Abruptly, he rolled over, pulled her on top of him, and ran his hands along her back and down over her pouting bottom. Gently, he urged her legs apart until he found her buried sweetness, smiling when she gasped at this intimate invasion. But the smile fled when he felt her stiffen. "No, Alexandra," he pleaded roughly. "Don't stop! Flower for me, love. Open yourself, body and soul. I must have you tonight — all of you — just as I give all of myself to you."
"Hawke, I —"
"No, no more words," he muttered hoarsely. "Only this fierce hunger, this shared aching which ends in oneness. Only this ..."
And then, as he ordered, there were no more words, only the dark rustle of skin against heated skin, legs tangling, hands searching, as their bodies learned the thousand small delights that only lovers share.
When she was swollen and damp, aching for him to bury himself inside her, he lifted her and rolled them over as one, capturing her beneath his hard thighs. His hands never left her, stroking her, claiming her, as if he feared she might suddenly disappear. Yet all the time he demanded more, provoking her with urgent hands and expert lips while he whispered harsh pagan praise against the sweet hills of her breasts and belly.
With glazed eyes, beyond thought or understanding, Alexandra watched him love her. His magnificent body tensed and strained against her, teasing, coaxing, demanding. Pressing but never joining. Hungry and insistent. Loving her in a thousand different ways until she could wait no longer for his final claiming.
Her small hands clutched his shoulders, desperately urging him closer, seeking his rigid length in an instinct as old as man and woman.
And then with a hoarse groan Hawke finally shifted over her and plunged deep within her velvet sweetness. His touch was fire itself. She moaned wildly as she received his swollen shaft.
"Yes, my love, take me," he whispered roughly. "Take all of me, just as I've imagined in a thousand reckless dreams. I could never forget how you hold me!"
His body was pleasure beyond imagining. Inch by powerful inch, he surged into her softness, and inch by white-hot inch, he withdrew, again and again, until she was mindless and panting with need. Relentlessly, he coaxed her, shaping and driving her until she became pure liquid sensation beneath him, trembling and spilling around him like wild waters in a spring flood.
She cried his name in a frenzy, kneading the corded muscles at his neck as with each powerful stroke he swept her closer to the whirling vortex, toward the dark mystery at passion's heart.
"Not yet!" he cried against the vein that pounded in the hollow of her neck. "So, oh God ... sweet."
Alexandra's blood sang. A net of silver shimmered around her, coiling around their heated, yearning bodies. Suddenly she was caught and thrown upon a far shore, where time and space dissolved in an explosion of joyous molten sensation.
She tensed, crying out his name.
"Yes, love, feel it," Hawke grated against her lips, sensing her tremors begin and drinking her wild, breathless cries with his lips.
But even then he did not find his release, though it cost him dear when she rippled around him with such sweet abandon. Still he waited, determined to see her passion spent and then rekindled. With rigid control he held himself back until her tremors passed, anchoring her in his iron grip. Only when she smiled tremulously and opened shining, love-dazed eyes did he begin to move inside her again.
The first thrust drove the breath from Alexandra's throat. The second made her moan and throw back her head. Without warning, her muscles tensed around him once more.
Hawke could wait no longer. With a raging fury he let himself go, plunging deep within her trembling velvet, at last releasing the iron restraint he had imposed upon himself for so long. "Yes," he gasped, "take me!"
His hands lifted her, anchoring her hips as he exploded against her; he pulled her legs around his waist so that stroke followed unimpeded stroke.
Just when Alexandra thought she must die of the exquisite sensations, the dissolution began again, and this time her pleasure was blinding, unimaginable, untellable.
For this time she shared it with him, catching him close and savoring his fierce shuddering release until finally they fell together, tired and languid, back to the quiet earth.
Chapter Thirty-Three
In the darkest hour of night the dream came to Alexandra again. She was in India once more, the gleaming white marble steps of Government House before her. All was strangely quiet, just as it had been that night ten years before.
No dogs barked, no laughter floated on the wind. All was heat and oppressive silence.
