She twisted a lock of her hair. A compliment? “Go on.”
His notebook lay open. Drawn in the margin was a heart with Rachel and Anthony stenciled inside. Her toes curled. She would rip out that page and carry it home with her to treasure forever.
Anthony stacked the copper and zinc discs, tonging the acid drenched flannel between. “You are the antidote to my severe, demanding, pigheadedness. I like your observations and most important, your witty comebacks. You make me laugh.”
Regrets. The people she’d miss, Aunt Margaret, the Duke, Sebastian, the butler and Anthony. Her throat thickened. They had been more than family. Think forward to Abby, Jacob, Ethan and the baby. Leave. Don’t’ think about it, don’t look back.
But to whirl in a circle, to sample Anthony’s attention, this indulgenceeven for a short time? When she walked by, she heard him inhale her hair. “I really feel we are on the brink of something that will change all mankind. Have you thought of the possibilities?” she said.
He didn’t say anything, his shoulder muscles tightened, intent on finishing the stack. Rachel clutched her chest. One two three. Attached to the top and bottom of the pile, Anthony joined the two wires. A small charge emitted. Her shoulders sank. The experiment failed.
Anthony raked his fingers through his hair. “I told you it wouldn’t work.”
“It did work. We ruled out a possibility. What do you propose next?” She refused to let him sink to despair, the same despondency she drowned in every day, knowing she would be saying goodbye.
“It’s useless. Day after day, we try repeatedly, harvesting nothing.”
She scuffed a chair closer to the cabinet and looked him right in the eye. “One of the older and wiser carpenters in the Thorne Shipyard used to tell me theories are like stars. You never really succeed in touching them with your fingers, but like the ancient seafaring men on the desert of waters, used them as their guides and discovered their path.”
“Platitudes,” Anthony groaned. “No matter how small my successes you always cheer me on. Let’s stack a higher pile.”
“That’s my Anthony, back on his problem solving. Oh, the perils of being a genius.” She wagged a finger at him. “Have you ever experienced the threat of humility?”
He offered her a hopeless grin.
“Well, wisdom is knowing what to do next. Let’s try mixing a salt and acid solution.”
“Interesting.” He compromised and dumped the existing solution to start over again. Rachel joined him at the sink, pumping water and washing the jars, and when the task was completed carried the equipment to the counter and started the process again. Anthony poured the sulfuric acid and Rachel measured in a salt brine solution, soaking new flannel discs.
Copper, flannel, zinc, were alternated and supported by three glass rods. Anthony picked up the two wires, glanced at her. “Let’s hope.”
She clapped her hands together in a prayerful pose. Please. Please. Let it work this time.
He connected the two ends and she held her breath.
Electrical fire zinged around the room like shooting stars, hurling against the walls of the laboratory. The dog barked and leaped.
Rachel had almost forgotten to breathe, for her entire body steeped with the most powerful and intense sensation she’d ever known. It was something like frenzied hunger, and something like fulfillment. It was wonder and awe and yearning and fear captured in a bold new world. Her chest expanded with it until pressed against her lungs, emptying them of breath. There were no words other than to have Anthony at her side and sit on the edge of the heavens at the dawn of creation.
She threw her hands into the air and cried out. “Oh, Anthony, you are magnificent. Do you realize what you have discovered?”
“We,” he emphasized and she loved the ring of that, “We have discovered the first method for the generation of a sustained electrical current, and creating a high energy source.”
He reached out one long arm reached out and caught her to him, like a lion interrupting the pulsing rush of an eagle. “If you don’t want me to fall in love with you, you’re going to have to start not looking so lovely. Maybe have the seamstress sew a couple of potato sacks together.”
She widened her eyes.
“I’m not jesting. You’re too beautiful.”
He pushed her back until she bumped against the cabinet. His mouth skimmed her jaw, down her throat, his teeth grazing her skin and the shadow of his beard scratching her.
Before I go…
She pushed at him, holding his hands. A part of her told her that she should stop, that she should think this through, but the other voices in her head drowned her out. She wanted him more than she wanted to breathe.
