For look at him now: it was not fair, nor becoming, to sit across from his wife and be amused by how her hands shook as she sipped her tea. But his anger, alas, was a wild beast, barely leashed—or else a scattershot weapon that found targets everywhere, not least in those who had been spared . . . everything.
She claimed to have suffered. But she did not know the meaning of the word.
No, no, he knew that was wrong. What had happened to him had also disarranged her life. But . . . she had assumed the worst of him. She had not gone to the authorities. Instead she had gone back to that island, precious Rawsey, which had always been her first and only love.
And yet—yes, he had given her every reason to suspect he would abandon her. The terms of their marriage contract. His haste in discharging his debts, the very morning of their wedding. Their quarrel that night, fierce and terrible. And she had been young, and hotheaded, and God knew that what had actually happened to him on that quay would have been beyond her imagination, or anyone’s.
So, yes, of course she had gone back to Rawsey. Of course she had told no one of his disappearance. Of course she had imagined his departure voluntary. He could not blame her for it.
He could not blame her; this was at once a fact he accepted and also another cause for his anger. For at the least, at the bloody least, he should feel free with his blame.
But no, she deserved none of it. She was guilty of nothing.
Yet he watched her fidget and said nothing to put her at ease. For she was ordinarily so completely self-assured. Why should she be otherwise? Nothing in this life had ever given her cause for discomfort. So let her enjoy the novelty of it. Let her fret.
He was staring. He realized it even as her gaze broke from his, shied away toward the wall, climbed . . .
“Good God,” she gasped.
Ah. He reached for the dish of biscuits at his elbow. The first bite was overly sweet, cloying. “That is Miss Martin’s painting,” he said. “Or—pardon me, Miss Ashdown is the name she signs to them.”
She looked pale. “So it really is a woman who made those paintings.”
“Oh yes. Why do you ask?”
She shook her head, continuing to study the painting. It did make for a riveting view. The looming soldier filled the canvas entirely, his face a rictus of murderous lust. Such was the force and genius of the brushstrokes, of the perspective, of the vivid realism, that he seemed a moment away from reaching through the canvas to throttle the viewer.
“I don’t know why it surprised me,” she said softly. “Of course the artist is a woman. I’m sure this is a view that many of us have endured.”
Her glance at him now felt like an accusation. And to his amazement, he flinched.
Christ, it would not be like that between them. Was that what she thought? He opened his mouth to reassure her—then closed it on a fresh wave of amazement.
Why, perhaps he retained some humanity after all.
Perhaps she was the key to it.
No. That burden was so unfair that even he would not thrust it upon her.
Nor, however, would he remain silent on this matter. “It is not a sight any woman should endure,” he said flatly. “And if I encountered the man in that painting, I would see him hanged.”
Her mouth twisted. Was she pressing back a relieved smile, or words of censure for his bloodlust? He could not say, for she looked into her teacup, concealing her expression.
Her hair was no less riveting than the painting. He found himself studying a ribbon of strawberry blond that snaked through the waves of copper and auburn.
Even Miss Martin could not have painted her hair. It was a natural miracle, inimitable. A single strand of it had slipped loose from her chignon, and curled past the shell of her ear.
Curious that ears were so often neglected by poetry. Hers put him in mind of a seashell. He had sucked on it once, and the sweet taste of her skin came back to him now, filling his mouth.
He was going to devour her.
“I didn’t see that painting before,” she said. “In the gallery.”
“No.” His voice sounded hoarse. He cleared his throat. “Those others had been sold, and were awaiting transport. This one, I kept.”
For this admission, he received a glance of mingled horror and amazement. “But why?”
He considered his reply as he crumbled the rest of the wretched biscuit. One temptation, from the moment of her appearance in London, had been to tell her everything. But it felt much like the urge he’d had as a boy to place his hand in the flames in the fireplace—knowing it would hurt, knowing the burn would throb for days afterward, but drawn nevertheless.
Tell her and be done with it.
Tell her soberly, so she cannot doubt it; show her the proof, and watch her repent her anger—her flight to Rawsey—her care for her own pride, which kept her from raising the alarm that night.
It would be the quickest way to have the upper hand over her. Guilt, after all, was a crippling toxin.
And yet the urge never to tell her was far more powerful. Was that to his credit? He thought so. To move on, damn it: was that not the point, even if he could not see where to aim for? After all, why else had he survived, if not to repossess his rightful life and eventually, somehow, abandon the nightmare of his past?
That would not be achieved by an explanation. But the truth, if explained, certainly would transform how she looked at him. Her current looks, full of anger and contempt and bewilderment, were bearable, even amusing. They did nothing to blur the memories of how she had looked at him before—on Ben Nevis, on Rawsey, in Edinburgh. Those looks had been his nourishment in his early days of captivity. He had remembered them so often and so intensely that he had burned them into his soul.
But if he ever saw pity on her face . . .
It would efface all the rest. One offered pity to cowed animals and helpless children. Not to a man.
Her pity was the single thing he did not know if he could survive.
Thus, sitting across from her, having her so near, intending to draw her nearer yet, felt like living with a blade at his throat. And, like a man at knifepoint, he proceeded carefully.
