holding a laughing, naked child in the crook of her elbow, stormed out the door after them.

“Now stop your figh—” The sledgehammer of a woman stopped at the sight of the filthy infant boy dining in the dirt and his brother's illicit artistic renderings on the side of the house. “You wash that filthy hogwash off this instant,” she cried. “What did I tell you about Italian art?” She snatched the dirt-eating child from the ground with her free hand. “And you! I just bathed you. You're coming inside, right now,” she ordered, marching in the house, a squirming child captive under each arm. “Nurse needs a dram before anyone gets hurt.”

Randall strolled back to Isabella, rethinking his future family's size and trying to formulate a plan. He found her sitting on a protruding tree root, rubbing her feet through her boots while being studied by two placid brown mares that chomped on hay from a trough on the other side of the fence. Isabella looked up at Randall and cried, “It feels like someone lit my toes on fire.”

Gazing upon her tired face, flushed from exertion, and her hair, tumbling about her face, all wind-blown and sticky with perspiration, an idea shot off like a firework in his head. “You were right!”

“Of course I was.” She wiped her brow. “About what?” She began to push off from the ground.

He grabbed her elbow and helped her up. “You're my sister, not my wife.”

He quickly set to work, brushing aside her fallen locks and undoing the buttons running down her back.
A
very
nice, graceful back. The kind perfect for cuddling against in bed on a cold night.

“What—what are you doing?” she hissed.

“I'm impregnating you, my darling. Be still so I can loosen your corset.”

She gasped and grabbed the collapsing bodice of her gown, trying to cover herself. Twisting around, she glared at him with her magnified eyes. “Randall, I don't know what you're thinking, but I am not having congress with you behind a tree.”

“
Congress
? With you!?” An image of taking her against the trunk filled his imagination—and he possessed a very vivid and detailed imagination. What he conjured wasn't so terrible. At least, his throbbing cock certainly didn't think so. In his mind, he imagined her soft lips parted with pleasure, her bound breasts freed and bouncing with his thrusts. He wondered what her nipples looked like. Were they pert, pink—

Get
ahold
of
yourself.

“I'm your brother. That's just disgusting in so many aspects.” He wagged his finger under her nose. “No, no, dear Sister. You've been playing Who's Papa's Naughty Pussycat with Mr. Powers, and now you've got a little kitten in the oven. At least, that's what I'm telling Mr. Busby.”

“I'm pregnant with Mr. Powers's child,” she repeated, as if Randall had just proposed the most asinine thing in the world. “That's your plan?”

“Brilliant, isn't it?”

“That's it!” She flung up her arms, causing her dress to fall, revealing the tops of her breasts—those lovely, ample things—over her corset. She must have seen him looking—ogling like a moonling might be a better description—because she blushed, yanking up her gown. “I'm doing this by myself. You're cracked.”

She stomped away, wobbling on her blistered feet.

He hurried to catch up. “Think about it. He has nine children. When I tell him that my beloved sister Izzy May was impregnated and abandoned by Powers, it's bound to sway him. It gets right to the heart. No beating around the bush, or should I say arteries, lungs, or belly, not to mix metaphors. We get the information we need and catch the next train leaving the station.”

Her spectacles amplified her glower as she considered. Finally she said, “I swear I will repay you for this ludicrousness.” She turned, letting him complete his “impregnation.” “And trust me, it's going to be painful and humiliating and will traumatize you for the remainder of your life.”

“Don't get me excited with anticipation,” he quipped wryly. However, his jolly Mr. Headsmith, still reeling from the tree fantasy, didn't perceive any irony in his words, and grew hard at the prospect of Isabella-inflicted trauma. He tried to keep his mind on her plain cotton corset, and not the curve of her neck and waist, or the heat of her body warming
his fingers.

When he was done, she clutched her dress to her chest, stomped back to the tree, reached over the fence, and grabbed a handful of hay from the
horse's trough.

“What are you—” He stopped when she jammed the hay down her corset. “I didn't think of using hay.” He had just intended to loosen her gown a bit. “You're going to itch and cry, but you're brilliant.”

***

Randall used the door knocker. “Are you sure you're ready?” he asked Isabella, who sniffed, her eyes watering as she furiously scratched the space just below her breasts and above the round hay-baby in her corset. Something about the straw bump filled him with masculine pride, as if it were a real baby and one he'd put in her.

What
the
hell
is
wrong
with
you? Your career, your reputation is in the chamber pot, and all you can think about is making babies with Isabella.

Meanwhile, his Mr. Long Johnson just heard the “make babies” part of his inner lecture and came to attention like a soldier called to duty.

