Willow rarely, if ever, indulged in temper fits.
Fits of temper solved nothing; they were largely illogical, and honestly, who in her life would indulge her? Her parents didn’t care, and Mr. Fisk cared so much that no temper was necessary.
But today? Today, she bumped up against some unforeseen limit and burst through.
Willow was a lifelong planner, a writer of lists, a packer of umbrellas on cloudy days, a tester of three shades of black paint before she committed to the perfect ebony. But how could she plan her life if she was only provided with the most pertinent details in the last moment?
If only Cassin had mentioned that he would not spend even one night at Leland Park after the wedding, she could have prepared some excuse for her mother and relatives or planned to leave at the same time.
It wasn’t a catastrophic oversight, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And the more she raged, the angrier she became.
As a rule, her packing technique was orderly and thoughtful, but now her trunk was in shambles. It would have to be redone. Poor Perry. She’d veritably shouted at the maid to get her out.
And now . . . this.
“Are you ready to be my wife in every way?” Cassin breathed, looking at her through half-lidded eyes. “Is that why you’ve led me here?”
“What?” she rasped, breathless. “I’ve led you nowhere. You followed me.”
“We were having a conversation,” he said, “and you continued walking away.” His mouth was so close she could feel his breath on her skin. Shivers rolled down her arms. She listed toward him, and he wrapped his large hands around her waist.
“No,” she said carefully, fighting for lucidity, “a conversation would be something like, ‘Now that we’ve had the ceremony, how should we manage these next few days?’ And I would say, ‘I cannot say for sure, Cassin. What do you think?’ And you might have said, ‘Let us weigh the—’ ”
He dropped his mouth to hers and kissed her.
Consciousness took flight, spiraling upward, while their bodies snapped together like magnets.
One minute she’d been having two sides of a hypothetical conversation, and the next he was kissing her, and oh good lord, yes . . .
How she had missed the all-consuming feel of his kiss, the strength of his body pressed against her, the steadiness of his large hands gripping her. Without hesitation, she looped her arms around his neck.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” he panted, “I am incapable of conversing with you, sweetheart, because every sensible, provoking thing you say makes me stupid with lust.”
“And all this time, I thought you were just stu—”
He cut her off with a throaty laugh and another kiss. She laughed, too, laughed and kissed him, tangling her fingers into his hair.
“Your bedroom is like a harem enclave,” he growled, pulling away to breathe.
“It’s merely white . . . virginal,” she countered, seeking his mouth.
He pulled away to laugh. “In no way is it virginal.” He widened his stance to grab her by the bottom and rake her against him, descending on her mouth again.
The embrace was almost immediately familiar. The rare and precious contact they’d stolen before informed him of where his hands fit, of how to slide them down the curve of her waist until he reached exactly the right spot, of how to squeeze and grind her against him until she cried out in pleasure. She knew the angle at which to tilt her head, she knew that if she dropped her head back, he would move to her exposed neck, kissing and sucking and scraping her with the roughness of his beard.
Faintly, in the back of her mind, there was so much more to say. She had been earnestly angry about being the last to know. And she would hear more about his visit to Aunt Mary’s. But this . . . this kiss . . . seemed to take urgent precedence over any words that could be effectively spoken, almost as if every non-kissing thing they’d managed that day had been a half effort, playacting, until the urgent business of what they really wanted finally collided them together.
After, she thought idly, holding his head to hers. After the kiss, we will speak.
“I’ve wanted you since the last time,” he breathed, sweeping his hands up her body to cradle her face. “I wanted you every moment in your workshop. I thought I would expire from wanting you.”
I’m expiring now, she thought, and he scooped her up by the bottom, higher his time, entirely off the ground. He bounced her once to slide his hands from her hips to her thighs, urging her legs around his hips.
She complied without thinking, laughing at how natural it felt, and he carried her, face-to-face, to the bed.
And now he dumped her backward into the fluffy white coverlet. The lace canopy swung into view above her, but only for a moment because he followed her down and fell on top of her.
She laughed again and reached for him, reveling in the hard, solid weight of him. She buried her fingers in his hair and kissed him as if he would sail for Barbadoes in the next five minutes—which, she thought idly, he might do. She whimpered at the thought and kissed him harder.
“This is madness,” he mumbled, grazing his fingers beneath the shoulder of her gown, nudging the fabric down. Lower still, just beneath the top of the bodice, his fingers sliding to the neckline. She arched, willing him to feel lower, deeper. “Yes,” she said.
He groaned and followed his fingers with his mouth, kissing first her shoulder and then licking his way down to her breasts. Willow whimpered and raised her knees, wanting urgent closeness. He grabbed her leg through her skirt and hitched it higher on his hip and held it there, aligning their bodies in a way that caused Willow’s eyes to fly open. She blinked at the canopy again, seeing nothing, and raised the other knee. Cassin laughed and nudged the neckline of her gown lower, setting her skin aflame with his whisker-bristled chin.
She was just about to wrap her legs around his waist, to hook her feet at the ankles and arch up, when they heard a scream from the doorway, followed by a chorus of barking.
