But if he could only find a palatable way to reveal the small … no, the huge misconceptions she’d harbored about him since they’d met, there might be a chance … No, there was no chance.
Ella and Max were not his children. True, they were brother and sister—but they were not related to him. They were not his offspring by a very early marriage that ended with the death of an uncultured, anonymous young wife. There had been no early marriage—no children—no tragic death. Arran and Grace knew. A fiery disagreement with Arran had been the result of that discussion, and Arran continued to be enraged by the dilemma Struan could not decide how to resolve. Calum and Pippa also knew the real story. They had encouraged the original fabrication as a means to secure the children’s acceptance at Franchot Castle. But the truth had been kept from Justine, who so abhorred dishonesty of any kind.
Oh, in Cornwall he’d intended to tell her exactly how he’d come by the orphans. Many times. But on every possible occasion something had intervened and, finally, he’d been forced to leave … No, not true. He hadn’t been forced to leave Franchot Castle at the time of his good friend’s marriage to Lady Philipa Chauncey. He’d left because although he could probably have explained the children to Justine, the rest was beyond him. Not even his own brother knew that story.
Justine thought him honorable!
She shifted, slipped a hand beneath her cheek, and nestled deeper. Her lovely mouth curved slightly upward at the corners as if some pleasant thought had found her in sleep.
Struan rubbed his brow slowly, repeatedly. I cannot have you. If you truly knew me, you would not want to stay anywhere near me.
The goblet of hock he’d poured stood on a brass-studded Indian table beside his chair. Struan took a long swallow and let his own eyes close as the liquor seared his throat. Liquor had seared his throat many times before, but there had been one night, one hateful night, when it burned, then boiled—then turned him to fire beyond his control. The wine had been the beginning.
In the pocket of his waistcoat rested the latest letter. Setting down the glass, he assured himself that Justine slept deeply, then removed the thin envelope with its dramatic seal.
The devil who had sent it, and all the others—by a messenger who was never seen—thought he could intimidate with cheap dramatics. Struan was not intimated. He was afraid for those he loved—which was why Ella and Max would not be rising to greet Justine in the morning. They were not here. He made certain they were never with him unless he was fully awake and on guard. True, by day they ran free on the estates among tenants and castle staff who also believed what Justine believed, that the two young ones were Struan’s. But in those daylight hours he had loyal and keen eyes forever on watch. And the children were never left alone after dark.
Very lightly, without considering what he did, Struan tapped the envelope against his nose and grimaced. Once more his memory, the detested memory, stirred. The beginning of the other part of his past about which Justine knew nothing. He felt again the deep, deep cold in a small, windowless cell inside a venerable building where men dedicated themselves to God.
Silence.
There had been great silence but for the beating of his own heart and the thoughts that had dwelled deep within his being as he’d sought to examine his conscience and decide if he was ready for the next step toward taking his priestly vows. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” Shortly he was to have sought out his confessor. Yet, at that moment, his soul had been valiant. A young soul that might, in time, have determined that its place was not in the halls of holy men—but still a soul searching and beginning to find its way.
As a mature man of thirty-four he was now certain he could never have belonged entirely to the church, yet he would have chosen to leave it in quite a different manner than the one that had been forced upon him.
Once more he pressed the envelope to his nose and breathed in slowly. He breathed the pungent aroma of old incense, of dust in dark crevices, of ancient chilled places where only carnal urges could create heat—desperate, destructive heat.
The aroma of incense seared his memory.
Moreton Abbey, Dorset, England September 1819
“Father Struan?”
He did not answer, did not rum from the place where he knelt in prayer beside a rude cot.
“Father Struan?” a girl’s light voice repeated. “The abbot sent me to you.”
Hallucinations—such as enticing voices—might come to those who had fasted many days, prayed many days, held silence for many days while they looked inward to examine their hearts.
Beneath his knees, the stone flags of his cell floor struck cold upward through his locked thighs and into his belly. His back had long since grown too numb to ache. Tendons in his neck stretched with the weight of his head where it bowed forward. His fingers, wound together, rested like a stone sculpture on the brown blanket, the only covering on the cot.
“It has been four days,” the voice said. “Only water. And nothing but the sounds of your own thoughts for company.”
Struan squeezed his eyes more tightly shut and murmured senseless petitions. The testing sought to fuddle him. He must concentrate the harder.
The sound of something solid being set down.
The scent of a newly lighted candlewick to mingle with the incense.
The flicker of light through his closed eyelids.
The gentle resting of a hand on the back of his rigid neck.
“The Abbot told me to see to your comfort, Father Struan. He said you have prayed and fasted long enough”
He felt fingers softly threading through his hair. “You have such thick hair, Father. Thick and black and alive.”
Please, he did not want this testing.
“Good,” the voice said, and he felt the settling of lips where fingers had been. “So strong and good. I have brought you something to ease this time. This unnatural time. The abbot said I should.”
The abbot was his friend. His confessor. His spiritual guide.
The touch left his neck. He heard the sound of liquid splashing into a vessel. “Here. Drink.”
