Taming a Wicked Rake Read online

  Adam drew up the carriage and hopped down, giving out a call. “Hi there, help needed.” Then he snapped open the door of the carriage. Reaching inside, he pulled Delaney out, letting the man fall like a sack to the ground. “I had a much more violent end planned for you, but today is the lady’s choice and she’s decided prison is your final destination. I will visit you just before the end to ask you if you would have preferred my ending rather than hers. I’ll be curious to know.”

  Charles moaned in response and Maddie nearly smiled. She was angry with Adam last night but far more than that, now she was grateful. Still, it was time he stopped telling her how things were going to be. Bar had been right. She needed to make the rules. It was time.

  The constables interviewed her briefly. They likely would have spent longer but Adam insisted they finish in the morning. They had enough information to lock Delaney away, and for that she was relieved.

  Adam carried her into the inn and began barking orders for food, tea, a room, and a bath. It all sounded heavenly and she relaxed against him. Despite her insistence that their marriage was not a foregone conclusion, she knew one thing. With her wellbeing, she trusted him implicitly. Her heart, however, was a bit more complicated.

  He picked her up and carried her up the stairs, unlocking the room while still holding her. Striding across the room, he gently placed her on the bed and began to strip off her dress.

  “Adam,” she gasped. “They’re about to bring in tea and dinner.”

  ‘Who cares?” He yanked at her clothes. “You’ve done marvelously well, but you’re growing paler by the second. What you need is food and rest and to breathe without that confounded corset on.”

  Once he’d stripped her down to her shift, he lifted her again and yanked back the covers. Laying her in the bed, she sighed with relief; the scented sheets felt so glorious.

  A knock sounded at the door and he pulled the covers to her chin.

  He came back a moment later, carrying a tray with steaming tea and delicious looking cakes and pies. She tried to sit up, but he stopped her with a word. “Down.”

  Then, setting the tray aside, he lifted her into a partial sitting position and brought the cup of tea to her lips.

  His tenderness was heaven. Over the next half hour, he slowly fed her small bites. Her headache receded, though her body aches remained. Just as she was done eating, another knock sounded.

  “That must be your bath.” He turned to the door and she nearly cried for the joy of soaking her sore muscles.

  Then it occurred to her. He was in the room. Was he going to leave?

  She silently watched the tub and buckets delivery and didn’t move a muscle as Adam poured two of the buckets into the basin.

  He pivoted to face her once again and she gave her head a tiny shake. “You have to leave.”

  “I won’t,” he said. His tone was gentle but firm. “You’ve been abused today beyond what most men could stand. I’ll not leave you to climb in and out of this tub alone.”

  Maddie drew in a breath. In her mind, this moment represented a pivot. If he saw her completely naked, helped her with this highly personal task, there was no going back, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for that. “Adam, try to understand.”

  “I do.” He crossed toward the bed. “Which is why I am going to tell you a story.”

  “A story?” Her head cocked even as he reached the bed and gently peeled back the covers. She was too weak to resist but she tried.

  He brushed her hair back and then began pulling out pins and setting them on the table next to the bed. “The story of my first engagement.”

  * * *

  Adam watched as all the resistance left her body and Maddie sagged with wide eyes on the bed. He knew that statement would grab her attention. “Your first engagement?”

  He understood what he needed to do here. She wasn’t going to be strong-armed. He had to give emotionally by sharing of himself. Damnation, this was going to be painful. “Lady Caroline Anders was a lovely eighteen-year-old debutante whose beauty was outweighed only by her vanity.” He lifted her to a sitting position and began to work her shift up her body. As it crested her legs, several bruises on her pale flesh made him wince. This was not how he’d wanted to see her naked for the first time. He’d been dreaming of what she’d look like exposed to him; this was so much more difficult and, in a way, more endearing.

  “Did she have dark hair or light? I’ve never met her. Which is odd when I think of it. After six seasons, you’d think our paths would have crossed.”

  “Brandt keeps her in the country.” He shook his head, a humorless smile touching his lips. “I suppose I should think I got the last laugh. They seem positively miserable. But it’s little consolation.” He was jumping to the end.

  “She was fair and slight. Almost like a pixie. And she had this way of looking at a man as though he was the only man who had ever existed.” He pulled her shift over her head, keeping his eyes on hers. He’d do a cursory study of her for wounds but that was all. “I don’t want you to think I hold any affection for her. I bring it up because it was a carefully designed ploy on her part to snare a man.”

  He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the tub. “Should I be offended? That you think women intentionally ensnare men?”

  His brows went up. “If you called Delaney a woman-eating monster would it be a position you’d taken on all of mankind or just him? She was a woman who embraced her role of man-catcher. It was a point of pride for her to land the man with the largest title.”

  “Understood.” Maddie’s arms snaked about his neck and he tried not to think about the fact that she was completely naked and pressed against him.

  They reached the tub and he lowered her down. She gave a soft sigh as the water swirled around her. “I know this to be true because before I came along, a Viscount had begun courting her. He told me years later that she’d been like the sun shining down on him until the moment I’d entered the picture.”

  “Then, he descended into cold,” she supplied. “I understand.”