The sound shattered the haze of pleasure and desire, and they froze.
Perry stood in the open doorway with her hands clasped over her eyes. Her mother’s five dogs milled at her feet.
Cassin swore, breathing hard, and rested his forehead against her temple. She dropped her legs, and his hands slid away. He rolled off of her and lay beside her, panting at the canopy. Willow bit her lip and tried to steady her breath. Perry pivoted to run, but Willow called out to her. “Perry, wait!”
Cassin swore again, louder this time.
She sat up. “Perry, wait.”
The maid reappeared in the open doorway, her hands still clasped over her eyes. “Begging your pardon, my lady,” she said.
Willow slid from the bed and smoothed the shoulder and neckline of her gown. “You may open your eyes, Perry. It was unthinkably rude of us to . . . forget ourselves with the door open. But we are recovered now.” Cassin remained splayed across the bed with his arm over his eyes. She kicked his boot.
“But my lady,” said Perry, walking into the room with her eyes still covered. “What about the silk negligee? From France? With the silver lace and matching slippers?”
Cassin groaned softly.
“No, no, it’s the middle of the day, and the earl was just leaving, actually. You caught us in a good-bye kiss that happened to . . . tip over. I apologize.”
Carefully, Perry dropped her hands from her eyes. “I told you it was a real wedding,” she said.
“Never mind that,” Willow said in a rush. “I’ve made a mess of the trunk, I’m afraid. We’ll need a second one for these last things from my bedchamber. Will you ask Abbott to send a footman with another? There should be more in the attic.”
Perry was staring down into the pile of possessions heaped into the open trunk, shaking her head. “Yes, my lady.” She shooed the dogs into the corridor. “Should I close the door, my lady?”
“Yes,” Willow said in the same moment that Cassin said, “No.”
***
“Is that what this was?” Cassin asked, sitting up in the bed, dropping his head in his hands. “A good-bye kiss?” His body was so hard he was in physical pain. He gritted his teeth against the impulse to reach for her hand and pull her back to him.
“My attitude toward consummating the marriage has not changed, Cassin,” she said. “I cope with things I cannot have by separating myself from them entirely.”
“You consider this”—he gestured to the bed—“to be separating yourself?”
Willow blushed. “I . . . I was carried away, but I did not intend to . . . that is . . . ” She cleared her throat. “Yes, it was a good-bye kiss. Ten minutes ago you were leaving Surrey within the hour. I’m fond of you, Cassin. Surely this is obvious to you.”
Something in the area of his heart shifted, a barricade held together by responsibility and fear. He knew he should interject, to stop her from saying things that he was not ready to reciprocate, but he could not. His gaze remained locked on her face. He waited like a prisoner awaits news of his parole.
She shrugged. “Every time you kiss me I grow, er, fonder. So there you have it. I deny us the consummation not to be tyrannical or prudish but to protect myself. We will have a business relationship until . . . well, until we do not have one. Whether that is because we have no relationship at all or whether you acknowledge some fondness for me remains to be seen.”
“Willow,” he said, “I am so blindingly fond of you that I nearly took you on your girlhood bed with the bloody door open.”
“This is not my girlhood bed.”
“The bed is not the point,” he ground out. “The point is that I can easily concede fondness for you, Willow, it’s simply that . . . ”
He ran a hand through his hair and shoved off the bed to pace. He would tell her about his uncle, he thought. It was no explanation, but it was . . . something.
“I had a visit from my uncle when I was in town.” He stopped and stared at her. She stepped away from the trunk into the light of the window, and his body surged again to full possessive attention. He resumed pacing. “It is more important than ever that the guano expedition begin as soon as possible and succeed as spectacularly as possible.”
“But what did your uncle want?” she asked.
“I’ve no wish to trouble you with him, but I cannot leave the country without giving you some awareness. There is a very small chance that he may seek you out, try to make your acquaintance. God knows what he might do.”
“But surely he has no notion of me.”
Cassin made a scoffing noise. “God forbid. Still, he managed to extract the news that I planned to marry and also that I would depart the country almost immediately afterward. His questions were endless. ‘What of this fresh supply of money? How do you plan to provide for Caldera after her dowry runs out?’ If he turns up, cut him immediately, Willow. Can you do that?”
She nodded, her turquoise eyes huge, and Cassin’s heart clenched in the earnestness of that look. She had been correct, of course. She was always correct. She deserved to know what drove his decisions and how they affected her.
“His threats to Caldera persist,” Cassin added. “In fact, they are mounting.”
“He would endeavor to take the earldom from you?”
Cassin shrugged. “If he knew a way, I’m sure he would.”
“So he wants . . . ” The question trailed off.
“Coal. Always coal. At any cost, even the safety of the men who descend into the earth to pound it out. He seems to have accepted the fact that I will not open the existing mines, but now he hounds me to excavate newer, deeper mines on the land—deep-shaft mines, they are called.”
“But Caldera and its mines, new or old, are not his to decide,” she said.