“The painting shows a truth,” he told her. “That in itself is a very rare accomplishment, and makes it worth the keeping.”
She frowned. “It’s a work of great power, I won’t deny it. But I wouldn’t like to dwell on it, day in and day out.”
“We can have it moved, if you like. It needn’t be in your line of view every day.”
“But you would keep it in yours,” she said slowly. “Why?”
He smiled, and she abruptly paled, so that he was forced to wonder what his expression telegraphed to her. “You ask clever questions,” he said by way of explanation for whatever she saw that troubled her. “You always did know which would be the most interesting questions to ask.”
The remark did not seem to calm her; the rapid rise and fall of her chest suggested quite the opposite, in fact. “You used to answer my questions. Now you merely dance around them.”
He could not deny it. “I suppose, once upon a time, I thought you might have some use for my answers. But now, as you’ve said, you want nothing from me—pardon me: nothing, that is, that requires words.”
She caught his meaning, and flushed. “I . . . There is no need to be vulgar.”
“Was I vulgar?” He flicked a crumb from his fingers. “Fucking doesn’t require speech: that seems a simple statement of fact.”
She gawked as though he had sprouted another head. “Goodness. I don’t know that word. But I believe I can follow its meaning. How glad I am that I expected no seduction!”
He laughed softly. There was her warrior’s spirit. It had just taken a good shove to emerge. “Oh, I do mean to seduce you, Anna. But I had planned to begin that upstairs. The doors to this salon do not lock.”
Her freckles were all but lost in the fierceness of her blush. “Upstairs will serve,” she said faintly. “But you
are proving my point. You are trying to scandalize me so you won’t have to explain the appeal of the painting.”
He laughed again, genuinely amused. She was so bloody clever, and self-possessed even when flustered—qualities that had not changed. “You’re right, of course.” He rose and held out his hand. “Shall we get to it? Unless you’re in the mood for more sparring, of course.”
She hesitated only a moment before squaring her shoulders and rising. She did not take his hand, instead using her own to smooth down her skirts—an unnecessary gesture that he found perversely touching, much in the vein of a condemned queen fixing her coiffure before mounting the block.
“My rooms or yours?” she asked stiffly.
He considered it. Her maid, he believed, slept in her dressing room. “Mine.”
This was not the answer she’d wanted. He saw her fight a frown before she nodded. “Fine. I will meet you there in half an hour.”
With these words, she marched out.
An optimist would assume she was hastening to bedeck and perfume herself. But Liam remembered her better. He would count himself lucky if she had not hurried off to tuck a weapon beneath his bed.
• • •
Anna was annoyed with herself. She was a sensible Scotswoman who spent half the year on a rocky spur off the southwestern coast whose survival depended on the copulation of sheep. She had played the bawd for old rams that had one more go to give. She was neither ignorant nor missish about what was required for conception. But all night—and most unforgivably, downstairs in Lockwood’s salon—she had blushed and fretted like a schoolgirl about the coming event, as though she had not been the one to demand it.
After a firm, silent scolding to herself, she knotted her wrapper at the waist, checked to make sure that Jeannie was sleeping soundly on a cot in the dressing room, and then walked without knocking through the door that connected her bedroom to Lockwood’s.
The bedchamber was warm, hushed, the bed curtains drawn back to reveal a mattress of gargantuan proportions. The tasseled maroon canopy matched the heavy quilts, and contrasted elegantly with the gold and navy patterning of the thick French rug that cushioned her footfall.
Lockwood was kneeling by the grate, poking at the fire, and did not seem to notice her entrance. His dressing robe—some luxuriously glossy swath of dark silk—molded over his body, revealing the breadth of his shoulders and well-developed back, the narrowing of his waist, the firm high mounds of his flexed buttocks.
She crossed her arms and made herself stare. Let herself stare, perhaps. Even kneeling, with his back turned, he made a magnificent sight. His travels had left him with the build of a laborer, heavily developed through his upper body, taut and chiseled through his legs. She knew this, because his kneeling position had caused the hem of his robe to fall away, showing the distinct bulk of his flexed calf. His foot, braced behind him as he balanced on one knee, was long and elegant.
His leg hair was as light as the tips of the hair on his head: she had not known that. She acknowledged and dismissed as irrelevant the blush that crawled over her face. These were things a wife should know. She was four years overdue, and the advice her aunts had given her before the wedding—that the marital duty was not always pleasant, but with luck, yielded rewards—came back to her, renewing her courage.
He laid down the fire iron and rose in one easy, fluid movement. He showed no surprise to discover her standing behind him. “Warm enough?” he said.
He’d built the fire to leaping, and it outlined his figure, lending a devilish looming aspect to his posture. His expression was somewhat obscured by the trick of the light, but she sensed some air about him of repressed, disciplined energy. It was late, and she had taken longer than promised to join him in his rooms—but he seemed neither tired nor irritated, only deeply alert, and focused entirely on her.
“Certainly.” She cleared her throat to eradicate the huskiness in it. “Several degrees warmer than it properly ought to be—but I suppose Englishmen are not accustomed to a healthy chill.”
