Shameless

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  “Do you think they’ll be able to climb up without assistance?” she asked Neil. Keeping her voice steady required considerable effort, but she thought she managed it very well.

  “I think they’ll do what they need to do to get help. Mary is nothing if not tenacious, Peg and Alyce both strike me as being quite intelligent, and Dolly—well, Dolly will do whatever she has to do to save herself.”

  That was all so true that Beth felt the tiniest bit better.

  “How long do you think they’ll be gone?”

  “It will take them some time,” he admitted. “Several hours. All we can do is make ourselves as comfortable as possible, and wait.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “SO—YOUR NAME IS NEIL HUME?” Beth asked after an interval of near silence, which she had spent calming herself while listening to the increasingly difficult-to-detect sounds of the four who were going for help making their way, as she assumed, across the cavern, up the wall, and into the passage. But she’d heard nothing of them for several minutes now, and hoped—prayed!—that they were far enough along in their journey as to put them out of earshot. Up until that moment she had been situated so that she was facing the cavern. Now, in a convulsive move that said volumes about the panic she refused to let surface, she turned over so that she was facing Neil as she asked the question. Unable to see him, although she could feel his long body brushing against hers, she reached out for him to get her bearings, and found herself touching the smooth cambric of his shirt. Beneath it, the solid warmth of his chest was a further welcome reminder that she was not alone.

  If she had to be trapped in what amounted to a stone crypt, it occurred to her that there was no one else she would rather have with her. The idea of Neil simply surrendering to these dreadful circumstances was unfathomable. Whatever happened, he would fight hard to survive. But for now, there was nothing either of them could do.

  “I’ve answered to many names. That was certainly one of them.” Neil capped what should have been, for her, a most unsettling confession by draping something heavy and warm—his greatcoat—around her shoulders. “Here, put this on.”

  “What about you?” Although she would be glad of the coat’s protection, she hesitated. Depriving him of his own garment seemed unfair.

  “I’ll survive quite nicely without it, believe me. Just do as you’re told for once, would you, please?”

  Beth responded to this crisp directive by making a face at him, which of course he couldn’t see, then sitting up as best she could, sliding her arms into the sleeves, and wrapping herself in his greatcoat. The garment was enormous, cozy as a blanket, and smelled indefinably of him. As she settled into it she realized how cold she was, and how bruising the ground was beneath them. Her thin dress, with its low neckline and tiny puff sleeves, might be the height of fashion, but it had never been designed for conditions such as these.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Mm.”

  It was impossible to see him, so she reached out for him again, suddenly desperate to make sure of his presence in the dark, and found her hand once more resting on his chest. He wrapped long fingers around her wrist, holding her hand in place. The sturdy heat of his body beneath his shirt brought solace with it. Had he not been there in that hideously confined space with her, she thought, she would have been beating her fists against the imprisoning stone walls, or at the very least screaming herself hoarse, by now.

  Instead, she was managing to maintain a really quite impressive measure of calm.

  “We’ve a deal of time to pass, so talk to me,” he said, tugging on her hand to pull her down beside him. With no objection to make, she slid down obediently. By the time they were situated comfortably, he lay on his back and she curled against his side. He had an arm around her and her head was pillowed on his uninjured shoulder. His other arm, presumably, was curved beneath his head. It was still black as pitch, they were still trapped, and the situation was still so dire that she couldn’t think about it without feeling sick. But she felt infinitely better lying there in his arms. “I know that you are Lady Elizabeth Banning of the flaming hair and hotter temper, that you’ve whistled three fiancés down the wind, at least one of them quite violently, and that you’re afraid of sex. I would know more. Let us start, say, with how old you are.”

  Feeling her temper heat, Beth willed herself not to think about where they were anymore. It helped that he couldn’t have hit on a more annoying speech if he had tried. Or perhaps he was trying to distract her, in which case his ploy was certainly working. Her eyes narrowed at him.

  “If we are to get on, I should perhaps warn you that I do not care to have the color of my hair constantly thrown in my face. Also, it would probably be best if you stopped bringing up the number of fiancés I’ve had, or the way in which my last engagement was broken. And I am not afraid of—of . . . ” She couldn’t say it. Instead, she ended, lamely she knew, with “ . . . that.”

