Wish List Part 5

"Not in those words," she said in a sob. "But the way he was with mea he made me believea" She buried her head in her arms, weeping violently. "Why would he marry Julianne, of all people? She is evila oh, there are things about her that you don't knowa things that Father told me about her before he died. She will ruin Andrew!"

"She's already made a good start of it, from all appearances," Cade said grimly. He found a handkerchief in his pocket and swabbed her sodden face with it. "Rochester is as miserable as I've ever seen him. He won't explain anything, other than to say that Julianne is a fit mate for him, and everyone is better off this way. And Caroa" His voice turned very gentle. "Perhaps he is right. You and Andrewa it is not a good match."

"Leave me alone," Caroline whispered. Gently she extricated herself from his arms and made her way out of the parlor. She hobbled like an old woman as she sought the privacy of her bedroom, ignoring Cade's worried questions. She needed to be alone, to crawl into her bed and hide like a wounded animal. Perhaps there she would find some way to heal the terrible wounds inside.

For two days Caroline remained in her room, too devastated to cry or talk. She could not eat or sleep, as her tired mind combed relentlessly over every memory of Andrew. He had made no promises, had offered no pledge of love, had given her no token to indicate his feelings. She could not accuse him of betrayal. Still, her anguish was evolving into wounded rage. She wanted to confront him, to force him to admit his feelings, or at least to tell her what had been a lie and what had been the truth. Surely it was her right to have an explanation. But Andrew had abandoned her without a word, leaving her to wonder desperately what had gone wrong between them. This had been his plan all along, she thought with increasing despair. He had only wanted her companions.h.i.+p until his father died and left him the Rochester fortune. Now that Andrew had gotten what he wanted, she was of no further consequence to him. But hadn't he come to care for her just a little? She knew she had not imagined the tenderness in his voice when he had said, / can't ever be without youa Why would he have said that, if he had not meant it?

To Caroline's weary amus.e.m.e.nt, her mother, f.a.n.n.y, had received the news of Andrew's impending nuptials with a great display of hysterics. She had taken to her bed at once, loudly insisting that the servants wait on her hand and foot until she recovered. The household centered around f.a.n.n.y and her delicate nerves, mercifully leaving Caroline in peace.

The only person Caroline spoke to was Cade, who had become a surprisingly steady source of support.

"What can I do?" he asked softly, approaching Caroline as she sat before the window and stared blankly out at the garden. "There must be something that would make you feel better."

She turned toward her brother with a dismal smile. "I suspect I will feel better as time goes by, although right now I doubt that I will ever feel happy again."

"That b.a.s.t.a.r.d Rochester," Cade muttered, sinking to his haunches beside her. "Shall I go thrash him for you?"

A wan chuckle escaped her. "No, Cade. That would not satisfy me in the least. And I suspect Andrew has quite enough suffering in store, if he truly plans to go through with his plans to marry Julianne."

"True." Cade considered her thoughtfully. "There is something I should tell you, Caro, although you will probably disapprove. Rochester sent me a message yesterday, informing me that he has settled all my debts. I suppose I should return all the money to hima"but I don't want to."

"Do as you like." Listlessly she leaned forward until her forehead was pressed against the cold, hard pane of the window.

"Well, now that I'm out of debt, and you are indirectly responsible for my good fortunea I want to do something for you. It's almost Christmas, after all. Let me buy you a pretty necklace, or a new gowna just tell me what you want."

"Cade," she returned dully, without opening her eyes, "the only thing I would like to have is Rochester trussed up like a yuletide goose, completely at my mercy. Since you cannot make that happen, I wish for nothing."

An extended silence greeted her statement, and then she felt a gentle pat on her shoulder. "All right, sweet sister."

The next day Caroline made a genuine effort to shake herself from her cloud of melancholy. She took a long, steaming bath and washed her hair, and donned a comfortable gown that was sadly out of style but had always been her favorite. The folds of frayed dull-green velvet draped gently over her body as she sat by the fire to dry her hair. It was cold and bl.u.s.tery outside, and she s.h.i.+vered as she caught a glimpse of the icy gray sky through the window of her bedroom.

