Martha groaned. “More, please.”
“Take it all,” he growled, giving her his full length with each savage stroke.
His hips drummed faster, harder, his grunts and snarls becoming maddened as he claimed her over and over and over again. By now they’d made love so often—often three or four times a night—that she knew the signs of his impending crisis.
His thrusting became wilder and less controlled. “Martha—I need—” His fingers gripped her hard enough that she would have bruises tomorrow. “I need—” And then he shouted her name and buried himself, his body jerking with each jet of hot seed.
She closed her eyes and reveled in his primal claiming.
The spasms gradually diminished and came farther and farther apart, until he was still. And then he sighed deeply and relaxed.
Martha slid forward, until she was lying on her stomach, with Hugo sprawled on top of her. He was heavy, but not unpleasantly so. The hard, sweaty muscles of his stomach and chest molded against her back and his shaft was still buried inside her, half-erect.
It was … heaven.
He shifted slightly, exhaled—the sound one of profound contentment—and then became boneless with sleep.
“Hugo?” she whispered.
He didn’t so much as twitch.
Martha couldn’t help smiling, even though she was more than a bit unnerved by his almost frenzied behavior. He was always an energetic lover—also vulgar and without shame—but he’d never been so frantic before.
Something had happened to him today. Not that Martha could have any idea what as she had barely seen him during the daylight hours since their arrival in London a week ago.
He disappeared every morning before she woke and only returned home after she’d gone to bed, slipping in beside her while she slept and waking her with his skilled, passionate lovemaking.
“I’m sorry, darling,” he’d said the third night, after she’d asked if he would ever eat dinner with her again. “Things should slow down … soon.”
“Have you met with your business partner?” She wanted to ask the woman’s name, but decided it was not her affair. If he wanted her to know, he would tell her.
“Not yet, but soon. I promise you it won’t always be this way. Why don’t you and Cailean explore together, for now, and then next week I’ll engage a leasing agent to show us some properties?”
For the first few days Martha and Cailean had occupied themselves discovering London, walking for miles and visiting historical sites that she had never imagined she would get to see in real life.
But two days ago, when she’d gone down to breakfast, she’d learned from Richard the footman that Cailean had left even before Hugo that morning.
Martha had been beside herself with worry until Cailean returned before dinner, clutching a filthy, battered, and bleeding cat. Martha loved animals—all animals—but the mangy feline had a face that only its mother—or Cailean—could love.
It was missing half of one ear from an old injury and the bend in one of its back legs wasn’t quite right. Most daunting was its entirely white right eye, which seemed to look right into Martha’s soul as she helped Cailean bathe the beast.
She had never bathed a cat before and would never do so again. Her arms looked as though she’d climbed through a dozen rose bushes. Cailean, who’d borne the brunt of the cat’s ire, looked even worse.
Once the animal was free of grime, its coat was actually an attractive black and gray tortoiseshell. But that was the only attractive thing about it.
Butterbank had located a small medicine chest and Martha had tended to the poor creature’s injuries.
Clean, dry, and full of milk and a bit of liver, the cat had slept soundly in front of the kitchen hearth. Not until the following day had she learned that Cailean had slept right beside her.
Any ambivalence Cook or Butterbank might have had about the new addition to the kitchen—whom Cailean dubbed Maggie—dissipated when Maggie presented Cook with an obviously well-fed rat.
After the cat incident Martha had asked Hugo to have a talk with the younger man and make sure he wasn’t venturing into dangerous parts of the city. No matter how huge he was, he was still a gentle, kind lad who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Martha could not be comfortable thinking about him exploring some of the parts of London that she’d seen from the window of a hackney.
Remarkably, Cailean was transfixed, rather than daunted, by the size and complexity of the city. Indeed, he seemed almost at home.
So, the only one of the three of them who had nothing to occupy them was Martha.
In addition to the housekeeper, there were at least a half-dozen maids—for the kitchen, the bedchambers, the common areas—a footman, the butler, and even a cook.
They’d been married almost two weeks and she’d never even cooked Hugo a meal! It just didn’t feel right.
Never had Martha believed that she could become bored with too much leisure time and too many books. It seemed profoundly ungrateful to admit that—even in the privacy of her own head—but it was true.
Martha sighed and closed her eyes, even though she wasn’t in a hurry to go to sleep and wake up alone again tomorrow morning.
Not surprisingly, rest eluded her.
It wasn’t until the early hours of the morning that she finally identified the emotion that had emanated from Hugo in almost suffocating waves: it had been despair.
Chapter 28
Bevan Davies sat behind the desk that used to be Hugo’s, his big feet propped up on one corner.
He was of middling height, his build whipcord lean, like Hugo’s.
He was not a handsome man, but his craggy face was strangely compelling. He almost always smiled, although it never reached his dark brown eyes. Hugo estimated his age to be somewhere around sixty, although he had lived a hard life and probably looked older.
Bev had spun such a web of lies around his origins that nobody knew when he’d first arrived in London. His accent was still Welsh, but with a big helping of St. Giles thrown in
