Cora (Virtue & Vice #4)

Chapter 20

CHAPTER TWENTY

CORA

C ora awoke slowly, then found herself alert in a near-panic. She was too hot, too naked, too?—

Next to a man.

Gideon. Right. Her husband.

Cora relaxed, though part of her remained on high alert. When he emitted a single snore and turned his head to nuzzle her hair, she froze. His arm lay heavily around her waist. Despite her head resting on his shoulder, his feet extended well beyond hers. Lying next to him made her feel dainty and feminine—things she certainly hadn’t felt after her previous experiences. Then she’d felt clumsy and awkward, especially with the way her partners each rushed out of bed after a perfunctory post-coital kiss, dressed in haste, and left her in the room she had rented for the occasion.

What had she been thinking, wasting her time on such bounders? His tousled dark hair was a testament to the wicked and wonderful things they had done the night before.

A twitch against her thigh brought a slight smile to her lips. Slowly, carefully, she reached down, as though she was afraid he might stop her. He didn’t.

One eye peeked open in a flash of amber-brown between thick lashes. Transfixed, she halted her movement. Air stuck in her lungs and held there.

“Well?” he rasped. “Don’t leave a man hanging.”

Freed from the fear that she was overstepping, Cora curled her fingers around his stiff cock and stroked, admiring the way he filled her hand. Gideon rolled up, half-covering her with his torso, and devoured her in an all-consuming kiss. She parted her thighs and guided him into her, exhaling as he pressed her fully to her back and flexed his buttocks to push inside her. All thoughts of regret flew out of her head as she greedily traced the rise of his muscles and the play of his back.

“How flexible are you, darling wife?” he asked huskily with his lips against the shell of her ear.

“What?”

“Let’s find out.”

He pulled out abruptly and sat back. Cora’s whimper turned into a moan as he pushed her legs up, draping one over each shoulder, and held her there. With a wicked grin, he prodded the head of his cock against her sex.

“Gideon?”

“Hm?”

“Aren’t you going to…” She searched for the right word, but couldn’t find it.

“Fuck you?”

She swallowed hard. Heat rushed down her skin, turning it from its usual pale shade to a deep rosy pink. “Yes.”

“Give me a reason to.”

Infuriating man. Boldly, Cora squeezed her breasts. He liked them. Unashamedly and unabashedly, he loved all the parts of her that had been an embarrassment ever since she hit adolescence and grew taller than many men, with a bosom no fashionably cut gown could conceal, and hips that brought comments about producing children. She’d been a child herself at the time, but she hadn’t looked like one. She had learned to be ashamed of her own body from a young age.

No wonder she had sought rational dress. Drab and ugly, cut to hide the things she hated most about her body. No wonder her new wardrobe, gifted with a view to turning her into the kind of woman Martha and Gideon so desperately wanted her to become, felt like an ill-fitting costume.

How ironic that the man who had publicly humiliated her and ruined any chance at her social redemption was now the one to love her body with undeniable passion.

“Very good, songbird.” He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the way she was playing with her own breasts. Emboldened, Cora reached down to stroke her sex, dipping her fingers in and out slowly while Gideon stared, entranced and ferocious.

“Like this?” she purred.

“Good girl,” he growled, and shoved his cock inside her so hard and fast that she barely had time to move her hand out of his way. He pounded into her relentlessly. Breathy moans came from her mouth as each stroke went deeper, harder, hitting parts of her she hadn’t known existed. She would feel those newly revealed parts later, and savor the feeling, but right now she was holding on for dear life trying not to go over the edge.

“Come, Cora. Damn it, come now ,” Gideon ordered through clenched teeth. His words shocked her. Pleasure coursed up her legs and down her neck, bending her back as she climaxed harder than she had ever come in her life.

Gideon followed. His shoulders shook as his entire body tightened in a convulsion of release. Cora couldn’t look away. His sculpted chest, framed by her thighs, with his abdomen muscles taut and his shaft buried to the hilt inside her—it was too much. She came again, a second release right on the heels of the first.

Their gazes locked and they laughed breathlessly.

“I had no idea this would be so wonderful.”

