Before the Fire Page 15

  George shifted his gaze to the tabletop, lest he laugh. Chester was not so circumspect as that. He laughed outright. Alex shot him his most surly “I am a marquess and you are not” glare.

  “I feel honor bound to warn you, Alex.”

  “Of what, George?”

  The earl sat up straighter in his seat, lowering his voice to a near whisper. “I know you harbor a tendre for Melea.”

  “So?” Alex shrugged.

  “Let us just say that future women have a different way about them. They are shockingly direct in their affections.”

  “So I gathered.”

  George shrugged. “I merely wished to forewarn you.”

  Chester decided he liked this topic. He couldn’t help himself. He had to know more. “I gather you are speaking of Kane?”

  George flushed, uncomfortable in speaking of his wife in any way intimate. “All I am saying is that if Melea behaves…well…wantonly toward Alex upon her arrival, he shouldn’t misconstrue the situation.”

  Alex grew semi-erect at the mental picture the earl painted. “Wanton?” he asked with what he hoped sounded like casual indifference, but probably sounded more like a lecherous pervert sucking his breath in and out.

  “Yes. I will say this and then no more: my wife was as pure as the driven snow when she came to me on our wedding night, but I never would have believed it from her behavior up until that point.” He shook his head in earnest. “Do not disgrace my wife’s friend in any way, even if she wants you. Insist upon marriage and no less if you must, but if you take her to your bed and she is then unable to return to her own time, she will be stuck here with lack of a maidenhead.” The earl looked at both men pointedly. “In Melea’s day the maidenhead is meaningless, but we all know that in our day it is everything.”

  The men mumbled their agreement.

  “Now then,” George beamed, glancing toward the gaming parlor. “Now that we have that sordid business behind us, who’s ready for a game of whist?”

  * * * * *

  “You shall truly like her, Mother Julia.” Kane held up the lady’s gown the dowager countess has scrounged up for Melea and smiled at it. It was a beautiful color of emerald with lovely embroidery work stitched into the bodice. “And since she is a full-time Warrior Woman, she is far more practiced at her craft than I. She will make us both an excellent sparring partner.”

  Lady Julia clapped her hands together and beamed a brilliant smiled toward her daughter-in-law. “Excellent!” She then considered the gentlemen’s reactions when she and Kane had been caught sparring earlier today and her smiled wavered. “Though I do hope my lord son—not to mention Chester and Alex—don’t think badly upon my person for continuing to engage in our sport.”

  “Nonsense!” Kane spat out. “And if they do, I shall have a very long talk with all three of them.” She placed the lady’s gown on what was to be Melea’s bed, then drew her fists indignantly to her hips. “You do realize, Mother Julia, that we could have come to a bad end that day in the alley had it not been for my skill?”

  “Of course I realize it!”

  “Then we shall make the gentlemen realize it as well.” Kane shook her finger at the dowager as if scolding her. “Don’t even think of backing down now. There is nothing shameful about your skill! I can’t be there to watch you always and I…” She sighed, her finger dropping as her shoulders slumped. “By the power of the goddesses, I couldn’t bear it if anything bad happened to you.” She looked away, unable to retain eye contact. “You’re the only mother I’ve ever known,” she whispered.

  “Oh Kane, darling,” Lady Julia crooned, touched by her daughter-in-law’s words more than she could say. She reached out and swept a lock of her golden tresses from her forehead and smiled. “I love you too.”

  Kane’s head shot up to meet the dowager countess’s gaze. She nodded, knowing it wasn’t necessary to say more. She took Lady Julia’s hand and squeezed it. “Thank-you,” she breathed out.

  “No dearest,” the dowager insisted, “thank you.”

  Neither of the women were the types to cry, so they both broke into peels of laughter instead. “Oh dear,” Lady Julia quipped. “We were dreadfully close to hosting a sinful display of tears!”

  Kane giggled. “By Mercury’s noxious gases, I would be ashamed of that!”

  They laughed again.

