‘There,’ he said. ‘The boathouse. Beside the jetty is where they had egress. But I see no sign of them now.’
‘Could they be in the boathouse?’
‘Perhaps.’ He didn’t sound hopeful.
All around the jetty and the door into the boathouse were signs of the children. But the silence said they were not here now.
He pulled open the door and entered the darkness. ‘Jane! Is anyone here?’
His voice boomed in the cavernous space, but the building which jutted out over the water was clearly empty.
He came out and closed the door with a shake of his head. He strode out onto the jetty, then his steps slowed and he proceeded more cautiously. He dropped to his knees.
‘What is it?’ she called, following him out.
‘Be careful, the planks are icy.’
‘What do you see?’ she said when she reached him.
‘Nothing. We should go back to the house. I think we need more people for this search.’
‘You saw something.’ Panic closed her throat. Her chest tightened. She struck out at him with her fist. ‘Tell me.’
‘The ice is broken,’ he said.
‘No.’ She fell to her knees, looking down at the place beneath the jetty where dark water lapped at the edges of splintered ice. ‘We have to find her.’
He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her up. ‘We don’t know if it is Jane. We don’t know if it is anyone. We need help. We have to go back to the house and get men. Find the children who played here and find out what happened.’
Something howled through her mind. A cold wind. A bitter fear. ‘No,’ she gasped, lashing out at him. ‘We have to find her before it is too late.’
Desperation gave her strength and she broke free of his grip, making for the ladder leading down onto the ice.
He caught her again, holding her, pressing her against him. ‘Claire, if she went into that water, it is already too late.’
‘No,’ she gasped. ‘No.’ She fought him, but he held her, his hands on her shoulders, gripping tight.
‘We don’t know she is in there.’ He gave her a shake. ‘We don’t know and I am not going to let you go down there.’
‘Let me go!’
He picked her up and carried her to the bank. She fought him, struggled, clawed at him, her mind seeing Jane somewhere below that ice, trying to find her way up, calling to her.
She found herself on her feet and made to run back.
He caught her again, cupped her chin, made her look at him, into his eyes. ‘Claire, no!’ he yelled. ‘You will just make it worse.’
She blinked, his words beating their way into her mind.
‘How will it help her if you drown?’ he said.
Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘She’s my daughter.’
‘And we don’t know she is in the water.’
‘She is. I know it. I know. I am her mother. I know.’
Her knees buckled as what she was saying registered in her heart.
He caught her, held her close, patted her back. ‘We don’t know. We must go back to the house. We must get help.’
‘No. We need a ladder. Something that will take my weight. I saw it done with a dog once. On the Thames.’
‘There’s probably one in the boathouse,’ he said instantly. ‘I’ll get it if you will promise to wait here for me.’
‘I promise.’
He ran for the wooden building. Disappearing inside.
She stared at the black hole beneath the jetty. Large enough for a child to fall through. Then he was back at her side, ladder in hand.
He lay it down on the ice alongside the jetty and knelt to crawl. The sound of ice cracking was like shots in the still air.
‘Let me,’ she said. ‘I’m lighter.’
A look of agony crossed his face, but he moved aside. ‘Go very slowly, Claire. Take your time.’
She gritted her teeth and nodded. The rails were rotted and splintery. Not in the best condition. Tomorrow she would have a word with the groundskeeper. If there was a tomorrow.
She balanced on her hands and feet, unable to kneel because of her skirts. But the ice didn’t make any more of that horrible cracking sound as she inched her way forward, aware of André on the bank tense and ready to come after her should anything go wrong.
‘Mrs Holte! Monsieur André!’ The shout echoed all around them.
André swung about. ‘It is Joe,’ he yelled. ‘Stay still. Perhaps he has news of Jane.’
She could not take the chance he did not. Frozen inside and out she kept edging forward.
‘Claire,’ he said. ‘Mon Dieu, arrêtez!’