Just as she contemplated the idea of sending for a tray of toast and tea, the closed door was attacked by an energetic fist. "Caro," came her brother's voice. "Caro, may I come in? I must speak with you." His fist pounded the wood panels again, as if he were about some urgent matter.

A faint quizzical smile came to her face. "Yes, come in," she said, "before you break the door down."

Cade burst into the room, wearing the strangest expressiona his face tense and triumphant, while an air of wil-ness clung to him. His dark brown hair was disheveled, and his black silk cravat hung limply on either side of his neck.

"Cade," Caroline said in concern, "what in heaven's name has happened? Have you been fighting? What is the matter?"

A mixture of jubilation and defiance crossed his face, making him appear more boyish than his twenty-four years. When he spoke, he sounded slightly out of breath. "I've been rather busy today."

"Doing what?" she asked warily.

"I've gotten you a Christmas present. It required a bit of effort, let me tell you. I had to get a couple of the fellows to help me, anda Well, we shouldn't waste time talking. Get your traveling cloak."

Caroline stared at him in complete bewilderment. "Cade, is my present outside? Must I fetch it myself, and on such a chilly day? I would prefer to wait. You of all people know what I have been through recently, anda""

"This present won't keep for long," he replied, straight-faced. Reaching into his pocket, he extracted a very small key, with a frivolous red bow attached. "Here, take this." He pressed the key into her palm. "And never say that I don't go to trouble for you."

Stupefied, she stared at the key in her hand. "I've never seen a key like this. What does it belong to?"

Her brother responded with a maddening smile. "Get your cloak and go find out."

Caroline rolled her eyes. "I am not in the mood for one of your pranks," she said pertly. "And I don't wish to go outside. But I will oblige you. Only heed my words: if this present is anything less than a queen's ransom in jewels, I shall be very put out with you. Now, may I at least be granted a few minutes to pin up my hair?"

"Very well," he said impatiently. "But hurry."

Caroline could not help being amused by her brother's suppressed exuberance. He fairly danced around her like some puckish sprite as she followed him down the stairs a minute later. No doubt he thought that his mysterious gift would serve to distract her from her broken hearta and though his ploy was transparent, she appreciated the caring thoughts behind it.

Opening the door with a flourish, Cade gestured to the family carriage and a team of two chestnuts stamping and blowing impatiently as the wind gusted around them. The family footman and driver also awaited, wearing heavy overcoats and large hats to s.h.i.+eld them from the cold. "Oh, Cade," Caroline said in a groan, turning back into the house, "I am not going anywhere in that carriage. I am tired, and hungry, and I want to have a peaceful evening at home."

Cade startled her by taking her small face in his hands, and staring down at her with dark, entreating eyes. "Please, Caro," he muttered. "For once, don't argue or cause problems. Just do as I ask. Get into that carriage, and take the deuced key with you."

She returned his steady gaze with a perplexed one of her own, shaking her head within the frame of his hands. A dark, strange suspicion blossomed inside her. "Cade," she whispered, "what have you done?"

He did not reply, only guided her to the carriage and helped her inside, while the footman gave her a lap blanket and moved the porcelain foot warmer directly beneath her soles.

"Where will the carriage take me?" Caroline asked, and Cade shrugged casually.

"A friend of mine, Sambrooke, has a family cottage right at the outskirts of London that he uses to meet hisa Well,that doesn't matter. For today, the place is unoccupied, and at your disposal."

"Why couldn't you have brought my gift here?" She pinned him with a doubtful glare.

For some reason the question made him laugh shortly. "Because you need to view it in privacy." Leaning into the carriage, he brushed her cold cheek with a kiss. "Good luck," he murmured, and withdrew.

She stared blankly through the carriage window as the door closed with a firm snap. Panic shuffled her thoughts, turning them into an incoherent jumble. Good luck? What in G.o.d's name had he meant by that? Did this by chance have anything to do with Andrew? Oh, she would cheerfully murder her brother if it did!

