“I don’t know if tomorrow another goose will jump out from a bush and I’ll fall from my horse, and that will be the end of Victor Frankenstein. Don’t you understand this? No one knows. You have already lived through death, and you are living a bonus life. It can be anything you want. And dear God, please decide it is a life with Angelika, or she will never recover.”
Victor’s entreaty to God went unnoticed by all except Arlo.
“Would it be cruel to marry her, only for me to die, weeks or months later? It will destroy her.” Arlo asked the next question he feared. “Will she die of grief, just as your father did?”
“It would be cruel to not let her have you for the hours, days, months, and years you may have remaining,” Lizzie said. “Whatever happens, we will take care of her. But for this moment, that is up to you. She needs you. Find that romantic story inside yourself. Never have I heard of one so extraordinary.”
Arlo rose from his chair and threw his napkin aside. He didn’t utter any polite good-evenings, but instead pushed through several mahogany doors until he was at the stairs. It made him think back to that first night, when Angelika had half carried him into her bedroom. In every step he took, there was a blade-on-bone kind of pain, and a thousand little deaths. The automatic thought came to him now: I think I’m dying.
Stubbornly, he rebutted it. I think I’m living.
The portrait of Caroline Frankenstein glowered contemptuously down at him as he climbed. Her look was, You believe yourself worthy of my daughter?
“I am not, fair lady,” Arlo replied out loud, “but I am who she wants, and I allow myself to be chosen.” It was a waste to spend another moment without Angelika. “I wish to marry her. I need to marry her. And I don’t want to die.”
Admitting this, no matter how undeserved, gave him the boost he needed to take the stairs two at a time. Light-headed, breathless, cold, and in agony, he was about ready to push through her bedroom door when Sarah appeared behind him bearing two heavy buckets.
“I’ll take them,” Arlo said. “Thank you, Sarah.” The girl blushed red, of course, but she was happy enough to put the handles in his palms. His hands were fading by the moment—how many more pails of water? How many more strokes of his love’s skin? Forget all that, he told himself firmly, and pushed open her door.
“I’m here,” he said.
Angelika was sitting in the half-filled tub, her arms around her knees. “What do you want, Arlo?”
He poured the first pail of water in at her feet. “I beg you. Please marry me.”
A sigh was the only reply.
The second pail went in, and he was also pouring his heart into the crystal-clear warm water. She did not lift her head to see him unbuttoning his shirt. Perhaps she heard the fabric moving, but his bride was stubborn, and that porcelain cheek remained on her forearm.
She definitely felt the shift in water as he put one foot into the tub, then the other, then he sank in behind her. The flawless expanse of her back, and the curves of her neck and waist, had his cock as hard as iron. He put an arm around her collarbone and eased her back from her braced position.
He used his hands to stroke her, wash her, pleasure her . . . but she did not reply.
“I’m not afraid anymore,” he explained. “I will be married to you, and I will be your husband, until I die. It is the only thing I want from this new life.”
Her breath shuddered out, and her spine softened, and she grew heavier in his arms. He watched his hands touching her: wrists, the bends of her elbows, the heavy palmfuls of breast, and the flat stomach that he would try to stretch full, in time, if miracles did exist. He ignored the knowledge that his fingertips were fading like the stars at dawn; right now, in this exact moment in time, he could still feel the wrinkles at her nipples and the hollows of her collarbones.
“This is only what your body wants,” she countered in a whisper.
She was sad, even as she pressed her bottom against him. He knew the signs that she was becoming restless with need; her chest was blushed pink, her thighs were squeezing and relaxing, and she dropped her head back on his shoulder to give him access to her throat.
“I am my body, and my soul,” Arlo countered as he kissed. “All of me wants to be your husband. Please allow me this honor.”
“I want to be married in a cathedral,” she said, and his heart soared with hope. She hid how serious she was with a flippant “But I suppose you would not want that.”
“That is what I want.” Scandal, gossip, his background exposed, jokes at her expense . . . nothing could touch them. “I will be there with you, and that is what you shall have.”
