by Gina Kincade
His kisses continued as short, light touches of his lips upon hers. When he pulled back, she opened her eyes to take in the faint outline of his face before the candle on the bedside table went out. Finally, she grasped both sides of his head to return his mouth to hers. She took control escaping any lingering doubts or fears in the familiarity of his tongue sweeping through her mouth.
His hot palms came to rest against her back. He surrounded her with his arms before rolling on top of her. The small, intense moments when he tightened his arms around her, comforted. She knew his passion had overtaken him. His desires grew noticeably against her. She embraced his body with her legs, fitting them together. They looked into one another’s eyes for a brief moment before he breathlessly pulled her back against him. Her crushed breasts ached in a most pleasing way, pressed against his tight muscles. His hot breath heated the back of her neck, caught by her hair falling over her shoulders.
Even with her eyes closed, she could always see him in her mind. In the darkness there, sunlight shone upon the smooth muscles of his chest as it had on the island. The muscles in her stomach gripped, and she grew moist and ready for his penetration. He hastily pulled away just far enough to allow the tip of his shaft to enter her.
He moved inside her in tiny increments, breathing deeper with each slow movement. Her own fears abandoned her as if driven out by his evasive movements. Contractions replied to the friction they created as Aubrey began the slow climb to orgasm. Their bodies pulsed against each other. With each blessed ripple of pleasure under her skin, they melded into one exhausted lump.
“My Lord, you should sneak back to your estate. You truly require sleep,” she said, trying not to nod off.
She knew one day soon she would be able to fall asleep still connected to him anytime she so desired. As she watched him quietly close the door, she let sleep take her to the dreams he promised.
Chapter Seventeen
“I still find it beyond belief you both made it to Triaill Brimuir and back. Such courage you put forth, Aubrey, going there on your own. All my life I have dreamed of visiting the island, wishing to practice such powerful magic on it, but to have attempted to go there…”
Edmund gave the woman a tight smile of gratitude when Lady Sanderly stopped her jawing like a dewy-eyed deb upon her twisted fancy.
“My Lady.” Lord Sanderly spoke with a gentle voice contrasting with his wife’s, which overflowed with girlish excitement. “May I take a moment to remind Aubrey that she should have come to us before leaving?”
“Yes, you may. And, may I add…” She leaned over to place her hand on Aubrey’s arm. “…that I do love you as a daughter. We would have protected you from Lady Dalysbury, and fought her wicked accusations. While we appreciate your immediate sacrifice for us, family works together, not alone.”
“Well, I think my wife has said it all. So, without further ado, we may go on to discuss how you two shall proceed, or we can go back, if the ladies wish it so, to discussing the wonders of Aubrey’s time on the Island. We do want the whole story.”
Edmund hated to be ungrateful to the Sanderlys when they had been the only ones to see he and Aubrey as a viable couple, but he needed not to be reminded of the dangers that could have befallen Aubrey on her trip of much desperation. He'd grown quite adept at bringing it to the forefront of his mind with no prompting of others. If he neglected to do so when awake, then his dreams did not hesitate to remind him. They had only been home but two days, and each night’s sleep had been filled with terrors both dark and gruesome.
The time for his body to rejuvenate during the night had turn coated, providing for him only the stress of what might have been. In dreams, ships plunged into the dark depths of black waters reflecting stormy skies. Strange bawdy men lured Aubrey into unspeakable situations. Being thus unbelievably weary after so little rest, he found it hard to stay awake. Of course, he found the reminder of the perfidy which had caused her to flee him in the first place to be most woe some.
Returning to confront his mother had been a sore trial for them both. He looked toward the beautiful woman, who out shined every bauble in the room, seated demurely in an emerald gown. He watched her eyes sparkle at the retelling of their travel’s tales—this time, more specifically, about the discovery of his gift. Only, after hearing of his father, he feared his gift might actually be a curse. It left him to wonder if inherited magic could be naturally good or bad, or if that was the choice of the witch. He had yet to find time or to find a moment he wanted to waste on such subjects.
“Edmund!”
Catching his name roused him from his unpropitious musings. “Yes?”
“Where were you off to in that mind of yours? Your face was scrunched in a most displeasing manner, causing me much concern.”
“Might anyone here object to a turn of subject, for a time? I find myself faced with yet another most serious situation.”
“Of course, Edmund.”
Edmund caught the playful wink Lord Sanderly gave his wife, as well.
“We can postpone your tales to another time.” Lord Sanderly returned a much more concerned gaze back at Edmund, as if he may actually understand the enormity of the troubling matters afoot.
“I find myself to be continually a pawn of fate. Upon my conception, I now believe, a malediction was called down upon me.”
“My Lord,” Aubrey exclaimed, turning her body fully toward his.
He watched her hands grip her skirts, knowing she wished to use them to comfort him but was restrained by propriety in this house with people she so respected.
“I must ask for your discretion before I relate the full matter. Aubrey’s future with me may hang upon this secret’s usefulness.”