  “Brandt was one of my best friends and I have to confess from whom I learned all my darkest habits. At the time I’d scorned him for them but later…” He didn’t want to discuss his habits of the last decade. Not now. He’d only hurt her with them. “Anyhow, even as we courted, became engaged, I noticed her demeanor would change whenever he was in the room. She was almost hostile toward him. Foolishly, I believed she just objected to his lifestyle and I was certain he’d never dally with a debutante. On both counts, I was wrong.”

  He picked up a bar of soap and began scrubbing at her toes. “What happened?” she asked as he lifted her leg to begin working the soap down her slim calf.

  “As wedding plans began, she grew more distant, petulant. I found myself working harder and harder to please her. We’d never even shared a kiss. That’s the part that burned me to the core. I’d treated her as though she were the most precious flower in a cultured English garden, and I, the gardener.” He reached her knee and began on the other leg. This was the hard part. “What I didn’t know was that she’d begun an affair with the marquess. It would have been easier, in time, if I believed her in love with Brandt.”

  “You don’t think she was?” He reached her other knee and glided his hands up her thighs, not wanting to hurt the bruises that dotted them.

  “Do I think that she was so overcome with emotion that she needed to follow her heart? No. I’ve never thought it to be true. What happened instead was an intimate dinner party where Brandt and I were the only guests. Caroline proceeded to announce to her parents that Brandt had filled her belly with his seed and that she was expecting his child. I saw the triumphant look in her eye when her father drew pistols and fired one, just missing Brandt’s head. She never even looked at me, the man she was jilting… It was humiliating. I was tossed out and Brandt married her three weeks later.”

  His lip curled then and he moved to one side of the tub to
start on her arms. “The worst part was that I wasn’t even surprised. I’d known we didn’t have a love match. I didn’t love her. I never expected to love my wife. My mother hadn’t loved my father. But I’d thought we’d share some respect. When I realized that I’d nearly repeated my parents’ marriage. Well…” He looked up at her then. “I decided I’d never marry. That I would keep my relationships unfettered and…” He stopped, cupping her cheek. “I’d keep myself safe.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Safe. It was a word that thread through their relationship. What he’d given her, the promise of a harbor in this world, he needed in return.

  Her role became stunningly clear. He needed to know that she would keep him safe too. Not in body, but in heart. Never in his life, from his mother to his first fiancée, had a woman ever taken care of that tender organ that beat within his chest.

  That was what she had to provide in this partnership. “Adam,” she reached out of the water, one hand unwrapping from where it covered her chest. She’d been too weak and pained to really care about her nudity and now she was too focused on him. “You’re safe with me. I swear it.” She reached out and softly stroked his stubbled cheek.

  In return, he turned into the caress, kissing her damp palm. She watched his eyes slowly close and stay that way. He needed to hear the words again. “You’re all I have ever wanted in a man and I will never, for as long as I live want another.”

  His eyes squeezed tight.

  She slid her fingers down his jaw. “From the first moment I met you, I knew you were different and now…” She paused because she knew the emotion thrumming in her chest but she didn’t know quite how to share it. Be brave, be strong. Take the risk. She inhaled a deep breath, then released it before saying the words in her heart. “I love you.”

  His eyes flew open, the liquid brown pools staring into her. “Maddie,” he choked, the words catching in a deep groan.

  He didn’t have to say it back. This was her role, to give to him in a partnership. “I thought I wanted to be a woman of my own means, but after all this, I know that isn’t true. I don’t know what I would have done without you today.” Her voice broke as she thought about what might be happening this very moment without Adam’s protection. “I just wanted a man who appreciated me for everything inside, not just the packaging.”

  He leaned over the tub and kissed her forehead with a light brush of his lips. “I do, love.”

  Adam eased her out of the tub, dried her with a soft towel, and then helped her get back into her shift before tucking her under the covers again. Her eyes were just about to drift closed when he loosened his cravat and draped it over the chair.

  Next came his shirt and rippling muscles met her gaze as his back and shoulders flexed. She pressed her lips together to keep from making noise as he kicked off his boots and then reached for the falls of his breeches.

  Covering her mouth with her hands, she wouldn’t interrupt this display by making a sound; she watched as he stripped off the last of his clothes. Long, muscular, hair-sprinkled legs met her gaze. She drew her eyes up over each ridged muscle to his rounded behind and nearly gasped at how stunningly perfect he was. Instead, she pressed harder against her face and then winced as she hit a bruise.

  A heavy ache settled at the juncture of her legs. She was going to marry a real live Adonis. Her breath hissed out of her lungs and he turned back to see her staring. A small grin played at his lips. Those supple lips, the softest thing about him. “Love, you’re too bruised to do anything but sleep.”

  “How did you know what I was thinking?” She sat up a little, both to converse and to, well, peek.

  He gave a deep chuckle. “I was a rake, love. I know that look in your eye well.”

  Her own lips pressed together. “As a rake, isn’t it your duty to give me what I want?”

  Water splashed as he settled into the tub. “First, I am no longer a rake, and second, as your soon-to-be husband, it is my first duty to see you well and fully recovered.”

