Heart Of The Night

by Gayle Wilson

  “It’s a little scary making love for the first time with the lights on,” she admitted.

  “I’ve been in the dark a long time, Kate.”

  A long time since he’d made love to anyone? she wondered. He had implied that before.

  “And I’m.. a little beat up,” he added. “A few nicks and craters.”

  She smiled at him. “That’s okay. I’ve got a few nicks of my own. Not bomb scars, of course. Life scars, I guess.”

  “I’d be more than willing to kiss them and make them better,” he said softly. Whether it was the depth of his voice or the accent, she didn’t know, but that didn’t sound nearly as dumb as it should have. It sounded…interesting. Romantic. Old-fashioned and so damned romantic. Just like Barrington,

  “I think I’d like that,” she invited.

  So he straightened and stepped into her room.

  Epilogue

  It was dark now. Some time during the long night through which he’d made love to her, Thorne had cut off the low lamp beside the bed. She had a memory of his long arm reaching upward, plunging the room into sudden darkness. And that wasn’t, of course, the only memory she had.

  She knew him intimately now. How his hands felt, both of them, tantalizing against her body, examining contours that had never to her seemed worthy of such a prolonged exploration. She knew his mouth and his tongue, trailing moisture over her shivering skin, caressing every guarded, secret place from which he could coax sensation. She knew the texture of his skin, even the scars he had warned her about, old and fading into paleness against his darkness or hidden by the thick hair on his chest.

  She had wondered that night how his body would feel against hers, dark, hair-roughened skin moving over the wanting smoothness of her breasts, her nipples hardening under the gliding touch of his. She had wondered, but now she knew.

  She knew so much about him. His strength. And his gentleness. His patience, she remembered with wonder. Infinitely patient. Taking an eternity over everything. Never hurrying. Learning the subtle differences in her needs, her responses. Enjoying her. She had known that because he had wanted her to know it.

  He had taken pains to let her know that he delighted in every trembling breath he forced her to take, every uncontrolled movement, every sigh, every gasping word she whispered against his throat or his shoulder as he had moved above her. Patient. Endlessly patient with her pleasure.

  There was definitely something to be said for making love with a Southern gentleman. The old regional analogies stole into her consciousness. Slow as molasses, hot as a summer’s day, and as enduring as the land. Thorne Barrington was every bit as good as he was cracked up to be, she thought, her lips lifting into a small smile against the smooth, brown skin of his shoulder.

  One long leg lay sprawled across one of hers. She bent the knee of her other leg to run the arch of her foot up his calf, the hair coarse and pleasant under her instep, the muscle firm. He shifted, his body moving over hers as it had so many times last night.

  She felt the rush of moisture, anticipating his entry, wanting the now familiar invasion. He slipped his palms under her thighs, hfting, positioning her, and more than willing to obey, she wrapped her legs around his narrow hips, and felt him push into the slick, wet heat of her body.

  She gasped, surprised as she had been before that her body could be so ready for him, so wanting, and yet he could fill her so strongly that it seemed he threatened the walls of her soul, the limits of what she was, of what she could ever be. Full and so deep. Entering and retreating, and then moving deeper still, past inhibitions and hesitations. Pushing toward the center of her desire that seemed to expand even as he moved within her. It had been this way from the beginning. As it had been with no one else. Ever.

  She belonged to him. She had known it since she had seen the pictures. Obsessed with him. Obsessed now with this, with possessing him and being possessed.

  His mouth was over hers, his tongue echoing the slow, deliberate movements of his body. Control. His was the control, and she was lost in it. He had given her permission to be lost in it. Making love to her. This was the reality of that oftmisused phrase—the reason it was new and different and so powerful. Thorne made love to her. And there were no demands except that she let him, that she accept what he wanted to give.

  She could feel her body responding, lifting to meet his, to arch into the strength of each downward stroke, its power seeping into her body. Upward to make her heart pound and her breath a panting rhythm. Downward to tighten the muscles of her legs around his body, drawing him to her. Closer. Deeper. Always deeper and more powerful, moving within her. Forever. Endless. Until finally, after an eternity, she exploded, her frame rocking against him with the force of her release. She dug her nails into his back, unaware of what she was doing. On some level, she felt his skin moving against hers, wet and trembling, the heat of it burning against the sudden coldness of hers.

  “Now,” she said hoarsely. A request or permission. She didn’t know, but she felt the response, hot and sudden within her arching body. She had wanted that. Together. Always together. As they were meant to be. As she had known from the first.

  She lay exhausted in his arms. Somehow he had known that was important. To hold her. To keep her safe in the darkness. Once he had belonged to the darkness, and so long as she was with him there was nothing frightening about the night. Not any longer.

  The sheets beneath her were damp and twisted. They should have been uncomfortable, but in the pleasant lethargy after his lovemaking, which left her body boneless and unmoving, there was only comfort and safety. Her breathing was beginning to even again, and her heart rate to slow.

  He lifted away from her onto his elbows, dark eyes looking down at her face.

  “I knew the first night you came to my house that I was going to make love to you,” he said.

