Lady Cecily and the Mysterious Mr. Gray

by Janice Preston

  ‘Kilburn?’

  Chapter Eight

  Cecily had expected approval that she had listened to his advice and would listen to her heart. Zach’s exclamation of horror took her by surprise. She had never seen him so perturbed.

  ‘You say that as though you know him.’

  Zach scowled. ‘We have met.’

  ‘And what, pray, is your objection?’

  There was a lengthy pause. ‘He is too dull and self-important for a woman like you.’

  ‘Like me? I should have thought I was perfect for such a man. I am hardly a giddy girl any longer. If I ever was.’

  The silence stretched as his gaze roamed her face and her body, coaxing trails of fire that sizzled along her veins.

  ‘That word again. Perfect. On the surface maybe,’ he said eventually. ‘But deep down lies a different woman and Kilburn is not the man to satisfy her.’

  Those sizzles of fire erupted, flaming her skin and firing her temper. ‘And you are?’

  Their eyes clashed and Cecily battled to hold his gaze. One kiss did not give him the right to question her decision. Or to think he knew anything about her.

  ‘I did not say that,’ he said, quietly, ‘but Kilburn is not the man for you.’

  She jumped to her feet, her insides churning with anger. ‘It is time I went. You might be wise in some ways, Zachary Gray, but you know nothing of my world.’

  He did not move. He continued to stare at her, a deep groove etched between his brows as though he were waging some internal battle.

  ‘I know more than you imagine,’ he said eventually. ‘And Kilburn...there is a darkness at the heart of him.’

  ‘Then tell me what you know of him. Convince me.’

  He dipped his head to stare into the flames, his shoulders stiff. ‘I have said enough.’

  She stamped her foot. ‘You cannot malign a man’s character like that and not elaborate.’

  ‘I am asking you to believe me. Trust me. You will be unhappy.’

  Frustration and anger bubbled together. The man was infuriating. There was enigmatic and there was just plain stubbornness. What could Kilburn have done to set Zach against him? Why would he not tell her? Clashes between landowners and Romanies setting up camp on their property were common.

  ‘Did he drive your people from his land? I should have thought you would be accustomed to such things.’

  She flinched as Zach surged to his feet, anguish etched on his face. She stood her ground as he stormed around the fire to confront her even though her insides quaked. He halted in front of her, hands fisted at his sides. Then he hauled in a deep breath. His shoulders dropped and his fingers uncurled as he exhaled, shuddering.

  ‘I did not mean to startle you. I’m sorry.’ He held her chin, tilting her face, his dark eyes searching hers. ‘Please, heed my warning, dove. Go if you must, but watch him carefully. Take note of his actions rather than his words. He is not a kind man. Probe his character.’ His words grew ever softer, his eyes more intent. He placed his other hand against her chest, covering her left breast, with exquisite pressure. ‘And hear your heart.’

  ‘I—’

  Her voice hitched as his gaze lowered to fix on her mouth and his fingers curved around her breast. Heat flared from the smouldering fire deep in her belly, flickering through her entire body until her veins, her nerves, the entire surface of her skin scorched hot. His other thumb moved then, slowly and deliberately, dragging her lower lip gently sideways as his warm breath danced across her skin. Without volition, her hands rose to his chest, her fingers splaying through crisp curls, and a moan escaped from somewhere deep, deep inside her. She followed the powerful contours of his chest up to his shoulders where her fingers curled into firm, hot flesh.

  His arms came around her, one hand settling at the small of her back, the other between her shoulder blades, fitting her body into his, soft curves against hard muscle. She tilted her face, seeking, and his lips grazed over hers, gently nibbling, soft and persuasive; she twined her arms around his neck and pressed closer still, pushing her fingers among those heavy, silken curls that so fascinated her. His tongue parted her lips as his hands skimmed down her back to the swell of her bottom and he cupped her, lifting, as he angled his head and deepened the kiss, the hard ridge of his arousal pressing into her stomach.