"Hawke!" she cried from her sleep, throwing her arms out to him but meeting only emptiness where her ardent lover had lain. She jerked upright in bed, her eyes stark with fear, and awoke to find herself alone, the sheets cold and rumpled. Not even his faint scent remained in that chill hour before dawn.
From the window there came a faint rustling. Alexandra pulled the covers around her protectively, grimacing at the unaccustomed soreness of her thighs. "Rajah?" she whispered sleepily.
It was a few moments before she recognized the strange surroundings. Unfamiliar velvet curtains at the window fluttered in a chill breeze.
Lord Morland's rooms, she realized at last. The candles had gone out, she saw, shivering. All was darkness save for a faint glow from the doorway. With a ragged moan Alexandra stumbled from the bed, heedless of her nakedness.
Hawke was bent over the fire with one arm braced on the mantel as he studied the fierce glow of the flames. The wound at his side was angry red, she saw, and his frowning face was set in hard lines, which the red firelight only seemed to make harsher.
Her bare feet made no sound on the thick Persian carpet, and her fingers were upon her lover's bronze torso before he knew it.
He jumped back from her like a cat from a flame. "When did you plan to tell me?" he growled, his copper-tinged eyes surveying her with cold feral dislike.
She who had awakened with love on her lips and hope in her heart saw her brightest dreams shattered in that very instant.
"When?" he repeated savagely. "After the baby began to show? When you were certain of your control over me?" He shook his head, a mirthless smile twisting his lips. "Ironic, isn't it? It came to me only a few minutes ago, as I pondered your extraordinary beauty. Your body has changed, you see, since that night four weeks ago when I first glimpsed your nakedness. The changes have already begun — your breasts are fuller, your nipples dusky now. My God, did you think you could hide it from me in bed? I've seen it before, don't forget, when my late and wholly unlamented wife was carrying our son!"
At the mention of Isobel, Hawke seemed to lose his last vestige of control, and his teeth bared in a snarl as he wrenched a trembling Alexandra against his chest. Like a man unhinged, he bent her back in his arms and forced her toward the fire.
The flame at Alexandra's back scorched her naked unprotected skin, but even then she did not speak, mute with shock.
"Do you know what it does to me? Do you know how I burn when I think of that part of me lodged deep inside you, innocently growing while you laugh in triumph at how well you've tricked me!"
"Hawke! S-Stop. You're hurting me!"
His laugh was dark and demonic. "Woman, you haven't learned the meaning of the word. Not yet — but I mean to teach you full well." In the firelight his face was a pure sheet of molten fury. With cruel force he grabbed her fiery curls and jerked her head back, snarling into her pale face. "Now tell me," he demanded savagely, "what were you plotting next in that sick little mind of yours?"
"S-sick?" Alexandra's blood was churning, and she had to fight for every ragged breath. "Sick?" Suddenly, she was choking with hysterical laughter. "Y-You dare to call me sick!"
The muscle at Hawke's jaw jutted out, rigid against his skin. "Did you plan to go away when the pregnancy began to show?" he shouted, his eyes all smoke and slate. "Or did you have a different plan in mind? Was the child to be your final instrument of revenge
against me?" His hands tightened savagely in Alexandra's hair, making her wince with pain. "But I've seen through your schemes. I've seen them all before, remember, in my years with Isobel. And you won't succeed, mark me well! No child of mine will be used in such a foul mercenary game! I was a pawn in a loveless marriage, and I know too well the scars that are left on the innocent victims."
"Yes! T-true! All true!" Alexandra cried, desperate to conceal the searing agony of his wild accusations. Even more than that, she was desperate to deny the truth he had uncovered, that new life was growing in her womb: life from his seed.
Dear God, the pain was too great. She couldn't face it!
"T-too bad you saw so soon. But you're hardly innocent. Whatever cruelty I might have planned was no more than you deserved!"
For Hawke all hope died at that moment when her flashing eyes and sneering lips confirmed his worst suspicions. Up until then he had dared hope that she was guiltless, incapable of such cunning.
He dropped his eyes, unable to bear the cruel pain of her triumph. With a brutally crude curse he pushed her away and stalked to the settee for his shirt, blindly jerking on the crumpled white cambric.
