Chapter Sixteen

W hat the hell are you doing in here?" Phoebe jerked at the gruff sound of Chris' voice, nearly pitching over in surprise. "Careful," she said irritably. "I almost dropped Hieronymus." Carefully, she set the turtle down within the confines of the nearest wooden box, from which sprouted an orange tree, its branches heavily laden with fruit. "What the hell is he doing in here?" he asked, and there came the tap of his cane upon the floor, growing louder as he approached. "He likes it," she said. "At least, I think he does. Probably he enjoys the heat." And it was hot. And humid. By design, she knew. The orangery was meant to keep the citrus trees warm throughout the winter, but in the late summer now it was fairly sweltering. Already her skin felt as if it had been misted with a fine layer of sweat. "He doesn't like oranges," Chris said, though he moved closer to watch Hieronymus strutting in his plodding turtle way within the box planter in which Phoebe had set him. "You weren't at dinner," he said. "Why?" Briefly, Phoebe considered a polite prevarication. But Chris was not capable of appreciating such a thing, at least at present. And so she admitted: "I couldn't do it without shouting at you. So I elected not to come at all." " Shouting at me?" "As I recall, I have taken you to task for it before," she said. "It seemed only fair that I should absent myself until I could restrain myself from the same." And if her voice was even now a little short, a little clipped—well, then, he could blame himself for that. She had not sought him out, after all. "I mean to say, why should you have shouted at me?" Phoebe flexed her hands at her sides to keep her fingers from clenching. The murder of one's father, she knew, was patricide. One's mother, matricide. Brother, fratricide; sister, sororicide. What was it called when one murdered one's spouse? She knew there was a word, but she could not call it to mind. "Brooks told me you left the house today," she said, and each syllable dropped like a stone between them. "That disloyal arse," he said. "I ought to have known he would—" "Did you even think for a single second that it could have cost you your life?" There was an itch between her shoulder blades, a prickle of heat that washed up her throat that had nothing to do with the humidity within the orangery and everything to do with the fires of fury. "There is someone out there trying to kill you!" Had he had any less control of himself, she suspected his jaw would have dropped open. "There is always someone trying to kill me," he said. "One learns to live with it when one has as many enemies as I have." "Or die with it," she sniffed. "A poor choice of words, I'll admit." He cast his gaze about, searching for—something. At last he swept his cane to the left, gesturing with it toward a wooden bench not too far away, and tucked up against the glass wall. "There," he said. "That bench. Sit with me a moment. I've been all over the damned house looking for you and my knee aches like the damned devil." "Hieronymus—" "Isn't going anywhere. Hell, if he manages to escape the box, I'll give him run of the house—though I shudder to think how he'd manage the stairs. Sit , Phoebe." With a beleaguered sigh, she turned for the bench and sat with a huff at the left side, grateful that it was wide and long. It was an effort to resist the urge to snap at him when he sat directly at her side, when two more people could have fit comfortably in the space he had left open. "Did you need to sit quite so close?" "Someone's got to rub my damned knee, and you're better at it." Phoebe fumed silently, her fingers clenching in the folds of her skirts. He had some damned nerve, soliciting her assistance when he'd made her so angry. And the worst of it was, she wanted to touch him. She'd grown accustomed to it over the past month, accustomed to him searching her out only to collapse in her lap and plead for head scratches like a needy puppy. Accustomed to that faint purr of pleasure that always seemed to hum at the very back of his throat. Accustomed to the relief that swept across his face, and the relaxing of his taut muscles, as if he had come to rely upon her for those things. Chris set his cane aside and nudged her shoulder with his own. "Please?" With a growl of aggravation, Phoebe set her hand upon his knee and dug the tip of her thumb into the tight flesh there. Chris gave a heavy sigh, leaning back and draping his left arm across the back of the bench. His fingertips grazed the curls that had begun to droop in the roasting heat, toying with them absently. "There's not much I can do at the moment," he said, by way of explanation. "I didn't get a good look at the man who shot me. At least, I assume it was a man. The fact is, it could be damned near anyone." "Then you shouldn't have left the house." He'd placed himself in an even more dangerous position. Not only hindered by his injured leg, but by his healing gunshot wound. "What sort of a life is one lived in fear? Besides, there's every chance it's someone from my set instead of yours. And my sort don't take well to cowardice. It's the same as weakness, and weakness is made to be exploited. If I thought to hide myself away, well—sooner or later, they'd come to me." "What do you mean?" "I mean I live in a large house with all of the vulnerabilities of one. There's always someone coming or going. New staff who might be bribed to leave a door unlocked or a window open. Someone paid to take a position as a member of the staff for the purposes of slipping arsenic in my breakfast." He gave a little shake of his head. "I'm not saying it's likely," he said. "Most people with a vendetta wouldn't be satisfied with just hearing I'd died. They'd want the satisfaction of doing the job themselves, seeing me suffer." Phoebe's stomach curdled at the very thought. "I told you it was possible you'd be a widow in short order some weeks ago," he said. "Why are you angry now?" Because when he'd told her, the danger had already passed, and he'd been confined to a bed for an indeterminate amount of time. The surgeon had assured her he would survive, and any further danger had seemed a distant thing in her mind. And in the time since— In the time since, she'd grown accustomed to him. More than she had wished to. More than that which she had thought herself capable of. Her breath whistled through the clench of her teeth. "I told you," she said. "I don't want to be a widow." "Hm," he said. And then he added in a casual, suggestive tone, "Do you want to be a wife?" And there it was, on the tip of her tongue at last. Mariticide . The killing of one's spouse. That was the word she'd forgotten.

