Wicked Becomes You

  While Alex’s connections spanned the government, he’d never had cause to befriend anybody connected to the church. And so the matter of the special license came down to Gerard.

  The twins, together with Alex, broke the news to their brother as Gwen waited outside with Elma. In the hallway, all that could be heard of the moment of revelation was a clatter and a great thump.

  “Oh dear,” Gwen murmured.

  Elma patted her hand. “He will be your brother-in-law,” she said.

  For a moment, Gwen could not tell if this was a caution against further criticism, or a caution against the marriage itself. And then came another crash. Elma’s hand closed firmly over hers. “One can see why Mr. Ramsey prefers to travel abroad,” she said, her smile pleasant, her voice steely.

  Silence fell. And then a voice lifted—Lord Weston’s. Gwen strained to hear, but she could not make out the words.

  A sharp female reply. That would be Belinda.

  The door slammed. The twins came into the hallway, Belinda stalking, Caroline slumping. Even the feather in Caro’s hat was wilting. But her smile was bright when she said, “Only give them a moment. He is very glad to see you join the family, Gwen.”

  “As well he should be,” Elma said coldly. “But I daresay he has an odd manner for expressing his joy.”

  The twins exchanged a look. “Oh, it isn’t you,” Caroline said. “Only . . .”

  “Only he is upset with Alex,” Belinda said flatly. “Alex never does take the straight path when a spiral or zigzag will do.”

  “He is yelling at Alex?” Gwen could not imagine anyone daring to do so.

  “Oh, indeed,” Belinda said. “And Alex is no doubt sitting back and smiling, and thereby taunting him onward.”

  “Well, you cannot wish him to apologize,” Caroline said sharply. “Gerry in a mood is thoroughly intolerable. What a pompous boor he becomes!”

  “Agreed,” Belinda said with a shrug. “But he’s more like a top than a bull, so he’ll wind down soon enough. In the meantime,” she added, taking a seat on the bench next to Gwen, “we will wait.”

  Caroline, meanwhile, began to pace.

  After a minute, the indistinct yelling paused. Belinda gathered her skirts to rise, and Caro’s face turned toward the hall.

  The shouting resumed. Belinda subsided with a sigh, but Gwen felt her patience snap. She sprang to her feet and paced toward the study, ignoring the startled remarks that followed her. It was well and good to sit about politely if one meant to charm one’s brother-in-law, but she knew that Alex had little concern for such aims, and she herself had finished with meaningless courtesies weeks ago.

  She held up her hand to the footman stationed by the entrance, then opened the door without announcing herself.

  It was just as the twins had predicted: Lord Weston was on his feet, thundering, while Alex sat comfortably in a chair, fingers drumming on his knee, politely listening.

  “—the top of beyond,” Lord Weston said.

  “Yes,” said Alex. “I thoroughly agree. Are you done yet? They’re waiting.”

  “Not until you admit that this is the last straw—”

  “I am the last straw?” Gwen asked politely.

  Lord Weston stuttered to a stop. Alex turned in the chair. “Ah, Gwen,” he said pleasantly. He came to his feet, crossing to catch up her hands and draw them, one by one, to his mouth. “Martyr,” he accused beneath his breath. “I thought you chucked your virtues some time ago. Save yourself and run.”

  She laughed despite her nerves and might have replied, had Lord Weston not stalked up and sketched a very stiff bow. “Miss Maudsley,” he said. “Welcome to the family. My apologies for the truly unforgivable circumstances of this match. I pray you pardon him. I pray you pardon all of us for supporting such a rascal.”

