“You can’t go,” Fanny said, her voice tight. “Your head. You may have a concussion.”
“I don’t,” Grey said. “I’ve had concussions before. I know the signs of injury.”
“You still can’t go,” Fanny insisted. “Even if that cat did upturn that urn, you still haven’t done anything to determine whether someone in the town might want to hurt Amelie.”
He was taken aback by her vehemence. “As I said—”
“I know what you said,” Fanny cut in. “But you are making decisions based on assumptions. This is a town peopled with superstitious layabouts. Who knows what deluded thinking goes on in any of their minds? You haven’t even asked any of the townspeople any questions. You only assume someone has some plot to discredit or defraud Lord Collier. You have nothing to base that on. One would think a man of your profession would utilize facts as well as fancy in formulating theories.”
A palpable hit. He prided himself on his attention to fact. It was this attribute that accounted for much of his success in debunking spiritualists. But more important to him, she was still afraid for Amelie. He could not leave here like this. “Would it satisfy you if I spent another day interviewing the locals?”
“Yes,” she said stiffly.
“One more day, but if I discover nothing, then my time is better spent looking elsewhere for another motive for this letter. I have an obligation to my brother-in-law, too.” He wouldn’t discover anything. The more he considered it, the more certain he felt that the letter was a decoy.
“One more day,” he repeated. “Then Hayden and I must leave.” He looked at his nephew. Hayden nodded glumly. He might not like it, but he understood that his duty to his father came before his infatuation with Amelie.
“Thank you,” breathed Amelie, looking so relieved that Grey felt his ire dissolve.
“I don’t wish to be dismissive, but I can’t help but think Lord Sheffield is right. No one would want to harm you, Miss Chase,” Bernard said from the chair where he’d been quietly listening. “The idea is inconceivable.”
The look he bent on Amelie was rife with longing.
Amelie didn’t notice. She was too engaged in sending a similarly longing look at Hayden, who returned it twofold. Fanny added to this festival of pining, her face flushed with tender regard as she studied Bernard.
Had these people no pride?
Bernard turned toward Grey. “It’s too bad you must stay through the morrow.”
“How’s that?” Grey said with ill grace.
“I’m going to Edinburgh tomorrow and would have enjoyed the company.”
Bernard was leaving? Grey’s spirits rose.
“But you’ve only just returned,” Fanny objected.
“I know, but a wire came today informing me that a cover for which I’ve been pining has lately come up for sale in Edinburgh. I know you think me silly, but I cannot risk losing it.”
The ass couldn’t begin to imagine how silly Grey thought him. What red-blooded man pined for a stamp when chasing after it meant leaving behind a beautiful woman who wanted his company?
By God, he was jealous. He was jealous, possessive, greedy to recapture her attention. He wanted her to look at him in such a manner. He wanted her to play to him with those obsidian eyes. He wanted McGowan gone.
He was appalled.
“We’ll miss you,” Fanny said. She looked downright mournful. “But hope for your success.”
“Thank you,” Bernard said. He rose to his feet without tasting the tea he’d been poured. “I’d best go.” His gaze flickered toward Amelie, then skated away. “I wish you a speedy recovery, Lord Sheffield. Lord Hayden.” He nodded. “Miss Chase.”
“Good-bye,” Grey said. Good riddance.
Fanny followed McGowan from the room. He stared after her, every muscle in his body tensing against a primitive compulsion to rise from the bed, go after her, and fling her over his shoulder at the same time he explained (in what would doubtless amount to grunts and barks) that McGowan could visit her again only if he sought to have his blandly perfect features realigned.
Once more, he was appalled.
Because, he realized, he’d fallen in love.
Fanny walked Bernard to the front door and turned to him as he reached for the handle. “Bernard. Your friendship has meant a great deal to both Amelie and me over the years.”
He regarded her quizzically. “Thank you. I value your friendship, too. I sincerely do. I hope you know that.”
“I do.”
“You sound as if you were preparing to say goodbye, Mrs. Walcott. Fanny.”
