Trials of Artemis Read online

  "We need to stop."

  "Why?"

  He laughed. "I said you could trust me."

  "I do trust you." She gave in to her need and wriggled against him. His hands clamped more securely against her hips to make her stop.

  "Jacqueline."

  "Jackie."

  He kissed her forehead, her temple. "Jackie."

  "Yes, Gideon?"

  "We need to stop."

  "Yes, Gideon," she said. But she moved her lips to his and the kiss began again. One of his hands slid up from her hip until it was cupping her breast, the thumb tracing lazy circles around her puckered nipple. The pleasure was so intense that it was agony. She didn't know what she wanted but she knew there was something more, something with far fewer clothes and more intimate touching. He was pulling away from her again and she clutched at him desperately.

  "Dinner has arrived," he said.

  She growled and kissed his throat.

  "Jackie," he said again. "You need to eat. I'm not sure you've eaten at all today."

  He had successfully distracted her from her intense desire and she sighed. "No, I was too nervous before the wedding."

  Stepping back he held out his arm to her. "Let me take you to dinner, countess."

  She slipped her hand in the crook of his elbow and allowed him to lead her out to his sitting room where his footmen had laid out a meal on a round table near the window. One footman remained and stood at attention as they entered. Gideon held out Jack's chair for her and she settled into it with as much decorum as a half-naked woman who had just been thoroughly kissed could muster. The footman held out the earl's chair and then asked, "Would you like for me to serve, my lord?"

  "No," Gideon said. "I think we would like to be... alone."

  The footman nodded and slipped out the door to the hallway.

  Now that her ardor had cooled, Jack was feeling self-conscious again. Gideon was busily filling her plate with choice tidbits, seemingly unconcerned with her murmured answers and shy nods as he tried to discern which items she wanted to eat. After he had filled his own plate and made sure they both had wine he said, "We gave the footman something to talk about. And I suppose it goes without saying, but just in case it doesn't, if you ever do that," he waved his fork to indicate the doorway to his bedroom, "with another man, I will kill him."

  Jack set her wine down with a thump. The shock of the whole situation was wearing off and she felt prickles of irritation. "And if you ever do that with another woman I will kill you," she announced, stabbing at her beef tenderloin with her fork. She didn't even look at her husband for fear of what his face might betray at her statement. Amusement? Pity?

  After a few moments he said, "Aren't we a pair?"

  She continued to chase the food around her plate with violent little stabs of her fork. She should have remembered that he was at heart an arrogant, overbearing clout. And it was not to be forgotten exactly how they had met as a consequence of his planning a liaison with another woman. Which reminded her of another thing.

  "I should still like to know who talked to the nosy popinjay at the paper. There were too many details for it not to be someone very familiar with the evening.”

  "You didn't give your parents the details?" Gideon asked.

  Jack did look up then, to see Gideon lounged back in his chair studying her with a lazy scrutiny. "No, but why would that matter?"

  "Your mother was obviously in favor of the match."

  "You're impugning my mother?"

  He shrugged. "Some women will do almost anything in order to secure a good marriage for their daughters. What is a little scandal in comparison to having your daughter marry an earl? Or it could have been your father determined to see me do the right thing by you, especially if he suspected we were planning to call off the engagement."

  She began tearing apart her dinner roll into tiny pieces. "My parents did not know the details of the evening, or if they did they didn't hear those details from me. And I also didn't talk to them about our agreement, that we could call off the engagement if the details didn't emerge."

  "I don't remember that being an agreement. I remember that being a plan that you continued to advocate."

  "You were the first one to complain that you never wanted to marry!"

  Gideon set his jaw. "I was also the one to offer marriage and seemed most willing to do the right thing."

  "Because of your pride."

  "It's a matter of honor," he said cooly.

  "Which you are undoubtedly very proud of."

  "Why are we even arguing about this?"

  "You treat me like I'm a doxy and that isn't very gentlemanly of you." She started to feel tears burn the corners of her eyes but she willed them away. No more tears. Not over this.

  Gideon set down his wine and began rubbing his forehead, looking very much like a man trying not to lose his temper. He finally sighed, his hands folded in front of him in an almost prayerful position. He nodded. "You're right, I apologize."

  Jack was shocked enough she thought she had misheard him. "You what?" she asked before she could stop herself.

  He raised a brow at her but repeated it. "I apologize, Jacqueline. You have not done anything in particular to make me question your loyalty. At least not yet. It's just easy to imagine that a young woman of your beauty and temperament who hasn't had a great number of suitors could be swayed by a handsome rake bent on seducing her."

  She raised her own eyebrows. "You think I'm daft."

  He started to look irritated again. "No, I don't think you're daft."

  "You think that some pretty face spouting poetry will make me compromise my own honor."

  He gazed down into his nearly empty wineglass. "As I recall it didn't require poetry and you hadn't even seen my face."

  She had thrown her own glass of wine at him before she even realized her hand had moved. She lurched from her chair, fury burning in her chest. "How dare you!"