The carriage brought her past Hyde Park to an area west of London where there were still large tracts of spa.r.s.ely developed land. As the vehicle came to a stop, Caroline fought to contain her agitation. She wondered wildly what her brother had arranged, and why she had been such an idiot as to fall in with his plans. The footman opened the carriage door and placed a step on the ground. Caroline did not move, however. She remained inside the vehicle and stared at the modest white roughcast house, with its steeply pitched slate roof and gravel-covered courtyard in front.

"Peter," she said to the footman, an old and trusted family servant, "do you have any idea what this is about? You must tell me if you do."

He shook his head. "No, miss, I know nothing. Do you wish to return home?"

Caroline considered the idea and abandoned it almost immediately. She had ventured too far to turn back now.

"No, I'll go inside," she said reluctantly. "Shall you wait for me here?"

"If you wish, miss. But Lord Hargreaves's instructions were to leave you here and return in precisely two hours."

"I have a few choice words for my brother." Straightening her shoulders, she gathered her cloak tightly about herself and hopped down from the carriage. Silently she began to plan a list of the ways in which she would punish Cade. "Very well, Peter. You and the driver will leave, as my brother instructed. One would hate to thwart his wishes, as he seems to have decided exactly what must be done."

Peter opened the door for her, and helped her off with her cloak before returning outside to the carriage. The vehicle rolled gently away, its heavy wheels crunching the ice-covered gravel of the front courtyard.

Cautiously Caroline gripped the key and ventured inside the cottage. The place was simply furnished, with some oak paneling, a few family portraits, a set of ladder-back chairs, a library corner filled with old leather-bound books. The air was cold, but a cheerful little fire had been lit in the main room. Had it been lit for her comfort, or for someone else's?

"h.e.l.lo?" she called out hesitantly. "If anyone is here, I bid you answer. h.e.l.lo?"

She heard a m.u.f.fled shout from some distant corner of the house. The sound gave her an unpleasant start, producing a stinging sensation along the nerves of her shoulders and spine. Her breath issued in flat bursts, and she gripped the key until its ridges dug deeply into her sweating palm. She forced herself to move. One step, then another, until she was running through the cottage, searching for whomever had shouted.

"h.e.l.lo, where are you?" she called repeatedly, making her way toward the back of the house. "Wherea""

The flickering of hearth light issued from one of the rooms at the end of the hall. Grabbing up handfuls of her velvet skirts, Caroline rushed toward the room. She crossed the threshold in a flurry and stopped so suddenly that her hastily arranged hair pitched forward. Impatiently she pushed it back and stared in astonishment at the scene before her. It was a bedroom, so small that it allowed for only three pieces of furniture: a washstand, a night table, and a large carved rosewood bed. However, the other guest at this romantic rendezvous had not come as willingly as herself.

a the only thing I would like to have is Rochester trussed up like a yuletide goose, completely at my mercy, she had unthinkingly told her witless brother. And Cade, the insane a.s.s, had somehow managed to accomplish it.

Andrew, the seventh Earl of Rochester, was stretched full-length on the bed, his arms tethered above his head with what seemed to be a pair of metal cuffs linked by a chain and lock. The chain had been pa.s.sed through a pair of carved openings in the solid rosewood headboard, securely holding Andrew prisoner.

His dark head lifted from the pillow, and his eyes gleamed an unholy shade of blue in his flushed face. He yanked at the cuffs with a force that surely bruised his imprisoned wrists. "Get these the h.e.l.l off of me," he said in a growl, his voice containing a level of ferocity that made her flinch. He was like some magnificent feral animal, the powerful muscles of his arms bulging against his s.h.i.+rtsleeves, his taut body arching from the bed.

"I am so sorry," she said with a gasp, instinctively rus.h.i.+ng forward to help him. "My G.o.da it was Cadea I don't know what got into his heada""

"I'm going to kill him," Andrew muttered, continuing to tug savagely at his tethered wrists.

