by Mary Balogh
“What do you want?” Her lips were stiff and unwilling to move.
“I want to walk alone with my Anna for a few quiet minutes,” he said. “Take my arm.”
The thought of touching him was deeply nauseating. “Please.” She could hear the abject, pleading note in her voice and could seem to do nothing about it. “Please leave me alone. Please. I am married now. All that is in the past.” Pointless words and untrue. Nothing was in the past.
“Take my arm, Anna.”
She took it and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. She knew suddenly why she liked Luke’s height. This man was tall; her head reached barely to his chin. She felt overpowered by him, enveloped in him, robbed of personal identity by him.
He strolled with her in the direction of the canal and the tree-lined path on the far side of it. Other masked revelers moved to either side of them, chattering and laughing. One or two of them greeted Anna. She walked past them in the darkness, in the shadow of the tall, black-cloaked, black-masked man at her side. It was impossible to believe that this was the same enchanted path she had taken with Luke earlier.
“What do you want?” she asked again.
“Just this, my Anna,” he said, indicating the pleasure gardens about them and touching her hand. She dared not snatch it away. “I longed to be back home with you. It was a severe disappointment when I finally returned and found you gone and knew that there would be the delay of coming to London to claim you. And yet when I came here, I found a further complication. Well, I chose to allow you to continue with your very naughty plans to marry. I chose to stand back and allow you a little time with your duke. ’Tis not easy. These few moments will soothe the emptiness.”
“What are you going to tell him?” she asked.
“Nothing at all,” he said, looking down at her with eyes that glittered through his mask. “’Twill be unnecessary. You will come to me when the time is right, my Anna, and he will need to know nothing but the fact that you have tired of him. He will not need to know that you are a cheat and a thief and a murderer—and a whore—unless you prove difficult.”
“I intend to repay every one of my father’s debts,” she said. “Then you will have no more reason to terrorize me.”
“Terrorize?” he said. “Do you still not believe that I love you, Anna? That when the time comes I will take you away and make you happier than you ever dreamed of being? And do you not know that the debts mean nothing to me? That I assumed them only to lift an intolerable burden from the shoulders of my beloved Anna?”
“I will pay them all,” she said. “In money. I will no longer accept even the smallest of them as gifts for favors rendered. In time I will pay them all.”
He patted her hand. “Let us not talk of such things,” he said. “Let us enjoy a quiet stroll. Ah, the wonder of seeing and feeling you beside me again.”
She could remember the deep gratitude she had felt toward him when he had first come to live in the neighborhood very soon after her mother’s death. He had seemed solidly calm and kindly and reassuring in contrast with her father, who had lost himself in drink and self-pity for years and then had collapsed almost completely when Mama died. Sir Lovatt Blaydon had visited often and, without ever seeming to insinuate himself into her confidence, had won her trust. She could remember strolling with him one afternoon in the garden, her arm through his as it was now, comforted by his tall solidity and his sympathy, telling him about her father’s debts, about their closeness to total ruin. She had not known what would happen to the children—even Victor had still seemed a child though he was nineteen at the time. And Emily was a deaf-mute.
Even unburdening her anxieties to someone else had been an enormous relief. She had not asked herself why she would do so to a stranger. He had not seemed to be a stranger. He had seemed more of a father figure—a dependable father figure.
He had bought all her father’s debts. She could remember his telling her, also in the garden. And she could remember being speechless with gratitude and relief. She could remember stretching out her hands to him and squeezing his very tightly and lifting them to her cheeks. She could remember biting her upper lip to stop the tears from flowing and then laughing because they had spilled over anyway and because she had been quite unable to speak even the words “thank you.”
She had thought he had done it because he loved her. She had expected him to return the next day to offer her marriage. She had pictured his making her a wedding present of those debts—a most precious gift. She had liked him so well that it had felt almost like love. It had not seemed to her that she would be sacrificing herself by marrying him. She had wanted to marry him. She had wanted to spend the rest of her life showing her gratitude.
But he had not wanted marriage. Only power over her. Though he had begun to call her “my Anna.” And he had begun to talk about the future life they would live together. He had begun to claim to love her. The further he drew her into his net, the stronger had grown his claim to love her.
Sometimes she wondered why he had chosen her as his victim. Simply because she had been there? Because making her a victim had been almost laughably easy? Probably she would never know.
“Ah,” he said now as they strolled back along the shabby path, “the husband awaits.”
Luke, she saw, was standing still below the rotunda, watching them. She wondered if the two men would meet. She wondered what would happen. Panic had long ago disappeared to leave in its place a dull sense of fatality. It was out of her hands.
But Sir Lovatt Blaydon stopped when they were a little distance away from Luke, took her hands in his, and bowed over them. Anna closed her eyes, but he did not kiss them.
“You may enjoy him a while yet, my Anna,” he said. “I will communicate with you from time to time to make sure you keep in mind that you are merely on loan to him at my pleasure. But you need have no fears for your reputation. I love you more than anyone else possibly could.”