  Such was the fervor of his tone that she felt offended for Alex’s sake. “Forgive me if I take a very different view,” she said flatly. “I have always found your brother to be thoroughly admirable in every way.” Alex’s snort, she ignored. “I cannot understand why you judge him so harshly, particularly when—”

  “Why? You cannot understand why?” The earl’s eyes bulged. “Dragging you off to Paris—landing you in such a situation—why, I pity you if you cannot imagine the why of it! I fear you will be in for an unpleasant surprise before your honeymoon even concludes.” Here he paused, turning a dull red. Perhaps he suddenly recalled the circumstances in which Lady Milton had discovered Gwen and his brother, and divined that the honeymoon would not hold as many surprises as it properly should. More gruffly he continued, “It has always been thus with him. I would have expected you to know this! Certainly you know how he chose to make his . . . living.” He nearly sneered the word. “And of course, there is the small matter of your brother—”

  She cut him off, in a tone far colder than she had ever used with anyone. “It was by my own desire that we contracted to marry. I must conclude, then, that you either mistake me for a fool because I wish to marry him, or you mean to twit me now by speaking so outrageously although you don’t mean a word of it. Yes, he makes a living—a very fine one. Indeed, you will forgive me if my personal experience of men with inherited privileges leads me to believe that a man who works for greatness is far more trustworthy than one who is handed it at birth.”

  Lord Weston opened his mouth to reply, but Alex spoke first. “Oh,” he said softly from behind her. “Do be careful with him, Gwen. He’s a bit more fragile than he looks. And not all these titled sorts are rotters.”

  The earl’s glare transferred over her shoulder.

  She crossed her arms. An apology was called for.

  Lord Weston’s lips remained sealed.

  “I do not think the earl so fragile as that,” she said grimly. Perhaps his siblings’ cosseting was all that ailed him. “By my calculation, sir, you owe Alex your thanks.”

  “My . . . thanks.” He spoke as though the words were some foreign language, meaningless syllables on the tongue.

  “Yes. He has done you a great favor. You were conned by a criminal. Alex has brought you the proof to see this man jailed, and your land returned to you.”

  Lord Weston’s eyes were nearly the same shade as Alex’s, but did not have nearly the same effect. When they opened wide and his lips parted in surprise, he looked like a glassy-eyed fish, appalled to find himself on the butcher’s slab.

  “Mm,” said Alex, taking her arm and shoving his free hand into his pocket. “Hadn’t gotten around to telling him that bit, Gwen.”

  “Oh.” She felt her cheeks warm. “Dreadfully sorry.”

  “No harm done,” Alex said. “What say, Gerry? Proof of Barrington’s unlawful ways in exchange for one small favor in the form of a quiet marriage license.”

  Lord Weston assented, of course. But, so Gwen noted, he did not bother to thank his brother for saving him from the hands of a conman. Family, it seemed, was not always the idyll she had imagined.

  Four days it took to procure the license, once Lord Weston turned his mind to it. As she stood now at the edge of the Cornelyses’ ballroom, safely anonymous behind her mask, with less than twelve hours until the appointed time of her marriage, she wondered again what she was doing here. She felt distant, curiously apart from the scene. She and Alex had come on the twins’ insistence, for no newlyweds, if not bound for their honeymoon, would hide from the London season. People might expect odd behavior of Alex, but not of Gwen. And so they would go, Alex had told her.

  But why? Why were they bothering with these people?

  The mask probably did not help her sense of detachment. She lifted it away as she searched the crowd for the Ramseys. Stares began to find her immediately. A balcony ran along one side of the ballroom, and an entire group of women craned over the rail to peer at her. These looks were not wholly malicious, but they were curious, prying; it would take only one misstep, in the days to come, to sway public opinion against her. Then what seemed, right now, like a roma
ntic spectacle would become a sordid scandal of the kind that deserved condemnation, cold cuts, turned shoulders.

  A month ago, she might have crumpled beneath the weight of such censure. Now it felt no more than annoying.

  She did not want to live amongst these people.

  Why were they here?

  By noon tomorrow, she would be married to Alex Ramsey.

  She spotted him, finally. He had removed his own mask and was walking straight toward her, but he had not spotted her yet. The sight of his profile as he looked over the crowd, his hawkish nose, the firm straightness of his body, filled her with something hot and covetous.

  I want this.

  Oh, yes, she did. She had never wished for anything more in her life than to be married to him—to make his laughter, his wit, his slyness, his ferocity, his protectiveness, his encouragement, his courage and determination, hers by right and by law.