  Strange sensations spiralled through her—she could barely believe how one kiss made her feel...or the effect she was having on this gorgeous virile man. Her entire being was focused on him and on this dizzying pleasure. Nothing else—not one single thing outside his arms—mattered. He swung her off her feet and carried her to his pallet, following her down, his body half-covering hers. Only then did he break their kiss, raising his head and sweeping her face with his glittering gaze. He stroked her hair back and then clasped her wrists, loosening her hold and easing her arms from around his neck. Still holding her wrists, he splayed her arms. As her hands touched the blanket on either side of her head, he changed his grip, lacing his fingers through hers, holding her in place.

  With lips and tongue he explored her face and her neck, her shoulders and her arms, murmuring his appreciation and endearments, soothing her even as her skin heated and tingled wherever he touched. His head moved lower, his mouth caressing the slope of her breast. She tipped her head back, arching her back, as a moan escaped her lips. Her breasts felt excruciatingly tight and her nipples ached. She moved restlessly and tried to pull her hands from his, longing to touch him. Needing to touch him. He tightened his grip.

  ‘Zach—?’

  ‘Hush, my dove. Allow me...’

  He shifted position and her hands were now above her head, together, her two wrists pinioned by just one of his hands as the other cupped her breast, the thumb rubbing her nipple, creating the most delicious...the most tantalising... She raised her head to peer down at him. His mouth was on the curve of her breast, tasting, licking, and then with one swift tug, he tugged her neckline, and her breasts sprang free. He drew one nipple into his mouth, his tongue swirling, teeth nipping oh so gently.

  Oh, heavens!

  She could not bear to lie still. She thrashed her head from side to side as her body bowed, but then he shifted again, bringing more of his weight on her so, once again, she could not move. She watched as he gazed down at her exposed breasts. When he looked up, the heat and the fierce desire in his eyes sent her senses reeling as her insides turned molten.

  ‘Zach—?’

  She could only watch, helpless, as he lowered his head again, turning his attention to her other breast, gently tugging and suckling. Her eyes closed in ecstasy and her head sank back to the ground as she gave herself up to his lips...his tongue...his teeth...and moan after moan sighed from her until, finally, he released her wrists and he took her lips in a long, soothing kiss as he gathered her to him and rolled on to his back, taking her with him.

  ‘Did that please you, little dove?’

  ‘You know it did,’ she breathed, taking in the wicked glint in his eyes as she leaned over to kiss him.

  This time she took control and he lay still as she stroked and kissed, licked and nibbled, fascinated by his bronze, hair-roughened skin and the shift of his muscles as she explored. The only time he stopped her was when her fingers strayed too close to his waistband as she explored his flat stomach.

  ‘Not wise, my dove,’ was his only response when she raised a brow.

  She knew he was right. She appreciated his restraint. Had the decision been left to her, she wondered, would she be so controlled? She ought not to play with fire. Tomorrow she would be gone and she would—surely—soon forget this sexy, enticing Romany and the wild cravings he conjured forth.

  When at last she snuggled close, Zach settled her into the crook of his arm, her head on his shoulder as he stroked her hair. She nuzzled into his neck, tasting him, savouring his unique salty maleness, and she ached—a hollow, yearning ache for what she could not have, deep in her core.

  She twirled
his chest hair with restless fingers.

  ‘You are...an unusual man,’ she said.

  ‘I have been called worse.’ He began to sing, low and musical, in a language at once foreign and soothing. When he finished, she stirred.

  ‘Was that a Romany song?’

  He pressed his mouth to her hair. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is it about?’

  A laugh rumbled in his chest. ‘It is a song for a man to sing to a woman.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  He tilted her face to his and kissed her—slowly, sensually, as though he were savouring every single moment, his lips soft and smooth and oh so tempting. Then he lifted his mouth from hers.

  ‘That.’ He settled her head against his shoulder once more and she made herself relax, controlling the urge to continue...to kiss him again...to take more...to...to...