She was. Not for herself, but on behalf of Amelie. The girl had tasted young love. Bernard McGowan, with his even good looks, sedate manner, and air of distinction, would never satisfy her now. She closed her eyes, trembling.
Poor Amelie. She’d tried to keep the girl from getting her heart broken, but she seemed determined to court misery. Lord Collier might be willing to be an absentee guardian to a girl purported to have supernatural abilities, but he would certainly not welcome her as anything more.
Poor Bernard. He’d have to give up his slow, persistent, though admittedly uninspired courtship. He would have made a decent husband, offering the peace of mind and calm sanctuary of a more mature man—though there were certain older men she’d lately become acquainted with whose affections, if offered, wouldn’t promise a soupçon of either.
And poor me, Fanny thought, who can’t stop wanting a man who considers my morals only marginally better than those of a pickpocket. A man who was impatient, imperious, rude…insightful, razor witted, sensitive, kind, and brought to life all her dormant passion.
“Not good-bye, Bernard. I just want you to know that we have appreciated all you have done for us.”
He returned her steady regard quizzically. “Ah,” he said. “Yes. I see. But I already understood as much.”
She realized then that there were no stamps. Bernard was leaving rather than undergo the pain of witnessing another man taking the place he’d wanted.
He took her hand in his and gave her a weak smile. “It’s for the best. He’s far closer to her in age and temperament. Or so it seems.”
“I do not assume anything will come of the association,” she said, as kindly as possible. “In fact, I altogether doubt it.”
“Yes. But you do assume nothing will come of ours.”
She did not disagree.
He nodded. “I was too understated in my attentions, and too late in paying them. I will always hold Amelie—Miss Chase—in the highest esteem. I wish only for her happiness.”
“I know you do,” Fanny said softly.
“Thank you,” he said, and left.
“The day after the morrow you’ll be gone,” Amelie said. Her heart would break. She knew it would.
“I’ll be back as soon as I—” Hayden stopped, looking miserable. “As soon as I possibly can. I’ll write every day.”
A little burble of laughter escaped her, and she dipped her face away from him. He’d go away and whatever enchantment he’d felt would slowly dissipate. Yet, what could she do beyond embarrass him with demanding promises he was not yet prepared to make?
But she wanted to demand. She wanted to be reassured. She wanted him to stay.
“I’ll look forward to reading them,” she said, trying to smile.
“I love you,” he whispered ardently.
Pride should have kept her from responding, but she couldn’t be coy. No one had ever taught her that skill. She would have to speak to Fanny about this oversight, she thought on a burble of miserable hysteria.
“I love you, too.”
Chapter 29
Later that day, Grey lay in his borrowed bed, The Iliad lying open and unread beside him, the lamp’s light casting shadows over the ceiling. Outside a veritable choir of nocturnal animals bayed, yipped, warbled, and screeched. In spite of the racket, he ought to be sleeping. A repeat dose of Grammy’s brew had certainly been design
ed to render him relaxed, if not insensible. But he wasn’t relaxed. He was unnerved. The terrible fact of having fallen in love with Fanny Walcott made sleep impossible.
Once he’d identified the emotion, he hadn’t bothered arguing with his findings. Above all, he despised deceit, and that included self-deceit, which made his fall deliciously ironic, since he’d long ago deduced that love was self-delusion: a mother going into transports over a baby with a face like a three-day-old pudding; a man delighting in the braying laughter of his favorite mistress; a wife hanging on every word of her imbecilic husband’s pontifications; and a beautiful, intelligent woman agreeing to marry a lisping, head-bobbing, white-faced flimflam artist.
There was no getting around the fact that love made a fool of truth. Love destroyed. It had certainly destroyed his father. Even the love he had for his three sons and they for him hadn’t been enough to save the man his grief over the loss of Johanna.
But if one were fully aware of its pitfalls, vigilant in guarding one’s autonomy, and strove to see beyond the haze this confounded condition engendered, one needn’t abdicate one’s reason entirely. He was still in possession of his faculties. He hadn’t lost his mind, simply his heart. In fact, there was no reason anyone should know about it. Including her.
