Chapter 13

On the carriage ride to her new home, Emily wondered if it were possible to actually die of humiliation.

One part of her hoped so. If it were possible, that was certainly her imminent fate. And then she'd be too dead to worry about things like people taking bets on whether or not she would be left at the altar. That gossip columnist would probably lose a night of sleep or two over it, too.

Poor, dead Emily, everyone would say at her funeral. We should have been nicer to her.

A larger part of her (though at this particular moment it did not feel much larger) hoped such a thing was impossible. Because, well, life. And her sisters. And friends. People who loved her even though she was a tragic figure who got appalling offers from drunkards in the middle of the street on her wedding day.

Although she did manage to almost smile when she saw the way her new husband was shaking out his hand. It had been rather satisfying—flattering, even—to see him flatten the lout with a single blow.

It had been, additionally, impressive in a way that made Emily feel…things.

She stifled a sigh. Apparently, she would live after all.

"My mother has moved to the dower house," her husband said abruptly after they'd been traveling for a few minutes, only the clattering of the wheels against the cobblestoned streets breaking the silence.

"Oh," she said when he looked as though he was waiting for a response. "Good?"

He nodded though he did not look entirely satisfied. "Yes. It is good. You are the Countess now—" Oh, Lord help her, she was a countess now. "—so it will be good for you to get to settle into the house without its former mistress underfoot. I doubt I shall be able to keep her at bay forever, but we shall have some time to ourselves."

"Right," she said. Her mouth was suddenly very dry. Why was her mouth so dry? It could not possibly be due to any alarm at the prospect of having time with her new husband. Uninterrupted time.

Time where they might, with the approval of God and Society, do…

Things.

"Right," he echoed as if waiting for her to say more.

She looked out the carriage window. How interesting she found the streets of Mayfair! She wasn't avoiding his gaze because she was a coward! No! Not at all!

She thought she heard her new husband sigh, but surely, he was too dignified for that.

Emily spent the remainder of the ride letting the phrase time to ourselves bounce around her head, the ball of nerves it generated growing larger and larger by the minute.

Death by humiliation was apparently impossible, but perhaps death by anxiety was still a possible outcome.

She tried very hard to focus on other things, she really did. It helped somewhat that, when they arrived at Moore Manor, there was the staff to greet and a tour to undertake. She found, however, that her mind kept traveling back to the tall, upright man who stood at her side, the stern man who had essentially herded her into marriage with him.

The man who had given her letters that could help her understand her friend's death.

The man who had punched a drunkard for her.

The man who had held her hand throughout the wedding ceremony to help her feel less afraid.

Really, it was all too confusing.

She was reminded, not for the first time in her life, to be careful what she wished for, however, when the housekeeper concluded their tour by leading them back to the front hall where they'd begun just at the same moment that the Dowager Countess of Moore swept imperiously through the front doors.

"Mother!" the Earl snapped, his voice a furious snarl.

Emily looked up at him in surprise. She wasn't sure she'd ever heard him sound quite this irritated, not even when she was doing her best to needle him into an absolute fury.

The Dowager Countess frowned at her son, not even sparing a single glance for Emily. Emily found she could not be overly sorry about this. This was the first time she'd faced the woman who might have known something about Grace's murder since she'd read the Dowager Countess' letters. It was hard to imagine that this woman, whose dress was cut inappropriately low—especially given that she'd only just come from her own son's wedding—and who was wearing too much rouge, could have been in cahoots with a hired killer.

And yet Emily had read the letters. Her new husband's mother had known that Dowling was a murderer. And she'd done nothing.

Or rather, she'd done nothing right. She had done something—she'd blackmailed him for her own gain.

Only a lifetime of training in propriety kept Emily from shaking her head in disgust.

"What?" the Dowager Countess asked her son, a distinct whine in her voice. "Do you always need to be quite so cross with me, Benedict?"

"You," he said through clenched teeth, "are meant to be at the dower house."

The Dowager gave him a pitying look. "Well, I am going, am I not? Or did you think I shouldn't pick up my bags before I decamp? Would you like me to be without clothing or food, Benedict?"

This was, Emily felt, a tad dramatic.

