I don't want to hear, she thought, facing him on her knees, thigh pressed to thigh, stomach to stomach. I've already heard more than I can bear. But she didn't say it, because she knew he would tell her anyway.
"You think I killed him for what he let his men do to my sister, and for murdering Patrick Maguire. That played a part, it's true. But only a part." He brought up his hand to bracket her face with his thumb hooked under her chin, his fingers hard against her cheek. "Because what I was thinking about, what I was remembering, when I killed Fitzherbert, was what he did to me."
"Don't tell me," she said, the words escaping before she could stop them, her head moving as if to shake in denial, but his grip was too strong.
"What he did to me, Jessie," he repeated, his voice as brutal and frightening as his eyes. "Because when the soldiers were finished with Rose, Fitzherbert had them hold me down. And then he used me the way his soldiers had used my sister."
"Oh, God," she said on a sob. "Oh, God. No." She was crying now, the hot tears spilling down her cheeks, over his hand, into her mouth, tasting salty, bitter.
"Yes." His hand tightened its grip on her face in a way that forced her mouth open. "So now you know. Now you know why it's an abomination that I even touch you, let alone do this."
He took her open mouth in a crushingly brutal kiss, a savage outpouring of passion and pain that was both profoundly arousing and frighteningly punishing, although she could not have said whether he was punishing her or himself. She made a whimpering sound deep in her throat, her hands aiming up. Only, instead of pushing him away, she clenched her fingers in the coarse cloth of his coat and leaned into him, opened her mouth gladly to this wild onslaught of emotion. She tasted all the anger and self-loathing and need in his kiss, and gave him back nothing except surrender and acceptance and love.
He tore his mouth from hers. "Don't," he said, his breath coming in harsh gasps, his eyes glowing wild, haunted. "Don't do that."
"Don't do what? Don't kiss you? Or don't love you?"
He surged to his feet and backed away, his eyes wide and wild. "Don't do that especially," he said, and whirled away from her.
She stumbled up, the toe of one boot catching in the long hem of her habit, her knees weak with fear and the heady sensations aroused by the passion of his kiss. "Lucas ..." She took a step toward him, then another. His coat shone pale gray against the blackness of the house wall, his lean, strong back held taut with suppressed emotion and leashed violence. But she was not afraid of him. She was afraid only for him.
"You shouldn't have come," he said, his head falling back, the wind ruffling his dark hair where it fell over the collar of his rough coat. "Please, Jessie. Just go and leave me here. Don't you understand what I was trying to tell you?"
She took another step toward him. "I love you."
She heard him draw in a deep breath that shuddered his entire body. "Don't say that."
"I love you."
He spun to face her, his eyes black in the night, his face contorted with the fierceness of the struggle he was waging with himself. "Jesmond. Stay away from me. Please. I'm not clean. I'm not worth ... any of this. Not your love, or the risks you take to be near me, or the pain you're going to feel when I finally leave—or they kill me."
"I love you." She reached for him, but he caught her by the shoulders and held her at arm's length, his fingers digging almost painfully into her flesh. She thought, for a moment, he meant to put her away from him. She could feel the fine tremors of want, shimmying through him, see the anguish of his tortured soul burning in the depths of his eyes. Then his breath escaped in a soft keening moan and he hauled her up against him, crushing her breasts to his strong chest, his mouth claiming hers.
His kiss was rough with hunger, a deep, frantic kiss of twining tongues and nipping teeth and breathless, gasping want. His hands roamed her body, swept down her back to cup her bottom with spread fingers and pull her hard up against him, his pelvis grinding into her soft stomach with an evocative, primitive rhythm that seemed to thrum through her bloodstream to every part of her being, leaving her hot and trembling and mindless with want. She held onto him, one hand splayed against the taut muscles of his back, the other tangling in his hair, holding him to her, her head falling back as he kissed her ear, her neck, his mouth silken heat against her sensitive flesh.
"I want you," he said, his lips moving over her throat, his voice a hushed murmur. "Here. Now."