“I want to be with you.”
Tension in the air snapped like the rigging on a full-blown sail. “You know this is illogical,” he said.
“Sometimes it is good to be illogical.”
Chapter Sixteen
Rachel gasped when he gathered her into his arms and carried her to the other room, shutting the door with his foot, a latch clicked into place. He stood her beside the cot. “What we are to do, Rachel is between a man and woman, husband and wife.”
She pressed two fingers to his lips. “I want this to be magic, to be memorable.”
“Do not move,” he ordered.
With no opposition from her, he reached behind and unfastened a row of buttons, pushing away her dress. She shivered as the delicate gown glided down her body and pooled at her feet. He tugged at her lacings, tossed the corset away. Naked now, Rachel covered herself. He moved her hands to her sides, her nipples grazing the soft silk of his shirt.
“You never need to cover yourself. You are beyond beautiful.”
Trapped in a whirl of heady arousal, she watched, intrigued as he shirked out of his shirt, reveling in the lean muscularity of his chest, arms and shoulders. She longed to run her hands across his skin, to glide her fingers over every muscle and sinew of him. Her gaze followed the line of hair rising from beneath his breeches to his chest, admiring his trim waist and the width of his shoulders. Pulsing heat spread between her legs.
“What if someone discovers us?”
He looked over his shoulder. “The lock would hold back an invasion of the Huns.”
Rachel moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. He watched her with hunger in his eyes. A slight sheen lit his body, sleek, and strong, without the excess bulk conspicuous of nobility. He finished shedding his breeches, and her eyes widened, her gaze riveted to his manhood, impressive and frightening.
“I will be gentle with you,” he promised.
Husband and wife. A proposal? Her heart hammered. Impossible. But his tenderness was her undoing, for she grew terrified and excited and she wanted it to be him before she withdrew to the isolation of Boston as a lonely spinster. To have this experience with the man she loved but could not have.
“This is a time for sharing, a time for loving.” Reverently, he lay her on the bed, and then took her in his arms, pillowing his head in the veil of her hair. He smelled wonderful. Clean, strong, vital male. They gazed into each other’s eyes awed by the majesty of the moment, both understanding and yearning for so much more.
He brushed her hair with his fingertips. “How many times have I conjured this very moment in my mind? Now you are here in my arms, your warmth and sweet scent to taunt me.”
With incredible perceptiveness, she sensed his vulnerability and reached up to stroke his cheek, outlining the sharp-angled planes of his face. She memorized everything about him. To know the way his analytical mind worked, his fight and thrill of discovery, his persistence, and talent. The way he kept her safe and secure. The way he listened to the wrongs inflicted on her. His consideration, his caring, his gaze riveted on her with tenderness. There existed a million different things about him that she held to her heart.
“Let this time be a long series of experiments,” she whispered. She was a trembling bow-string ready t
o snap.
Rachel felt the hard boldness of him, pressed to her side, saw the smoldering flames in his eyes. He bent to take her lips, searing a trail down her throat and shoulder. A warm hand closed over her breast, caressing in circles then capturing a nipple and squeezing it between his fingers before trailing to her next breast. She reached up and smoothed her hands over his shoulder, feeling his heat like a hot iron beneath her fingertips.
He crushed her to him, his hands exploring the hollows of her back and down over her hips, automatically she curled into the curve of his body. Her breasts tingled against the muscles of his chest. His hand and lips were everywhere, the gentle massage sending currents of desire through her. His mouth moved to her breast, his tongue caressed her sensitive swollen nipple.
“Do you like that?”
“Yes.” She arched toward him.
His hand seared a path down her abdomen and onto her thigh. He stroked there and she groaned, pushing her hips into his hand. His palm sought the warmth of her woman’s mound, circling her wet cleft. She jerked.
“Fascinating.” He did it again. She writhed.
Urging her thighs further apart, he slid his fingers deep into her.