Struan shook his head and bent to rest his face on his hands.
“You’ve suffered too much. Let me help you now.”
The creature knelt beside him and rubbed the length of his spine through the rough black tunic that was all he wore. Her hands were firm and sure, and after a while she wrapped her arms around his body and settled her warm, soft, woman’s flesh against him.
Struan felt the fullness of her breasts and shuddered. The force of his instant quickening shocked him. He had not as much as touched a woman in longer than he remembered.
“Leave me, please,” he whispered, hating himself for breaking the silence, yet desperate to be rid of this temptation.
“I will leave you soon enough. But not until I’ve done what I was sent to do, Father. I’d be in trouble if I went without that. You wouldn’t want me to get into trouble.”
Slowly, he rocked his head from side to side on his fists.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” she said. “Here, do what the abbot wants and take a little of this.”
Her hand on his shoulder urged him to lift his head. Still he did not look at her.
“Come along, now,” she said, her voice carrying the soft burr of the Dorset countryside. “It’ll give you the strength to carry on.”
Struan opened his eyes and squinted against the light from a single candle. Then he looked down into the face close to his shoulder.
Black eyes that stared unblinkingly into his. A small, uptilted nose. Full red lips, moist and parted. A profusion of thick, black curly hair that fell, unbound, over white shoulders revealed inside a simple, dark-blue cotton dress. Cut exceedingly low at the neck, a band of paler blue lace rose and fell with each breath—rose and fell with the movement of large, perfect breasts so smooth he clenched his fingers the tighter to keep from touching them.
“A sip of this will do you good,�
� the girl said, raising a pewter goblet to his lips and tipping. “There, there, then. Drink, Father.”
With his eyes on her breasts, he forgot to protest. Wine, dark and sweet, ran into his mouth and his throat. Hot. Burning.
He gasped, and a little of the wine ran down his chin.
The girl laughed and stopped him from wiping it away. Instead, she held his hands and reached up to lick the drops into her own mouth.
The devil had sent a test.
He turned violently from her. The liquor’s heat scalded its way into his belly and weakened the muscles in his legs.
But his rod leaped.
“I’m Glory,” she said, the laughter still in her voice. “Did the wine taste good?”
With her cool, firm fingers, she eased his face toward her once more until he looked down into her smiling black eyes. First she sipped the wine herself, then raised the goblet to his mouth once again. With his gaze fixed on hers, unable to look away, he let her tip the vessel, let her pour its contents fast enough to force him to gulp. And all the while he felt drawn deeper and deeper into her fathomless stare.
“Good?” she pressed him.
After four days of fasting, the wine burst into his body with power that invigorated him and then drained his strength. Her face wavered before him. When he turned his head a little to focus, she tilted her head and ran her tongue over her lips.
Still on his knees, Struan swayed. “Go,” he muttered. “Leave me now.”
“I couldn’t,” Glory said. “You need me. You need me ever so much, Father.”
His vows. He wanted to take his vows … didn’t he?
Above her bodice, her white flesh shone in the candlelight as if oiled.
She lifted the wine to his lips again and this time he drank without restraint, drained the goblet, and rocked while she filled it again.
“Come on,” she said. “Let me make you more comfortable. There are things you need. And then you must sleep. The abbot said so.”
“You—must—go,” he muttered, his mouth thick.
Her laughter filled the little cell. “I’ve been watching you, y’know, Father.”
He blinked but could not see her features clearly.
“I never saw a gentleman quite the likes of you before. I’ve been thinking of you all day and all night.”
“No.”
“Oh, yes.”
“I’m a priest.”
“Mmm. And priests don’t have women, do they? When was the last time you had a woman?”
Somehow he managed to get to his feet and point to the open door. “Out”
“How long ago?” She stood, the top of her head barely reaching his chin. “Surely you haven’t forgotten. And don’t tell me you’ve never had one, because a man like you starts his sowing early. Girls in the fields. Girls in barns. Girls who caught your eyes in taverns and came to you in warm dark rooms afterward. Come on. Tell Glory. How long ago?”
She rested her fingers on his mouth, then rose to her toes to kiss him. Struan’s eyes closed. Her tongue passed-his lips and wound to find his. She pushed a hand into his hair and held his face tightly to hers.
“How long?” she murmured.
“Too long,” he said. “Too long.”
“Unnatural,” Glory told him. “A waste of a man the likes of you.”
He had given himself to God. That’s what he’d intended to tell her.
“I’m a girl who doesn’t want just any man,” she said. “But I want you. It’s God’s will that I want you and you want me.”
Bright shapes parted before him and slowly came together again, and this time he sought her mouth, kissed her hungrily, covered the swelling mounds of her breasts above her bodice.
Glory moaned and panted, and said, “You poor thing. You’re bursting with your need. I’m going to take all your need away.”
The bodice laced. She pulled braided fastenings undone and let the dress fall about her ankles.
Naked. Naked she stood before him, a curving, narrow-waisted object of lust and longing that sent blood pounding into his temples and throbbing into his loins.