She drew her hands from his, breathed air slowly into her lungs, and turned from him. She moved toward Luke, who was still standing where he had been before. She tried not to hurry, though she felt suddenly that devils’ claws were about to tear at her back. She smiled and let her eyes sparkle above the veil until she remembered that for more than one reason the smile was inappropriate. She let it die.
• • •
Luke watched her come. He had felt a rather foolish and uncharacteristic alarm when he had returned to the rotunda to find that she was not there, either with Lady Sterne or with anyone else. For one moment he had imagined that she too had flown. But of course she was outside strolling, as were more than half the other revelers at Ranelagh.
He did not recognize the man who accompanied her, though he might have been an acquaintance. His black cloak and mask and the fact that his hood was up made identification difficult.
It was perfectly acceptable for his wife to be walking with another man. He should return to the rotunda, Luke thought, lest both she and others think that he spied on her. He spent enough time watching her in ballrooms and drawing rooms, and he had no doubt other people had noticed. He had no wish to be known as a man besotted with his own wife.
However, he stayed where he was, watching them, having the inexplicable feeling that he might be needed. But they had seen him and the man was taking his leave of her, bowing over her hands. For a fleeting moment Luke felt that he must know the man, but full recognition eluded him.
Her eyes smiled at him as she approached and then turned serious again.
“Anyone I know?” he asked.
“Oh.” She laughed. “No. Just a rather distant neighbor from home. I used to know his daughter quite well. I am amazed he recognized me. I did not know him until he identified himself. Did you send Doris home?”
“Yes,” he said. “I saw them on their way. I regret that you were a witness to violence, Anna.”
“’Twas not your fault.” She looked closely at him. “Where did you learn such skilled swordplay?”
“In Paris,” he said, “among other things.”
She shivered suddenly and sagged toward him in such a way that he had to reach out a hand to steady her.
“I want to leave,” she said. “Please, Luke?”
“I came to suggest it,” he said. “’Tis not easy to rejoin the revels after one’s sister has just narrowly escaped ruining her life when she is too young to know what she does.”
They took their leave of Lady Sterne and Anna’s sister and Theo and were in the carriage on their way home five minutes later. Luke set his head back and closed his eyes, glad that his wife seemed indisposed to talk. Ruin would be so much more disastrous for a woman than for a man. He had been only a year older than Doris was now when his own life fell to ruins about his ears. Because he was a man, he had been able to make a new life for himself. It would have been far more difficult for Doris to do likewise.
His cold anger had receded though he was not sorry for the decision he had made while he had waited with Doris for their mother to come to take her home. Tomorrow she would be sent all the way home—to Bowden Abbey, where she could be watched more closely. His mother would go with her. He had told them of his plan and had told them too that he would call on them in the morning to see them on their way.
“And to beat me before I leave?” Doris had asked defiantly and bitterly. “You are not going to let me escape without a beating, are you, Luke?”
“Be quiet, girl,” their mother had said coldly. “I would stand by without a word of protest if Lucas should have the good sense to discipline you in such a way, even if he were to use a whip. It is something that should have happened to you long ago.”
Luke had made no comment. He had been too angry. But remembering his mother’s words now, he found himself wondering if it was whippings that Doris had lacked through her childhood and girlhood—or if it was love. Perhaps if his mother had hugged her a few times . . .
But he did not believe in love. Love would have destroyed Doris just as surely as its absence seemed to be doing. Not that he could accuse his mother of a total absence of love, he supposed. It was just that she had always put duty and propriety first, as if a display of love were a foolish weakness. And yet Doris perhaps needed more open love than she could get from her mother—or from him. He could remember what an affectionate child she had been.
Luke swallowed. And he realized suddenly that he was holding his wife’s hand rather tightly on the seat between them. It was not something he was in the habit of doing. It was almost as if he had reached for her, needing her. He did not need her or anyone else. He had learned to be strictly self-sufficient. He must never allow himself to need Anna in any other way than the sexual. He slid his hand from hers.
She sat quietly beside him for a few moments, and then she swayed toward him so that her arm was against his and she rubbed her cheek hard against his shoulder. Startled, he opened his arms to steady her as she got awkwardly to her feet and moved across him to sit on his lap. She yanked her veil beneath her chin, wrapped her arms about his neck, rubbed her breasts suggestively against him, and found his mouth with her own in the darkness.
Good Lord! His arms closed about her, his mouth opened appreciatively, and he thrust his tongue into the warmth of her mouth. She moaned and he felt the stirrings of arousal in himself.
“After all”—she drew back her head and laughed—“why waste a perfectly decent carriage ride?”
Anna as innocent flirt he was familiar with. Anna as seductress was a new pleasure to him. She feathered kisses over his face. “I want you,” she whispered between each one. “I want you.”
He could feel the warmth and shape of her legs through the flimsy drawers. Her breasts were pushed high by her stays, an armor that kept the rest of her body from his seeking hands, and yet somehow an excitement in itself.