Which meant there was only one thing to do: turn tail and run. Only a fool rushed into certain danger. And Fanny Walcott was a veritable minefield. He knew she was hiding something, and he suspected she was plotting something, and he didn’t care. He woke each day anticipating the next time he would see her, rehearsing in his imagination things he would say to win her look of surprised amusement, or consideration, or thoughtfulness, or indignation. Anything to secure her attention.
It was disgusting. He was utterly besotted. He did not want to leave here, and so, of course, it was vital that he did. It was the only reasonable, sensible, logical thing to do.
He stared at the moonlight streaming into his room and wished to God he were not a reasonable, sensible, logical man.
That same moonlight worked its alchemist’s magic on Fanny’s room, sweeping aside the colors of day and burnishing them with night-forged hues: silver and cobalt, black, argent and steel.
Her thoughts drifted in that netherworld between sleep and wakefulness. Fanciful notions courted her, thoughts she never allowed to surface found expression in fleeting images and whispered words. Here it was safe. Stripped of what she’d learned and what she knew, she was left with who she was. And Fanny was lonely.
Oh, she had Amelie and McGowan for company, and Violet, and even Grammy, but to some degree her secret would always keep her separate from others. Only in Grey’s arms did she feel a sense of rapport, of bone-deep affinity. She understood him: the biting wit that guarded an all-too-sensitive heart, the pain that had fashioned him, the quest for justice that drove him, how lonely he was. How behind that sardonic mien, closed within that powerful body, was a man as desperate as she to touch and be touched. To love.
He was leaving and she might never again share that sense of belonging and homecoming she’d felt in his arms. Might never experience that ultimate union. And it wasn’t as if she were a virgin or a young girl. She was a widow. She had no reputation to protect in that sense. Yet if she failed to act now, to seize the moment, all she would have would be regret.
Her eyes opened.
No. Not this time.
The door to his room opened, sending a puff of air over Grey’s torso. But he must have dreamed the opening door and the freshening air, or experienced it as a hallucination, a by-product of the witch’s dram. How else to explain Fanny coalescing out of shadows, silver-rimed in moonlight? There was no other explanation. So he might as well enjoy his fantasy, let his hungry gaze linger.
A slight draft molded her thin nightgown to her slender body, revealing the lush weight of her full breasts, the graceful nip of her waist, and the swell of her hip tucking into the dark vee at the apex of her slender thighs—
“Grey?”
He froze, stunned. It wasn’t a dream. Good God, didn’t she have any idea of the havoc she was playing with his senses, the effect the sight of her was having on him? What was she doing here?
She moved closer. A diffused beam of moonlight touched her profile, brushing the high curve of her cheekbones with silver-blue and dabbing a pinpoint of light on the plump swell of her lower lip. Her hair drifted as she came nearer, swirling loosely around her shoulders and down her back.
She peered through the gloom to where he lay on the shadowed bed, heedless of any danger. Foolish girl. She was like the incautious princess in a child’s tale, venturing near the ogre’s den to investigate a curious sound. “Are you awake?”
“Yes.”
He willed his arms to stay at his sides, even though she had positioned herself above him and was studying him with those black, fathomless eyes. A long coil of hair fell from her shoulder and swept across his taut chest.
She was on one knee on the bed, leaning over him, her hair spilling across his naked chest, her hand fluttering over his face. “I was so alone.”
“Me, too,” he whispered, his hands rising and tangling in her hair as he dragged her mouth down to meet his.
Chapter 30
In response, Fanny wrapped her arms around his neck. Grey lashed her to him, his head raised from the pillow, his mouth hot and urgent on hers. She matched the hunger of his kisses with her own, her fingers digging into his shoulders, sending tremors through his big body.