  A minute later, Lady Julia bent over and reached into the valise a servant had brought into the bedchamber. She picked up another gown that would be given to Melea, holding it up for Kane’s inspection. “What think you of this one?”

  Kane nodded her appreciation, her eyes gleaming. “She’ll love it. Red is her favorite color.”

  “Excellent.” Lady Julia placed the gown on the bed beside the one Kane had set there a few minutes past. She reached into the valise again and drew out another. Laughing, she held it up for Kane to see.

  Kane raised an eyebrow, not understanding the humor in the situation. “What is funny about the gown?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why are you laughing?”

  The dowager countess shrugged her dainty shoulders as she broke into a fit of giggles. She wiped the tears of mirth from her eyes, but continued to grin at her bewildered daughter within the law. “I do apologize. I was just thinking.”

  “About?”

  Lady Julia’s grin widened. “The looks on the gentlemen’s faces when they caught us in the act of sparring.” She proceeded to mimic the trio precisely, theatrically bulging her eyes out and drooping her jaw toward the ground.

  Kane couldn’t help it. She had to laugh with her mother-in-law. “From the looks on their faces, it would seem to an outside observer that they had caught us in the act of offering up incantations to the dark gods!”

  “Roasting innocent children over a witch’s spit!”

  “Shape-shifting into three-eyed trolls!”

  The Countesses of Blackmore regarded each other in silence for a long moment. Inevitably, they burst into laughter.

  * * * * *

  George walked into his bedchamber with the purpose of having his valet help him undress. He had planned to go to his wife’s bedchamber and claim his husband’s rights immediately thereafter. One glance at the bed told him that plan was unnecessary. His wife was already asleep, in his bed.

  Their bed.

  Kane had insisted that the Earl and Countess of Blackmore would not have separate sleeping chambers, regardless to the eighteenth century nobility’s customs. George smiled at the memory of her lecture, vastly contented. He’d have it no other way himself.

  The earl looked back to his valet and nodded, making certain to block his view of the bed in the process. “I shall attend myself this eve. You may retire.”

  Saying nothing, the valet merely acquiesced with a nod, then quietly made his exit.

  George made short work of his clothes, discarding them rapidly and flinging them onto the back of the nearest chair. He climbed into bed next to his wife, thinking to play the gentleman and allow her to continue in her deep sleep. When he pulled out the covers to join her in slumber and thereupon realized her to be as naked as he was, that good intention found a quick death. He reached out for her, needing her desperately.

  Kane rolled over onto her side to face him, still half asleep. “George,” she smiled dreamily, closing her eyes to fall back into sleep’s clutches.

  George watched his wife sleep for long moments, contented to study her as she dozed away. The merest sight of her never failed to take his breath away. He had never thought to be a man so fortunate, to find a lady to banish the cobwebs of loneliness and despair that had settled into his brain these past nine years.

  And yet he had. He had found her and he’d be damned if he’d ever let her go. So many emotions crossed George’s face and tore at his heart as he watched his wife sleep.

  Possessiveness.

  Hope.

  Love.

  In the end, it was the need to be one with hi
s mate that tore him from his perusal and urged him toward his wife’s side of the bed. He drew himself to his knees, then settled his body gently on top of hers.

  Kane’s eyes fluttered open on a sleepy smile. She gazed lovingly into her husband’s eyes as she drew her arms around his neck. “Welcome home,” she breathed out, still hazy from the effects of slumbering.

  George smiled tenderly as he clutched her buttocks and poised his erection at her entrance. Kissing her once on the tip of her nose, he slowly entered her, groaning at the exquisite feel of her wet flesh wrapping around his cock. “My god you feel good,” he rasped.

  “Not as good as you,” she breathed out. Wrapping her legs around her husband’s waist, she moaned as he began to rock in and out of her.

  His fingers digging into the flesh of her hips, George gritted his teeth as he thrust into her, the sound of her flesh enveloping him mingled with the scent of their lovemaking the most sensate and erotic experience of his life. He thrust long and hard, over and over again, oblivious to anything but the woman beneath him and the body she gave to him so willingly.