"Of course not." The Earl was practically vibrating with annoyance. If Emily didn't so vehemently dislike the Dowager Countess, she might have considered taking notes on the older woman's technique. At present, Emily and her new husband were in something of a truce, but that didn't mean Emily would never again wish to bedevil him.

After all, the previous incidents had ended in a highly satisfying manner.

Except, no. She wasn't thinking of that. She was still on a strict no-kissing regime.

"But," the Earl went on, "you were meant to have already moved over there. Before the wedding."

The Dowager shuddered in an exaggerated motion. "Why, don't be ridiculous. Why should I spend one more minute than is strictly necessary in that awful, dour place?"

"It's a fine house," the Earl began. His mother spoke right over him.

"Besides, I know you were caught in a compromising position with your—" Now she did finally look at Emily; her eyes were shining with disdain. "—wife, but I rather assumed that you could control yourselves long enough for me to gather my things."

Emily gasped at the crass implication. How dare this woman…? And about her own son!

The Dowager Countess' expression flickered between victory and pity, as if Emily were so obviously pathetic that it didn't even need to be said.

"I warned you to watch your tongue, Mother," the Earl said tersely. "I will not repeat myself again. If you wish to remain welcome in this house, you will not speak out against my wife again—not overtly nor in implication," he added when the Dowager Countess opened her mouth, clearly intending to argue that she hadn't actually said anything untoward.

Emily felt the tiniest flicker of pleasure at being defended.

The Dowager, meanwhile, was clearly furious.

"Fine," she said, thrusting her nose in the air. "If you wish to be that way, I cannot see that I have any way of stopping you. I shall gather my things and go. I know better than to stay where I'm not wanted."

"If only that were true," the Earl muttered under his breath.

Emily wasn't sure if she was shocked at this or if she wanted to laugh. In the end, she was blessedly free from having to choose as the housekeeper (a brilliant woman, Emily decided, who need a raise posthaste) took that moment to draw Emily aside with a detailed question about the upcoming week's menus that could have easily waited another day…or three.

Despite the distinct lack of urgency to the task, Emily let herself be drawn into a lengthy conversation about butchers and cuts of meat, grateful both for the comfortable terrain and for the distraction from her new mother-in-law's departure.

For, indeed, by the time Emily was returned to her husband's side, his mother had (with several annoyed sighs that went unanswered) decamped for her temporary lodgings at the dower house. And if the Earl looked slightly put out, Emily decided to believe this was because his mother was (it must be said) rather trying and not because he'd been abandoned barely an hour into his marriage.

"There you are," he said irritably when she found him pacing in the upstairs hallway, putting an end to Emily's pleasant fiction that he hadn't been irritated at her. "Where were you?"

"My apologies, My Lord," she murmured politely. "I was speaking with the housekeeper regarding my domestic obligations."

To her surprise, this made his frown deepen. Goodness gracious, if he wasn't the most impossible man alive! Weren't men meant to be pleased when their wives did…wifely things? But oh no, not this man. When she was quarrelsome, he didn't like it; when she was demure, he also didn't like it.

Maybe he had some sort of rare medical condition, she allowed, one that had rotted the part of his brain that most people dedicated to not being utter prats all the time. Perhaps a medical journal would like to write about him. She should make inquiries.

"What?" she demanded, her resolve to behave correctly weakening under the weight of her frustration.

"You shouldn't call me that," he said, his annoyed mumble containing a hint of sheepishness.

What in the…? She had no idea what he was on about. "Call you what?" she asked.

"'My Lord,'" he replied. Whatever bashfulness he might have felt over this current absurdity was quickly being overwritten by snappishness. How utterly typical. "You shouldn't call me that. I'm your husband. It's ridiculous."

That was… Well, it was annoyingly reasonable in a way that made her want to snap at him. She summoned the part of herself that had spent a lifetime practicing how to not shout at the twins seventy-four times per day and took a deep breath before responding.

"What would you prefer I call you?" she asked, her tone remarkably controlled if she did say so herself.

He scowled again, but this one seemed pro forma. "My name is Benedict," he said. "Try that."

She had to take another deep breath.

"Very well," she said. "Benedict."