Heat scorched her belly and lower, a distinct warmth flooded between her legs. She whimpered unable to get enough, raising her hips to the splendid mastery of his fingers, sinking and withdrawing.
“I must test and retest,” he said raggedly.
He kissed her with raw passion, parting her lips, and setting her nerves ablaze with a slow search for her tongue. Rachel’s hands crept around his neck, her breath labored, her body turning light and hot. When he dragged his mouth from hers, she kept her arms around him, her head spinning.
“I want to ask you a very pointed but hypothetical question.”
“What’s your question?” she said unsteadily.
“I don’t want you to go back to America.”
“That’s a statement, not a question.” Oh, why did he stop now? She swallowed and found the courage to look up at him. “Your wife should be of nobility and of equivalent pedigree.”
“We will discuss this later.”
“Anthony?”
“Hmm?” His lips played at the sensitive corners of her mouth.
She had one week remaining. “I’m leaving.”
“And I’m allergic to dogs.”
Like a bird in a cage that sings when it knows it is dying, she said, “I cannot fill those shoes especially if you are to be the next duke. I have to go.”
“We’ll see about your departure.”
“You cannot stop me.”
“Hush,” he cradled her face in his hands. Brushed his lips over hers. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen even if I have to chain you to this lab.” His fingertips slid up and down her slender neck, toying with the fine curls at her nape. He nudged her legs apart, continued his stroking until she cried out for that intangible, elusive sensation to give her release. He withdrew his hand, pushing her thighs apart. “Look at me,” he said fiercely, staring into her face.
Her dark lashes lifted, and she held his intense gaze. She grabbed him then, guided him to her. He thrust slowly into her with incredible control, and then stopped.
“From what I’ve heard, it will hurt for only, a moment.”
He looked so severe and concerned above her. With trembling fingers, she touched his jaw. “I trust you.”
He drove into her and muffled her cry with his smoldering kisses. He stopped. “I’m so sorry, Rachel.”
She moved, adjusting to his throbbing fullness. He began anew. Each time, he penetrated a little further, stretching her, moving with insistent rhythm. Rachel stroked the smooth surface of his back, and her pleasure mounted. Her fingers dug into the plane of his muscle. His breath faster now. Her fingers drifted from his shoulders, digging into his hips, her heart racing. She heard him whisper to her then, in broken phrases he couldn’t seem to hold back. “You’re beautiful…so intelligent…I love you.”
Confused, disbelieving, silken desire exploded within her, around her like the electrical fire that bounced off the walls, ceiling and floor. She was drowning in feelings she could not name or describe as his hands clenched her buttocks now, lifted her, felt him suck in his breath, stiffen and then plunge into her, waves of warmth poured from him.
They lay entwined as lovers, drifting off to sleep, and then making love again…and again. The musk and scent of his body filled her nostrils and she was floating in languid contentment. It was all a dream, a wonderful fairytale, and yet, she had to give it all up.
That it was done of her love for him yielded the greatest sacrifice of all.
She would take home memories that time would never erase, but the heartbreaking reality was knowing that an eternity would not make the soul-drenching loss forgettable. Only bearable.
In the gossamer haze of the late afternoon, sunlight stretched long shadows, glistening on the glassware, shimmering over the cabinets and gliding over the cot in a subdued riot of color. Still joined intimately to her, Anthony stirred, a frown marring his handsome face. “Perhaps we can come home early from that dratted ball you need to attend and discuss the universe.”
She bit her lip. Next week she’d sail to Lisbon, and then home. Whatever time she had remaining she would share with Anthony. “We could arrive late. Could draw some more conclusions.”
“Agreed. I’m on the precipice of something more and not accustomed to finalizing conclusions after only five observations.”
With heavy-lidded eyes, she stretched cat-like, loving the feel of him already hardening in her. “Better make it six observationsto be sure.”
*
She was like warm pliant clay, her body damp with perspiration, her arms limp on the pillow. Anthony rolled and cradled her in his arms. Rachel smoothed a finger over Anthony’s chest. “I can delay no longer. I need to go and dress before someone comes looking for us.”