  “All duly noted.” He sounded as if he was smiling again, and she was suddenly sure that he’d set out to ruffle her feathers deliberately. “But you haven’t answered my question.”

  “I am twenty-one. How old are you?”

  “Thirty-one, a whole decade your senior. Are you going to tell me why you’re afraid of sex?”

  “I am not—” She broke off. “You are the most complete bounder, and I refuse to let you bait me. Let us rather talk about you. If your name is not Hume, what is it?” Then a thought occurred to her, and her tone turned severe. “Is it even really Neil?”

  “Yes, oh doubting one, my name is really Neil. My surname is”—he seemed to hesitate for the briefest of seconds—“Severin.”

  “Is that the truth?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I give you my word.”

  She snorted.

  “What? My word’s good. When I give it, which I must tell you is something I don’t often do.”

  “So I should feel honored that you are giving it to me, is that what you’re saying?”

  “You should, yes.”

  “Neil Severin,” she said, weighing the sound of it. “You are English by birth, then?”

  “My father is English, my mother was French. And beyond that, my origins are something I prefer not to discuss.”

  “Oh, ho! Very well, then, if your origins are out of bounds, then so, too, are my hair color, my fiancés, and—all the rest of it.”

  “You mean the reason why you are afraid of sex?”

  She glared at him, although of course he couldn’t see. “You devil, you know perfectly well what I mean.”

  He laughed. “Very well, consider the deal struck.”

  “Then would you care to tell me how it came about that you stole Mr.—What was his name? Oh, yes, Creed—how you stole a large sum of Mr. Creed’s money?”

  “That’s quite a tale.” She could feel him settling into a more comfortable position. “Are you sure you want to hear it? It might sink me utterly in your eyes.”

  “I’m already aware that you’re a housebreaker and probably a smuggler as well, besides being horrifyingly proficient at killing our fellow human beings. Oh, and that you are purse-pinched enough to show up in Green Park some days after we agreed to meet to collect a sum that I no longer owed you, because you saw fit to extract immediate payment from me by way of a snatched kiss. I have also had time to reflect on your subsequent pursuit of me for long enough to arrive at the conclusion that you probably hoped to profit from restoring me to the bosom of my family. Bearing all that in mind, I can quite easily assure you that nothing you can tell me could cause you to sink any lower in my eyes.”

  “That’s put me in my place.” His tone was appreciative. “But there is one point of your most chastising narrative that you have got all wrong.”

  “And what would that be, pray?”

  “I am no longer in the least purse-pinched. On the contrary, I am presently in the possession of two extremely fat purses. You may check the pocket of my coat if
you don’t believe me.”

  Beth realized that she could, indeed, feel heavy weights pulling down the fabric in the area of one pocket. Thrusting her hand inside it, she felt two, as he’d said, full-to-bursting purses, along with the pair of candles she knew about. A quick moment’s reflection sufficed to reveal to her how odd it was that he should have two very plump purses that were, from the feel of them, different in every particular.

  “These are not yours, are they? Did you steal them?”

  He laughed again. Listening to the brief bark of amusement, Beth realized that she was almost having a good time despite everything. And she owed that to the fact that she was with Neil.

  “One of them is mine, although the contents may once have belonged to someone else. The other I stole,” he admitted. “It seemed like the best thing to do at the time. Though I’m very sorry now, of course.”

  “You are not in the least bit sorry, and I know it, so you may as well not try to humbug me. Instead, I wish you will tell me about Mr. Creed’s money.”

  “You are most persistent,” he complained. Then, after the briefest of pauses, he continued: “Very well, if you feel you must know. At the time I was deeply involved in—ah, expediting—shipments of various types of highly desired goods into this country from our bloodthirsty neighbor across the channel.”

  “You were a smuggler,” Beth interjected with relish. “I knew it.”