She'd meant for the word to come out exasperated. For one, she was exasperated. He didn't need, after all, to be so eager to jump to offense. For another, it seemed a way to show that she was onto him, that she understood his cantankerousness was more bark than bite while remaining within the bounds of propriety.

Instead, it came out…

Breathy.

Drat, she thought, her thought somehow also sounding breathy. If I wanted to change the mood, I've managed the thing nicely…

Benedict was no longer looking at her like he was annoyed. No, now he was looking at her with heat. With hunger.

She took an involuntary step backwards. A predator's smile spread across her husband's lips, and oh, Emily's body remembered how those lips felt against her own, against her jaw, against the pulse of her throat which now pounded and raced.

"Say it again," he purred.

She shook her head, an instinctual protest. It was unreasonable, she knew. She had to call him something, after all—they were now bound for life, and wasn't that quite a thought. He'd already disallowed polite address, and he was not the type to allow trite nicknames.

His given name would have to do.

But she feared if she gave in on this, she'd end up giving in on everything.

Yes, whispered a traitorous voice. Do that. Give in.

And because Benedict really, truly was the most contrary man alive, her refusal—her foolish, nonsensical refusal—was the thing that seemed to please him. He prowled forward. She stepped back and bumped into the wall.

"Come now, Emily," he said. This, she felt, was an object lesson on why she should not cede to this demand. When he said her name, after all, it didn't feel like a mere word. It felt like a caress.

And then it was a caress, his fingertips reaching out to touch her elbow—Emily had never before paid such attention to her shoulder—before sliding up her arm in a glancing touch.

She didn't know whether she should jerk away or lean in to get more of the contact. Trapped between the two, she stayed utterly still.

Benedict, however, did not. Leaving gooseflesh in his wake, he trailed his fingers up and up, skipping over the short sleeve of her wedding dress, then across the shelf of her collarbone, up her throat, and around the edge of her jaw. He twined his fingers into her hair and gripped.

It didn't pull. It didn't hurt. But it was firm and undeniable, that grip.

Something fragile inside Emily trembled under the pressure of it, threatened to break.

Yes, said the traitorous voice again. Yes.

Stubbornly, she rebelled, steeling herself, even if nothing felt quite right about that choice.

"Emily," he prodded again, the tiniest, barest hint of a mocking lilt to the word. "I'm waiting."

He leaned in, his frame perfectly sized to let him curl all around her. She could feel the heat of him from her toes to her crown. She could feel the gentle brush of his breath against her cheek.

True to his word, he waited.

He waited and waited with some sort of wretched wellspring of eternal patience, the only movement in him that gentle flow of his breathing. His grip in her hair remained firm, unyielding. She thought she might die if he let go.

And something in the surety of that grip freed her just enough to close her eyes and whisper his name, something in her certain that this wasn't just giving in, that this was being brave. Something in her certain that those two things were more related than they seemed.

"Benedict," she said, letting the word grow as breathy and syrupy and warm as she felt inside.

His hand clenched tighter—he didn't let go—as his mouth came crashing down on hers.

It was more of a kiss than the ones they'd shared previously, more heat, more fury, more passion, more everything. It was a cliff, the highest mountain, and Emily wanted to throw herself off it. He'd catch her, wouldn't he? He was still holding on.

She opened as his tongue invaded, wanting more, more, always more. His body surged against hers, pressing her firmly against the wall, his free hand clenched in a fist beside her head, the veins bulging at the wrists. The sight of those veins, the controlled strength they indicated, touched her straight down to her bones as he kissed viciously against her pulse point.

It was all so good that she almost didn't care that they were still standing in a hallway. Almost.

"Benedict," she moaned which made his attack on her neck become even more vigorous. He was going to leave a mark, something that, oddly enough, filled her with a sense of satisfaction. "Benedict, wait?—"

The groan that ripped from him was agony. "No, Emily. No, please?—"

Oh, no. He thought she meant wait as stop, and goodness, she didn't want that either.

"No," she said, interrupting, her words coming out as gasps. "Not—I just meant—hallway."

It was the best she could do when her mind only wanted to conjure words like yes and more and surrender.

