by Sophia James
Guiding her face away from swollen flesh, he lifted her chin and she stood. He had no clothes on and she was fully dressed, small webs of repaired fabric standing out against the light. Placing his mouth across hers, he slanted the kiss, his fingers running across the fine lines of her throat and bringing her closer.
‘Love me, Sandrine.’ Whispered. Gentle. Allowing more than simple lust.
‘I do.’
She was so light as he lifted her, a shadow of a woman, but tall with it. He brought her to the bed and sat her down, and when her hands went to the buttons at her shirt he stopped her.
‘My turn.’
She did not argue.
Five buttons and one missing. Beneath the cotton was sheer lawn and lace, repaired like the rest of her clothes, but of a quality that told him of a life led before. The pad of his finger lingered on the stitching, complex, intricate, the sort of thing his mother might have worn had she lived.
The straps were thin and of satin and he slid them across her shoulders so that the chemise drooped and her breasts were there, peaked and perfect. He cupped his hand around one feeling its form, admiring the curve of skin and the unexpected smattering of freckles.
The tip-tilt of her nose as she looked at him made him smile. A girl who was the most beautiful woman in the world. The narrowness of her waist, the slender length of her arms, the elegance of neck.
This was Sandrine.
A goddess lost into the wilderness and now refound.
He traced his initials into the cream of her skin, NL, and she looked up in puzzlement.
‘Once I was someone else,’ he explained.
‘And I was, too,’ she responded, the rightness of their coupling underwritten by truth. ‘But now all I want to be is loved well.’
He lifted her onto his knees, slipping off her trousers and socks and boots so that she sat naked and waiting. He liked how she did not hold her legs together tightly or stiffen as his fingers came between them, exploring.
‘Is this well enough?’ he asked as he found the core of her in the hard nub of need. ‘Is this what you want?’ he added as he began to move faster and faster, the rhythm changing just as he thought she was about to come apart.
Wet for him and swollen. He could feel the throb inside and the heat.
And when she nodded he simply placed her upon his cock and drove in, the finesse transformed to something much stronger and more basic. It was not knowledge that brought them together now, but an ancient magic with no rational thought, and he cried out as her body clenched about his, taking all that he offered and more.
He took her again in the night and once in the morning when the first rays of sunshine woke them. He had not slept with a woman for so many hours in his life, his more normal caution and vigilance taking him from a bed well before they asked for more than he might want to give. But with Sandrine they spooned together in the cold and lonely hours and when they awoke their bodies called, the quick burst of need and the slow sating after relief.
Once on waking he found her looking at him, as though she wanted to remember every piece of who he was.
‘Stay with me for ever.’ The words were out before he knew them to be and she placed his hand upon her heart in answer.
‘Here. You will always be here.’
‘Do you promise?’
Nodding, she simply rolled over on top of him and all that had been magical before began again.
* * *
Cassandra awoke with tears running down her cheeks and the cold London morning bearing down. No longer in France. No longer in the place of dreams and promises, the steam bath above Bagnères-de-Bigorre and the curtained room in Saint Estelle.
Avalon. The vaulted ceilings and the shining marbled Gothic arches.
A noise made her turn, and James was at her doorway, a teddy bear held in one hand so that his furry legs dragged along the floor.
‘Mummy.’
‘I am here, darling.’ She pulled back the sheet and waited until he came inside, tucking the warmth about him when he was settled. His small roundness pressed into her, the smell of slumber upon him.
‘I dreamed we were in France.’ His pale grey eyes watched her, dark hair standing on end from sleep.
‘Once we were, my love. Once it was just you and I there and I knew from the very second I saw you that I should love you for ever.’
He giggled. ‘You always say that.’
‘And I always mean it.’
‘Nigel said his daddy still lives in France. But I said mine was dead.’
The worm of dread turned. ‘Well, you have so many others who love you, sweetheart. Mummy. Maureen. Anne. Granddad. Rodney. The cook. Nigel’s mummy.’
‘But a daddy is special. Nigel said that they were.’
Lord Nathaniel Lindsay. More than special. She would have to tell him, she knew that she would, but not yet. Not while Jamie was still hers to love and hold like this, the secrets of the past hidden in a corner where they were unable to escape and ruin everything.
And if Nathaniel took their son away...?
She shook her head and, drawing her fingers up into the shape of a spider, began to recite a children’s ditty, liking the laughter that followed.
Chapter Six
‘Chris Hanley said what?’
Nat tried to curb the panic in his voice as Stephen answered.
‘He said that he saw Cassandra Northrup creeping from the Brown Street boarding house as though the very devil was on her tail the night of the murder.’
‘What the hell was Hanley doing there?’
Hawk began to laugh. ‘He was out on the town with a group of friends, but your question precludes other more pressing ones, Nat. If, for example, your lady was not present you might have asked if he was crazy to be so mistaken? As a judge, I would infer from your words that the accusation was true.’
‘Cassandra Northrup is hardly my lady.’