  “Yes, well, be that as it may, Mr. Creed and I and a small number of others were working in concert, and doing very well for ourselves, when Mr. Creed, who was our leader, had a flash of uncharacteristic brilliance. Instead of paying for the large load of brandy that was delivered one night, right through this very passage, by the way, he determined to keep it, as well as his money, by killing the men who made the delivery. This he did, in the coldest of cold blood, with, as he thought, since he had told none of the rest of us the shipment was coming, no one to know. Only as I was working in the taproom at the time—Did I mention that I was seventeen years old? Yes, I was, and I worked in the inn’s taproom when I was not uh, expediting the delivery of goods—I saw Mr. Creed go down into the cellar and I followed him. I saw all that passed, and I saw, too, where he hid the money. His intent, I think, should any of the unfortunate victims’ associates have come to inquire for them, was to say that the delivery was never made. If something had befallen them, how was he to know? But as I had a most pressing need for a large sum of money, and little interest in the fate of those who had brought it, I left their misfortune to the concern of others and made off with the money. As I said, it was a large amount, and that Creed knew it was I who had taken it was borne in on me when, a year or so later, I happened to pass this way again. He was extremely wroth, believe me. I was fortunate to escape with my life.”

  “Will he not try to kill you when he comes to free us? Or”—the thought made her stomach clench—“will he not just be content to leave us—you—here to die?”

  “Creed won’t leave me here. He was ever a vengeful man, and satisfactory vengeance requires face-to-face retribution. That, and the hope of recovering some of what he lost, will ensure that he pulls me out.”

  “Won’t he then try to kill you? Or”—oh, happy thought—“will what’s in these purses be enough to repay him?”

  “Not nearly enough. And he probably will try to kill me, but not until he assures himself that he has wrung all the blunt he possibly can from me. At that, he is liable to catch cold. Much has changed since we last knew each other, the chief of which being I am no longer a raw youth.”

  That was so very true that Beth was reassured.

  “So why did you need such a large sum of money?” she asked.

  He didn’t reply right away.

  “Neil?” she prodded.

  “That is a very old story that I am persuaded you don’t want to hear.”

  “Then you are persuaded wrong. I very much want to hear it. Pray tell me.”

  “I hoped to use the money to free my mother and sister.”

  Beth waited, but he didn’t continue.

  “Free them from what?”

  The ensuing pause lasted so long that she wasn’t sure he meant to reply. Finally he went on, but she had the sense that he was almost reluctant to do so.

  “The French. As I told you, my mother was French, and she and my sister were living in France. They were arrested for crimes against the state, probably simply because my sister was half English and my mother was married to an Englishman, and locked away, along with thousands of others, in prison in Paris.”

  Again he stopped. From the very expressionlessness of his tone, Beth began to get a most horrible feeling.

  “And were you able to free them?”

  “No.”

  “No?” Her voice faltered. Unable to see anything at all, she nevertheless looked up at him through the dark.

  “No. They were tried and convicted before I could reach them. I stole the money to try to see if I couldn’t use it to get them free. I had some thought of bribing the authorities, or paying restitution, or—well, whatever it took.”

  “What—became of them?”

  “They were executed.” His voice was very even. “On the guillotine. My mother first, and then my sister, one immediately following the other. My mother was terrified—you could see it in her face, her eyes—but stoic. My sister—Isobel, she was only twenty, a beautiful girl with long black hair that on that day was twisted up on top of her head in a clumsy knot so, I can only presume, it wouldn’t get in the way of the blade—my sister screamed. Screamed and screamed. All the way up until that thrice-damned blade fell.”

  His voice was absolutely bereft of intonation, but Beth could feel the long-denied pain buried deep beneath his words. Her heart turned over. Her stomach clenched. Her hand, which rested on his chest, slid around him. Holding on to him tightly, she looked up at him through the darkness, although she could see nothing of him at all.

  “That is—just horrible. But how could you know those things? Anyone who would have told you such details . . . ”

  “I was there. In the crowd, battling to get to them. I’d done everything I could, talked to everybody I could think of, bribed the guards at the prison, who took my money and laughed at me, tried to break them out of the cell where they were being held, to no avail. I knew they’d been sentenced to death, but I’d no notion they were to be executed so soon. I thought I still had time, you see. I was begging for an audience with Ambassador Whitworth when I got word that they were amongst those who had been loaded into the tumbrels that morning. And then I arrived too late. I would have shot the damned executioner if I could’ve gotten close enough. But they pulled them out of the tumbrel, shoved them beneath the guillotine, and . . . it was over. Just like that. A matter of minutes only. My mother—they caught her head in a basket. Isobel—they held my sister’s head up high, held it by her beautiful hair for all to see. And then they tossed their bodies away like trash and went on to the next poor unfortunate.”