  ‘Where shall you go when you leave here?’ Anything to distract herself.

  She felt his shrug. ‘You have asked me that before, dove.’

  ‘Will you rejoin your family? Are they still camped at Worcester?’

  ‘They will have moved on by now.’

  ‘But...how will you find them?’

  She worried about him. The countryside was vast.

  He flicked her nose. ‘Don’t you worry about me, dove. I will find them. I know their direction and where they will camp.’

  ‘It is a strange way to live. At least, to someone like me.’

  ‘It must appear so.’

  ‘You said—the other day...’ She paused. She did not wish to anger him, but her curiosity was fierce. ‘You implied that you had chosen your way of life. That you had an alternative.’

  He shifted position, as though uncomfortable. He was silent so long she feared he would simply not answer.

  ‘Every Romany has the choice to change if they so wish. They can choose to find a job and somewhere to live. But they are born to travel. It is in their blood. They do not hanker after roots to anchor them to one place, or a roof to shut out the sky. They live beneath the sun, the moon and the stars.’

  His use of ‘they’ rather than ‘we’, and the care with which he spoke, suggested there was more—a secret he did not wish to reveal, not to her. She was, after all, a stranger to him—a gadji, as he termed non-Romany women—and they would probably never meet again. She must respect his desire for privacy even though she longed to probe the bitterness she had glimpsed in him that morning at the stable yard.

  ‘Noblemen can rule their fiefdoms in accordance with their own rules, no matter how self-serving.’

  Had he been thinking of Kilburn? The Earl was surely not the sort to attract such vitriol from a man who otherwise appeared content to accept life, and people, as they were. She recalled Zach’s warning—there is a darkness at the heart of him—and caution whispered through her.

  Time passed and her heart grew heavy in her chest as she accepted the inevitable. She forced herself to pull away from him.

  ‘I must go.’ She smiled at him, at the tenderness in his dark eyes. ‘And, yes, this is one of those times when I shall follow what I must do rather than what I should like to do.’

  ‘And what is it you should like to do, my lady?’

  ‘That which I cannot—stay here, like this, until dawn breaks.’

  His throat rippled as he swallowed, but his expression revealed neither regret nor relief. He stood up. ‘I will walk with you.’

  ‘There is no—’

  ‘There is every need. Do not argue.’

  He reached out and she placed her hands in his. His fingers folded around hers and he pulled her gently to her feet. Then he released her and strode to his cart to grab a shirt, which he tugged over his head. Cecily watched, committing him to memory. This was not reality. She knew that. It was but an interlude in the play of life: a very short interlude. She did not—would not—delude herself. But, oh, how she regretted... Tears clogged in her throat and stung her nose and her eyes.

  Yes. How she regretted.

  She turned away and waited for him to join her.

  * * *

  Zach tucked his shirt into his trousers, taking his time, until he was certain his emotions were again securely boxed. What was it about this woman that touched him? And made him wish for the impossible—that he was not who he was? It was as though she had reached deep inside him and taken possession of his soul.

  Her sort had never interested him: prim and proper ladies hiding their disdain for more lowly born folk behind their exquisite manners and their perfect behaviour. Even as a child, he had recognised the truth in their eyes. They had looked down upon his mother. They had ignored him, the son of the gipsy woman. And as a man he expected no different from their sort. His father’s sort. Kilburn’s sort.

  But Cecily—and Thea and the Duchess, if he thought about it—were different. Thea, he could understand. He had helped her brother. She was grateful. The Duchess—her attitude had puzzled him, until he had met her grandfather and learned of her father’s humble beginnings, and then her lack of highhandedness had made more sense. But a duke’s sister—never had he imagined she would be so...non-judgemental. And neither would he have believed such passion smouldered in her depths or that she would reveal that side of herself to a man like him.