"I want you more," she whispered nipping his ear with her teeth, and heard his ragged laugh.
He spun her around, trapping her against the rough masonry wall with the hard heat of his body. He tore at the buttons of her habit, shoved down her corset, yanked open her chemise. He was rough, fierce with need, his breath easing out from between his teeth in a hiss of satisfaction as his fingers closed over her bare breasts.
She cried out, her head hitting the wall behind her, her back arching into him as she lost herself in the hot wonder of what he was doing to her breasts with his hands and his lips and his tongue. She clutched at his hips, found the flap of his trousers, tugged.
He said something harsh under his breath, something she didn't understand as his hand came to help hers and he straightened. He filled her world, a dark outlaw silhouetted against a star-studded sky. She sucked in a quick gasp of air scented with the smell of the sea and the night and him. Then his mouth took hers again with increasing urgency.
Already, his hands were at her skirt, pushing it up, bunching the heavy cloth around her waist. She heard him swear softly, his fingers impatient as he encountered the riding trousers she wore beneath. She heard the rip of parting cloth, but she didn't care, her need as frantic as his, her heart pounding in her chest, her breath, like his, coming in quick pants.
"Please," she said, her mouth moving against his. "Oh, please." She felt so empty inside, empty and needy, squirming, until his fingers found the slit of her drawers and she felt his knuckles brush her tender flesh. She moaned into his open mouth. Then he touched her opening, slipped a finger inside her, and the relief of finally having something fill her, fill that aching need, was so intense, she screamed.
But already, it wasn't enough.
Boldly, she found his open flap. He shoved his hips forward, and her hand filled with the throbbing heat of his erection, so hard, yet so soft. "Jessie," he groaned, his breath warm, his black head bent to kiss her throat. He dipped, his knees nudging her thighs apart, his hands tightening on her buttocks, lifting her up, her back pressed against the roughness of the wall. Up, up, he lifted her, his pelvis tilting forward, the muscles of his arms bulging under her grasping hands as he controlled her descent. She felt his hot, smooth flesh between her legs; then her breath caught in wonder as his body drove into her, a swift intrusion of heat and hardness and aching fulfillment.
She cried out, her back arching against the support of his arm, her fingers clutching at his shoulders. "Easy, darlin'," he whispered, his breath warm against her ear as he bent his knees, then thrust up, driving in deeper, harder, all the way to her heart.
She cried out again, holding him to her, making him hers in the only way she could. Time came unhinged as she lost herself in the wild fever of their union. She hung suspended between the hard pounding of his body and the rough wall behind her, her world a sensual dreamland of hot, sweat- slicked skin and cool night air, of gasping breath and endless wet kisses and hard muscle under grasping hands, all keyed to the ceaseless rhythmic thrusting of his body within hers. She felt engulfed by sensation, hot liquid desire and pulsing pleasure, wave after wave flooding over her, again and again, until her sight began to dim and all she could see was the gleam of his eyes, bright, feral.
She heard him say her name on a harsh expulsion of breath, felt his fingers dig into her hips, hard enough to bruise. She watched his lips pull away from his teeth in a savage grimace, his head falling back as he pounded into her deeper, harder, once, twice more. Then he jerked down and back, an abrupt withdr
awal that made her cry out in loss. He sank to one knee, a deep guttural groan tearing up from within him, his body hunching forward, his head bowed, his shoulders shuddering.
"Lucas." She went down on her knees before him, cradled his bowed head in her arms, her face buried in his hair. She could feel the pounding of his heart, the tremors shivering through him. A deep, violent love for him flooded through her, brought the sting of tears to her eyes. "Oh, Lucas."
His hands gripped her arms, his head coming up, his eyes narrowing as he searched her face. "I must be some kind of an animal, going at you like that," he said, his breath still so strained his voice was but a harsh tear. "You deserve better than to be taken up against a house wall in the open night."
She laid her palm against his cheek, rubbed her thumb across the fullness of his lips, felt her own mouth lift in a smile. "Actually, I rather liked it," she said, and caught his soft laugh with her kiss.