‘Mrs Holte,’ Joe shouted still some distance off. ‘Miss Jane is at the Dower House.’
Safe. Jane was not in the water, not gone with the Gypsies. She was safe. She couldn’t move. Not forward or backwards. And then the ladder was sliding, pulling her back to the bank and André was lifting her to her feet.
He let her go. She felt his hands leave her waist. The loss of his support made her stagger, but somehow she found her balance.
Her heart, which seemed to have stopped beating since she saw the hole in the ice, staggered to life. Joe ran out from behind the boathouse, from the direction of Castonbury. They walked to meet him, but time seemed to slow, as if she was walking through air turned to syrup. She didn’t dare hope she’d heard correctly. It would be too cruel to find she was wrong, after all.
Joe halted in front of them, gasping, face red from the chill wind and his run. ‘Mrs Holte, Jimmy just brought word from the Dower House. Miss Jane went to visit her cousin. Becca said you’d come out to search for her. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’
‘Jane is at the house?’
He shook his head. ‘Lady Hatherton had a maid put her to bed. She got herself lost in the woods for a while.’
Claire’s knees gave way.
André caught her arm beneath the elbow. ‘It is all right, madame. The child is all right.’
André could scarcely hold her she trembled so hard. Walking half a mile like this was out of the question.
‘I must go to her,’ she whispered, but it might as well have been a shriek she sounded so distraught.
To see her overcome by all the anguish of her terror now the child was safe shifted walls built one painful brick at a time. Something dark twisted in his chest, wanting to find its way into the light. Clawing at the veil on the past, revealing the stark recollection of crying out for his mother. His fist banging on glass that might as well have been ice for all the notice she took. Or water closing over his head. His knocking had been silenced by the hand of a stranger while he watched her ride away.
Until that moment, he’d basked in luxurious safety, pampered and treasured, or so he’d thought. It had all been a lie.
He slammed the door shut on the grim visage that followed, the brutality and weeks of desperation. Neither memory served any purpose. He lived in the here and the now. Yet deep down he knew what Claire felt.
‘Madame, you must not go to her until you are calm. You will frighten her.’
He looked at Joe shifting from one foot to the other in the snow. ‘Madame is frozen to the bone.’ He gestured to the brick bath house beside the boathouse. ‘I will light a fire in here and bring her when she is herself. Have John Coachman ready the carriage to take her to the boathouse. Leave me the torch, s’il vous plaît.’
Claire shuddered violently and Joe stared at her. ‘Shall I send Mrs Stratton?’
‘I do not think it necessary, mon ami. I will bring la madame shortly.’
The boy touched his forelock, handed André the torch and scampered off.
‘Claire,’ he murmured softly but firmly. ‘Come. Walk a few steps for me. We will have you warm and ready to find Mademoiselle Jane safe and sound, and asleep in her bed.’
‘Th-thank you.’
She took a step, but almost fell. He picked her up and carried her into the bath hou
se. So light. So small. Such a very dainty lady. And so very courageous.
Thank goodness for the hearth already set for a fire. He touched the torch to the kindling and it caught immediately, the flames flickering off the water in the plunge bath and dancing off the blue-and-white tiles that lined the walls.
He sat beside her on the changing bench and she sagged against him, all the strength seemed to have leached out of her. All he could think to do was put an arm around her shoulders and stroke her.
‘I thought she was gone.’ Her voice was thin and wavering. Her shoulders rose with a deep shuddering breath. ‘I thought she’d been taken. And then, when I saw that hole in the ice…I was so sure she was gone. She is all I have.’
Her body shuddered with such force, André feared she might be about to fall into some sort of fit. He held her tighter, willing his strength into her fragile body, cradling her cheek against his shoulder, rocking. ‘Hush. Hush. It is all right. She is safe.’
‘I can’t lose her. I can’t.’