"Wait, you'll hurt yourself. I have the key. Just be still and let mea""

"Did you ask him to do this?" he asked with a snarl as she climbed onto the bed beside him.

"No," she said at once, then felt scarlet color flooding her cheeks. "Not exactly. I only said I wisheda"" She broke off and bit her lip. "He told me about your betrothal to Cousin Julianne, you see, and Ia"" Continuing to blush, she crawled over him to reach the lock of the handcuffs. The delicate shape of her breast brushed over his chest, and Andrew's entire body jerked as if he had been burned. To Caroline's dismay, the key dropped from her fingers and fell between the mattress and the headboard. "Do be still," she said, keeping her gaze from his face as she levered her body farther over his and fumbled for the key. It was not easy avoiding eye contact with him when their faces were so close. The brawny ma.s.s of his body was hard and unmoving beneath her. She heard his breathing change, turning deep and quick as she strained to retrieve the key.

Her fingertips curled around the key and pried it free of the mattress. "I've got it," she murmured, risking a glance at him.

Andrew's eyes were closed, his nose and mouth almost touching the curve of her breast. He seemed to be absorbing her scent, savoring it with peculiar intensity, as if he were a condemned man being offered his last meal.

"Andrew?" she whispered in painful confusion.

His expression became closed and hard, his blue eyes opaque. "Unlock these d.a.m.ned things!" He rattled the chain that linked the cuffs. The noise startled her, jangled across her raw nerves. She saw the deep gouges the chain links had left on the solid rosewood, but despite the relentless tugging and sawing, the wood had so far resisted the grating metal.

Her gaze dropped to the key in her hand. Instead of using it to unlock the handcuffs, she closed her fingers around it. Terrible, wicked thoughts formed in her mind. The right thing to do would be to set Andrew free as quickly as possible. But for the first time in her entire sedate, seemly life, she did not want to do what was right.

"Before I let you go," she said in a low voice that did not quite sound like her own, "I would like the answer to one question. Why did you throw me aside in favor of Julianne?"

He continued to look at her with that arctic gaze. "I'll be d.a.m.ned if I'll answer any questions while I'm chained to a bed."

"And if I set you free? Will you answer me then?"

"No."

She searched his eyes for any sign of the man she had come to love, the Andrew who had been amusing, self-mocking, tender. There was nothing but bitterness in the depths of frozen blue, as if he had lost all feeling for her, himself, and everything that mattered. It would take something catastrophic to reach inside this implacable stranger.

"Why Julianne?" she persisted. "You said the affair with her was not worth remembering. Was that a lie? Have you decided that she can offer you something more, something better, than I can?"

"She is a better match for me than you could ever be."

Suddenly it hurt to breathe. "Because she is more beautiful? More pa.s.sionate?" she forced herself to ask.

Andrew tried to form the word yes, but it would not leave his lips. He settled for a single jerking nod.

That motion should have destroyed her, for it confirmed every self-doubt she had ever possessed. But the look on Andrew's facea the twitch of his jaw, the odd glaze of his eyesa for a split second he seemed to be caught in a moment of pure agony. And there could be only one reason why.

"You're lying," she whispered.

"No, I'm not."

All at once Caroline gave rein to the desperate impulses that swirled in her head. She was a woman with nothing to lose. "Then I will prove you wrong," she said unsteadily. "I will prove that I can give you a hundred times more satisfaction than Julianne."

"How?"

"I am going to make love to you," she said, sitting up beside him. Her trembling fingers went to the neck of her gown, and she began working the knotted silk loops that fastened the front of her bodice. "Right now, on this bed, while you are helpless to prevent it. And I won't stop until you admit that you are lying. I'll have an explanation out of you, my lord, one way or another."

Clearly she had surprised him. She knew that he had never expected such feminine aggression from a respectable spinster. "You wouldn't have the d.a.m.n nerve," he said softly.

