The Lion and the Mouse: A Steampunk Romance Page 7

  She took in his appearance with a quick glance, then dawdled over breakfast, crumbling toast and pretending an interest in the newspapers. As she emerged from the dining room, she overheard his orders to Jones.

  “Mrs. Truitt has had a shock. She needs looking after, cosseting. Don’t let her leave the house. It’ll be your position if you do.”

  Her first strong emotion in days shot through her: anger. Her hands fisted. Darn Colin and his shrewdness. He had locked her in, using the key of her own conscience. She couldn’t bear to be responsible for a man—and his wife—losing employment.

  She was three steps up the staircase to her room, but swung around on her heel. Had Colin known she’d overhear his orders?

  He had his head back, watching for her reaction.

  Damn him!

  Their eyes met.

  He looked tired. He’d tried to reach her over the past week, but there was a gulf between them. He blamed himself for Looster kidnapping her. His comments and his half-apology told her that.

  She hadn’t told him that there was no need. She understood that Looster alone was responsible for the evil he did. But the evil had scarred her. Her emotions were in cold storage and it felt safer to keep them there.

  Colin had married her for her inheritance. Let him be satisfied with her father’s company and control of the airways.

  She lifted her skirt and ran up to her room.

  The closing of the front door reverberated through the house.

  “Oh God.” She stood just inside her room and pressed her hands to her mouth. Pain compressed her lungs. The pain was intense, so that she struggled to breathe. She’d found Colin’s presence, his insistence on guarding her, oppressive. But now that he had gone, she was alone. She had been alone for so much of her life, until that flight to York and the wild, sweet hope of Colin’s gentle seduction.

  Looster had stolen that hope from her and locked her into loneliness.

  “No!” she screamed, and heard the running footsteps of the servants.

  “Mrs. Truitt? Madam?”

  “Leave me.” She saw Mr. and Mrs. Jones exchange glances. “And do not telephone Mr. Truitt. I am fine.”

  She wasn’t, but nor was she hysterical. She saw the Joneses assess her mental state and reluctantly accede to her wishes. No doubt they would inform Colin of her behavior as soon as he returned. At least they weren’t able to see the fierce indentations of her nails into her palms.

  Mrs. Jones closed the bedroom door behind her.

  Anthea strained her ears till the last footsteps vanished, then she cracked open the door. A great restlessness filled her. She walked through the house, unsure why she needed to, but committed to the exploration once she’d ventured into Colin’s gray and oppressive master bedroom. There were no flowers or fire to lighten it, merely gloom and the smell of coal smoke from an open window. Even in summer, London was dirty.

  She ascended the stairs and confronted the narrowness of the servants’ rooms in the low-roomed attics. She wrinkled her nose, though there was no smell of rats; only the animal fat reek of tallow candles. Colin needed to modernize his home—ah but it wasn’t a home. It was a horrible house. Horrible. She struck the unpolished bannister of the servants’ staircase and it wobbled. The whole house was horrible with not a redeeming feature and she was trapped in it.

  She ran back down to Colin’s room. Its grayness drenched her soul. He was as trapped as she. She knew his history because he’d confided it to her, and so, she could deduce that he’d bought this narrow townhouse because he’d never known a home. He knew no better.

  “But I do.” She sat on his high, wide bed. She knew there was more to life than this prison—if she had the courage to seize it.

  Chapter Twelve

  “You’re fired,” Colin shouted at Jones. The meeting with the engineering firm had taken longer than he’d hoped. All the time he’d had worry for Anthea at the back of his mind. He wanted a real marriage, but he didn’t know how to achieve it. He was in no position to demand her presence in his bed and she wouldn’t be coaxed, not in her present state. He was lonely, angry, hurting—and now, Jones said Anthea had gone.

  “Mrs. Truitt said she’d be at this address.” Jones proffered a card.

  Colin read the address written in Anthea’s elegant hand. It was a house in the suburbs, by the river, beyond London’s infamous fogs. One of the moneyed new estates.

  “Mrs. Truitt has the carriage,” Jones continued. “I thought you’d prefer the coachman and stable boy with her. You’ll have to take a hansom.”

  So much for Jones thinking his employment terminated. What story had Anthea spun him that he’d let her leave the house?

  Colin hailed a hansom and got in. The crowded streets gave way to green gardens and glimpses of the river. The early morning cloud had cleared to a perfect spring afternoon. Roses rioted, may bushes shone like white clouds. Birds sang. A scarlet robin flitted across a lawn.

  He didn’t care. Cold terror twisted his gut. Anthea was leaving him. That’s what this message meant. Instead of running away, this time she’d send him away—and he couldn’t let her.

  God help him. He needed her.

  The hansom slowed, turning in a long driveway.

  A new red brick house came into view among the trees. Colin had a good sense of direction. The river would be behind it. It was the sort of house he could imagine Anthea in. Not a mansion, but tall and rambling with white-framed windows and a tower built just askew of center. Being in the tower would be akin to the freedom he felt piloting a dirigible. Unlike the crowded streets of London, a man could breathe here.

  Except his breath strangled as Anthea appeared on the front steps. Clearly she’d heard the hansom’s approach. She wore a practical tweed suit and her head was bare. No hat. The sun glinted off her hair.

