Marry the Man Today Read online

  “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-leave.”

  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 Pembridge.” 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 wagon—”

  “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 accoun
ts, using false names.”

  “False names?”

  “And disguises, so their husbands wouldn’t find out.”

  “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?”

  “Damn it, Elizabeth, I can’t very well ignore you and still pretend I’m looking into the matter.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a waste of manpower.”

  “It’ll just have to be that way, Ross, until the police start arresting husbands for assaulting their own wives. What if you had a sister who was being beaten by her husband?”

  “I’d kill him.”

  “Then you’d go to jail, Ross. But if he killed your sister in a fit of anger, he would be excused because, after all, she was only his property. Don’t you see the injustice? Sometimes we just have to take matters into our own hands and set things right as best we can.”

  Ross felt the familiar roar of outrage rising up in his chest, tried his best to blink away the stark image of Thomas lying dead on the steps of the doctor’s surgery. The broken little body, bruised face, limbs at odd angles. He’d died in Jared’s arms and they carried him to the surgeon’s front stoop, a place where they knew he’d be found. Then they went in search of Squire Craddock, the savage bastard who had beaten him to death.

  They’d come away with a handful of solid gold buttons, and a brighter, braver future.

  The same future that Elizabeth was offering to Lady Wallace and the others.

  No wonder he loved her so dearly, so deeply. She was his heart and his soul.

  His past and his future.

  But it couldn’t be this way. “No more kidnappings, Elizabeth.”

  Her eyes flashed a rebellious emerald. “Ross, I—”

  “But I can help.” In his own way.

  “How? Kill off all the husbands?” She scowled deeply, so ready to stand her ground for the defenseless. “Because that’s what it’ll take. When Lady Hayden-Cole sought a civilized separation from her husband, the man threatened to commit her to an asylum if she ever tried to leave him again.”

  “Madam, you’re sitting on the lap of a man who has a vast network of power available to him.”

  She raised her eyebrows, only half amused. “Ross, your prowess as a lover is admirable—”

  “Only admirable?”

  “Staggering, then. Awesome, overwhelming. However—”

  He cupped her chin and brought her closer, wanting her to understand his promise. “Bring them to me, Elizabeth, and I’ll see them safely to their new lives without a single threat from their husbands.”

  Her face filled with doubting wonder. “You can do that?”

  “In the blink of an eye.” He winked, smiled because he couldn’t help himself.

  She sniffed at him. “You didn’t know where the princess was until I told you.”

  “But you did tell me, Elizabeth.” He touched his mouth to the arc of her lips. “I’m usually not as dense, but you unbalance me.”

  “Then you really will help me?”

  He took her hand and flattened it against his heart, hoping she heard it galloping there. “My word of honor, my love.”

  “Oh, Ross, you’re my—”

  He didn’t let her finish, certain he’d just become her hero. He kissed her instead, covered her mouth completely and made love with her tongue. Caught her sigh inside his chest, and growled with the pleasure of her squirming, riding him without when he’d rather be buried inside her.

  A lift of her hips and they would be connected there. Though he would surely spend himself immediately. And often.

  A risk he planned to take—

  But she pulled away, her eyes bright. “I have a brilliant idea, Ross!”

  “And I have a great need for you.” He cupped her bottom.

  “We can take Lord Tuckerton to New York to live with his dear Eugenia.”

  “What?” Would the woman ever stop planning great escapes. And how the devil did she know Tuckerton?

  “He’s miserable, Ross. We have to tell him that his grandniece is well. But we can’t let him stay here in London because Lord Wallace would surely find out where she was hiding.” She cupped his chin, her eyes suddenly rimming with tears. “We can’t let him just waste away in a club chair at the Huntsman. That would be cruel.”

  And he’d noticed himself that the old man had already begun to fade, in just these few weeks. His hair white, his eyes more dull, his back more bent.

  “Oh, God.”

  “Next week, Ross? As soon as we can, please. I have excellent contacts at all the steamship companies! And what a grand honeymoon for us!”

  “We’re on our honeymoon, Elizabeth, in case you hadn’t noticed that I’m ready to burst for wanting you.”

  Elizabeth had noticed, could feel herself ready to burst, ready to give her heart and her soul to this amazing man.

  “I’m not exactly what you bargained for when you married me, am I, Ross?”

  “Now, there’s an understatement, wife. You are a wonder.” He was looking at her in a very heady way, breathing like a bull, dropping hard, steaming kisses across her bosom. “And as it happens, Lord Clarendon agrees.”

  “The foreign minister?”

  He looked up long enough to say, “He’s arranging for a royal commendation for you.”

  “A royal commendation!” How amazing! “But what about Jess and Cassie and Skye? They were every bit as important to the mission as I was.”

  “I’ve already informed them of their commendations, when I was looking for you at the Adams. As I would have informed you, had you stayed put.”

  “I obviously don’t know what’s good for me.” But she knew what was good for him.

  And he must have thought so too as she closed her hands around the very hot shaft of his penis.

  And then she leaned down and kissed him there, suckled and teased and fondled this big howling husband of hers until the poor man just couldn’t take it anymore.

  He lifted her off his thighs and, with an unerring aim and a roar of triumph, he slipped his thickness inside of her and rocked her world with his wonder.

  They made love until the noonday sun was piercing through the windows, until they were breathless and starving and her limbs no longer moved. Until her eyelids drooped and her dreams came nudging up against her.

  She woke sometime later with Ross looking down at her. He was stretched out above her, looking every long inch the sated wolf, clean
ly shaven and smelling of soap.

  “Good afternoon, wife.”

  “A very good afternoon.” She cuddled against him, amazed at the turn her life had taken.

  “By the way, love, I made two stops after I left the Adams. Before I came here to look for my runaway wife.” He lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them, then gathered her right hand inside his.

  “Two stops? For what?”

  “Something I neglected to do the night we were married.” His eyes sparkled as he lifted her hand to show her the wedding band he’d magically put on her finger sometime while she’d been sleeping. “Call me a little slow.”

  “Oh, Ross!” The band glinted gold and steadfast. “I’ll call you wonderful to the end of our days!”

  She kissed him long and hard, catching her name in her heart as he whispered it against her mouth and her cheek and her temple until he was rolling her to the edge of the bed and climbing out.

  “Where are you going?” She grabbed at his arm but missed as he left her for the wardrobe.

  “Don’t you want to know where else I stopped on my way here?”

  “Not if it’s going to keep you over there.” Though he was a delicious feast for her eyes from this distance. Tall and bronze and still very nakedly aroused.

  “Greedy.” He returned with a smile and slipped back into bed beside her with a folded packet of what looked like legal papers.

  “You went to a lawyer?”

  “I had these started the morning after we were married.” He handed her the packet, then laid back against the pillow with a catlike smile.

  She unfolded the stiff pages. “What is it?”

  “It’s everything you owned before we married. I’ve deeded it all back to you.”

  “What do you mean, Ross?” She sat up and tried to make sense of the words swimming around on the pages, realizing that she couldn’t read for the tears welling in her eyes.

  “It’s all yours again, Elizabeth. Lock, stock, and barrel.” He crossed his arms over his chest, looking very pleased with himself.

  “But, Ross … ! That’s not what I want.” It felt wrong. Separate from this man she loved with all her heart.

  He frowned and sat up. “It’s not?”