Asher’s Invention(18)

“Well, are you?”

“You don’t believe me?” His frown deepened. “After everything we’ve been through?”

She’d nursed her suspicions for several weeks, and now she had to voice them.

“Asher, I’m not your average woman. I’ve been around my father’s workshop long enough to recognize things, and I’ve spent considerable time watching you work too. I have eyes. When I was in your workshop in London, I noticed several items. Like boxes of promethium magnets and barium coils and electromagnetic gauges. I wondered why you would still have so many supplies.”

He jutted his jaw. “I’m an inventor. Am I not allowed a few simple ingredients?”

“So you still insist you don’t possess a genuine millennium machine?”

He stared at her for a long time. The clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hour, sounding unusually loud in the sudden silence. Rubbing his upper lip, he contemplated the fire burning in the grate. Eventually he turned to face her, tall and sober and just a trifle menacing.

“If I possessed a working millennium machine, I would be extremely apprehensive of advertising the fact. Such an invention would attract a lot of attention, some of it good, most of it bad. We’ve already witnessed how bad it could be. If I had this invention, I would want as few people to know as possible. I would be afraid of it falling into the wrong hands. I wouldn’t want to tell friends or family for fear of that knowledge being used against them. If I had this machine, I would keep its existence secret from everyone.” He paused, allowing his words to sink into the silence. “Do you understand?”

She gulped. The implications of everything he’d told her pressed down on her. She’d asked some meddlesome questions, and the answers weren’t at all welcome. Well done, Miss Busybody.

“Perfectly,” she muttered.

She had no right to pry into his private affairs. Still, a part of her was gladdened to know Asher had achieved something no one else in history had. He was unique and talented, and he had a brilliant future ahead of him.

He exhaled slowly and began to walk toward her. “You have that look on your face.”

“What look?”

“A look that says you’re conflicted. You can’t make up your mind whether to be annoyed or pleased by me.”

She bristled at his needling. “I suppose it’s a common condition around a man like you.”

He cleared his throat and hooked his fingers around the lapels of his frock coat. “Minerva, there is something I wish to discuss with you.”

The whitening of his knuckles hinted at the tension in him and made her own lungs constrict. “Oh?”

He rocked back and forth on his heels, the firelight dancing on his polished calfskin boots. “Er, something of a very personal nature.”

Not a drop of air could enter her lungs. All she could do was nod.

“Well, I, um—” He took a deep breath, and then without warning, he dropped to one knee and seized both her hands. “Will you marry me, Minerva?”

She remained frozen while the blood thudded in her veins and her head spun. Secretly she’d been hoping for something from him, but this?

“Speak to me, Minerva. Why do you look so astounded?”

She scraped her tongue across the dry roof of her mouth. “Is it any wonder, when you blurt out something like this without any warning?”

“No warning? My dear girl, did I not give full warning the last time I was here?”

She frowned at him. “Why do you want to marry me?”

“Why?” Blank astonishment came over him before his eyes melted and his voice dropped to a low, impassioned tone. “Isn’t it obvious? I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you, not for one minute. I cannot imagine loving any other woman.”

His tenderness ambushed her, brought tears to her eyes. After all that he’d endured, she didn’t expect such poignant frankness from him.

“Oh, Asher.” Tears blurred her vision as she clung to his hands. How long had she dreamed of hearing these words? No, she’d long ago given up on that dream.

He put an arm around her, folding her into his chest. For months—no, years—she’d no one to rely on but herself. She’d built up an inner core of resilience, and she didn’t require anyone’s support. Yet Asher’s strength beguiled her and scaled her defenses. She leaned her cheek against his waistcoat, relishing his warmth and vigor.

“My sweet Minerva.”

He tilted up her chin, pressed his mouth against hers. His kiss sent a fire racing through her veins, a hungry, consuming fire. She leaned up and returned his kiss. The passion that had lain dormant these past weeks flared up stronger than ever. She curled her fingers through his hair, marveling at its silky thickness. He pulled the pins from her hair and unraveled her tresses, combing them over her shoulders. As he devoured her mouth, his hands roamed over the worn cotton of her dress, shaping the curve of her hips, stroking her thighs, moving higher to slide over her breasts. Her breath caught in her throat as his broad hand possessed her breast and squeezed and stroked until her nipple hardened even through her layers of clothing, and then, still not satisfied, he continued to graze his palm this way and that across her sensitized nub until she was half-mad and panting with lust.

But though her body and mind were rapidly disintegrating, still a tiny rational part throbbed uncomfortably. Four weeks ago, she’d been ready and eager to give herself to him in the hackney carriage, and she would have done so without a smidgeon of regret. The time had been right, then. Saved from the clutches of Monk’s henchmen and knowing her father was alive, she’d been filled with frenzy and ecstasy, her leaping emotions firing her recklessness. But that moment of wild abandon had passed. Now she knew very well what it would signal if she allowed Asher to continue making love to her.

She yearned to be his lover, but was she ready to be his wife?

Rationality seeped through like an autumn mist, slowing her rearing urges. She captured his caressing hand and stilled it. “No.”

His face was flushed, his breathing hard. Slowly he withdrew his hand. “Forgive me, my darling. I forgot myself. Of course, this time we will wait—” he sat upright and attempted to straighten his cravat, “—until our wedding night.”

“No.” The word rasped against her throat like a rasp.

“No? I don’t understand.”

It took all her strength to withdraw from his embrace. She stood up and began to neaten her dress, her fingers numb and shaking. “I’m sorry, Asher, but I can’t marry you.”

“What!” His shocked dismay was painful to witness. “Whyever not? Are you…are you not in love with me?”

“I am in love with you. I’ve always loved you. That’s what makes this all the more agonizing.”

He pulled to his feet and yanked at his rumpled waistcoat. “You make no sense. If you love me, then why on earth won’t you marry me?”

She pinched her lips, dreading he wouldn’t understand her. “Because I’m not ready to marry you.”

“You were ready enough five years ago.”

“Circumstances are different now.” She laced and unlaced her fingers, unable to find the calm she desperately needed. “I have my father to take care of, and this household.”

“And how do you intend doing that without any source of income?”

“I’ve taken your advice, Asher. I’m going to set up my own business, making artificial limbs. I’ve spoken to Dr. Shelley at the infirmary, and he’s already recommended me to several of his patients. My workshop upstairs is all set up.”

“That’s very commendable, but you can still do all that once we’re married. I won’t be some primitive kind of husband who wants to tie you to the hearth.”

“But I want to be an independent woman. Don’t you see?” She faced him square on, desperate to make him see her point of view. “All my life I’ve been subject to other people’s whims, and if I married you now, I would just be repeating the same pattern.”

He made a disgusted snort. “You make it sound as if marriage to me were some form of slavery. I’m not a savage. All I want is to love and cherish you, not subjugate you.”

“I know that.” She moistened her lips, despair and love and melancholy swirling through her. She hated hurting Asher, but it seemed she couldn’t avoid it. “And I would like nothing more than to be your wife and to share your life. But I must do so on my own terms. I want to enter our marriage knowing I’m not beholden to you, that I do so wholly of my own free will. Please, Asher, can you not see that?”

He wheeled on her, his face stony and furious. “And what the devil do you propose I do while you search for these personal terms of yours? Am I supposed to wait in London, pining for you? Because I warn you, I’m not good at waiting or pining.”

She gulped. “Just because we aren’t married doesn’t mean we…we can’t still be…intimate.”

Crimson flooded her cheeks as he gaped at her. “You’re suggesting we become lovers?”

His jagged tone made her flush more furiously. She licked her lips again. “I—I don’t see why not, so long as we are discreet…”