Casey barked. The dog ran back and forth to the cot.
“What is wrong with the dog?”
Anthony nuzzled her. “Probably can’t get to my favorite flask.”
She pushed at his chest. “The ruff is up on her collar. What if it is a servant who has come to remind us to get ready for the evening’s event?”
Anthony cursed and heaved himself from the bed, jerked on his pants and shirt, pattered out into the laboratory. “No one is here.”
Rachel breathed a sigh of relief, dressed, then presented her back to Anthony, allowing him to fasten her buttons.
“I rather like this domestic responsibility.” He placed her coat about her shoulders, and then kissed her long and lingeringly. “You go on ahead and get ready for the evening’s event. I’ll clean up the lab.”
Chapter Seventeen
Anthony sprinted to the house. How much more entranced could he be? He had begun to imagine the magic that he could feel, and if he feared of anything, it was that he might never come to a place in his life again when he could know such sweet and soaring pleasure. Night cloaked the firmament and an amethyst strip lay across the sky, studded with stars. Despite her ridiculous protestations, Rachel would be his wife, sleeping next to him, and they would watch the sun come up over the horizon and spread across the estate. As duke, he could marry anyone he desired. To hell with tradition.
She was his, destined from the beginning of time, and there lay a certain male pride in that fact. He couldn’t wait for the vows, but deep down, she was already his in every word and deed. All their barriers had faded away, and for the first time in his life, he was filled with a tenderness so deep he ached inside.
He could love.
That Rachel could teach him to love was without a doubt the enchantment she spun and he was caught forever in her web. He even looked forward to the ball this evening, hosted by the Duke of Banfield. No doubt Rachel was ready and waiting for him. He ducked his head in the library. Not there. Caught Sebastian in the hall. “Is Rachel ready?”
&nbs
p; “I did not see her come back from the laboratory.”
Perfect reasoning suggested she was dressing. Anthony sprinted up the stairs, cornered Mrs. Noot carrying mending from Rachel’s room. “Have you see Miss Thorne?
Mrs. Noot shrugged. “I haven’t seen her since morn. I’ve been waiting for her.”
The hackles raised on his neck. He raced down the stairs. Broke into a run. His father shouted. Outside, his foot slipped on an iced flagstone, and righted himself. The pause allowed him to hear a whimper in the rear of the bushes. Two guards lay bound. A lump the size of a hen’s egg bulged on the side of one of the guard’s head. An envelope was pinned to his coat.
“Where is she?”
“Got hit from behind.”
His heart dropped to the pit of his stomach. The great danger Rachel found herself in was a result of his negligence. No chance the scoundrel was still around. He would have left as soon as he had her. Was she still alive? Of course. His unseen enemy wanted the Rutland heir. Hands shaking, Anthony tore open the envelope. A muscle jumped in his jaw.
He tore inside the house. His father stepped from the bottom of the stairs. Ten staff members assembled. Sebastian raised a brow. More guards came in from behind him. Anthony waved the letter. “I must trade myself for Rachel.”
*
Anthony’s stallion whickered in the woods where he tied him several yards back from Captain Elijah Johnson’s house. Nose down, the dog prowled beside him, growling. Right place. Casey smelled Rachel. “Stay.” The dog froze on the spot, whining. Not at all happy of being left behind.
“I’ll get her back.”
Anthony had told his father and the guards to come ten minutes later. To hold back, so he could arbitrate and get Rachel out alive.
He pressed an ear to the crack of the door to the old sea captain’s house. No sound. Not good. They were waiting for him. How many? He eased open the door and slipped inside, moving across planked floors that moaned with age. A half-moon cast long eerie shadows across water stained walls, illuminating the interior as bright as day. Clutter and debris stacked everywhere, the peculiar trait of a hoarder. An ongoing battle between rat feces and mold rioted the air. Broken furniture had been used for firewood. Rinds of smoky bacon greased the floor. He nudged the ashes in the fireplace with the toe of his boot, the embers still warm…someone lived here of late.
Light of My Heart Page 15