‘You have not lost her.’ He lifted her face with his palms, looking into her eyes, giving her his calm as she had given it to him. ‘You heard Joe. She is safe, with her family.’
But he understood only too well that safety could be stripped away in an instant. The thought of what could happen, what had happened to him as a child, brought bile to his throat. Not all families cared for their children. But this woman did. She’d been prepared to lay down her life for her child.
Then she started to cry. Great racking sobs that shook her body, and all he could do was hold her.
‘Claire,’ he said gently, removing his glove. He tipped her face up and wiped her cheek with the pad of his thumb. ‘Tears now, chérie? When out there you were so very brave.’
And still the tears fell. He held her close, rocking her slowly. Letting her cry. ‘Hush,’ he whispered. ‘Doucement. Doucement.’ Gradually the sobs subsided to little hiccups and sniffs.
His mother had walked away. Abandoned him without a backwards glance, whereas Claire would give her life for Jane. Something inside his chest felt too large, too tender. He pretended it was not there. Sought for something to say.
‘Hush, now, ma petite. It is over.’
When she was finally quiet, he did what any man would do. He mopped her face with his handkerchief.
She lifted her face to his touch, gave him a watery smile and a look of such gratitude he felt like a god among men. She touched his heart in ways that made him long for things he never knew he wanted.
Love. A family. Things he’d always denied were important.
He didn’t quite know how it happened, whether he bent to her, or she lifted her face to him, but one moment he was drying her tears and the next their lips met. Passionately. Feverishly. Fiercely. Her lips were hot against his, where her cheeks were cold and damp against his palms.
He wanted to warm her through and through and offer her comfort. And heaven help him take some for himself after the memories she’d evoked. Memories he’d buried as a frightened child.
Her lips parted against his and his tongue swept her mouth, helping him forget the images of that terrible afternoon when his mother had abandoned him to his fate.
She moaned sweetly in the back of her throat and he hardened within his trousers, the fabric tight against his arousal.
Her hands went around his neck and she stroked his tongue with hers, explored his mouth, the little cries in the back of her throat both a wonder and a torment to his heightening desire.
‘Claire,’ he whispered. ‘Ma petite.’
Her gaze searched his face, looked into his very dark soul with passion and smiled. ‘André,’ she breathed. She kissed him at first sweetly and then with fierce demand.
He cradled her head with his hands and kissed her back, nipping at her lips, exploring her mouth with his tongue, tasting the essence of womanhood and wonderful Claire.
His hands roamed her shoulders, brushed the front of her coat, felt the rise of her breasts beneath the heavy fabric. A groan of frustration rose in his throat and she drew back, looking into his eyes. Traces of her tears glistened on her cheeks, but her smile was definitely more than a little wicked.
Hands braced on his shoulders, she twisted around and, pulling up her skirts, straddled his thighs. Her smile, full of bravado, also contained more than a hint of a challenge. Brave girl. Brave to the point of reckless. And thank goodness she was a widow, because there was no way in the world he was going to be careful. He was just too damned aroused to think straight.
While she teased his lips with her tongue, she stroked his face, tickled his nape and his ears with her fingers. He undid the buttons of his falls with one hand and caressed her chilly buttocks with the other.
He had some idea that he should protect her from the chill until the fire could warm the small space, but it was a very vague idea, not fully formed, and her assaults on him were driving him too close to the brink.
And the damned buttons would not undo.
He felt like an awkward boy, all fingers and thumbs, and clumsy eagerness, his knuckles brushing against the hot satiny skin of her inner thigh.
She rose up on her knees with a breathy little laugh at his battle, cupping his face to kiss his lips, open-mouthed and delicious, and giving him better access beneath his coat.
At last, the button slipped through its moorings in the placket, then the next and the next, and his erection was released from its confines.
With effort, he broke the kiss, breathing hard.
‘Claire,’ he said, looking into her hazy desire-filled gaze. ‘Are you sure?’