  He also rose, wiping wine from his eyes and looking equally furious. "How dare I? In what way am I speaking anything other than the truth of the matter?"

  Jack fled the room before she could start throwing cutlery. She slammed the door that divided their rooms but discovered there was no lock on her side. How typical of their entire relationship that seemed. She dragged one of her trunks full of books across the room and lodged it firmly against the door. She didn't dig out one of the fancy knives that Sabre had sent her from Spain as she knew she would be too tempted to use it on him. Instead she searched through the trunks until she found her copy of the Iliad and then read in her sitting room until she dozed off in her chair in the early morning hours.

  Gideon was cutting his breakfast ham with a good deal more force than necessary. He was still irritated with the final confrontation between himself and his wife the night before. He hadn’t been unreasonable, he didn’t think, pointing out that she had been quite receptive to his advances. First, before she knew him at all. The second time when she had been bent on calling off their unwise engagement. Even last night it could be reasoned that she would have had reservations but instead she had been like a cat in heat, all sensual movement and hot demand. He hardened at the memory of those occasions which served to make him more irate.

  He saw his footman move to hold out the chair on the other end of the table and realized she had entered the room. She was wearing a morning gown the color of freshly churned butter and the soft fabric glided over her figure to float in a small flare around her feet. She had paused at the door and was looking over the table.

  "Couldn't I sit closer to my husband?" she inquired softly. The footman immediately gathered up the place setting and almost stumbled in his haste to do his new countess's bidding. She settled into the chair at Gideon's right elbow with the delicacy and grace of a butterfly alighting on a bush. She appeared ready to resume their campaign of convincing the staff that theirs was a love match, but he wasn't sure he had the stomach for it just now.

  "G
ood morning, Gideon."

  "Good morning, Jacqueline."

  She was selecting items from the trays that the footmen offered to her. Her eyes looked shadowed this morning as though she hadn't slept. Gideon would have expected her to have enjoyed the sleep of the righteous after her magnificent show of temper followed by dragging some heavy piece of furniture in front of her door. He had considered shoving it out of the way just to prove that he could, but continuing a screaming match didn't seem like the best way to cap off their first day together as a married couple.

  He would do best to remember that he thought, looking at her more carefully. She was his wife. No matter what else they might think, they were now together. Forever. Even beyond death if the vicars were to be believed. She was his responsibility and this morning she looked tired. But she was trying her best to be cheerful and gracious.

  "You could have had your breakfast in bed," he offered.

  "Oh, no. I've always come down to breakfast. It's one of my favorite meals. It's the best family meal."

  Gideon felt a small lurch in his heart. A family meal. His family had rarely all taken meals together and when they did it was always a formal dinner. The idea of having a new family where everyone wanted to have breakfast together seemed odd but strangely uplifting.

  "Also," she said softly while buttering her toast, leaning in as though she were sharing a confidence. "I accept your apology."

  "You what?"

  She looked up at him and smiled, seemingly tickled by his surprised tone. "I accept your apology. We are both in the habit of making horrible assumptions about each other."

  He frowned, not sure he was ready to easily let go of their confrontation from the night before.

  "And thus I must apologize myself for making assumptions," she continued. "In addition to apologizing about the wine."

  She went back to her breakfast, apparently content. What a riddle his wife was. But he supposed he had the rest of their lives to figure her out. Provided they didn't kill each other first.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Gideon gave her a tour of the house and grounds that day and within a week they settled into a routine. Riding together early in the morning, breakfast, then Gideon went to his office to work on his accounts while Jack worked with Mrs. Gladstone on menus and other household chores. Lunch together followed by each of them going off in individual pursuits, a time that Jack usually spent in the library. Afternoon tea. Dinner. They remained warily polite to each other, rarely talking about more than the weather or mundane household topics.

  Jack used that time to study her new husband. His staff adored him and he was a kind and considerate employer. He was diligent, usually using his afternoons to visit his tenants with Phillip Gladstone in tow like an obedient puppy. Phillip was, she learned, Mrs. Gladstone's son. It seemed the Wolfes had a tradition of keeping as many members of a family in their employ as possible. She also noted that Gideon received a steady stream of mail from London, many of the packages looking like weighty documents she assumed were from the sessions of Parliament. He churned through his correspondence relentlessly, sending out almost as many items per day as he received.

  She didn't receive nearly as many letters, just notes from her mother and sister until finally one of her mother's envelopes held a forwarded letter from Sabre. Letting out a small whoop of surprised delight she raced from the front hallway all the way up to her sitting room in order to read it.

  My dearest Jack,

  You don't need to tell me what he's done. Just tell me where he is so that I can kill him for you. We should be back from Italy before March is out. Send his direction by way of Robert's address and I will take care of it.

  Love, Sabre

  Jack was still laughing over Sabre's staunch and pithy support when she heard a knock at her open door. She looked up to see Gideon leaning on the doorframe.

  "Is everything all right?" he asked. "Dibbs said you shrieked in the hallway and ran upstairs.”