He fell back on the bed, breaking the kiss, but his hands stayed in her hair, tugging her head back. She straddled him, bracing herself against his chest, her back arching, her neck thrown back in an attitude of vulnerability. He dragged scalding kisses down her neck to her collarbone and lower. She arched further, inviting him, opening to him. His mouth opened over the gossamer tissue of her nightgown, closing on her nipple, wet and ardent.
He stroked her nipple with his tongue, dampening the cloth, nipping away the fabric, and returning to dampen it again until, with a sound of urgency, he reached between them and dragged the neckline down, exposing her breasts to his sight. She gasped, and his fingers shivered in response as they coasted over the flesh he’d bared. His mouth closed with excruciating tenderness on a swollen nipple. Trembling, her hands clenched into fists against his belly, bracing her upright. A whimper escaped her lips, and she shifted her hips restlessly.
He groaned, tipping her over and onto her back. He shifted over her, bracing himself above her on his elbows. Lowering his head, he tendered hundreds of little kisses over her upper body, his weight holding her still beneath him. He murmured heated words, punctuating each erotic phrase, half-heard endearment, expletive, and prayer with long, deep, wet kisses.
“Please,” she begged, her hips lifting up against the hard swell separated from her by the blanket and her gown. “Please.”
He yanked the blanket from between them. His hands flowed along her flanks, his fingers finding the hem of her gown and bunching the fragile lace, rucking it up at her thighs. He tried to lift it over her head, but the ties and minute shell buttons held fast. So finally, with a sound of frustration, he simply rent the material down the middle and deftly slipped his palms down her sides to her hips and behind, cupping her buttocks.
His hands slipped lower between them, and his fingers touched her intimately, sliding between swollen, moist folds.
“No. Please. Yes. More. Yes. Oh, please.”
He couldn’t answer. Had no voice to reply to the desperation in her face, the pleading in her eyes. Gently, he coaxed her legs apart, swirling his thumb lightly over her clitoris. She shuddered, the exquisite expression of disbelief on her face more arousing than any experience in his life.
And then he realized the truth: She’d never come before. Never achieved that unbelievable release of agony into pleasure. Damn Brown for a selfish bastard.
Ruthlessly, he clamped down on his own need, the driving pulse that ached in his loins. H
e would go slowly. He would take his time. He would make this last for her.
She was so damn vulnerable. So exposed. Her head was tipped back, her hair a silky black shawl beneath them, her eyelids half-closed, her lips parted, her breath a whisper of clove-spiked air. The moon shimmered over a tilted breast, the nipples dark and moist from his suckling. He would surely die of wanting her. He moved his finger lower, into her body.
Her eyes flew wide open, her arms gripping his biceps.
“Trust me.”
He saw her anxiety fade, felt the tension ease from her body. He moved his hand, caressing, teasing, playing with her, and her gaze remained on his, the onyx eyes unfathomable, though her breath hitched and her heartbeat raced.
And finally, when his hand was slick and her body was trembling for release and his own felt as though he’d endured a century on a rack, he eased himself into her body, moving in one long, deep, slow thrust until he’d seated his full length deep within her. She shifted and he ground his teeth, clenching his eyes shut against the overwhelming sensation.
“Stay. A minute. I can’t…I’m not… Stay.”
She stopped moving, and he rested his head gratefully against hers, breathing harshly. The feel of her surrounding him was too intense, like a silken hot fist clenching him. He might die for wanting her.
Then die he would, if it meant pleasuring her first.
He rolled her over, seating her on top of him, her legs spread wide to accommodate him, still buried deep within her. She floundered, uncertain what to do. He felt a tender laugh rise in his chest, and he gently, firmly pushed her upright so that she sat fully upon him.
He caught her hips in his hands and gently bucked up into her. Her eyes widened in surprised discovery. He bucked again. Discovery turned to amazement, then eagerness. She began moving, awkward, delicious little pumps of her hips that set her ripe breasts bouncing, nearly undoing him, but far from satisfying her. She whimpered, frustration supplanting her earlier eagerness. She’d clearly been teased with a hint of where this could lead before and left wanting.
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