“One would assume. But he seems to believe that I can be convinced by a chorus of his like-minded coal hounds in London. He’s drawn up a proposal to form a joint-stock company to finance a deep-shaft mine on my land. He’s gone so far as to rally six or seven investors and counting. As if his lot of coal-rich bourgeoisie could sway me.”
She made a snorting noise, and he looked at her. “What?”
“You do see the irony?”
“That virtually anyone will invest in a death-trap coal mine, but the only person willing to invest in the guano was you?”
“Yes, that,” she said softly. She gave a little shrug. He was overwhelmed with the urge to take her up and kiss her again. He forced himself to turn away.
“It’s a wretched combination,” he said, “of my uncle’s boundless ambition and his refusal to take me seriously. I lie awake at night, worrying about his lust for Caldera. It’s his boyhood home; he had already begun to salivate over it at the end of my father’s life. So avaricious, despite the mines he already owns throughout all of bloody England. His greed burns brightest for Yorkshire. It tortures him that I’ve closed the mines.”
“Can I help you deter him when I am in London? I should like to do more,” Willow said.
He laughed again. “You’ve done so much. Your dowry may very well save the earldom from ruin. Looking back, I cannot believe I resisted you for so long.” I cannot believe I resisted you for even five minutes, he thought. I cannot believe I am resisting you now.
She shrugged and glanced at the open door. “You were being responsible,” she said, “when you resisted.”
I’m so weary of being responsible, he thought.
Willow added, “That is why we are not consummating the marriage. We are too responsible.”
Cassin laughed. “I am not that responsible.” He raised an eyebrow.
She blushed more deeply and took a step closer, studying his face. It was a look he knew well, one he dreaded as much as he adored, because it gave him little choice but to stare heatedly back.
Mercy, please, God, he wanted to say. Aquamarine eyes, auburn lashes, porcelain skin. I see it. I see it all, and what good does it, except to stop my heart?
If he wanted to kiss her again, she would allow it—of this, he was certain. But where would one kiss lead? He was not in a position to make promises, and she would accept nothing less. And rightly so. Never did he think her unreasonable; simply that she was not what he had planned for this moment in time.
He sighed and turned away, clearing his throat. “I have prepared a dossier for you, Willow, and I have left it in the care of your aunt and uncle in London. Please look it over when you’ve reached Belgravia. It lists the names of my solicitors and banker, my mother and brother and sisters and their direction at Caldera. They know of you and are curious, naturally. I would not put it beyond my mother to write you and venture some introduction—that is, through the post. You may decide if you care to reply. But be careful; she can be an aggressive correspondent.”
He glanced at her. It was a huge confidence, giving her leave to write his mother, but he trusted her to be contained, and respectful, and to restrict language to well within the bounds of their current agreement.
“The papers in London also include the details of where I will be and how to reach me by post in the Caribbean. The Royal Mail delivers twice a week on the island of Barbadoes—although we can expect five weeks from when you post any letter for it to reach us.”
He forced himself to stop just shy of asking her to write to him. Her face was unreadable, and he could only imagine that his own expression held something akin to tired misery. He was so very tired, exhausted from mustering inhuman self-control and miserable from wanting her.
He finished, “I’ve explained these details to your aunt and uncle as well. London is so very different from Surrey, but they will help you make your way. I would not have abandoned you to them if they had not convinced me of this.”
She nodded once, raising her eyebrows, another unreadable gesture. It occurred to him that she now suffered through yet another moment of being the last to know.
“This is a lot of information in a short amount of time, I am aware,” he said. “I thought a dossier would be the most succinct way, considering my rushed departure. I . . . I hope you can allow for all of it.”
“I don’t see how I have a choice,” she said.
He sighed. “I see your point about being apprised of things at the last minute, Willow. But honestly, I’m only discovering how to manage our very odd relationship myself. It’s not that I—” He paused, searching for the correct word. “It has never been my intent to subjugate you. On top of everything else.”
She nodded again. “There is a very great distance between leaving me to my own independence and subjugating me, Cassin. This was the vast territory I wished to explore.”
Cassin dropped his head back and stared at the ceiling. She spoke of their potential future. A future for which he could promise exactly nothing.
Willow spoke again. “It is not my nature to leave something undefined; I’ve said this before. But that is the very essence of our relationship, isn’t it? Undefined. Not quite business, as I designed it, but also not intimate—not fully. You have shared your reasons for withholding anything more, even if I was forced to wait until we part ways to hear them. They are valid reasons, I grant you. We are at an impasse. I’m not sure what more can be said.”
If Cassin was meant to articulate this more-ness, he could not. She was five seconds from showing him the bloody door. He could sense it. He’d be forced from this heavenly room, from her bewitching presence, from the passion that had, just moments ago, blazed. Of course he could not speak. He could barely breathe.
She dropped the gloves into the trunk and walked to the door. “Good-bye, Cassin. And good luck. I will make some excuse to my mother and her guests about why you have gone.”
She stepped into the corridor and gestured that he should walk out. Her blue-green eyes were bright with unshed tears, but the set of her jaw left no question.
Cassin swallowed hard, rolled his shoulders, and left the room. “Good-bye, Willow,” he said, breathing in the scent of cinnamon.