When he turned back to study Alexandra's heaving form, his face was devoid of emotion. She flinched, he saw scornfully, and she brought her hand to ward off a blow. The sight made him laugh hollowly. "Don't worry," he growled, "I won't touch you again. But you'll take my name, by God! For the child's sake you'll do it, even if I have to drag you to the altar with a pistol at your back. Yes, Alexandra, you'll have my child, and then you'll disappear without a trace — back to India, I should imagine, leaving the innocent creature for me to raise without your corrupting influence. I'm only sorry that I can't do anything worse to hurt you."
His eyes shone bloodred in the firelight — just like Rajah's, Alexandra thought hysterically, when the fierce bloodlust was upon the mongoose.
Even then she did not speak or try to deny Hawke's accusations; her pride and blinding anger held her aloof.
Scornfully, he threw her ragged gown into her face. "Now get dressed. It will soon be light." His lips curled up in contempt. "I don't care to become a further laughingstock when someone sees us returning together from a furtive tryst at dawn."
* * * * *
"It is very beautiful, madame." Alexandra's voice was strangely wooden as she studied the perfect beauty of the silver tissue-silk gown reflected in her cheval glass. From low squared neck and fitted sleeve to beaded hem, the gown fell with exquisite elegance. The pale silk set off the rich depths of her eyes and the flame of her hair, vying for purity with the alabaster of her skin.
Yet to her, it meant nothing at all.
"You are a true artist." Alexandra's numb fingers smoothed the silver folds, oblivious to their exquisite crispness, which was so much like her own skin.
Since the night at Vauxhall a week before, she had seen very little of Hawkesworth. He had begun, it appeared, to pick up the threads of his previous life in earnest, meeting politicians like the prime minister, George Canning, and a host of others who sought him out as soon as they learned he was about in society once more. He had even brought Sir Stanford Raffles home for lunch one day, as Alexandra discovered when she returned with Robbie from a tour of the Botanical Gardens. That was how she'd discovered where her old friend was lodging in London.
She would look him up soon, she told herself. But she found she had no spark for any task, and her joy, even her pride, was gone. She moved through each empty day like a sleepwalker.
On the very morning after their visit to Vauxhall, an elderly aunt of Hawke's had appeared on the doorstep. A sweet, tiny thing, Lady Babbington was hopelessly boring as well as stone deaf, but Hawke had flatly informed Alexandra that she was to go nowhere without his aunt and the tall, brawny footman Hardy, who had recently arrived from Hawkeswish.
Telford again? Alexandra had wondered.
What could he do that was worse than what Hawke had already done? she thought hollowly.
As for the baby growing inside her, she simply pushed that thought out of her mind along with everything else, unable to bear the pain of it.
They were to have nine for dinner, Hawke had told her flatly one morning — had it been two or three days ago?
It really did not matter. Nothing mattered, in fact.
"Au contraire, you do me the honor, mademoiselle." The modiste's words recalled Alexandra to the matter at hand — completing the final touches on her dress for the dinner party. "Dieu, but it is fine to clothe one who ornaments my creations, rather than the opposite." Her quick eyes flickered over Alexandra's pale features, turning shrewd for a moment. "You will catch many eyes at your dinner party tonight, I think."
Alexandra frowned slightly. She did not want to catch many eyes tonight.
"And what woman would not wish to capture such attention?"
Suddenly, Alexandra felt a spasm of nausea grip her stomach, and she reached for a high-backed chair of aqua brocade. Her fingers dug into the rich fabric, her knuckles white with tension.
"But mademoiselle is unwell!" Madame Gres cried. "Come, you must sit! Some wine will restore you."
Alexandra shuddered at the thought of wine — of food or drink of any sort, in fact. Wearily, she slid into the brocade chair and rested the back of her head against the thick cushions. "It is just that I am very tired."
Madame Gres's eyes were measuring. "You have lost weight, non? The dress is somewhat large, although it was fitted but last week. You must take care of yourself, mademoiselle. Not only for your sake —"
Alexandra stiffened.