"And precisely how are you proposing to explain this to your family?" he asked dryly, reining his horse in behind hers as they took the narrow path up the hill, away from the cove.
Jessie swung her head to look back at him, but thin bands of clouds had appeared on the eastern horizon, obscuring the moon and many of the stars, so that he was only a dark shadow following her through the silence of the night. She still felt sticky and slightly sore between her legs, where he had been, and just the thought of it, now, was enough to send an echo of desire tripping through her again. It was a wondrous, powerful thing between them, she thought, this wanting. Powerful and perilous.
"I suppose my disheveled appearance and torn habit could be attributed to a tumble," she said, her voice shaking slightly with the wayward direction of her thoughts. "Riding in the dark can be dangerous."
She heard him grunt behind her. "Very dangerous indeed," he said, exaggerating his brogue, "especially for wayward young lasses." Over her soft laughter, he added "What were we supposed to be doing out here in the first place, then?"
"Ah, I've already thought of that. I left a message for my mother, telling her I wanted to observe the southern lights." She threw another glance at him over her shoulder. "Have you ever seen them?"
"Oh, aye. I've glimpsed them a time or two. Through small, barred windows."
It disturbed her, as it always did, to think of him locked away, night after night, like some crazed beast. And it occurred to her, now, that this was probably the first night of relative freedom he'd known for a long time.
"Then look at them now," she said softly, reining in her mare as they crested the top of the bluff and the southern sky opened up before them in flickering gold-green splendor.
He rode up beside her, his head falling back, his body held breathlessly still as he gazed at the great, luminous arcs of colored light that flared across the sky in undulating folds of brilliance.
"Dia," he whispered. "It's beautiful."
She watched him watching the magically lit sky. The wind ruffled the dark hair at his head, flared the hem of his coat out at his side. In the ghostly light, the beloved features of his face showed so strong and finely drawn, he stole her breath.
His horse moved restlessly beneath him, as if his hand had tightened suddenly on the rein. "I hear they're called the
Merry Dancers, in Scotland. Now I know why." He swung his head to look at her. "Have you any idea what causes this?"
She shook her head, fighting to swallow the lump of emotion in her throat. "It's some form of energy that seems to be attracted to the poles at this time of year, perhaps from the sun. I don't think it's entirely understood yet."
They sat side by side for another long moment of companionable silence, sharing the majesty of the fiery flow of air moving rapidly across the heavens, rippling like windblown silk. Then he reached out to take her hand in his, his gaze hard on her face, his eyes glittering in the darkness. "Thank you. For this ..." He drew his other arm out in an arc that took in the colored flares of the night sky. "And for the comfort and joy of your body." He brought her hand to his lips and kissed the palm of her glove, his eyes smiling at her. "And for rescuing me from the consequences of my own folly."
"I understand why you did it," she said, twisting her fingers to tighten on his hand. "I don't think I did before. But I do now."
He drew in a deep breath that lifted his chest, all traces of the smile fading from his features. "I will try to escape again, Jessie. I can't stay. Not for you. Not for the wonder of what's between us."
"I know, I know," she said. But knowing it, and accepting it, were two different things entirely.
The overseer's eyes glittered in silent anger when she delivered Gallagher to the small, octagonal guardhouse. But Dalton s anger was directed at her, not at the man she had kept out past hours, and as an employee, the overseer could do nothing except mutter under his breath when she turned away.
She made her way through the still, dark garden to let herself in the side door of the house. As she passed the closed door to the music room, she heard the sweet strains of Beethoven's Apassionata being played with such heartbreaking emotion that she knew it had to be Warrick and not her mother at the piano; Beatrice might be technically flawless, but only Warrick possessed the ability to move a listener to tears with the power of his music. Dinner must be long over by now, she thought, and hurried up the servants' stairs, to her room.