“You know you have it, Edmund.” Lord Sanderly’s use of his more familiar name gave him purchase upon comfort.
“I am in need of any information you may be able to provide me on an Aelfin Pendle.”
“Good heavens!” gasped Lady Sanderly, giving him pause.
“My Love, please give your words due consideration. Let Edmund finish telling us why he needs information of such a man.”
“I ought to have known his name would grant me such a reaction.”
Aubrey’s head cocked to the side with compassion for his plight glistening in her green eyes.
“I fear," he continued, "though I may be loathe to admit it, but the man is my true father. What Aubrey left out of her tale was that he is the reason I had magic in me to discover on the island. We do know the relative I gained it from.”
“Edmund,” Aubrey cautiously said his name, and he appreciated her gesture.
“No, it is fine. I find myself with a need to discuss it.” He turned to the Sanderlys again. “Lord Dalysbury was not my true father. It was a great scandal of my mother’s, but the true situation of my birth has been hidden well. I, myself, have only secured his name upon our last meeting with my mother. I find myself in a devil’s scrape. Should I try to find him and tell him of my existence? Aubrey and I are in no need of another hobble, so I beseech you to not hold from me even the most abominable of details.”
“He does not practice as we do.” Lord Sanderly said. Edmund much appreciated that the man had asked him for no other explanation of his birth, as he had not the fortitude to relate it. He'd grown so weary as of late, travels, late nights, worries. Bone tired, his thoughts did not run as they should.
“That much my mother said. I had just hoped it was another of her lies this time.”
“I fear not. I can see why magic was so easy for you on the island, though. Despite his dark ways, he is, I daresay, the most powerful wizard in all of England. He has dealt many a bad hand with it, too. His power has been accumulated over the years by unnatural means.”
“So, he is alive?”
“Not only that, but he is not all that far a journey from here. We should lay this all out upon the table when you are up to it. I fear he will soon know of your existence simply because yo
ur powers have been rekindled. He will feel you. He may not know at first of what he is feeling, if he knows not he has a son, but I put nothing beneath his grasp of finding out. You do not want such a man knocking upon your door before you are fully prepared to deal with him. We will be behind you, though, we promise you that. So, if you want, I could inquire upon a most secret route of communication we have access to about him. That is, so you are more informed of his ways. I would not fully trust the stories we have heard not to have been embellished upon.”
Lady Sanderly crinkled up her face and shook her head in agreement, as the man continued, “We were set here in this position due to gained wealth, and we have remained only hoping to be of some use some day to our magical kin. I daresay, our time has come. We are here for you both in whatever capacity you may need us. We believe in love, my wife and I, as all that matters upon this earth. Seeing the two of you together has brought us joy as well as reminded us of how fortunate we are to have each other.”
“Lord Sanderly,” a servant said from the door, “You have a caller.”
“And, who wishes to speak with us.”
“The Most Honourable, The Dowager Marchioness of Dalysbury has come to call, Sir. She says she wishes to have a word with you. In fact, she said to tell you she is quite distressed, and wants to assure you she means no disruption or displeasure by her coming.”
Edmund was again touched by this man when Sanderly looked his way before answering. He merely nodded his head to allow it. He raised himself up, feeling his weariness, to stand behind Aubrey’s chair. Reaching his hand down over her shoulder, he found his muscles relaxed, his shoulders shied away from his ears, once her hand joined with his.
“Gads! What does she want now?” Aubrey muttered under her breath to him.
“I have not but the least notion.” Edmund said as he squeezed upon her shoulder.
“I would never have thought her to darken our door again. Such audacity!” exclaimed Lady Sanderly, bouncing her body in her chair with her displeasure.
“She has no such scruples as to see it so,” Edmund countered, dulling his voice to a monotone. He would reveal nothing of his ire or pain. “I promise you Lord and Lady Sanderly, I will do my best to keep the brangling at bay.”
Aubrey now sat up poker straight. He had done his best to keep her seated.
He watched as his mother swept into the room in all her overbearing pomp. Although her manner of dress still fastidious, he found the sight of her wretched miserable. She seemed paler than her powders usually allowed for, and her eyes shown not at all bright with her usual glint of superiority. A hint of laughter brewed within him as the woman walked cock-sure toward them in all her feminine lavishness nonetheless, as had been so engrained she believed in her own type of power. A myriad of contradictions, she never ceased to find a way to cut up his peace.
“Thank you Lord and Lady Sanderly for welcoming me into your home to speak to my son. I am most grateful to you.”
“You are welcome, Lady Dalysbury. But, I will be honest with you in asking you respect all of us in this room, or I shall ask of you to leave.”
“Yes, I will I promise you that. It is why I have come to call, unannounced, at such a time.”
Lady Dalysbury looked away from Lord Sanderly, thus ending the conversation. Then, she moved her gaze, and thus her attentions, to Edmund and Aubrey.