"If you will not talk to Madame Gres, perhaps you will consider speaking with a Miss Gray from Brighton." The rolling French cadences suddenly dropped away, and the modiste's voice became thoroughly different — thoroughly English, Alexandra realized.
She frowned. "But —"
"I'm no more French than you are, Miss Mayfield. But it is necessary for the sort of business I am in — something the Duke of Hawkesworth understood immediately. The name was his idea," she said thoughtfully, sitting down beside her surprised client. "I was working in a second-rate milliner's shop near Brighton, half starving, when he found me. Believing that I showed talent, he set me up and introduced me to a few close acquaintances. Oh, it was entirely a question of business," the small woman said quickly, seeing wariness darken Alexandra's eyes. "Though for my part—" She shrugged suddenly and her voice hardened, almost as if she expected an argument. "He is a fair man, Miss Mayfield, and I can speak only good of him. That is why I reveal my masquerade to you now." Her head tilted to the side, birdlike. "For I think you have need of someone to talk to, someone who understands how you feel. Am I right, or have I dreadfully overstepped my place?"
Alexandra reached out to touch the modiste's slim fingers. "No, of course you have not."
Her companion's eyes were warm and faintly chiding. "My dear girl, it is not something long hidden. You and he have been lovers, have you not? No, don't answer," she said quickly, holding up a small hand. "Just listen. You've been sick lately, tired perhaps. It is merely a passing illness, you tell yourself. And your monthly flux—?" Miss Gray paused delicately.
Alexandra's face turned white. The modiste had discovered her secret too! Her heart pounded as the knowledge she had tried to deny burst fiercely into her consciousness, traveling along every path of blood and nerve, sweeping up to her constricted heart.
Yes, God help her, she was pregnant. With the bloody Duke of Hawkesworth's child!
"Have you told him?"
Alexandra did not move. It was all a horrible dream, she told herself. If she concentrated hard enough, it would go away and she would wake up. Her long slim fingers dug into the pale aqua armrests.
"It is your decision, of course, but I think it would make him very happy. The Duke of Hawkesworth is a generous man. He would take care of you and the child. His response, in fact, might surprise you very much."
Alexandr
a's nails raked the stiff brocade, and her face was a mask of pain. "Surprise?" she said bitterly. "Yes, his response surprised me very much."
Miss Gray frowned sadly. "I am sorry that all is not well between you. Perhaps ..." Realizing that she was treading on dangerous ground, the modiste stood up and clasped her hands together briskly. "Eh bien, mademoiselle," she began, the French cadences restored, "you have a party to go to, n'est-ce pas? And I have a score of commissions awaiting me at my atelier."
In a trance Alexandra stood up, submitting as the woman carefully refitted the beaded sash at Alexandra's bodice. This part of the gown, too, required restitching, for the fabric now strained uncomfortably across her full breasts.
Hawke had seen. Madame Gres had seen. How long before the world saw? Alexandra only wondered why she had not seen it sooner herself. As the seamstress hovered over her, she recalled her conversation with Hawke on this very subject, when they had argued about what was owed to a child and whether love could replace the material benefits the duke could offer.
The question, it seemed, was no longer academic.
At last Madame Gres completed her delicate labor and stood back to admire her handiwork. "Bien," she said, "finished — and with ten minutes to spare. It is good," she added thoughtfully. "Monsieur le Duc will be epris. There are few men, I think, who would not grant you anything you asked tonight, mademoiselle." The modiste smiled slightly. "Think well on what you request. What you want and what you need may be closer than you know."
Then, with a quick curtsey, she was gone.
Alexandra was still standing before the cheval glass, the modiste's words echoing in her ears, when a gentle tapping came at her door.
"Come in," she called out woodenly.
Robbie entered, looking very grown-up in a dark blue velvet jacket and lace-trimmed jabot. For the first time he was to accompany his father downstairs to welcome their guests, and he was very conscious of this special privilege. "How very grand you look, Miss Mayfield!" he blurted out with youthful enthusiasm, before lapsing into painful embarrassment.
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