She gazed at him, awareness slowly seeping into her expression, while her chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. ‘I need this,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’
The please was the coup de grâce. Until that moment, he’d thought he could resist. Be logical. Sensible. Though heaven knew he’d been far from logical in any of his dealings with Claire Holte.
A gentle stroke of her hot damp cleft and her little moan of pleasure in his ear confirmed her permission.
He took himself in hand and guided the head of his shaft against her hot wet sheath, parting the folds gently, caressing the centre of her pleasure with his own hard flesh until she quivered and squirmed. The moment he ceased holding her high, she slid down on him, sheathing him in her heat. His hips rose to meet her downwards thrust and the darkness of passion invaded his mind.
A welcome blackness. A void where only the physical existed, the slide of flesh on flesh. The sound of her encouraging cries. The feel of her hands through his clothes. The deep physical joining of naked flesh.
The abyss drew him on. He pounded his hips hard between her thighs, his hands lifting her, then driving her down on his aching shaft.
The soft sounds of her cries of delight echoed off hard tile and drowned him in the delicious music of lust.
And then he was going over. Too fast. Too hard. He caressed her where they were joined in desperate haste. She uttered a cry. Pleasure, not pain. And the silken walls of her body fluttered and stroked him and he was lost.
La petite morte claimed him. A hot death full of trembling mindless bliss more intense than anything he’d ever experienced.
Deep calm. They clung to each other like the victims of a storm, breathing hard; he inhaled her scent, a fragrance so potent it made him dizzy. She lay with her cheek against his, breathing softly, like a child at peace.
Warily he placed the flat of his hand on her back, wondering if she might reject him now it was over. Steeling himself for righteous horror. Dreading it, even as he knew he deserved it. She’d been vulnerable. Lost. He’d been ignoble in taking advantage.
He hated himself, knowing he’d want it again and again. He’d taken her like a rutting beast. A lady. A noblewoman. He’d been crude and unthinking.
It wasn’t like him at all. She deserved so much better.
Slowly she drew in a deep breath and raised her head.
He waited. Expecting recriminations.
Her eyes startled, her expression bemused, she touched a finger to lips reddened by rough kisses. She seemed more surprised than disturbed.
Stunned, perhaps, by the enormity of what they had done.
‘Claire,’ he said, his voice rough. ‘I—’
‘Not now,’ she whispered. She touched a hand to his lips. ‘I must go before someone comes looking. You ordered the carriage, remember?’
Witnesses to his folly were just what they needed. He went hot and cold.
He helped her off his lap, trying not to feel the chill as he lost the heat of her centre. He rose, turning away to fasten his falls, feeling much like a thief in the night.
What the hell had he done? He turned back to find her standing, her skirts in careful order, her gaze directed at the door. ‘Jane. I must go to Jane.’ She pulled the door open. Cold swirled in around them, bringing with it clarity of thought.
‘Give me a moment.’ He took a bucket from beside the fire and ushered her out. He scooped up snow and went back and doused the flames, much as reality had doused his ardour. He picked up the torch and they walked side by side back to the house, in silence.
Oddly, there was companionship in that walk, when he’d braced for anger, or even icy contempt. But, after all, he was not the only one at fault and Claire was nothing if not fair.
He just wished he didn’t feel so damned guilty.
The carriage was waiting. Caught in the light beside the door, Claire looked flushed and tear-stained and, heaven help him, well-bedded as John Coachman leapt down to help her into the coach.
André bowed as he had been taught as a boy to bow to a lady, in the days when he’d been a gentleman in the making.
‘Thank you for your help, Monsieur André,’ she murmured, leaning forward from inside. Did he sense more than formality in her tone? Did her gratitude reflect something more deeply personal?
A cold wind whipped across the driveway and André hunched his shoulders against the chill and watched her drive away.
How would she feel about what had passed between them in the cold light of day? Once she was herself again. He saw difficulties ahead.
Lady of Shame Page 14