“I must not,” he whispered, swallowing, taking a step backward. “I cannot.”
“You must. You can.”
“I am promised to the Church.”
“The Church cannot give you what Glory can give you.”
She moved so quickly, he could not stop her hand from closing on him through the loose tunic.
His knees all but buckled and he let his head fall back.
“Oh, yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes, my love. It will be fast. But then it will happen again and again. First, this.”
Releasing him, she took one of his hands and guided it into the moist heat between her thighs. Mewling deep in her throat, she pressed his fingers to the swollen place at her center. She ground him into her, jerked her hips back and forth. Almost sobbing, Glory urged his head down to her breast and held her nipple to his mouth until he sucked it in, sucked and bit, mindless now—on fire in every vein.
For one instant she grew still, then she screamed and jerked and pushed against him so hard, his calves met the cot and he fell awkwardly onto the mattress.
Before he could catch a breath or say a word, she was upon him, pulling up the tunic, wrapping her strong legs around his hips, rolling until she lay beneath him.
Struan looked down into her flushed face, glanced from her parted red lips to her breasts, still wet from his mouth and tongue. And he felt the tip of his bursting rod against damp curls—and drove into her. He drove and drove again, all thought gone, all thought snuffed out by the searing sensation of her sheath drawing him in.
A third thrust and the pent-up male juices he’d sworn never again to spill burst into her.
Supported on his arms, he fought for breath while strength rushed away.
“You shouldn’t have!”
Struan squeezed his eyes shut.
“I was a virgin. Who’ll want me now?”
He saw tears coursing her cheeks. She clawed at him, pushing, writhing. Struan frowned, tried to capture her hands.
“Help me! Someone help me! I’m ruined.”
Suddenly cold, Struan struggled to rise away from her. And then he heard another voice. “Dear Lord. Oh, my son, what have you done?”
Struan looked from the place where his body joined with the girl’s, to the doorway, fully open now.
Framed in that doorway stood the man he admired most in the world. His confessor and friend. The Abbot of Moreton Abbey.
Chapter Four
“Struan?” He started, opened his eyes, and looked into Justine’s worried face. “What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked.
The envelope was still pressed to his nose. He withdrew it and stuffed it back into his waistcoat pocket.
“My dear friend,” Justine said. She touched his cheek. “You were asleep and having a nightmare. You cried out.”
A nightmare? He tried to smile “Did I? What did I say?”
She bent and wrapped her arms around him—and he could not deny himself the pleasure of that embrace. “You said: Forgive me for I have sinned.”
Struan rested his brow on her shoulder. “Must have been something to do with you asking me if I took the children to church. My conscience making itself felt.”
“Your conscience is above reproach,” she said firmly. “You are tired and oppressed. Thank goodness I came. From now on you shall not deal with your burdens alone. If I had the smallest doubt about my decision to help you, it is completely gone now.”
She caught his wrists and pulled until he rose from the chair. “Come,” she said. “I have your cloak and you are cold. In the morning we shall see to putting this house in order. Obviously the bedchambers are such that you do not wish to show them to me. That will change. For now, we two friends shall warm each other. Put more wood on the fire. It is all but gone out.”
The morning would not bring the domestic bliss she mentioned. Rather, it
would bring sanity. He would thank her for her kindness, insist he needed no help, and make certain she was dispatched as quickly as possible. Struan piled fresh kindling and wood into the fireplace and used bellows to send flames leaping once more. The storm had quieted somewhat and he thought he saw the vaguest glimmering of dawn through a Crack in the draperies.
“Now,” Justine said. “Sit with me until you are warm and quiet again.”
He stared at her a moment, then did as she asked, dropping down beside her and allowing himself to be covered with her cloak and his. She rested against him, her head on his shoulder, and within moments he heard her steady breathing as she must have fallen asleep again.
Struan dared not as much as close his eyes. To do so now might mean a return to that dreadful time and place and to the events that had followed his weakness.
He turned his head to stare into the fire. Justine was a slight, warm weight at his side. Why could it not have been that she should come to belong at his side permanently?
From somewhere in the lodge a thud sounded.
Struan stiffened. He glanced at Justine’s sleeping face and tried to edge away.
The thud was followed by another and another. Struan made to leap up.
Too late.
The hard pounding of boots on stone heralded the arrival of a tall man with curling, dark red-brown hair. He burst into the hall and strode to the daybed.
Struan’s tension fled instantly. He grinned up into the handsome face of his oldest friend, Calum, Duke of Franchot. “Welcome!” he said. “By God, this is a night to remember.”
“It may be a night you never forget, friend,” Calum said, white lines forming around his thinned lips. “If you have seduced my sister, this is the night you finally put your precious bachelorhood behind you.”
Calum forced his fingers to uncurl. “I ought to call you out on the spot, damn you,” he said through gritted teeth. “Better yet, I ought to beat the life out of you where you sit, you filthy—” He caught Justine’s horrified eyes and managed to swallow the rest of what he had every right and every responsibility to say.
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