He let her legs slide down. “You, songbird, have a lot to learn.” His weight pressed her into the soft mattress. “And I am going to teach you everything there is to learn.”

Hm , Cora thought. We’ll see about that.

She didn’t mind being taught, but she had ideas, too—and she knew where to get more of them.

* * *

“Where do you think you’re going?” her mother-in-law asked not half an hour after her arrival for luncheon.

“Out.”

Martha had already reduced any lingering glow from this morning’s lovemaking with Gideon to ash with a single arched brow and disapproving glance at Cora’s midsection—as if she would even be showing a pregnancy after less than two months of marriage, if she and Gideon had actually made love before two days ago. Nor was it Martha’s business.

Yet there was no way for Cora to answer an insult implied, not spoken. Martha was excellent at delivering a set-down without uttering a single syllable. There was no opportunity for a smart retort. Only a war of mutual sidelong glares and eye rolls that Cora constantly found herself on the losing side of. She’d lost her appetite the moment they sat down to go over the following week’s social calendar.

As this required little input on her part, Cora mostly nodded and offered tight smiles in between bites of cucumber sandwiches.

“Out, where? It’s sleeting.”

“Titi needs her walk, foul weather or fair, and I promised to visit Honey this afternoon.” Guilt gnawed at her. She wasn’t planning to see her friend. “Isabelle and her mother, Lady de Lucey, are stopping by for tea this afternoon, so I really must be going if I’m to make it to Mayfair and back.”

Lady de Lucey was surely the kind of highly respected and titled company that Martha wanted her to cultivate ties with. But her mother-in-law’s lips pursed into a thin line.

“Her daughter, Isabelle, is illegitimate.”

This was the irredeemable stain upon the daughter. For a woman who worshiped the business of making money, Martha was quick to turn up her nose when people who possessed it fell short of her exacting moral standards.

“Yes, like I was. Am. She is still a countess’ daughter, just as I am still a duke’s daughter. Whether our parents made the union official is out of our control.”

Most people understood that fact and granted children born out of wedlock some leniency. Not all people, and certainly not Martha, who dabbed the corners of her mouth with a napkin and placed it upon her plate. “You will use this afternoon’s visit to explain to the countess why you cannot offer support to young Miss Isabelle Kingston.”

“Isabelle is quite shy,” Cora explained. “It would be a kindness to the countess to be her sponsor this Season.”

Isabelle needed all the help she could get. She hadn’t met her sister-in-law’s sister-in-law more than a few times, but it required little insight to discern that Isabelle Kingston was undeniably an odd duck, deeply uncomfortable in large groups, although she managed well enough in smaller groups of people whom she knew well. She and Rosalyn had become fast friends, despite the genuinely awkward way they had met. Esther, the dowager Countess de Lucey, had been working with Isabelle for months to help acclimate her to her new role as an aristocratic lady. Annalise had told her all of this, but she still worried about how Isabelle would fare once the Season got underway.

Annalise didn’t need any more worries to contend with, in her condition. While the bank was finally stable and she seemed content enough in her inconveniently located little cottage with Eryx, there was still a massive ongoing construction project on their mansion. Even if they could afford it, the expense alarmed her. Besides, Annalise was a natural worrier. She couldn’t help but take on other people’s worries as her own.

If Cora could spare her this concern, she was determined to do so.

“I see greater upside to cultivating a friendship with the dowager countess than in alienating her, Martha. Don’t you agree?”

Martha’s lips pursed. “If you were already established in Society, and your regrettable parentage forgotten, then I would agree that a countess’ friendship is worth courting. However, you are not established in Society. You remain a pariah, your lamentable origins are on everyone’s lips, and not a single soul has forgotten your unfortunate performance at the Pindell’s debutante soiree. Every single person is waiting with bated breath to see whether you make another mistake. You cannot afford to risk helping that young woman, no matter how deserving you believe her to be.”

“Maybe they’re waiting to see how I impress them.” She smiled with sharklike sweetness. Martha rolled her eyes.

“We will see you at the Blumford’s ball Season opening ball this evening,” Martha informed her. “Wear the saffron and gold gown with the bow on the back.”