∞∞∞

The wretched woman ground her heel down upon Chris' toe. " Christ ," he hissed, yanking one of her curls in a bit of petty retribution. "Haven't I suffered enough just lately?" "I don't believe you have," she said snidely, with a curl of her lip. "Besides, it hardly even counts as maiming. And you're just fine with maiming, aren't you?" "When I'm the one doing it, yes." At least she hadn't removed her hand from his knee, even if she'd forgotten in the flare of her anger that she'd been meant to be rubbing it. Because she liked touching him. He'd noticed it right away, though first he'd thought it was nothing more than simple curiosity. But if it had been, she'd have assuaged it well before now. And she had just kept doing it. Any opportunity he'd given her. He was aware, generally, of the way ladies of her station were raised, how sheltered and protected they were. How any physical contact with an unrelated man, no matter how minor, was largely discouraged outside of a few very limited circumstances. Phoebe had lived nine and twenty years in a restrictive world, and while she hadn't gone wild with her newfound freedom, she had pushed the boundaries of acceptability. Stretched toward those intimacies she had always eschewed rather than away from them. At the moment she was altogether too angry—because he'd almost been killed, and then he'd made her worry for his safety when he'd left the house. So he said, "I'm choosing now." "Now? What do you mean, now?" And then she gasped. " Now ? You can't be serious." "Serious as the plague," he said, and the color that burst into her cheeks was startlingly vivid. "I'm furious with you!" she blazed. "That's why now." Probably it was a mistake. There was still a prominent ache in his side, and he really had irritated the devil out of his knee as he had gone systematically about the house in search of her. But it was a mistake worth making. And if she just so happened to plant her bony little knee into his side once more, well, then, he'd just use that to bargain for yet another. "You did agree," he said, striving for a reasonable tone. "The time and place of my choosing. I'm choosing now. You wouldn't be trying to renege upon a deal, now, would you?" "No!" She snarled the word with altogether too many teeth bared in a feral sort of fury that suggested she might be more than a little tempted to bite him. Ah, well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. He'd taken quite a few risks in his life which would have been deemed reckless in the extreme by anyone else. It always came down to whether or not the reward was worth the risk, whether one's intrinsic understanding of a situation could be manipulated to one's benefit. His was not exhaustive, but he had learned one thing at least: his sweet little ladylike wife could be baited. That was absolutely worth manipulating. And if he did it correctly, she wouldn't even realize it until it was too damned late. "Seems to me you are," he said, allowing just a shred of mockery to weave through his voice. "I'd not taken you for a coward, but—" "Oooh!" The sound of raw fury crackled through the air between them, and she turned toward him at last with a forceful little movement, her knee wedging itself against his thigh. Her hands seized the lapels of his coat, wrenching him closer with a violence he could scarcely credit her with. And with the glint of ire igniting within her hazy blue eyes, she jammed her mouth over his. His puff of laughter was smothered beneath the pressure of her mouth. "Phoebe," he said, though with his lips crushed against his teeth, it came out more like Feevee . But she was determined to meet the stipulations to which she had agreed, and ignored him with an iron tenacity seldom seen among her sort. If he could just— ah . He slipped one arm beneath her pointed elbow, found the small of her back, slid his palm up the rigid line of her spine and plunged his fingers into the curls that dripped down from their pins. The humidity of the orangery had rendered them less stiff, drooping from the perfect tight coils that had been made of them into soft ringlets that slid through his fingers. He raked his fingers through those ringlets, seized a handful of them, and held—not enough pressure to hurt, but enough to claim a whisper's worth of distance from the vengeful pressure of her mouth. "Enough, you spiteful little shrew," he said on a ragged laugh. "And lest you consider it, be warned: I will bite back." A shiver slipped down her spine at the warning, but perversely her strained muscles softened, the points of her elbows no longer half so tight and guarded. And when he laid his mouth over hers once again, she did not treat it like a battle to be won, striving to gain dominance over him. Instead she parted her lips to admit the thrust of his tongue and listed toward him, surrendering the last of her anger on a sweet sigh. Probably it wouldn't last. But at least she would remember this when next he'd given her cause to be