  Some minutes later when he poured his life into her body and gave her his son, he thought back on his wife’s welcoming words.

  Welcome home.

  Indeed, he thought, I am finally home.

  Chapter 21

  The late Lord Masters’ library was, in Kane’s estimation, a royal waste of her time. Just as the gardens, meadows, and libraries of Blackmore—not to mention Viscount Blake’s greenhouse—had proved fruitless, so too did the main collection of books for the Royal Botanical Society.

  Kane was seriously beginning to question the merit of the research she had done on the ancient plant she had named “kabitross”. The term kabit referred to a creature native to the marshes of Nero whose cottony looking exterior resembled the billowy heads of other plants whose seeds were known to be powerful healers. Ross referred to the plant’s skinny stalk and was named after the humanoids who dwelled within the synthetic biosphere of Jupiter’s largest moon. The term seemed appropriate, as the Ross had a tendency to be oddly narrow of form.

  And so the name kabitross had been penned into being. Now, however, Kane was beginning to wonder if she hadn’t inadvertently given a very real name to a very nonexistent plant.

  Kane closed the book she’d been browsing through with a small thud. She tapped her fingertips together, contemplating the wisdom of having Melea brave such a journey as this one for nothing. She would never forgive herself if her dearest humanoid friend came here only to find herself stuck. And worse yet, stuck without any hope of success. Stuck without even having located this exasperatingly elusive plant.

  The next evening after dinner, she sought out her husband to discuss her worries with him. Needless to say, he didn’t agree with her in the least.

  “Of course you should have Melea come to us,” he argued. “That will be one more set of eyes that know what the plant looks like to help you search for it.”

  “But what if the plant doesn’t even exist, George? What if it is a make-believe fiction, like fairies and trolls?”

  George tugged at his cravat, tightening it to ready himself for the ball they were scheduled to attend later this evening. “And what if it isn’t?”

  Kane threw herself onto their bed, dramatically hoisting her arm over her face to shield it. “I would feel guilty as I don’t know what if Melea got stuck here in vain.”

  The earl grimaced at that notion. He would too. “My love, I empathize with your feelings, truly I do.” He sighed, reaching out to help her from the bed. “It seems you’re in one hell of a quandary.”

  “I am.”

  He nodded sympathetically. “If she doesn’t come to stay with us, that’s one less woman to search for it. And if she does…”

  “It could be for nothing.”

  George pondered that possibility for a long moment. He considered what he knew of Melea, both from his own conversation with her as well as from his wife’s stories about the Warrior Woman. “Let me ask you something, my dear.”

  “Hm?”

  “Do you think you could stop her from coming?”

  Kane’s eyes widened in understanding. She thought of her own position and knew that not even the swamp dwelling predators of planet Zyphon could have kept her from travelling to 1776 in the hopes of aiding her people. Melea was no different. She was just as obstinate, if not more so. “You’re right,” she murmured. “It wouldn’t matter what I said to forewarn her. Melea will still do what she believes in her heart of hearts to be right.”

  George drew his wife into a warm embrace, resting his chin atop her head as he breathed in her familiar scent. “All we can do is hope, my love. Hope that you find the plant you covet and hope that she can take it back without incident.”

  Kane craned her neck, gazing up into her husband’s eyes. “Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

  George pretended to contemplate the question. “Hmm,” he said, arching one arrogant eyebrow, “not since before dinner.” He grinned down to her. “Madam, but where are your manners?”

  She smiled provocatively up to her husband as she undid the buttons on his breeches. Opening the flap and releasing his erection in the process, she fell to her knees and grinned up at him. “I never meant to neglect you. Let me make it up to you.”

  George groaned as she proceeded to make it up to him in spades.

  * * * * *

  George William Frederick Alexander Wyndom, the ninth Earl of Blackmore and the heir apparent to the Duke of browning, was feeling surly. He watched from the balcony of the Emory’s ballroom as his beautiful wife engaged in a waltz with yet another gentleman admirer. The earl was beginning to question the wisdom of having allowed Asherby and Blake to teach his woman to dance.