“Here in the carriage?” he said. “I am very ready to oblige you, madam, if you can stand the relative discomfort.”
“Here and now.” Her voice was low and throaty. “Not a moment later. Give it to me now.”
He would have made the peeling away of her drawers an erotic part of their foreplay. But her hands joined his to tear impatiently at them and toss them to the floor. He undid his own buttons and brought her astride him on the seat. She was on fire, almost frantic with desire. She had fired him too. He was glad she wanted it now. He did not believe he could wait until they reached home.
“Now it will be, then,” he said, spreading his hands over her hips and drawing her down onto him.
She was hot and wet and so ready that she cried out and exploded into release even as he mounted her. He let her shudder into relaxation before enjoying his own pleasure in more leisurely fashion and to the accompaniment of satisfied murmurings from his companion.
He held them coupled until he feared that they must be nearing home. What a wonderful treat, he thought drowsily. He had never made love in a carriage before. It was a step in his education that he was very glad he had not missed. Very glad. He kissed Anna’s cheek.
“My coachman might well have an attack of apoplexy if he finds us like this when he opens the door,” he said. “Shall we make ourselves respectable and resume the unrespectability in the privacy of our own apartments later?” He would want her again, he knew. This had merely whetted his appetite.
She chuckled in that throaty manner he had noticed earlier and sighed as he uncoupled them. She bent to retrieve her drawers and wriggled into them. They were seated side by side, not touching, when the carriage drew to a halt and the coachman opened the door and lowered the steps.
Luke escorted her to her dressing room and stepped aside after opening the door.
“Soon, madam?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
She smiled dazzlingly. “Sooner, your grace,” she said and swept into her room, all floating gauze and sparkling embroidery and fascinating femininity.
Soon. Ah, yes. Or sooner. He strode away to his own dressing room.
• • •
Hopelessness had given place to panic, a panic she had tried to control in the carriage. Unusually, miraculously, he had taken her hand in his and she had concentrated all her being on the contact, rested all her sanity on the touch of his hand. When he had removed it, her sanity and her control had gone with it and she had hurled herself at him, only one need driving her. The need to climb right inside him. The need to become so much a part of him that no one would ever find her again.
The feel of him coming into her, hard and long and solidly real, had been so wonderfully reassuring that it was everything. It was all. She had allowed herself the luxury of losing herself in him. And then of letting him hold her, warm and utterly safe, his body still a part of hers.
But the panic had not gone, she discovered when she was in the safety of her own home and her own rooms. She was alone and terrified even while her maid was with her. She fought hysteria while she waited for him to come. He came much sooner than usual though it seemed she had waited for him for hours. She smiled at him from the bed and pushed the bedclothes back from her naked body as he let fall his dressing gown.
Hold me. Save me.
She reached up her arms to him. “Make love to me.”
“It is my full intention, madam,” he said, “as I am sure you can observe.” He bent over the candles to blow them out.
The sudden darkness brought a wave of panic, and then he was beside her and reaching for her and beginning the growingly familiar, but always new, ritual of lovemaking.
“Anna.” He liked to proceed slowly, making every move excruciatingly agonizing, excruciatingly pleasurable. “You are very hungry?”
“Ravenous,” she said. “I am starved, Luke. Fill me.”
“An invitation not to be resisted,�
� he said.
She parted her legs for him as he moved over her, frantic to be filled with him again, hot and panting with her need. But it was his fingers that touched her first, his marvelously skilled fingers, which could bring her to the edge of madness with their stroking and probing sensitivity. But tonight they met sore and pulsing need as he kissed her breasts and sucked gently on them.
She could hear herself begging as her hands pulled loose the ribbon at the nape of his neck and spilled his hair about her breasts.
And then his mouth was where his hands had been, shocking in its unexpectedness, his tongue more sensitive, more erotic than his fingers. His hands covered her breasts, her nipples squeezed between thumb and forefinger.
“Harder,” she heard herself beg and the increased pressure of his fingers had her crying out in unbearable pain and desire.
She shattered about him, felt the ache build again and shatter again and build yet again.
By the time his body covered her and he came inside her, she was whimpering with a need that had been satisfied time and again but had not been put to rest. She relaxed gratefully against his driving hardness for several minutes until he reached so deep into her soul and became so much one with her there that no conscious thought, no conscious feelings or emotions were left.
Only perfect peace. Perfect love.
When she awoke she was alone. Oh, not alone in bed. He was there beside her, as he always was at night. He was sleeping. But she was alone in the sense that they were not touching. She did not know what time it was, but she guessed that she had slept for several hours. It was amazing—she had not expected to sleep at all.
She was safe. She was in her own bed with her husband beside her. She tried to keep her body relaxed and relive in her mind the way he had made love to her earlier—the most wonderful lovemaking in a month of wonderful lovemakings. She tried to convince herself that he would eventually come to love her as she loved him and that they would live happily ever after.