“My dear Edmund, and my dearest Aubrey, I fear I owe you both apologies. Since the day you were conceived, Edmund, all these years, every move and every breath has been for you. I may not always have found the correct…”
His heart stopped with her pause of words. Her speech had been flawless to that point, well rehearsed enough not even to falter over Aubrey’s name. So caught off-guard by her sign of frailty, he had nothing to say. He merely waited open mouthed until she began again.
“I may not have done right by you always, but I did what I thought was best for you at the time. Yours have been the only interests I have worried over. I do see in my selflessness that I may have overstepped my bounds at times.”
“Hell and blast, Mother. What bubble-brained notions do you daresay now?”
His ire came rapidly upon her use of the word selfless in any capacity, although he showed it not in his forced monotone manner of speaking. He did not think she even knew the word selfless, let alone have the audacity to use it in coordination with herself. He only hoped the deep, even tone of his voice matched his glower without revealing any of the weaknesses eating upon him. He already owed Lord Sanderly an apology with the first biting words from his mouth, having gone back on the promise his mother had made of keeping things civil.
“Son, please, I am saying I was wrong. My life has been bleak since your travels, and now so much worse since your visit to me. I love you. I always will. I can not bear to be separated from you or to deal with the brunt of your anger.”
He studied her, wishing he could believe the thinly veiled din as she looked down upon Aubrey.
“Careful, Mother! Watch your words if you wish to speak to her.”
“Aubrey, please.” She went forward as if he had not spoken at all, “my behavior toward you has been contemptible. I see that now. If it is you he loves, then so shall I.”
Edmund laughed heartily in his state of exhaustion at the ridiculous banter coming from her mouth, beyond wishing to figure out her game he wanted this meeting over.
“No, son, I am most serious. We will deal with the scandal together. Surely, I have great enough standing to overcome such a marriage. It exceeds all rationale, but I think we shall pull it off and all be the better for it. I beg of you to find it in your heart, Aubrey, for Edmund’s sake, to allow me to plan the wedding with you. We should begin posthaste.” He noticed the Drury Lane tears his mother shed a moment before he noticed that Aubrey looked as if she had been bewitched and turned to stone.
“This is enough, Mother. The hour is late. We have heard you out. We will consider what you have said.”
He would have said anything to get her to leave on that score. He needed time to figure out what her deception concerned. Her performance passed beyond the boundaries of irony, so he hesitated even to analyze it.
“Thank you, Edmund. It is all I can ask.” She turned from him then with her hands clasped demurely in front of her. “Again, forgive my intrusion, Lord and Lady Sanderly. I thank you for caring for Edmund and Aubrey as you do. I only wish I had done so myself from the start. Looking back now, I was such the fool.”
They only nodded at her before she turned and let the waves of material trussed at the back of her dress swoosh out her dramatic exit. Aubrey stood to face him then, and he swept her into his arms a little closer than the confines of propriety allowed.
“I apologize to you all for the theatrical performance my mother gave. I believe she was at her nastiest underneath her display of sangfroid. Her every word was more ridiculous and absurd than her prior one.
He refused to worry presently at her motivations. His only job tonight would be to secret Aubrey away to her room and to make love to her until all of her tension seeped, to find her supple against him.
Chapter Eighteen
His door slamming into the wall awoke him from his fitful sleep. Before he could figure out what was going on, Lord Sanderly's hands shook him as she yelled long strings of words. He caught his name and Aubrey’s name as his eyes blinked open to a well-lit room.
Sitting up abruptly enough to start off a running pain in his back, he found the source of the brightness to be a few servants with candles along with one servant poking at the fireplace. It did not take much to surmise the news they had come to him with was frightful. Grimaces lived on all their pale faces, including Lord Sanderly’s. They stood all wide-awake at whatever ungodly hour of night rang out. No rays of sunshine attempted to beam through the curtains. It took him a moment's time to look around the room, remember that he had spent the night in a guest room at Sanderly to be closer to Aubrey.
“We need to go!” Edmund yelled, leaping from the bed into the small sea of bodies. The ones he aimed at moved aside just as Lord Sanderly caught his arm.
“Stop! Go where? Edmund, you would be too far behind them to have any idea even which way they chose. You must come back home with me until my guards return her. You will want to be there for her when she returns from her trauma. Unfortunately, there is not much we can do but endure the gruesomeness of waiting.”
Edmund looked at the group of men with his eyes still narrowed from the invasion of light into his darkness. His heart thumped wildly, blackening the edges of his vision. A sharp swelling agony cut through his empty center. The nightmare of her earlier disappearance haunted him with a vengeance. In fact, he found the old wound still very much open and festering. His questions and his denials and his fears swirled into unintelligible combinations of words.
“No, no, no!” He shrugged off the hand which still held his arm. “You wait for word. I am going after my mother. The minute Aubrey returns you must send for me. My mother has done this despite my warnings. Did the snide woman actually believe her performance last night would take her name off of my list of suspects once Aubrey was kidnapped? I shall have my revenge this time! She has gone too far. Now, go wait for news, and I will be on my way.” The thought flew through his mind quickly to deliver his many owed apologies once he had Aubrey back and safely tied to him this time.