His mind whirled as Stephen continued to speak. ‘The ruination of her reputation might only be a minor concern when stacked up against such a killing.’
‘Do people believe Hanley?’
‘I’d like to say no, but I think that they are beginning to. Reginald Northrup has made no attempt at silencing his friend either, which is telling. I took it on myself to find out a little of the Northrups and if Reginald himself stands to gain anything from any discrediting of the brother’s family. One daughter is almost deaf, the second one is married and living in Scotland and the son is still a minor. Cassandra Northrup’s ruination is irrelevant for I am certain Cowper would have made a will stating his preferred guardians for Rodney and for the trustees of his estate.’
‘Is it the title he wants? From all accounts the Northrups are not as rich as he is.’
‘No, not that. Just the influence, I am presuming, for the title is more than safe. Rodney is the direct heir, but there is another more pressing fact that you should know, Nathaniel, given your recent championing of the youngest Northrup daughter. Cassandra Northrup may not be the lady that you think she is. She is reputed to take many more risks than she should.’
‘Risks?’
‘She does not seem to give much account to her reputation. It seems she is not averse to wandering the same streets the prostitutes do in order to save some of them. Kenyon Riley was touchy when I asked him further about it.’
‘You saw Riley?’
‘Yesterday at White’s. He bought rounds for all and sundry and I had the feeling some personal celebration was in the air. He spends a lot of time with the Northrups so perhaps he has finally decided to offer for one of the daughters.’
The wheel turned further and further. Cassandra Northrup had become the beauty Nat had predicted she would all those years before and even encumbered with
two failed marriages she was...unmatched.
Swearing, he poured himself another drink.
She ransacked him with her beauty. That was the trouble. The history between them had also had a hand, their marriage, their trysts around Saint Estelle and the small villages before Perpignan, hours when he had imagined her as his forever wife safe at St Auburn and providing timely heirs for a title steeped in the tradition of first-born boys.
Lord, what groundless hopes. In every meeting thus far she had never given him an inkling that she hankered for more between them other than the safe keeping of hidden secrets arising from betrayal.
And now a further problem. She was innocent of the murder of the man at the brothel, but could he just leave her to fight the accusations herself? He knew that he could not.
‘Is our membership in the Venus Club complete, Stephen?
‘Yes?’
‘When do they meet again?’
‘This Saturday. I thought to go there after making a showing at the Forsythe ball.’
‘I will accompany you then. I would like a chat with Christopher Hanley.’
‘So you will still be involving yourself with Cassandra Northrup’s plight?’ The laughter in his friend’s eyes made Nat wary. Sometimes Stephen had a knack of finding out things from him that he did not wish to divulge.
‘There may be no one else to help her.’
Hawk raised his glass. ‘Then I drink to an outcome that will be of benefit to you both.’ Nathaniel wondered what Stephen might have made of the fact that they had once been married and that high up on the foothills of the Pyrenees their troths had been consummated with more than just a nominal effort. He wished he might speak of it now, but there would be no point in the confidence. Sandrine had chosen her pathway and it had wound well away from his. Still, he would not want to see her made victim for a crime she had not committed.
He swallowed, for his logic made no sense. She had betrayed England and then carried on with her life with hardly a backward glance. He should not trust her.
A ring of the doorbell brought his butler into the library.
‘There is a Miss Maureen Northrup here to see you, my lord. She will not come through, however, but would like a quick word in the foyer.’
Standing, Nat looked at Hawk, who lifted his glass with a smile. ‘A further complication?’
Outside, the same dark-eyed girl at Albi’s ball stood, her maid at her side and her hands wringing at the fabric in her skirt. Underneath a wide hat he could see her face and she looked neither happy not rested.
‘Miss Northrup.’
‘Thank you for seeing me, Lord Lindsay. I will be as brief as I can be. Is there a room where we might have a moment’s privacy?’
‘There is.’ He opened the door to his left and shepherded her into the blue salon, wondering at all the conventions being broken for an unmarried woman to be alone here. He did not shut the door.
‘I wish to know what your intentions are regarding my sister, my lord?’ She did not tarry with the mundane.
‘I have none.’
He thought she swallowed, and she paled further at his reply.
‘Then I want you to stay well away from Cassandra, sir. She does not need your dubious threats.’
‘Threats? She told you I had been threatening her?’
‘Not in as many words. But unless you have some hold upon her I cannot see why she would have been willingly in your bed in that house of disrepute off the Whitechapel Road for any other reason.’
This Northrup daughter was as brave as her sister, her eyes directly on his face and no blush at all upon her cheeks.
Her voice was strange, he thought, the diction so precise. Then he saw her glance upon his lips and he remembered. She was deaf. Deaf and brave, he corrected, and trying with all her might to protect her family.
‘I was helping her. A man had been murdered in the room opposite and San...Cassandra would have been implicated had she been found there. I bundled her into my bed and pretended...’
He could not go on. This was the strangest conversation he had ever had with anyone before.