Benedict—and she liked the way his name sounded on her tongue, the way it felt in her mind, now that she was growing used to it—blinked like he was coming out of a trance. He looked at the hallway like it was he, not she, who was new to this house.

"Hallway," he echoed. "Fuck."

The combination of his startled tone and the profanity on the lips of her eternally stern husband shocked a laugh out of Emily. When he turned from staring bemusedly at their surroundings to staring bemusedly at her, she realized it was the first time he'd ever made her laugh. The thought made her want to laugh again, and she nearly did, except Benedict took that moment to glance at the hallway again and step back, releasing her.

The loss of his grasp, of the way he pressed against her, was like a shock of cold water.

He grabbed her again in an instant, his hold coming firm about her wrist as he dragged her into one of the bedrooms—she wasn't paying good enough attention and lacked sufficiently familiarity with the house to know if it was her bedchamber or his—before he grasped her again, bringing her face back to his with both hands.

And it was a good kiss. It was. She felt it course through her veins like little sparks, making her hot and dizzy.

It just…wasn't the same.

She wasn't the puddle she'd been outside, wasn't feeling her bones turn to mush within her. She kept being distracted by the cool air at her back and that annoying little internal voice, the one she'd been trying to silence before, was now gone. She did not, she found, care for it. Not one bit.

She pushed up on her toes, pushed closer and closer and closer to Benedict, hoping to find that this was the thing that let her dissolve again. But it wasn't. It didn't. She remained firm—rigid, even.

Benedict noticed. He pulled back, frowning.

"What's wrong?" he demanded and for once, Emily was certain that his clear irritation wasn't at her. "Are you—Emily, we can wait?—"

She shook her head sharply, cutting him off. She didn't want less, didn't want to stop. She wanted more.

She just didn't know how to get it.

She glanced at the nothingness over her shoulder like this would provide some answer.

"I just—" she said, breaking off. She just what? "Can we—" She caught a glimpse of the armchairs sitting before the fire and thought of the kisses in the parlor, thought of the settee. Perhaps that might…?

She nodded in that direction. "Can we stand over there?" she asked, praying he didn't command her to explain herself. She couldn't explain herself.

But maybe, she realized as her husband's eyes tracked over her in careful, assessing motion, intelligence glinting in his gaze—maybe Benedict could explain.

Slowly, achingly slowly, his hand came up again, an echo of the path it had followed in the hallway. Only this time, his fingers didn't make contact with her skin, didn't touch her at all, in fact.

Not until they entered her hair with a firm, controlling, claiming grasp.

Yes. The voice was back. Yes, yes.

Her breath left her like a sigh.

A smile threatened at the edges of Benedict's mouth. "Do you like this, wife?" he asked. There was no doubt what he meant—no hiding from it, not when there was only this one point of contact between them.

But Emily couldn't lie.

"Yes," she whispered, certain, somehow, that she should feel ashamed of this.

But she didn't. She didn't feel an ounce of shame and in fact, felt a warm glow of pride when Benedict let out a strangled groan.

"Oh yes," he murmured, voice throaty of approval. "You are a very good girl, aren't you?"

Emily's cheeks blazed and a whimper escaped her lips. But even so, she nodded, the movement causing his grip in her hair to tighten and loosen just a smidgen.

His grin was marvelously wicked as he took her mouth again.

His grip on her was firm, and while it wasn't as comforting as the wall at her back, it was enough to let her relax into the embrace, to meet his tongue with hers, to let her hands rise to meet his chest, pressing against him to check the surety of his hold even as she never wanted to be separated from him.

It was enough that she scarcely even noticed when he began maneuvering her, deftly steering past any obstacles. She walked backward, following the urging of that grip, of the guiding pressure of his body against hers.

She very much noticed, however, when the back of her knees hit the edge of the bed, when Benedict pushed her with just enough extra force that she topped back onto it, the soft mattress and plush duvet enveloping her in an instant. She couldn't have even tried to push herself up before he was climbing atop the mattress as well, his legs on either side of hers, his weight lowering atop her.

He was a tall man, a strong man. He was heavy. Very heavy.

It was perfect.