  As a man, he had avoided gentlewomen, let alone a lady of her breeding. In the years since he and his mother had made their home with her family, he had preferred to dally with the local servant girls at the various places near which they had set up camp. Those girls—fun and uncomplicated—understood the game for what it was: a bit of fun not to be taken seriously. He had taken care not to dishonour any of the Romany girls he met by showing interest in them. With a father who was a gadjo, even his mother’s family did not consider Zach as true Rom, yet all the non-Romany world saw of him was a man who was a gipsy.

  He belonged nowhere, to neither world.

  Cecily, though...how he yearned to belong with her. To love her, to bury himself inside her, to claim her and to never let her go. But to think like that was fantasy. For her sake he must let her go but—to Kilburn? Fury scorched his gut.

  Kilburn. Of all men.

  The shock of hearing that name, after all this time, still reverberated through him: picking open the old wounds, shining a light on the past he had tried so hard to forget, reminding him once again of his misery at his half-brother’s rejection and of the humiliation and the torment to which he and his friend, Kilburn, had subjected Zach throughout his boyhood.

  How could he persuade Cecily to heed his warning about Kilburn without revealing both the identity he had renounced a decade ago and the wretched truth of his past? Even he found it hard to believe Kilburn would treat a lady—his own wife—with the same barbaric cruelty he had employed against a sixteen-year-old half-Romany boy. Every fibre of Zach’s being rebelled at the thought of exposing that particular shame to such a perfect lady.

  He battened down his thoughts, and returned to where she waited by the fire. His Lady Perfect—it meant something different now to when he had coined the phrase. She was the perfect lady for him—but he could not have her.

  ‘Come.’ He took her hand. ‘Let us go.’

  They walked to the lake and crossed the parkland to the archway into the garden. In silence, they trod the pathway to the side door into the house. The door she had left by. Quietly, Zach tested the door; it was still unlocked.

  As one, they faced one another and Zach raised her hand to his lips and breathed in her scent as he kissed her skin. He stroked her hair back, framing her face with his hands, then pressed his mouth to hers, tasting her sweetness for the very last time. His heart was a solid mass of aching, brimming with black despair.

  ‘Farewell, my perfect lady.’ His voice barely audible. He kissed her cheek, the saltiness of her tears on his lips. He folded his arms around her, pulled her close to his chest and put his lips to her ear. ‘Please. Trust me. Kilburn has a cruel streak—watch him carefully. Do not
rush to a decision. Wait. Give yourself time. Consider. Your heart will tell you.’

  She leaned back in his arms and cradled his face, one soft hand against each cheek. ‘I will.’ A choked whisper. ‘I promise. Goodbye, Zach.’

  And she was gone.

  Chapter Nine

  Three days later, Zach caught up with his family in the beautiful Vale of Evesham. They were a smallish group. His grandfather—the Absalom he was named after—was the head of the family. His aunt, married to the oldest of his uncles, was the heart. For ten years, his home had been with them. They had taken him and his mother in after his father—a gadjo—had died and they had nowhere else to find refuge. He steered Titan around the perimeter of the camp and drew him to a halt at the far side, at a distance from his uncle’s tents. His mood lightened at the sight of his family—uncles, aunts, cousins—as they gathered to greet him.

  Perhaps now, in the midst of his family, he could cast Lady Perfect from his thoughts. And his dreams.

  ‘Well, Absalom.’ His uncle spoke the Romany language, deep, thick and musical. ‘You have returned? You did not stay?’

  ‘As you see, kako.’

  Come.’ His aunt urged him from his cart. ‘The boys will see to the animals. Come and eat.’

  Myrtle had leapt down as soon as the cart halted and was hopping around on three legs, and Zach hoped she would remember her training. Dogs were considered unclean by the Rom, due to their habit of licking their genitals, and Zach had trained her not to come too close to where the food was being prepared or eaten, or to venture inside his bender tent when he erected it but, since being alone, he had been less strict, remembering the canine companions of his boyhood and the pleasure he had derived from them when his older half-brother had rejected him.

  His grandfather sat by the cooking fire, a blanket around his shoulders. Zach sank down on his haunches next to him.