  “Did you know it would be like this?” she asked.

  “I knew I wanted it to be, but nothing has ever been like this.”

  “I thought—” she began and then realized that wasn’t something she should say to him, even after the intimacies they’d just shared.

  “What did you think?” he asked when she didn’t continue. He leaned down to brush his lips against her throat, his breath warm over the film of perspiration that had captured floating tendrils of her hair to curl against her neck.

  “That you couldn’t possibly live up to your reputation,” she admitted, smiling again. She was glad he wasn’t looking at her.

  His mouth paused in its drifting caress, and after a long moment he lifted his head again. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked.

  “That the debutantes of Atlanta must have been feeling very deprived for the last few years, bless their little diamondencrusted hearts.”

  “Debutantes?” The crease she had noticed before was between the dark brows.

  “I had a picture of you—” she began, and then she realized for the first time what had become of that picture and all the others.

  “How could you have a picture of me?”

  “From the paper’s files,” she said, not really thinking about what he had asked. Thinking about Kahler, about Kahler’s hands searching through her things, finding the folder with those pictures. Violated, she thought again. He had violated her privacy, and so he had known all along how she felt about Thorne Barrington.

  “Kate?” Thorne asked.

  “I had a collection of pictures. Pictures from before…before the bomb. He took them,” she whispered, feeling sick despite the fact that Kahler was dead and Thorne was holding her

  “Took them?” he repeated, and then suddenly he understood. “Kahler took them?”

  She nodded. “He must have taken them when he put the confetti—” Into the bed they were sharing.

  “Don’t,” he whispered, and his arms tightened around her. “It’s over. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  He held her, and eventually there was a relaxation of the t
ension that had been in her body. And then he asked, his deep voice touched with the amusement she liked to hear there, more cherished perhaps because it was rare and often unexpected. “Tell me about the debutantes.”

  She laughed, remembering how many times she had looked at that picture. Envying those women because they knew him and she hadn’t. “They were all looking at you,” she said. She lifted her hand and ran her thumb along the line of his bottom lip. “Like they could eat you up with a spoon.”

  “And?” He caught her thumb in his mouth, holding it.

  “That was all. Just looking at you. I used to look at that picture and wonder what you were really like.”

  “Now you know,” he said. He had released her thumb, but he turned his head to press a kiss into her open palm.

  “Not anything like I thought you’d be,” she said. She put her hand over his cheek, the stubble rough against the smoothness of her skin.

  “Disappointed?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. She moved her head against the damp sheets, side to side. “No,” she said again, “I’m not disappointed.”

  “I just aim to please,” he said softly. Another Southernism.

  “Your aim’s pretty good. Practice make you perfect?”

  She regretted the question as soon as she asked it. She had no right. No rights at all where he was concerned. She had given herself to him freely, willingly, without any vows or commitments. That wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, not the way she’d been raised, and now she knew why. It hurt too much to realize that he could go back to that life tomorrow. There was no reason now for him not to go back, she realized. Back to what he had been before.

  He didn’t say anything. There was a code about that, too. Gentlemen never discussed their conquests, no matter how numerous they were.

  Deliberately she moved her gaze away from his. She focused on his mouth, as sensuous, she now knew, as it looked.

  “Kate,” he said, and she forced her eyes up.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I always knew that—”

  “I love you Don’t you know that?”

  She couldn’t think of a single teasing answer. Men said that all the time. It didn’t mean anything anymore. Just something they said. But still she took a breath, so hard it was almost a sob.

  “How could you not know I love you?” he asked.

  “Because you never told me. And then these last weeks, I didn’t hear from you. How was I supposed—”

  “You just know,” he said. “You have to know. I love you, Kate August. Maybe I’m not much of a bargain, but—”

  “I guess you haven’t been reading your press. Or checking your bank balance,” she said, smiling at him, beginning to believe him, maybe because she wanted to believe so much. Or because she recognized the doubt in his voice. It was one of the things she’d liked about him from the first—that he really didn’t seem to know how attractive he was.

  He didn’t say anything, and she wondered if she had gone too far. “I didn’t mean that. I don’t care about that.”

  “I know,” he said.

  They were quiet for a while until then he said, “Tell me about the pictures.”

  She laughed. “I’ll bet that’s a real ego trip. To know I obsessed about you. Drooled over your pictures.”

  “Considering what I thought you thought about me.”

  “Now you know better.”

  “What exactly do I know?” he asked, the dark eyes smiling at her.

  “That I love you. That I’ve loved you for a very long time, even before I knew you. That’s why I came to find you.”

  “Into the darkness,” he said softly.

  She put her mouth against his, which turned, fitting over hers. Meant to fit. It seemed she had always known that.

  Bless their little deprived hearts, she thought again, and then she smiled.

  Gayle Wilson also writes for Harlequin Historicals! Turn the page for an exciting preview of her December, 1997 Historical (#393)…and then find it in your local bookstore next month!