The groan that escaped her was meant to have words, she was nearly sure of it. She just had no earthly idea what those words were supposed to have been.

When Benedict chuckled lowly against the side of her throat, she trembled.

"Oh, yes," he murmured, his lips brushing against her skin. She wanted to pull him closer, heavier atop her, but her arms were pinned, and she made no effort to get them free. "Is this better, darling girl?"

"Yes," she managed, very pleased with herself that she'd spoken in coherent English. "Benedict."

His breath sharpened when she said his name. She liked that, too.

For all that she saw the signs that he was nearly as affected as she by this…curious type of embrace, his voice was silky and sinuous as he spoke, his lips seeking hers.

"Let's try this again, shall we?"

And so they did.

It was easier like this, Emily noticed with a rush of relief that felt nearly euphoric. Her mind wasn't urging her to notice a thousand different things. After all, there was nothing else she could notice.

There was the bed beneath her and Benedict above her. For these precious moments, they were her whole world. It was simple. Blissful.

And that wicked, greedy voice inside her hissed, More.

Benedict—who really might have been a mind-reader; she'd have to investigate this later—noticed this, too. Or maybe it wasn't that subtle, she thought, when he pulled his mouth back from hers, and she realized that her hips had been canting up against his body, seeking…something.

She was, she had to say, well and truly bloody tired of this not knowing business.

He looked down on her, his dark, serious brows furrowed. She squirmed under the probing intensity of that gaze which felt good enough that she squirmed again. He didn't budge—except for his hand which came down firmly on her hip.

"Stop that," he ordered sternly. Emily's body ignored him—though her mind would have done the same, were it still in control of the situation. He pressed more firmly. "Emily, stop, you'll ruin me?—"

She squirmed harder, and he sucked in a sharp inhale, his eyes closing briefly. When he opened them again, fire shone in his gaze.

"You," he said lowly, "are very wicked."

She shook her head. She really wasn't…at least, not usually. "No, I'm?—"

He silenced her with a kiss.

"No more tricks, wife," he said, the words almost playful as he pulled back. The only thing that disrupted their lightness was the intensity in his face. "You've shown me well enough what you need, you perfect little thing."

The praise silenced her protests even as it stoked the restless heat within her. He moved with slow, deliberate precision as he moved her arms so that they were no longer tucked beneath his weight but instead pinned beneath her own. It was an odd position but one that Emily found oddly reassuring. Even as he pulled his weight off her, movements languorous, she did not feel that gaping nothingness that had bothered her when they'd stood in the middle of the room.

Somehow, staying in the position he'd assigned her made her feel as though his hands were still upon her, even as he regained his feet, pausing a moment to loom over her, eyes searching the long stretch of her form.

"Beautiful," he murmured, and she could barely breathe. Nobody had ever considered her, too tall, too prim Emily Rutley, beautiful.

"I—" she said. I'm not. It had been on the tip of her tongue, but she didn't want to deny it.

And the look on her husband's face suggested, in no uncertain terms, that she'd regret it if she did. And as much as she, as a general rule, liked to annoy him, the roiling want inside her told her that now was really not the time.

So, she swallowed her protests, pushed back any sense of propriety that threatened to reveal itself, and said the honest thing.

"Please, Benedict."

It wasn't clear in the slightest as far as requests went, but he—not that she'd ever admit it—was some sort of genius because he seemed to understand her perfectly.

His gaze didn't leave hers as he bent just enough, so he could grasp a handful of her skirts, raising them slowly.

"Do you know what I think, Emily?" he asked, sly as the devil. "I think that you are a lie, wrapped up in a prim little package."

She sucked in a breath. She didn't even know what that meant, but goodness, it had to be criticism, didn't it?

But his smirk suggested otherwise.

"Oh, yes," he said, almost to himself. "You pretend to be oh so proper. A wallflower. Miss Rutley, who never causes a scandal." Her skirts were past the edges of her stockings now, the hem grazing against her thighs. The gentle rasp was loud as gunfire.

"But that's just a mask, isn't it?" he teased. His fingers were trailing up her skin now, too, the sensation obliterating the lingering feeling of her skirts. "Beneath all that, you are the most tempting woman in the world, and I am merely the only one lucky enough to see it."