  Like a panther on the prowl, he strolled toward the other side of the balcony where he could get a better view of the mayhem below. He then proceeded to mentally count the number of gentlemen he might be obliged to call out on his wife’s behalf. Not that any of them had done anything untoward, but hell, dancing with her was enough of an insult to his way of thinking.

  He watched through narrowed eyes as the lecherous Duke of Weymouth wrapped his hand about Kane’s arm and led her into the next dancing set. Seething with possessiveness, he made a note to best the duke at whist the next time they met up at White’s.

  “Blackmore? I didn’t realize you had planned to attend. What are you doing up here?”

  George didn’t bother to glance Alex’s way as he responded to his question. “Watching that ladies man down there try to seduce my wife.”

  “Seduce your wife?”

  Alex searched the dance floor quizzically until he finally located the waltzing Lady Blackmore and Lord Weymouth. He threw back his head and laughed.

  George glared at him. “What’s so damned amusing, Asherby?”

  Alex tried to conceal his smile, truly he did. He wasn’t entirely successful, however. “Is the Duke of Weymouth the ladies man to which you refer?”

  “Yesss,” the earl hissed.

  Alex shook his head, still smiling. “He’s nigh unto eighty and three and last I heard given toward confusing his children’s names with that of his horses’.”

  “And you’re point, Gossipy Greta?”

  Alex arched an amused brow. “You’re behaving like an idiot.”

  The earl had the decency to blush, but quickly regrouped. “I haven’t seen you in nigh unto two days, yet I find it not long enough to miss your presence,” he gritted out irritably.

  Alex laughed.

  George frowned.

  “Oh alright damn it,” he admitted ruefully, “mayhap I am behaving a trifle out of sorts.”

  “A trifle?”

  George glared at the marquess. “Alright, a bit more than a trifle I’ll grant you.”

  Thoroughly bemused, Alex did what any true friend would do. He proceeded to tease the earl mercilessly. “Oh look,” he said, poi
nting down toward a country baron who was stuffing his face with food while waiting his turn to dance with Kane, “best call him out before he dances with the countess. God knows if she gets a good look at him, she’ll leave you on the spot, earl or no.”

  George frowned. That the baron in question was five feet tall and nearly as round was of no import. Should he dance with his lady wife, he’d be set in the same grim category of the possibly challenged as the other gentlemen.

  “Ah,” Alex went on relentlessly, “and over there waiting for his dance with your wife to be played is the dashing Marquis d’Eston.” Alex shook his head with feigned regret. “Once your wife smells the Frenchman’s charms, ‘tis all over for you, my friend.”

  George grunted. True, the French nobleman was not over fond of bathing and hence reeked like a horse’s leavings, but…

  “And we cannot forget the gentleman who is lined up alongside the marquis.” Alex pointed down to the dance floor toward a rotund man who wore more face paint than most courtesans.

  “Oh all right,” George gritted out. “I take your bloody point.”

  Alex turned around, grinning wickedly at his best friend. “Come, Blackmore, let us stop all the ladies’ hearts from beating and twirl a wench or two around the floor.”

  Grunting, George followed the marquess down the Emory’s staircase.

  * * * * *

  Glittering with unadulterated rage, Kane’s eyes narrowed at the humanoid bitch Charlotte who had managed to gain a dance with her husband at this ball, just as she had at the Giddings’ affair. Normally, Kane didn’t mind her husband dancing with other women. In fact, she had encouraged him to do so before they had set out this evening, lest he appear standoffish.

  But Charlotte was a different she-beast entirely.

  The overly made-up courtesan with the powdered wig and breasts all but spilling from her gown caused Kane’s blood to boil. The woman wanted George. Anybody could gather that from her demeanor. She wondered how it was the woman managed to gain entree into all the same parties since class lines were rigidly drawn in this world.