Once there, she quickly stripped off her riding habit and shrugged into her dressing gown. She was just reaching for the pitcher of water when the door behind her flew open with enough force to crash into the wall. She whirled about, one hand flying up to hold together the neckline of her gown, the other braced unconsciously against the washstand behind her.
Beatrice stood on the threshold, a band of angry color staining her cheeks, her body rigid with fury. "So you're home, are you?"
"Mother," said Jessie, her hand clenching in the fine silk of her gown. "You startled me."
"I know what you've been doing," said Beatrice, and closed the door behind her with a snap.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
"Have you lost all sense of what you owe your family?" Beatrice demanded, the black silk skirts of her mourning gown swirling about her ankles as she stalked over to realign the candlesticks and vase on Jessie's mantelpiece with swift, jerky movements. "First this ridiculous nonsense concerning your betrothal, and now... this."
Jessie felt her heart begin to race sickeningly in her chest. "Mother—" she began.
"I want to know how long this has been going on," Beatrice interrupted, whirling to face her. "Since the afternoon of the storm, or before?"
How long had it been going on, Jessie wondered, staring at her mother. When had it begun? That afternoon in the rainforest, when they'd shared a first, magical kiss? Or hadn't it really begun that first day, when she looked up and saw him standing in the quarry. For, surely, nothing in her life had been quite the same since.
"I can't believe you would do such a thing," Beatrice was saying, her hand coming up to press against her forehead in a distracted gesture. Jessie saw the glitter of unshed tears in her mother's eyes, and knew a moment of profound shock. Beatrice never wept. "How could you do this? How could you do this to me, when you know how I feel about that woman?"
That woman. It took a moment for the sense of her mother's words to penetrate the numbing chill of Jessie's fear. She doesn't know, Jessie realized, sucking in a dizzying gasp of relief. She doesn't know about Gallagher. She pushed away from the washstand, her heart beating with unsteady lurches, as if it had stopped and was only now starting again. "Mother, what are you talking about?"
Beatrice's hand fell, her nostrils flaring with anger, and it occurred to Jessie that if there were tears in her mother's eyes, they were tears of rage. "Don't play the fool with me, Jesmond. I am talking about your visits to Last Chance Point."
Jessie stared at her mother. "Genevieve?"
Beatrice's entire body seemed to draw up in fury. "Don't you even think of lying to me."
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Jessie walked over to sink down on the stool before her dressing table. "I have no intention of lying to you." She clenched her hands tightly in her lap, her gaze on her mother's flushed face. "Genevieve and I have been friends for eight years. I didn't tell you when I was younger because I knew you would have prevented me from seeing her, but I should have told you upon my return from England. For that I am sorry."
"Eight years? You have been consorting with that shameless hussy for eight years?" They stared at each other, the lace of Beatrice's fichu rising and falling with her agitated breathing, her eyes wide, almost wild. "You are not to visit that woman again. Do you hear me?"
"She is my friend," Jessie said quietly.
"She is not at all a proper person for you to associate with. You know that. You have always known that."
"Why?" Jessie demanded, her head falling back as her mother stalked up to her. "Because she dared to snatch her own happiness from out of the living hell her parents envisioned for her? Is that why you hate her so much? Because she had the courage to do what you did not?"
Without warning, Beatrice drew back her hand and slapped her daughter across the face, the force of the blow strong enough to rock Jessie back on her seat. "You're just like her," Beatrice hissed, her jaw clenched so tightly, only her lips and throat moved with the words. "Always roaming about the countryside, doing odd things that might be precisely calculated to draw undue attention to yourself. You even look like her, at times, when you're being willful and opinionated."
"Look like her? Why would I—" Jessie broke off, her thoughts whirling away. It all made sense, suddenly. The cottage that had once belonged to Jessie's grandmother, but was now Genevieve's home. Genevieve's interest, all through the years, in the well-being of Jessie's mother and brothers. The easy camaraderie that had always existed between Jessie and the older woman—an affinity so unlike what Jessie had known with her own mother, but which she believed could sometimes exist between mother and daughter. Or aunt and niece.
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