furious. He didn't have to fight the points of her elbows to get his other arm around her, and if the position itself was awkward, threatening to wrench his back out of alignment, well, then, that was just the price of pleasure, the cost of gaining the luxury of flicking her buttons free of their loops with a deft dexterity that ensured she hadn't noticed until he'd already slid his hand within the parted fabric. She gasped into his mouth as he found the place where her short stays ended just beneath the high waist of her gown, where there was only the thin linen of her chemise to protect her skin from his. The misty heat of her flesh seeped through the fine material, scorching his fingers. Hell . Women wore altogether too many clothes, but he liked the muted whimper she gave as the chemise rasped her sensitive flesh, the way the laces of her stays tangled in the grip of his fingers. He liked the way she tasted like the faint sweetness of sugary tea. He liked the way she strained to get closer, her fingers smoothing the fabric of his lapels from the wrinkles her fists had pressed into them as one hand inched toward his shoulder, and the other—the other slid through the hair at the nape of his neck. She had learned from him, too. Learned that he liked the scrape of her nails through his hair, and she wielded that knowledge against him with innocent ardor. The sweetly floral scent of roses overwhelmed his senses; a scent he'd only ever found pleasing when paired with the heat of her skin. And now the taste of her tongue. God help him, he doubted he would be able to manage a casual stroll through a garden without raging erection hereafter. But the damned angle—she made no protest as he lifted her across his lap, only a soft murmur of confusion which quieted itself swiftly as she let him settle her as he wanted, her legs bent beneath her and splayed over his lap, skirt stretched to its widest width and banded across her thighs. He wondered if she had noticed that he'd had to wrench her skirts up past her knees to manage it, and decided she had not. Or if she had, she hadn't cared. She had found a place to settle, if not comfortably, then still with ardent enthusiasm, her breasts flattened against his chest and her knees pinching his hips between them. Her bodice was still too tight to peel her out of it without her cooperation, which she wasn't likely to give—not when she was entertaining herself with tiny nibbles across his lower lip. He let her do as she pleased, let her have a few precious moments of experimentation as he cupped the nape of her neck in one hand and slid the other beneath her dress to find the silky skin of her thigh. That she had noticed. Her knees nipped about his hips, and she drew a tiny breath of surprise. The ghost of a shudder. A moment of hesitation, indecision, her fingers clenching in his hair as she pulled her mouth away from his. But the protest he'd expected didn't come. Instead there was just the press of her cheek against his own, the panting of her breath in his ear as he smoothed his fingers up the damp skin of her thigh. And God, she was so soft, so wet, the petals of her private flesh parting beneath the tender strokes of his fingers. She had so much passion within her. How had she convinced herself she didn't have these sorts of desires? They had all come pouring out with only a kiss, and now she rocked instinctively against him, seeking a deeper connection. It was a damned pity he'd not had the foresight to prepare a condom in advance. He pressed a kiss against the side of her neck, where that rose scent was strong and sweet, and the mist of sweat salted her skin. "That was…passable," he said, and stifled a laugh at the way her shoulders went rigid with offense. "But only half of my conditions have been met." In the sudden froth of fury that slipped over her, that passion-flush that had gilded her cheeks deepened to scarlet. "You said now ," she said in a guttural growl against his ear. "Mm. You didn't give me a chance to specify where." He'd provoked her into an attack, and it had been delightful. But he was not above a little manipulation. Just a tiny nudge to get more than she'd anticipated giving. Not that it would take much. Even in the renewed burst of anger that had claimed her, still she sought the idle strokes of his fingers. Light, stirring—but not quite enough. A baited hook cast into the water to reel in a larger prize. Her fingernails kneaded his shoulder. "The orangery," she said, though there was just the tiniest hint of confusion within the husky murmur of her voice. "I assumed—" "Your mistake," he said. "I meant here." A slow, lingering stroke, and for just a moment her eyes went heavy-lidded. Only a moment. And then they flashed wide. "You're joking," she said. Half hopeful, half titillated. "I am not." Another stroke coaxed forth a shiver. He could feel those claws even through the thick material of his coat. "You're going to sit on my face, and I'm going to kiss you right—here."