  His voice did not break. Beth’s heart did instead. She pictured the lean, handsome boy he would have been, imagined the horror he had endured on that terrible day, the horror that had been visited upon the mother and sister he had clearly loved, and felt hot tears well into her eyes.

  “Oh, Neil. I am so sorry.” Her voice broke. She snuggled closer, hugging him tightly, her cheek pressed against his chest. “So terribly, terribly sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago.” He almost seemed to shrug. The indifference in his voice tore at her heart, because she knew it was assumed, or rather constructed over the course of many years to mask a fathoms-deep well of anguish. “I never think of it anymore, so don’t imagine I’m still grief-stricken, or anything of that nature. The brutal truth is, it was just one atrocity out of tens of thousands that came out of those years. I would it had not happened, of course, but it did and it can’t be changed, so there’s an end to it.”

  “You must have suffered so
much,” she whispered, because a sudden lump in her throat kept her from speaking any louder. The welling tears spilled over to run in scalding tracks down her cheeks. “What a hideous, horrible—”

  She broke off because she couldn’t continue. The lump in her throat had grown too large.

  “Are you crying?” His fingers were on her face, sliding over her cheeks, discovering the telltale wetness of her tears for themselves.

  “Yes.” Beth gave a defiant sniff, which was meant to serve as punctuation to her uncharacteristic display. Its purpose was ruined when her breath caught on a sob and more tears leaked out despite her best efforts to hold them back. “Oh, the devil take it, I never cry. It’s only—thinking about you there, in the crowd watching—” She broke off, swallowing hard before she could continue. “Well, why wouldn’t I cry? Anyone would. It is just . . . so . . . sad.”

  “I think,” he said slowly, and there was a note in his voice that Beth had never heard in it before, “this has to be the first time anyone has ever cried for me.”

  Beth took a deep breath, trying to rally her defenses, trying not to make an utter cake of herself even though her heart ached for him.

  “If that’s true, then that has to be almost the saddest thing of all,” she said, striving for cool composure. But her voice shook on the last words, and she wasn’t quite able to stop more tears from coursing down her cheeks.

  He brushed them away. His touch was incredibly gentle.

  “Did you know, Madame Roux, that you are really quite a darling?” he whispered.

  Then he moved, shifting onto his side, and as she looked up at him with blind questioning his mouth found hers.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  HIS LIPS WERE FIRM, and warm, and sure, and they felt so right on hers that she responded instantly. Her head fell back onto the steely resilience of his upper arm. Her lips parted under his. His mouth was wet and hot and he tasted faintly of spirits and his unshaven cheeks felt bristly against her smooth skin—and she loved all of it. She kissed him back with an ardor that would have surprised her had she been in any condition to consider it, which she was not. She was lost in the moment, in the upswelling of emotion, in the increasing urgency of the kiss. She kissed him as she had never imagined she would kiss a man, answering the hungry demand of his lips and tongue with fervent caresses of her own, sliding her hands up over his chest to twine her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him with abandon. The folds of the greatcoat parted so that she could feel every blatantly masculine inch of him against her. The solid wall of his chest invited her breasts to swell and tingle as they flattened against it, and they did. The lean, hard cradle of his hips lured her to press close, and she did. His hand slid beneath the coat to cup her bottom, exploring the taut roundness he found there, squeezing her softness so that she felt the long strength of his fingers clear through the fragile layers of her clothes, then pulling her closer yet until she was pressed so tightly against him that she could feel the shocking contours of that part of him that had grown amazingly large and rigid with wanting her. The electrifying intimacy awoke tremors of passion that set her to shaking in his arms. Deep inside, a series of quick, instinctive contractions began to spiral ever tighter until they became a clamorous throbbing that was like nothing she had ever felt. She clung to him, intoxicated by the unfamiliar sensations, on fire now as she responded to his kisses, to his touch, with a rising hunger of her own.