  But she did not believe for a moment that he loved her.

  Oh, he told her so. His sisters told her so. Elma claimed she had known it all along, had seen it in how he’d looked at her when she’d not been paying attention. Balderdash. She wanted to believe it—she would even pretend to believe it tomorrow. But she knew him too well. She knew his secret: for all his wandering, his independence and his unorthodox ways, he took his responsibilities very seriously. He even borrowed others’ responsibilities, making them his own simply because he thought this sort of service was owed to those whom he loved. From the moment Lady Milton had spotted them together, there had been no question that he would offer for her. He had promised Richard to look after her. Marriage was the only option the situation had offered.

  His eyes fixed on her. His expression changed. He sent her a smile so slow and tender that her lungs squeezed.

  Maybe he loved her.

  He started across the floor toward her. She held still, watching him approach. It was possible he loved her. He did not require her money. He’d had her virginity with no promises made or asked for.

  He did not stop at a polite distance. He came directly into her, his hands closing on her waist. She resisted the urge to look up toward the balcony. Everyone thought them married, and these touches were permissible among married couples. That did not change the effect it would have: in a minute, if he did not release her, they’d make a spectacle so powerful that the balcony would probably collapse beneath the weight of the crowd craning over.

  She put her hand over his. He offered her his trademark rogue’s smile. She understood now exactly what that smile signified. It was a personal promise of long, sweaty nights and no quarter given.

  Her grip tightened over his by no conscious volition. If he loved her . . . then what couldn’t she do? What couldn’t the world show to her? What wasn’t possible?

  “I am bored out of my skull,” he said. “Do you think we’ve put sufficient time into this purgatory?”

  “We promised we would not leave until the twins did,” she reminded him.

  His head tipped slightly. A new gleam entered his eye. “Would not leave the house,” he said.

  Beneath her palm, his skin was hot, his fingers strong. The possibility in his suggestive smile made her pulse quicken. “Alex, we can’t . . .”

  “Come,” he said, turning her toward the door. In her ear, he breathed, “Be a little wicked, Miss Maudsley.”

  Here, indeed, was wickedness: she realized, as she followed him out of the ballroom and down the hall, that she had been dreaming of this while she’d wandered, lost, through the house. She knew exactly where they should go. She stepped ahead to lead him and he followed close on her heels, not speaking, nudging her when she paused, nipping at her ear and muddying her doubts when the curious glance of some masked passerby made her courage falter.

  She stopped by the baize door, now standing shut, through which she had spied the open linen closet. Turning back to Alex on a great breath, she said, “I think this might work. Just inside, there’s a—”

  He took her under the arms and put his mouth to hers as he backed her through the door. Some distant, rational part of her listened for the thump that spelled the door’s closure; the rest of her wits were already scattered beneath the driving pressure of his kiss. They had not kissed with this intent since Milan. There had been no opportunity. In the days since, she had started to wonder if the wildness and freedom she’d felt in his arms had been the product of an overfevered imagination, the wishful thinking of a woman afraid of slipping back into deadly, dulling comforts.

  But she had not imagined it. His lips on hers made every part of her come alive. She pressed herself into him for more of it, then let him push her back against the wall, breathing encouragements into his mouth, urging him on to greater ferocity. Her nails caught in his shirt, beneath his shoulder blades, digging into the density of his muscle, daring it to try to resist her. His mouth slipped down her neck, teeth scraping, testing; he bit the place where her throat joined her shoulders, as if to hold her in place, when she wanted to be nowhere else.

  She tasted his chin, his jaw, the skin which had been rough with stubble in Milan, now so smooth from the wick of a sharp-edged blade. His palm covered her breast, lifting it clear of her corset as he sucked the skin at the base of her throat, just inside the lacy neckline of the silver tissue gown she wore. She hoped he marked her. She wished he could make her somehow indelibly his; that they were still children so they could cut their fingers and mingle their blood and know this meant something. She longed for some transformation more lasting than that wrought by the law and his name, some visceral change he might effect in her so that anyone on the street with one glance would know she was his.