He smiled as he came toward her. The robe slipped like dark liquid over his thighs, leaving no doubt that they, too, were magnificently bulked. She felt a grudging approval for that, for the industrious exertion it suggested. He had not spent her money while sitting on his arse, cream tea and bonbons in hand.
He stopped a pace away, looking her over with a thoroughness that put her in mind of a man at a horse auction. She lifted her chin. Her own robe, of soft but bulky flannel, did not seek to impress him. Impressing him was hardly necessary.
“Unbind your hair,” he murmured.
She stiffened. She had braided her hair into a single plait, which seemed the neatest way to proceed. “We will make this brief, I hope.”
His soft laughter raised gooseflesh on her arms. “Turn around, Anna.”
“It needn’t take longer than a few minutes.” That was generous, she thought; sheep required sixty seconds, no more. “What I mean is, I’ve no interest in—”
“Hush.”
Hush? “I beg your—”
His hand slipped around her nape, the warmth of his palm startling her. “Or keep talking,” he said casually as his thumb lightly stroked over her pulse, the sensation sending a curious tremor through her belly. “Either way, you agreed to my terms.”
Curious to realize that nobody had ever touched her there before—save him. The neck was not thought to be a particularly private area, yet as he studied her, his thumb slipped back and forth so lightly over her skin that she felt dizzied by it. In the firelight that filled the room, his amber eyes were dark pools, unreadable.
“Speaking of terms,” he said quietly. “I do invite you to speak your mind. Should something displease you, tell me so.”
An unsettling tremor quivered through her belly.
Tremors often presaged a collapse.
She crossed her arms. “Very well. Whatever you require to perform.”
Another soft laugh: the jab to his manhood didn’t bother him. He circled behind her, out of sight, and she hugged herself more tightly.
Light touches and tugs on her braid, then his hand slipped down it, toying with the ends. These sensations, so faint, had an outsized effect. The muscles in her neck and shoulders seemed to melt like butter.
“Your hair,” he murmured, “is the eighth wonder of the world.”
She scowled at the fire. Flattery was not wanted when it was false. “I suppose you would know. Is that where you went? To tour the other seven?”
Her pulse tripped as he stepped into her from behind, the sudden hard warmth of his body pressing against her from nape to knees. “Do you want to discuss that?” he whispered in her ear. “Or shall we get to it?”
Quite right. She closed her eyes. He smelled . . . familiar. How had the smell of his skin remained so vivid after so many years? Some distinctive and inimitable blend of soap and salt and musk and maleness, it cast her back to the time when she had hungered for him. When she had fallen asleep dreaming of this night, and expediency had not been what she hoped for.
“Yes, get to it,” she managed. The words slipped out of her unsteadily, borne on a wave of realization: there was no good reason, no advantage, in failing to enjoy this. She wanted to lie with him for what it might bring her. What difference if the process felt pleasurable?
The decision lifted a burden from her, causing her to sag a little as he unbraided her hair. His broad palms stroked over her shoulders, and she bit down on a smile. How good his hands felt as they traced her arms through the thick layer of flannel.
But he could have had her long ago. Why should she feel gleeful and grateful for what should have been hers four years before? He had abandoned her on their wedding night. This, his clever light touches along her body, meant so little to him that he had not bothered to enjoy them before he left.
No. She would think on that tomorrow. Tonight, it would do her no good.
She turned in his arms, her eyes closed so
she would not have to see his expression when she cupped his face and pulled his mouth to hers. She remembered how to kiss him. She remembered all of it.
Only through her fingertips, which bracketed his face, did she sense his surprise at her aggression: a momentary stillness, no longer than a heartbeat. Then he stepped into her again, so his chest brushed her breasts, and kissed her back.
His lips were still clever, shaping lightly, persuasively, over hers. But this kiss quickly turned bolder than any he’d ever offered. He opened her mouth with his lips and tasted her. The touch of his tongue made her head swim. It was . . . declarative: he had the right to go inside her now. And where their hips pressed together, she felt the instrument by which he would do it. He was hard, and very large.
The ewes never seemed to enjoy the rams’ attention.
She pulled backward suddenly, out of his touch. He stared at her, his lips shining in the firelight, shining from the moisture of her mouth. But he did not speak. And the ferocious intensity of his look suddenly unnerved her.
She cleared her throat. “All right. Well—” She walked to the bed on legs that felt rusted at the joints, then lay down with mechanical stiffness. “On with it.”
He came and sat on the edge of the mattress, looking down at her for a moment, some opaque calculation working through his face.
Frustration welled in her. She wanted him—and resented him. She wanted this over—she wanted him to kiss her again.
With an angry jerk, she unknotted her robe and threw it open. But he did not look down at her. He remained studying her face, his gaze speculative.
“Take off your robe,” she said through her teeth, “and get on with it. Sheep, you know, only require a minute.”
“Very well.” He reached into the pocket of his robe and pulled out a white cloth. “First,” he said, “tie this around your eyes.”
• • •
The Sins of Lord Lockwood Page 9