  Prologue

  April 1815

  The chestnut gelding, fresh and eager for the promised run, resented the sedate pace to which his rider was relentlessly holding him. That resentment had been subtly demonstrated to the man who competently, and without conscious thought, controlled the horse’s brief rebellion.

  It was not until Lieutenant Colonel Lord Nicholas Stanton finally sighted the slender figure moving through the dappling shade provided by the ancient oaks that he allowed his mount his head, and only until they had closed the distance. Horse and rider sedately followed the strolling girl, until, apparently hearing them behind her, she turned to look over her shoulder.

  Her blue eyes, shaded by the wide brim of a style of straw bonnet that would certainly not be seen in the fashionable city from which the Duke of Vail’s younger son had just returned, openly considered the rider a moment. Her gaze then returned to concentrate on the path she had been following along the edge of the shadowed country lane.

  The horseman’s well-shaped lips tilted upward. Nick Stanton was unaccustomed to being snubbed, especially by women. Indeed, the adulation of the marriageable ladies of the ton during his recent visit to London would have been enough to turn the head of many a man. Not only was he nobly born and extremely well-fixed, but an acknowledged military hero as well.

  It didn’t hurt his standing with the fairer sex that his profile had, on more than one occasion, been compared to Adonis. The calm dismissal in the eyes of the girl in the outmoded straw bonnet was certainly not the reception Lord Stanton had recently been accorded by the London ton.

  Perhaps in response to that obvious disdain, Nick touched his heels to the chestnut and guided him alongside the strolling figure. Again, blue eyes rose to his, their gaze far too direct for fashionable flirtation.

  “Good afternoon,” Stanton said, holding his mount to the pace the girl had set. A finger of sun touched briefly on his hair, turning it gold. The fair hair was darkened now with perspiration and slightly curling. His uniform jacket set off broad shoulders and a narrow waist, the tight pantaloons emphasizing the muscled strength of his long legs.

  At his greeting, the girl’s eyes lifted again, slowly appraising both horse and rider. Her upturned face was classically heart-shaped, but her mouth was too wide for the current fashion, her nose straight rather than retroussé, and there was nothing the least bit simpering in her manner. Her assessment was unflinching.

  The sprigged muslin she wore was at least two years old, its skirt rucked up in the country style to protect the fragile material from briars, revealing underneath a plain white petticoat. Over her arm she carried a wicker basket almost halffull of red currants.

  “My lord,” she said simply, and then the blue eyes returned to the lane before them.

  Again, that upward tilt disturbed the line of the rider’s mouth. The silence lasted for several moments as they moved side by side.

  “Berrying?” he asked finally, a ridiculous question, given the evidence in the bottom of the basket.

  The girl’s mouth, more used to laughter than to primness, flickered dangerously, almost losing its determined sternness. “Indeed,” she agreed.

  Again silence descended, broken only by the plodding hooves of the gelding.

  “May I give you a ride?” Lord Stanton offered, holding out his hand. His fingers were long and deeply tanned, despite the months he’d spent in England away from his regiment. That had not been his choice, but the ball he had taken at Toulouse had proved to be far more troublesome than anyone had suspected. There had been talk that he might lose the leg, but thankfully that danger was past. Despite a slight, persistent stiffness in his right knee, Nick considered himself in fighting trim and that had been the point of his recent trip to London—to convince his superiors at the Horse Guards.

  “Thank you, but no, my lord. I’m sure you’re far too busy with your own affairs to bother with mine.”

/>   “I promise I should be delighted to assist a lady.”

  The girl’s eyes rose to linger a moment on the handsome face. “But surely you can see,” she said, “that I’m not—”

  “A lady?” he interrupted, his mouth controlled and his face a politely inquiring mask.

  “In need of assistance,” she finished without apparent rancor at his insult. From her sleeve she removed a scrap of lace with which she touched the dew of perspiration on her upper lip.

  “Making jam?” Stanton asked pleasantly, his eyes following the dabbing of the cloth along the beautiful bow of her lip.

  The girl glanced at him, her dark lashes sweeping upward to reveal some emotion dancing in the depths of her eyes.

  “Pies, I believe,” she answered.

  “For your sweetheart?”

  “I have no sweetheart, my lord.”

  “For a lass so beautiful, I find that difficult to believe. Are all the men here blind?”

  “Perhaps. To my charms, at least. It seems there are always…other pleasures that distract them.”

  “Then they’re fools,” Nick said softly.

  “So I’ve often thought,” she agreed. Then her gaze deliberately shifted from its focus on the man who rode beside her to the lane ahead.

  “Do you have a name?” Stanton asked.

  “Of course, my lord.”

  This time Nick lost the battle to control his amusement, and the smile that had charmed the feminine half of the beau monde was unleashed in full force. Remarkably, it seemed to have no effect on the girl.

  “Might I know it?” he urged.

  “You might,” she said calmly, removing from her basket a berry which had apparently proved unworthy for the proposed pies. “And then, you might not.”

  “Has no one told you not to be pert with your betters?” Nick asked, laughing.

  “No one but you, my lord. But I’m sure that was simply an oversight. My name is Mary Winters.”

  “Do you live here in the village, Mary?”