  She slid back onto the pillows. She had to confess, it was nice to be cared for but, at this exact moment, she wished he would come over to the bed to do it. Leaning back, however, reminded her of her extreme exhaustion. Her jaw opened as she let out a yawn. “Will you burn those letters as part of my recovery?”

  She had to confess, now that she was fed and bathed, weariness made her limbs heavy.

  “Of course,” he answered, his voice sounding far away.

  She snuggled deep into the covers. “Will you stay with me tonight?”

  “I’m not going anywhere, love.”

  “Thank you,” she answered. She’d worry about his feelings, her feelings, her wishes for the future tomorrow. Tonight she was just glad to be here with him.

  * * *

  Adam scrubbed off quickly in the quiet of the room. Maddie had gone silent and he was sure she was asleep. Good. She needed the rest.

  He’d nearly laughed out loud when she’d asked him to stay. Nothing would have removed him from this room tonight. He’d spent the day with fear nipping at his heels that he’d never find her, never see her again. He wasn’t letting her out of his sight.

  Wrapping in a blanket, he dried himself and pulled on his breeches. Looking up, his jacket hung on the back of the chair, and as he lifted it, he pulled the letters out from his pocket. Dressing, he stretched next to Maddie on the bed and began to read.

  The first was so obviously a query. She introduced herself as a disenchanted debutante, wishing that her sole option was not only to marry. She argued that if a man chose the wrong path in life such as the wrong career, he simply found another. A woman, however, at the tender of age of eighteen was expected to choose a man that would make all her decisions for the rest of her life. What followed was a highly reasoned argument that explained if a woman was intelligent enough to make such a weighty choice, then it stood to reason she was capable of others.

  He kept reading as, with each subsequent letter, she strengthened and built upon her arguments. By the last letter, he was convinced of two things. The first was that his future bride was more intelligent than most men he knew and the second was that she was absolutely right.

  At some point, as he’d read, she curled herself around him, her arm across his lower stomach, her head on his chest. He gathered her close. He didn’t want to burn the letters, he wanted to publish them in a book. The choice was hers, of course. But he carefully set them aside, and then slid down, being careful not to disturb her. Settling her more evenly on his chest, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  Adam didn’t remember a thing until the first rays of the sun peeked in through the windows. He woke, wondering where he was and why he was so warm and comfortable. That was until his blanket sighed. Stretching out, he touched the warm flesh of his bedmate. Not a habit he was in.

  “Morning,” Maddie’s sleepy voice rasped in his ear. “You’re a terribly comfortable pillow.”

  The events of yesterday came rushing back. He was in bed with the woman he was about to marry.

  He looked down at her face, a few bruises evident, but she didn’t look nearly as bad as he’d feared. “How are you this morning?”

  Her sleepy smile said it all. “Lovely. Much better than I thought I would be. Thank you for taking such excellent care of me.”

  He chuckled. “Apparently you are intelligent enough to choose a man who can make good decisions for you.”

  She stiffened in his arms. “You read the letters.”

  As she began to pull away, he held her fast. “I did. And honestly, I love you for them.” There. He’d said it. He’d bared his heart to her. He’d thought never to do that for anyone, but she was different. He’d known it already, of course. But those letters had underscored what he’d already understood. She didn’t care about his title, his wealth, like when he’d been courting Caroline. Nor was he an obligation to be fulfilled, like he had been with his mother.

  “You love me?” She peeked
up at him. “Truly? Because of the letters?”

  “Not because of the letters.” He couldn’t help himself, looking into her eyes, he had to capture her lips with his own. “But they did articulate what I already understood. You are a woman of intelligence and heart and—”

  “You’ll be safe with me,” she said and then leaned in to kiss him again.

  He brushed his lips against hers in longer and longer strokes until hers parted. Lightly brushing his tongue against hers, he tasted her sweetness and groaned with a longing that curled in his loins. “Maddie.” He wrenched his mouth free. “I am trying to be a gentleman.”

  “Why?” she asked as she touched her lips to his. “Is there a chance you won’t make an honest woman of me?”

  “Not one,” he growled out. She would be his. Was already.

  She pulled back, her lips taking a playful tilt. “Well, as a woman capable of making decisions for her own life, I’ve decided that I wish to be yours. Now. And forever.”

  The words swelled inside him, growing and filling him. “It’s because of my title, isn’t it?”

  She cocked a brow. She knew what he wanted to hear and sliding on top of him, she looked down into his face. “No, it isn’t.”

  “My money?” he asked.

  “Is there a lot of it?”

  Her legs straddled his and she settled her pelvis onto him, his member pressing against her softness, making them both groan.

  Reaching for her hips, he held them together as he began a slow rhythm, pushing against her in all the right places. He watched as her head tilted back, her eyes glazing. “A fair amount,” he rasped. He was hard as a rock now as her hands skittered along his shoulders and then laced about his neck.

  “No,” she moaned as his lips trailed down her neck, and into the open V of her shift.

  “It’s because of my looks, isn’t it?”

  “They help,” she gasped. If his man bits hadn’t been boiling to the point of explosion, he might have chuckled at that one. “But what I like best about you is…”