  The fabric of her gown was so thin that she could feel the chafing of his thumb, now, the slight, sweet abrasion of his nail across her nipple, as though she were naked, and he, too. Flesh to flesh, pressing into each other, every doubt in her melting. I want this. God above, she wanted to be his.

  His mouth closed over her nipple through the fabric, sucking strongly. It pulled a hot, sweet current from low in her belly; she ran her hands up and down his broad back, restless, impatient, ready to jump from her skin if he did not take her now. This was mad, insane. A servant could come along at any moment.

  The thought cleared her brain a little. She had no desire to kowtow to convention any longer, but decency was a noble concept all the same.

  She groped blindly along the wall behind her. The door was there somewhere, she knew it. Her fingers closed on nothing. “Wait,” she panted.

  “No,” he said, and bit down lightly on her nipple, startling a low, hot sound from her throat.

  “Someone—Alex, someone could come. We should . . . stop.”

  He lifted her by her bottom, pinning her between his body and the wall. “Yes,” he agreed in her ear. “Someone could come.”

  A hot, dark thrill ran through her. She understood, all at once, that games had a place in this matter, too. But . . . a strand of fear intruded, constricting her ardor. “Alex—” She wasn’t ready for such things. Not yet. “Please,” she whispered.

  He hesitated only a fraction of a moment before drawing her a pace down the dark, narrow passage. She heard the click of a latch, and the smell of the linen closet flooded the space: starch and lemon and lavender. His hand at her waist guided her inside; he pulled the door shut and total darkness enfolded them.

  His lips touched her ear. His voice was soft and so, so low. “You’re right,” he murmured. His hand smoothed over her bottom, tickled the tops of her thighs. “This is much better. Anything might happen in such darkness.”

  The shiver that passed through her, the current of want that powered it, dried her throat to dust. She turned blindly for his mouth, and he ran his tongue along her lower lip. His hands slid slowly, slowly, down her arms. Encircling her wrists, he pulled them behind her, his silent squeeze an order: she would leave them there.

  His mouth returned to hers now, his kiss slow and deliberate and thor
ough as she stood still, all the pleasure points in her body pulsing ever stronger, the imagined restriction of her arms somehow feeding this desire: standing in the dark, blind, willingly trusting him. “What do you want?” he whispered.

  “You,” she said.

  Without warning, his finger brushed lightly between her legs, making her jump and whimper. He stroked again more firmly, rubbing almost contemplatively at the juncture of her thighs. “What do you want for yourself?”

  She frowned. “You.”

  He laughed, a low, sexual sound. Between her legs, his light, teasing strokes were not enough; the skirt, while thin, impeded his touch. She strained toward him, and he said against her mouth, “Shh. In a moment.”

  He pressed harder now, reminding her body of how empty it was, of the ways he could solve that, the ways he could satisfy her. But she did not want to wait anymore. Even as his hand rubbed and goaded her and the hunger built, that strange panic began to seep back into her thoughts. Take me, Alex. Was it so easy for him to wait? Did he not burn the same way she did?

  She reached down and laid a palm on his erection, and when he took a sharp breath, no doubt to chide her for her insurrection, she said to him, “Shh,” and cupped him more firmly. She wanted this. She needed this. His hands curved around her bottom, clenching and squeezing her, lifting her against him, against her own hand. She went on her tiptoes to help him, to help them both. “Have me,” she whispered as she rubbed against him. Have me. Her fingers learned the catch on his trousers and flipped it open.

  His cock sprang into her hand, hard and full and ready. He was drawing up her skirts now, pulling them up in great handfuls. Their mouths met and their tongues tangled as his palm met her stocking and smoothed up past her garter, finding the bare flesh of her thigh beneath her thin silk drawers. His other hand he lifted to his mouth; she heard a wet sound, and then he placed his finger to her quim, to the throbbing spot that leapt at his touch and made her swallow another garbled moan. For a moment, as he rubbed her and she writhed, the only sound was of their fevered breathing and the whispering shush of her gown.