Lucky? Her mind caught on the word, uncomprehending. He couldn't possibly look at everything between them and still call himself lucky, could he?

But he didn't look like he was lying. He looked like he was…

Well, she might have said happy if he didn't also look like he planned to devour her whole, a prospect she greeted with an entirely inappropriate sense of excitement. He pulled her skirts up those last inches, until all of her was bared to him and her frock puddled awkwardly around her waist.

Except even that sense of awkwardness was so fleeting that she scarcely noticed it. Because he was looking down at her like she was beautiful. Like he was lucky.

Just then, it felt like possibility and hope.

His eyes flicked up from where they'd been focused on her bare flesh—which should have mortified her but very much did not—to meet her gaze.

"Would you like me to give in to that temptation, Emily?" he asked, the curving twist of his smirk leaving her breathless.

"Benedict, yes."

She wasn't certain what she was agreeing to, but she didn't care—Lord, how good it felt to not care, to know that she could be reckless, that she could just be.

Because he would be there, firm and steady as her weight upon her.

"Yes," he echoed, his hands dropping to clasp her, right above her knees. He pried her legs further apart, his firm grip brooking no argument until the stretch was a glorious ache. He dropped to his knees before her, and if there was a moment where she ought to have been embarrassed, it truly was now when she was laid out before him for his leisurely perusal.

The feeling did not come. In fact, the only shift in the happy, hungry mood that tumbled inside her came when Benedict cursed soundly and pulled his hands from her so he could shuck off his jacket and chuck it carelessly across the room. She could see him just well enough to register the movement and was able to get out one breathless laugh before he grasped her again, spreading her legs just the tiniest bit wider, and pressed his mouth to her.

The laughter died in her throat as ever particle of her being focused his feeling of his mouth against her. His lips and, oh, God, his tongue. Her breaths came out in panicked gasps, so many in a row that she felt nearly lightheaded or maybe that was just the effect of that wicked, irritating, talented mouth on her too hot flesh.

"Oh my," she heard herself say. "Oh my, oh my."

She thought it was possible—maybe even likely—that Benedict was smiling. But she decided not to care about that, either. Not just then.

How could she care about whatever inane nonsense coming out of her own mouth when her husband released one of her legs, wedging his shoulder against her so that she couldn't close her legs even an iota, and trailed his fingers closer and closer to her center? Closer and closer until he wasn't approaching, he was there and then inside, pressing against her in a place she hadn't ever imagined existed.

Still pinned beneath her body, her fingers clenched in the soft fabric of the duvet, squeezing so tightly that she would have worried about tearing the clearly expensive spread were she not so thoroughly distracted by other things.

Heat spiraled within her, winding her up like a spring, tighter and tighter even as, no matter how contradictory it seemed, lazy heat floated through her. And then he moved just right, touched her so perfectly. She ruptured, shattered, detonated. Her back arched, her whole body focused in on her pleasure, waves wracking through her until she was left as nothing more than an exhausted, wrung out puddle of bliss.

Oh, she thought. It was the best she could manage.

"That," she said, her voice sounding slurred like she'd overindulged in spirits. "Nice."

She felt sure that she'd missed some words in there, but it was hard to imagine what they should have been. Puddles, after all, were not known for their oratory skills.

And besides, the low chuckle that left her husband's mouth at her garbled nonsense made her feel warm and cozy inside.

So she just lay there, limp as a rag doll, as Benedict slipped off her shoes and unlaced the back of her gown and corset, already drifting off into sleep as he left her in chemise and stockings, a blanket draped carefully over her form.

It was no doubt, she knew, far too early to head to bed, but between the fuzziness of her mind and the heaviness of her limbs, she felt it impossible to worry about that overmuch. It had been, after all, a dreadfully long day, what with waking up as Miss Emily Rutley and going to bed as Emily Hoskins, the deliciously debauched Countess of Moore.

Surely tomorrow was soon enough to become responsible again, she thought sleepily. And perhaps Benedict would help her. That would be nice.

The thought brought a smile to her face as she slipped into slumber, too far gone to realize that her husband was leaving the room and closing the door behind him with a decisive, ominous click.