Well, that sealed his fate. She certainly could not back down after such a challenge. Resolutely Caroline continued on the silk fastenings until the front of her velvet gown gaped open to reveal her thin muslin chemise. A feeling of unreality settled over her as she pulled her arms from one sleeve, then the other. In all her adult life, she had never undressed in front of anyone. Goose b.u.mps rose on her skin, and she rubbed her bare upper arms. The chemise provided so little covering that she might as well have been naked.

She would not have been surprised had Andrew decided to mock her, but he did not seem amused or angry at her display. He seemeda fascinated. His gaze slid over her body, lingered at the rose-tinted shadows of her nipples, then returned to her face. "That's enough," he muttered. "Much as I enjoy the view, there is no point to this."

"I disagree." She slid off the bed and pushed the heavy gown to the floor, where it lay in a soft heap. Standing in her chemise and drawers, she tried to still the chattering of her teeth. "I am going to make you talk to me, my lord, no matter what it takes. Before I'm through, I'll have you babbling like an idiot."

His breath caught with an incredulous laugh. The sound heartened her, for it seemed to make him more human and less a frozen stranger. "In the first place, I'm not worth the effort. Second, you don't know what the h.e.l.l you're doing, which throws your plans very much in doubt."

"I know enough," she said with false bravado. "s.e.xual intercourse is merely a matter of mechanicsa and even in my inexperience, I believe I can figure out what goes where."

"It is not merely a matter of mechanics." He tugged at the handcuffs with a new urgency, his face suddenly contorted witha fear?a concern? "d.a.m.n it, Caroline. I admire your determination, but you have to stop this now, do you understand? You're going to cause yourself nothing but pain and frustration. You deserve better than to have your first experience turn out badly. Let me go, you b.l.o.o.d.y stubborn witch!"

The flare of desperate fury pleased her. It meant that she was breaking through the walls he had tried to construct between them, leaving him vulnerable to further a.s.sault.

"You may scream all you like," she said. "There is no one to hear you."

She crawled onto the bed, while his entire body went rigid.

"You're a fool if you think that I'm going to cooperate," he said between clenched teeth.

"I think that before long you will cooperate with great enthusiasm." Caroline took perverse delight in becoming cooler and calmer as he became more irate. "After all, you haven't had a woman ina how many months? At least three. Even if I lack the appropriate skills, I will be able to do as I like with you."

"What about Julianne?" His arms bulged with heavy muscle as he pulled at the handcuffs. "I could have had her a hundred times by now, for all you know."

"You haven't," she said. "You aren't attracted to hera"that was evident when I saw the two of you together."

She began on the tight binding of his cravat, unwinding the damp, starch-scented cloth that still contained the heat of his skin. When his long golden throat was revealed, she touched the triangular hollow at the base with a gentle fingertip. "That's better," she said softly. "Now you can breathe."

He was indeed breathing, with the force of a man who had just run ten miles without stopping. His gaze fixed on hers, no longer cold, but gleaming with fury. "Stop it. I warn you, Caroline, stop now."

"Or what? What could you possibly do to punish me that would be worse than what you've already done?" Her fingers went to the b.u.t.tons of his waistcoat and s.h.i.+rt, and she released them in rapid succession. She spread the edges of his garments wide, baring a remarkably muscular torso. The sight of his body, all that ferocious power rendered helpless before her, was awe-inspiring.

"I never meant to hurt you," he said. "You knew from the beginning that our relations.h.i.+p was just a pretense."

"Yes. But it became something else, and you and I both know it." Gently she touched the thick curls that covered his chest, her fingertips delving to the burning skin beneath. He jumped at the brush of her cool hand, the breath hissing between his teeth. How often she had dreamed of doing this, exploring his body, caressing him. The surface of his stomach was laced with tight muscles, so different from the smooth softness of her own. She stroked the taut golden skin, so hard and silken beneath her hand. "Tell me why you would marry Julianne when you've fallen in love with me."

"Ia haven't," he managed to choke out. "Can't you get it th-through your stubborn heada""