“I feel like I want to scratch my skin off,” she whimpered, her face resembling a swollen, w
et tomato.

“I'll get us out of here as quickly as possible. You just stand there being pregnant and miserable while I do the talking. Remember, Powers likes
witless women.”

“What is that supposed to mean about me—”

The door opened. Inside stood a naked infant, maybe a little older than three, looking up at them with large, vacuous eyes. He jammed a tiny finger in his nose and plucked out a nice gift for them.

Nurse, clearly unaware of Isabella and Randall standing on the doorstep, lumbered forward with squirming dirt-eater still trapped beneath her arm and a wet, dripping washcloth in her hand. “Close that door. You're… Oh heavens, callers,” she exclaimed with the same enthusiasm that one has for tax collectors.

Dirt-eater was more hospitable. He emitted a happy shriek and clapped his hands as his nurse set him down.

Randall yanked off his hat, placed it over his heart, and grabbed Isabella's elbow. “Pardon me, ma'am. I'm Mr. Randy. A respectable, 'ardworking fellow I am. And this is me sister Izzy May. I'm requesting an audience with the 'onorable Mr. Busby.” He lowered his voice, leaned in, and raised a brow. “Regarding an extremely serious personal matter.”

The way the nurse looked at him, her eyes weary and battle-hardened, made Randall think that the only matters that swayed her were of the magnitude of houses burning, children falling in wells, and being down to her last drop of elderberry wine. Before the put-upon woman could speak, a loud, high-pitched voice pierced the hall. “Why, she's increasing!”

Around the hefty nurse stepped a pretty brunette just a few years older than Isabella and Randall. She wore an expansive, bell-like skirt layered in ruffles, and her corset was laced so tightly that it pushed up her ample breasts, forming a shelf of flesh below her neck. In her arms she held a fat, gurgling baby, whose chubby red face looked as if it would burst out of its lace cap. “I just love babies. Yes, I dosy-wosy,” she told the infant. “I just adore the little-wittle things. Ouch! Don't pull Mama's hair! Stop!” She ripped one of her spiral curls from the baby's grasp. “So how much longer?” She gazed at Isabella with bright, happy eyes, unfettered by intelligence or self-awareness.

“Longer?” Isabella's brows curved in confusion.

“Until you have the baby-waby, dearie.”

Isabella's lips quivered. She looked up at Randall, uncertainty in her eyes. He saw the gaping flaw in his brilliant scheme—neither he nor Isabella knew a thing about infants. Well, aside from how they were made. After all, she had explained the process to him years before, and he had done a great deal of practicing since then—that is, in the act of making babies, but never actually creating one.

“Five months?” Isabella ventured as she scratched her gown above the bulge.

“Just five?” the woman in the mountainous skirts exclaimed. “This must not be your first little darling-warling. I was an absolute house at just the third month of my second dearsy. A house, I tell you. And what an active baby she was. I couldn't sleep for her kicking me. And mind you, that sweet little hunny-bunny decided to turn around just before she was born.”

“Turn around?” Isabella echoed.

“Her little broadside first,” the woman explained, and turned her bundle of lace and joy to illustrate. “Sixteen hours I labored before the midwife got the forceps and—”

“Mrs. Busby,” the nurse cut in, “remember what your husband said about sharing too many unnec
essary details.”

But it was too late. Isabella's mouth had dropped in horror. She began to edge to the door, but Randall held her tight.
No, love, we are in this folly together.

“Oh, don't you fret now,” Mrs. Busby assured Isabella. “It was nothing compared to the first, as you well know.”

The woman waited for a response. Isabella had none to give but a high, nervous squeak as a bead of perspiration rolled down the side of her face.

“Well,” Mrs. Busby continued, “
I
remember thinking that I was being hacked apart by an ax.”

“My Lord,” Isabella cried, and pressed her hand to her mouth, her eyes watering.

“Oh, are you going to be illsy?” Mrs. Busby's eyes crinkled with concern. “I was so illsy with my fifth. Couldn't even look at cabbage without—”

“Mrs. Busby.” The nurse cleared her throat. “Unnecessary details.”

“Good heavens, but I do get carried away when I talk about baby-wabys,” she admitted, and gazed down at her gurgling waby. “Yes, I dosy-wosy.”

“As—as I was saying,” Randall said, trying to turn the conversation away from the specifics of pregnancy and childbirth so his pretend sister did not faint—and he wasn't feeling so well himself—“I wanted to talk to Mr. Busby regarding a serious personal matter.”