‘Pretended...? You said “pretended”?’ She mulled the word over, the light coming on in her dark eyes as she did so. ‘I see, my lord. I had thought...’ Again she stopped. ‘Thank you for your time, Lord Lindsay. I do appreciate it.’
With that she simply glided out through the door, gesturing to her wide-eyed maid to follow and was gone, the clock in the hall ringing out the hour of one in the afternoon. The butler looked as puzzled as he did.
‘If Miss Northrup returns, do you wish to know of it, sir?’
‘I doubt she will be back, Haines, but if she comes send her through to me.’
Stephen still sat where Nat had left him and from the look on his face he had heard the whole thing.
‘If Cassandra Northrup was with you, Nat, I should imagine your intentions are nothing like those you regaled the oldest Miss Northrup with? You have not taken a woman to bed in years.’
A reprimand. Given with the very best of intentions. He could no longer lie to Hawk.
‘Once, Cassandra Northrup and I were married. In France.’
By the look in his friend’s eyes this was the last confession that he had been expecting. ‘Are you still?’
‘It was never annulled.’
‘I see.’
The silence in the room heightened, a heavy blanket of question.
‘She had been captured by a group of bandits in the Languedoc region and dealt with badly. I was trying to protect her.’
‘Something that you are still doing here.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Then take care, Nathaniel, for society can be most intolerant to a woman who would live outside its rules. Even one who is both beautiful and clever.’
* * *
Saint Estelle had been small and run-down, a mountain town of old buildings and kind people.
In the morning after they had eaten they had walked along the river and he had found a shard of blue-green pottery at the water’s edge.
‘If I could buy you a tourmaline, Sandrine, I would, because that gemstone is the exactly the shade of your eyes. But as I am penniless, this will have to do.’
She took it carefully, with the hand that was not ruined, and held it up to look at. ‘Gemstone pottery?’ Her laughter hung in the earliness of the day and warmed his heart. ‘A priceless gift that I will keep for ever.’
‘For ever is a long time.’ Sadness had settled in the corners of his mind. He wanted to hold her away from danger and keep her safe. He wanted to take her to St Auburn and make her understand exactly whom she had married, the coffers of the place filled with the treasure of the past in an unending array of wealth, diamonds, gold and silver and every gemstone in between. He wondered what she would make of the expectations inherent in his title and conversely what those at the castle might make of her. Especially his grandfather.
‘Tonight I will find some leather and fashion a hole through the top so that you can wear it as a pendant.’
Her hair had caught the wind and the many-coloured lights of it tumbled wild with her curls, the length reaching the contour of her hips.
‘Mama always insisted that one gift required another in return. She said that in the giving of a present there should also be the taking of happiness.’
He stood still as her hand came against his cheek, tracing the line of his throat downwards.
‘The gift of the power of womanhood is one I could bestow upon you if you should so desire it, Nathanael.’ Beneath the laughter in her words there was another cadence, full of promise. ‘My cousin Celeste used to say that I should find it one day, this knowledge of the sensual, and that men would not be able to refuse such an authority from
me.’
‘She was right.’ Gravity had crept in under humour and he could hear the steady beat of his own heart in his ears.
‘So you accept?’
‘I do.’
They were far from the village and he had seen no sign of others for many miles. Besides, the road out of Saint Estelle lay upon the opposite bank of the river, past the line of trees, out of sight.
Last night had been frenzied and passionate and furious. Today a languid peace reigned, a quiet acceptance of each other’s needs.
‘Come.’ She held out her hand and he took it, following her into the shadow of the trees until they reached an overhang of cliff, the rocky outcrop of the Pyrenees sheltering a little bowl of meadow. It was noticeably warmer.
‘Here, away from the wind we can love each other.’ Bringing two blankets from her bag, she laid them down as a bed.
Within a moment she had removed her clothes, lying on the wool without any sense of shame, burnished like an angel from one of the old religious paintings that graced his grandfather’s library.
Reaching for his fingers, she placed them upon her right breast and leaned into the touch. His other hand she splayed in the warmth of the space between her legs, her thighs apart and waiting. ‘I am yours for the day, monsieur. I am yours until the sun lies upon the horizon and the dusk is reached. My gift for your gift.’
Positioning the other blanket to keep out the cold, his fingers began to move with a will of their own, up into the warmth of her, up into the swollen wet darkness where feminine magic lingered. She did not draw back. He slipped in farther and heard her sharp intake of breath. Playing her tenderly and feeling the answer of her muscles against his hand, the first tremble of release as frenzy tightened. Taking ownership. He did not let her move away as her whole body shuddered into climax, roiling waves clenching skin to muscle.
She cried out, once and then again, her head arched back so that daylight filled her, the sweat of climax dampening her skin and making her rigid with lust.
The scent of her between them, the hard erectness of nipples, the loss of self into a frenzy of feeling. Shivering need brought her arms about him, her nails gouging trails into his shoulder. Joined. For ever. Locked into union.