∞∞∞

"I feel very foolish," Phoebe said, with an awkward shift. "What if someone comes in?" "Nobody's going to come into the orangery at such an hour," Chris said reasonably. "And if they should—well, they'll rethink it quick enough. Now stop squirming and hold onto the arm of the bench." How had she let herself be talked into this? There was no dignity in it, nor even a shred of decency besides. She comforted herself that it had to be dreadfully dark beneath the layers of skirts and petticoats he was working on wrenching into some sort of order. And between the frothy layers of fabric and the humidity within the orangery itself, it also had to be terribly hot. "You're bound to suffocate," she warned. Something that might've been a laugh. "I'd rather go out with my head between your thighs than with a lead ball in my back," he said, and then his fingers slid up the outside of her legs, curving over her bottom to lift her toward him. Her knees, pressed into the wood of the bench beneath her, trembled at the touch. Her fingernails bit into the arm of the bench on either side of where his head rested. It couldn't be a comfortable position for him, but at least the length of the bench had allowed him to stretch out. She'd agreed to this. She knew what he planned to do. And still it was a shock to feel the puff of his breath against the private curls between her thighs. He murmured something that was all but lost beneath the plume of her skirts, but had sounded vaguely approving, and then—then his tongue touched her. A slow lap that streaked across her skin like a brush of flame, sending sparks skittering throughout every raw nerve. A strangled cry wrenched itself from her lungs. " Kit !" It hadn't been a conscious choice to say it so much as it had been pulled from behind the clench of her teeth. But she knew from the way he tensed between the pinch of her knees that he had heard it, that he had—some opinion that would presently make itself known. His right hand released the globe of her bottom, and he wielded it instead to draw up layers and layers of her skirts. His head emerged at last, brows drawn down into a scowl. " What did you say?" Those icy eyes bored into hers. "I—ah—" Phoebe licked her dry lips, her knuckles flexing upon the arm of the bench. "Kit," she said at last, though it had come out more like an inquiry than a statement. A long, tense moment stretched out, and she felt her face growing hotter and hotter with each second that elapsed, the sting of humiliation prickling upon her skin. "All right, then," he said at last, as if he were extending to her a magnanimous grace which she was ill-equipped to appreciate. And he fluffed her skirts once more and disappeared back beneath. She hardly had time to consider what had happened before his mouth was on her again—not in soft, tender strokes, but with a sort of primitive hunger that surpassed even her wildest expectations. She could feel a drop of sweat trickling down between her breasts, feel her skin catching fire as her hips arched instinctively into the touch of his tongue. His name dripped from her lips in a symphony, a litany, her back arching until every muscle felt tight and strained as sensation piled atop sensation until she had reached the very edge of what she could bear. But his fingers dug into the soft flesh of her bottom when she would have shied away, holding her precisely where he wanted her. "Christ," he said against her skin, and even the reverberations of his voice provoked a gasp. "I can feel you—you're going to come on my tongue." The silky satisfaction in his voice barely penetrated the strange haze that fogged her mind. She could think of nothing but the flick of his tongue, the gentle suction of his lips, the fierce pressure of his hands, and then—a great fracturing of her self into tiny splintering shards. A wild cry bounced off the glass walls of the orangery, assaulting her ears with the evidence of her own pleasure. Tension dissolved into seafoam as she wilted in the heady aftermath, her chest heaving with the effort to regain the breath that had been stolen from her. She had lived through it. But only just. And it had shaken her to the core.