  She was too far away for him to read her expression. Did she intend to talk with him on the steps? to tell him not to pay off the hansom driver because he’d be needing transport to leave?

  “No damn chance.” He kept his gaze averted from her and paid the driver, watching the hansom trundle off.

  An arm slipped through his and he jolted at the soft touch. He smelled Anthea’s subtle rose perfume. She hadn’t voluntarily touched him since York. He knew he sounded as loud and rough as he ever had when he growled. “Well, why am I here? Why are we here?”

  He chanced a look at her and she smiled.

  His breath rushed out of him in a long sigh of relief. If she’d been leaving him, there’d be dread and determination in her eyes, not an invitation. He unthreaded his arm from hers and caught her hand.

  Her fingers curled around his. Curled around his heart. “I bought us a home. Come and see.”

  Anthea’s smile widened at Colin’s stunned look, even as her heart wept a bit. His blank disbelief told her how awful her behavior had been. Whatever he’d been expecting, it hadn’t been a home. He followed her unresistingly from room to room as she sold the house to him and told him of her plans. They would need to build on a conservatory for rainy days and a workroom where she could test her devices.

  “And since I don’t want a sewing room.” She grinned at him. “I thought this could be our retreat.” She lead him to the tower stairs.

  He hauled her tight against him and put his face close to hers. “You can have anything you want.”

  She steadied herself with two hands on his shoulders. “I’ve been distant the last few days.”

  His body tensed.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said. “No, listen. I don’t blame you for Looster kidnapping me. He was an evil man. And you came for me. You braved everything for me. You saved me when I couldn’t save myself.”

  “You’re my wife, Anthea.”

  “And you’re my husband.” She took a deep breath before making the ultimate commitment, the total surrender of her happiness to him. “What Looster said to me—reminding me that you’d married me for my inheritance. No,
wait.” She silenced him when he would have protested. “I got messed up in my mind. All the different hurts jumbled together. But this morning, I realized that if I want happiness I have to reach out for it, and to have happiness, I need you. So this is me reaching out to you and saying I want us to build a life together.”

  He squeezed her tight and this time her lungs ached in a good way.

  “The tower, Colin. Let’s go to the tower.”

  In answer, he picked her up and carried her up the stairs—and this time, she laughed and thrilled at his strength.

  He halted just inside the tower and she saw his gaze take in the furnishings she’d had delivered. Not traditional furnishings, but thick rugs, over-sized cushions and satin quilts. The tower room glowed with color and the large windows brought summer inside.

  Slowly he lowered her to her feet, keeping an arm around her. His gaze was intense as it returned to her.

  She stretched up on tiptoe. “I love you, Colin. Make love to me.”

  “All the devils in hell couldn’t stop me.” He kissed her, and his mouth was hard and urgent, possessive as it should be. “You are so beautiful.”

  She shivered and slid her hands inside his jacket.

  He ripped it off and his tie. His shirt went next. Half-naked, he stood before her. “This isn’t how I meant to make love to you the first time, but I can’t wait.”

  “No, don’t stop.” She kissed his shoulder and traced the rippling muscles. He radiated heat like a furnace and she was feverish from wanting him.

  “I planned a slow seduction.” He undressed her with fingers that shook, his mouth caressing each inch of skin he revealed.

  His kisses stole away her embarrassment. She forgot to be modest as sun flooded in the window. She felt warm and golden, glowing with joy.

  He flung a satin quilt over a pile of cushions and followed her down, his weight unfamiliar and exciting. She shifted uncertainly and felt pleasure burst in her tummy as he groaned in response.

  “I love you,” he said as she lay naked beneath him.

  “Darling.”

  “Sweet name.” He kissed her and his tongue probed her mouth, teased and withdrew. “Sweet as you taste.”

  She twisted her fingers in his hair and brought his mouth back to hers.

  This time, his tongue stabbed.

  She imagined how it would feel when he penetrated her for real. Her hips bucked.

  “Are you wanting me, love?” His hand roamed from her waist, burning a path along her hip and covering the melting heart of her. “I see that you are.” His fingers stroked her intimately.

  She had never known pleasure so exquisite.

  “The first time might hurt.” He sounded uncertain.

  She heard his desire. “It doesn’t matter.” She lifted her hips to his hand. “I’ll have you. Oh.”

  At her words, he’d slid a finger inside her. “You’re tight, and I’m bigger than this.”

  “I want bigger.” She abandoned all modesty and clutched at his shoulders as she raised her knees either side of him. “I want you.”

  The pain of his entry vanished in the sheer strange delight of having him inside her. Of being loved.

  “All right?” he asked. His muscles quivered as he strained for control.

  “Oh, yes.”

  And then he was moving, powerful and commanding, teaching her, demanding that she match him, and she did until the universe exploded, kaleidoscoped and there was only the two of them, together, and more happiness than she’d thought the world could contain. “I love you, Colin.”

  Want More?

  Ivana’s story is told in The Icarus Plot.

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  Demon Hunter

  Djinn Justice

  Dragon Knight

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  Plague Cult

  Hollywood Demon

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  And if you’re interested in going Old School, start with Phoenix Blood.