She pulled away, and his hopes began to falter . . . until she got to her knees, turned, and straddled his lap. The bathwater was now an ocean. Between their bodies, his arousal was hard, and her tight fist squeezed out his breath.
“I want a honeymoon that lasts a year,” Angelika told him as she lifted her body, aligned him, and began to sink.
“Fine,” Arlo choked out.
“I want to see the world. I will be extravagant in every regard, and I am a ridiculous traveler.”
“I already know that.”
She leaned herself back, to find the angle she liked best. “But I do not suppose you would enjoy that type of life, being taken everywhere with me, put into my bed, and bought anything I think you will enjoy. Ships, horses, carriages. Spices, tapestries, wine.” She was losing her breath. “Then, we shall return to Larkspur Lodge, where I will have our first baby.”
“That is all I want.”
He was having trouble thinking, but she deserved so much more. He angled his pelvis, and focused. “I was too much of a coward to say everything I want, because I feel like I could lose everything again. But it is no use; I simply must have you. All I have to give you is this, my body”—his breath stuttered in his chest as the water crested—“but even as I become completely myself again, I will still love you as I do now. Fiercely, violently, in ways that scare me. I vow to you that I will not change.”
He felt his composure begin to break down. How had he been so slow to reach this surrender? “I will kill for you. I will live for you. I will allow myself to be spoiled by you. From this moment on, you are my wife.”
“Father Northcott, performing his own wedding vows?” Angelika replied with a pinch of sarcasm and sweat on her brow.
She still did not believe him.
He did not know where the strength came from, and there was no longer any pain. He stood up slowly, feeling her gasp, and her body clutched him tight everywhere. With strange ease, he stepped out of the tub, and now there was the sound of rainfall and a cold chill. They did not notice. The windowsill was a promising height, and he didn’t lose his deep seat inside her as he put her down and crowded into her open thighs. His world was narrow and tight, dripping wet, and he felt himself changing.
Beyond this leadlight window was the forest where he’d found her on her back, sleeping as if enchanted, having cheated death by inches, and he was becoming that wild creature that had fallen to his knees, terror in his heart.
“I’m going to keep doing this until you say yes,” he said, moving his hips, and she uttered a rich, desperate moan. “I will spoil you in ways you cannot imagine.”
Her eyes rolled closed, but he did not feel that vise-tight sensation that usually gave away her overloaded passion. He put his hands under her knees, and continued pushing and pulling her. “I want to have you like this every day, showing you how I love you, how I am desperate for you. Every blink of your eyes, and every tart reply, makes me store this up for later, when I take you to our bedroom. Do you want that life?”
Her hands were slipping on his wet shoulders. “Yes. I want that. Harder.”
He put his hand to where they were joined, and added a new tension to her next moan. When they made eye contact again, everything turned desperate.
Words were not possible any longer, and now he used his body and his lips to explain to her what she meant to him; that she was exceptional in every way, the most gloriously gorgeous, rightfully vain, brilliant person he would ever meet. Memories of her began to splinter in his mind as he thrust again and again, and she began to break down in ecstasy.
Trousers tight on her thighs, a sea sponge in her hand, the fall of her loose hair on her shoulder, biting into an unusual apple, the spark of light in her green eyes, and how she always looked at him: like she loved him beyond any sense, sidestepping the natural order of the universe with a grin and a quip . . .
Now she was traveling into that private landscape of ecstasy, her limbs jerking, her pulsing and pulling causing him to follow. He clutched her to his heart, and he felt like a wild animal. “I love you.” It was the truest thing he’d ever said, even if it was growled. “Marry me, for God’s sake, give yourself to me.”
He lifted his head as his body took care of his orgasm, tripping him back into jerks of sheer pleasure, over and over. He looked into her eyes, and she smiled.
“Yes. I consent to marry you, Arlo Northcott. But I have a complaint. This is not a story we can tell our children.”
She put her hand to his cheek and kissed him.
He’d never felt relief quite like this.
Chapter Thirty-Two