Cora loathed that gown. The bow’s placement on her bottom might be the height of fashion, but it did her figure no favors. The color turned her skin sallow and her hair dull. Gold tissue was a beautiful fabric wasted on hideous design.

Martha wanted to stage-manage every aspect of her public conduct and appearance, but Cora did not have to accede to her wishes.

“Will Gideon be there?” Cora had the temerity to ask. Martha had left the luncheon table and was sorting through a stack of invitations. Ivory parchment whispered soothingly. Martha’s only response was a quirked eyebrow.

“You’re asking me?”

Cora merely waited, a technique she had used on her brothers, with middling results.

“You are his wife.” Martha set aside the letters. “I don’t ask you to keep track of my husband’s activities, now do I?”

Stung, Cora summoned a footman and slipped Titania’s jumper over her little head. The older woman sighed. “I confess you were not the daughter-in-law I would have chosen for Gideon. I could have tolerated you for Reggie.”

“Yes, you have said as much.” Cora stood up and headed for the door. Martha followed her. “How is Reggie?”

“Well enough. Considering his circumstances.”

The poor man. Trapped in a wheeled chair and subject to the whims of a mother like Martha.

“We haven’t finished discussing your Season,” Martha protested. “And another thing—you will make this your final visit to Miss Caldwell. You cannot be friends with a spinster so firmly on the shelf, with a loose tongue and not a thought in her head. You must think of the impact of your actions and your associations upon Wentworth’s, Cora. It is your duty to your family, now.”

“I beg to differ. I explained that I have appointments. You might have done me the courtesy of inquiring whether I had time for this discussion before barging into my home and expecting me to be instantly available to you for the entire afternoon.”

“This is why you weren’t my first choice for Gideon. Nor even my last,” Mrs. Wentworth fumed. “You do not listen to any counsel except your own. You are heedless of the opinions of others, obstinate in the face of criticism, and too stubborn to admit fault. Wentworth’s cannot afford your arrogance!”

Cora had heard that conflation between a business and personal identity before. From Eryx. Brusquely, while knowing she was proving her greatest critic right, Cora thrust her arms through the sleeves of her mantle and closed the frog fastenings. In truly poor taste, she shoved her hands deep inside the pockets. It was a habit she had picked up from her brother, who had been rather sullen about being sent off to school.

“I will never understand what prompted Gideon to make marrying me a condition of saving my brother’s bank, but I am glad that he did. He is a difficult man, but then, I am not an easy woman. As you have observed.”

Mrs. Wentworth puffed with pride.

“My son is a good man. An honest man. Scrupulous in his dealings.”

Cora couldn’t argue. Gideon had been kind to her, and she had not expected kindness. She was certain Martha would say she did not deserve it, so she sidestepped the issue.

“I am not interested in making another mistake this Season. I do not wish to outshine anyone.” Let the debutantes have the spotlight. She no longer cared. “All I want to do is blend in as much as possible.”

“You are not the kind of woman who can go unnoticed, Cora.”

“I am painfully conscious of that fact.” She was nervous about the role she had been asked to play, like a ballerina who had fallen during a performance and more than a decade later had been granted a second chance at the stage.

Mrs. Wentworth heaved a sigh and glanced away. “We must work with what we have.”

Good lord, this woman could not be pleased. “On that happy note, I must take my leave.”

“Cora.”

Mrs. Wentworth’s tone snapped like a military command. She froze.

“It was not Gideon who set you up for failure that night.”

Cora could not stand this woman. Her willful blindness. Her love for her family was commendable, but it caused her to be cruel to everyone she considered to be an outsider. Marriage was not enough to bring Cora into this woman’s inner circle. Nothing she could do would ever make her good enough to earn Mrs. Wentworth’s regard.

“If you will excuse me.”

She jammed her hat onto her head and swept out into the cold sleet with a none-too-pleased Titi cowering from the weather in her travel basket. But they did not go to Honey’s. Instead, Cora had the driver drop her near Honey’s front door, and as soon as he was out of sight, she quickly crossed the street and went around back to the secret entrance to 9 Dove Street.

It was past time she learned how to play billiards well enough to beat Gideon, and finally get answers about that night.

Because as wonderful as last night with him had been, as long as he was hiding the truth from her, any growing affection between them was built on sand.