  She bounced off the settee and sashayed towards him, holding out the letter. "I have you now. My friends will be here soon."

  He read the short letter and handed it back to her with a laugh. "Your friends are assassins?"

  She laughed again. "Not assassins exactly, but we are all quite deadly."

  He stepped forward and hooked his arms around her waist, holding her to him. "Really? You're deadly are you?"

  "Quite."

  "Perhaps I should give you a reason to defend yourself in order to test your skills."

  "You have a gun or a knife on you?"

  "You aren't threatened by an assault on your chastity?"

  "That's hardly deadly, I shouldn't think."

  Gideon kissed the side of her neck and she could already feel her resistance to him melting away.

  "You make a good point, though," she said.

  "I do?" he asked, moving to the other side of her neck. "What's that?"

  "I should defend against this simply because you think I can't."

  "Can you?" he murmured.

  She quickly ducked out from under his arms and danced away. "Yes, I can. And don't test me, it will make us argue again."

  "Why argue when we can do something much more... interesting."

  "Stop it," she scolded. "You always start this and you never finish it, apparently distracted by your need to lecture me on my wanton ways."

  "I've never called you wanton."

  "You've implied it. I'm not stupid."

  "Nor have I called your stupid, although you seem bent on assuming so."

  "Again, you have implied it. I don't want to argue about this. I'm happy that my friend is coming home in another month so just go away." She made a shooing motion. "Go away. Go back to whatever you were doing before Dibbs told you that your wife was screeching in the hallway. Go."

  With a shake of his head and a lopsided smile he finally left and Jack sat down to write some more letters to her friends.

  Gideon sat at his desk idly tapping his pen on his blotter as he had been doing for the last ten minutes. He had sent Phillip on a break to have time to think. Seeing Jacqueline with that letter in her hand made him realize he had never seen her happy before. She had vibrated with it and it had drawn him in like a bee to a flower. He wanted to taste that joy, feel it under his hands. But she had been right to push him away. He could still sense that moving too quickly on the physical side of their relationship would be a mistake. An intensely satisfying mistake, no doubt, but a mistake nonetheless. Since he now dreamt about her nightly it was hard not to join her in her bed and try the acts his mind had come up with. Every day began and ended with thoughts of her long, silky legs wrapped around him as he pleasured her until she called out his name in ecstasy. Fabulous. Now those thoughts intruded on the middle of his day. He wondered how much longer he was going to have to wait, but when he weighed his current frustration against whether they could have a satisfying long-term marriage it really wasn't a contest. He had always been one to believe in long-term investments. For good or for ill, they were married now and that meant at least attempting to make a good marriage of it. His Jacqueline had to make sense of their relationship in her own mind and that would take time. He wasn't sure what it would look like when she had made up her mind but he was confident he would recognize it. Until then he would just do his best not to think about her in the middle of the day.

  Buoyed by Sabre's note Jack spent the rest of the morning reading her own journals from their childhood together. Many of the stories were familiar from constant retelling, but others had been forgotten over the years. She had chosen to tuck herself into the charming window seat in her bedroom that looked out over the side garden. With the delicate embroidered pillows and yards of gauzy drapes it was the sort of spot that the three girls would have hidden in to giggle over these stories when they were young. She heard the maids enter to straighten her room and didn't think much of it. She supposed they did that every morning when she was most often dow
nstairs with Mrs. Gladstone or doing other errands. The two girls chatted without her notice as they worked, until one sentence caught her attention.

  "My sister says as he turned off his mistress without even so much as a by-the-by."

  "Don't see why he did that as it's certain he's not getting any attentions from her ladyship."

  "Gull, I think they're quite sweet together."

  "Tidiest beds I've ever seen slept in. You're not going to keep a man inside his marriage that way."

  "But when they arrived they certainly looked, well, you know."

  "Some women go cold quick. Especially the blue bloods, my mama says."

  "I adore milady," the first girl defended. "She's always kind."

  "A man doesn't want a kind woman in his bed, that's all I'm saying duck."

  Jack's cheeks were burning. She had drawn her feet up tight against herself to ensure that she was fully hidden behind the curtain unless the girls decided to clean the window seat. Once they had left she crept out of the window and put her journals away in the trunk again. Then she took to her bed for the rest of the day, sending word that she wouldn't be down for dinner due to a headache.

  Late that evening she heard a light tap on the door between her sitting room and bedroom followed by Gideon's voice. "Jacqueline?"

  She couldn't talk to him, not yet, and pretended to be asleep. He came over to the bed and felt her forehead then smoothed her hair back from her cheek. He stood there over her for long minutes and it almost made her open her eyes and ask him why he was lingering. Finally he straightened the coverlet over her and walked to the door that connected their rooms. After moving her trunk out of the way, something he was able to accomplish far more quietly than she had the night she had dragged it there, he went through to his own room and left the door open. She could hear him moving around and preparing for bed. Even after the sounds in his room quieted she continued to stare at their open connecting door. She finally fell into an exhausted sleep in the middle of the night.