He had spotted nothing of the sort in the lad earlier, which was why he had guessed him to be a good deal younger, and he likewise heard nothing of it now.
“My voice is changing.” The lad made an obvious effort to convince him, lowering his voice an octave. “And I am fair-haired. Golden whiskers require more time.”
His eyes narrowed. He stalked deeper into the darkness covering the front half of the chamber, determined to discover where the usurper was hiding. “I remain unconvinced, despite your excuses.”
“What is a pícaro?” the lad asked.
“Why are you not abed as a child ought to be at this time of the night?” he countered.
“I don’t like the darkness,” came Olly’s response.
For the first time, Alessandro believed the squatter was telling the truth. “Why not?”
But he was sure he knew already. The darkness always held its terrors. Memories. Pain. The unknown. After he had lost Maria and Francisco, he had spent untold nights staring into the murky blackness of the night, questioning his place on terra firma, the fragility of life, his belief in heaven and even Dios Himself. He had stared into the inky gloom, alone in his bed, his heart feeling as if it had been severed in two, wondering what death was like. Begging for death to claim him as well and put him out of his misery.
“I aren’t afraid of it, if that’s what you think,” Olly said.
“I am not afraid of it,” he corrected gently, as some instinct within him, previously dormant, awoke and wondered what education this child had received in his short life, if any.
“I didn’t say you was.”
“You were,” he said. “I didn’t say you were. That is the correct way of saying it, pícaro.”
The imp made a rude sound of disgust. “How do you know? You don’t even talk like the rest of us.”
“I was educated here,” he clipped, irritated with the runt as much for the disruption as he was for the ease with which the miscreant hid himself. “I am an Englishman by birth.”
How strange it felt to acknowledge. He had not considered England his home since his mother had died here. But he was now surrounded by all the reminders, the little chains tying him irrevocably to this land, to these people. He wondered how his mother must have felt, torn between her family and everyone she knew at home in Spain and becoming the wife of a wealthy and important English earl.
“You doesn’t sound like one,” said the squatter, his tone dubious.
“And yet, I am.” He stalked toward a chair, convinced that must be where the little devil was hiding. “And the proper way of saying it is you do not sound like one. How much schooling have you had, pícaro?”
“More than I need,” claimed the little voice in the night. “You never did say, what is pícaro? For all I know, you be calling me horse dung or donkey piss.”
A reluctant laugh burst from him even as he discovered the chair where he had believed the miscreant was hiding was empty. “And why should I call you horse dung or donkey piss?”
“I’ve been called worse.” The child’s voice seemed to have moved. “I’m a bastard, after all. No one wants me, least of all Bramwell. But my mother died and left me with her sister. And then she died along with her husband. A lung infection, it were. They was both gone in one sennight.”
Frowning, Alessandro stalked next to a settee, but it, too, was empty. “How did you come to be with Bramwell? What is his relation to you, and what do you know of him?”
These were questions he would have asked earlier—should have asked earlier—but he had been too preoccupied with Marchmont’s state of abandonment. And, too, he had known he would need servants. Badly. Those had been his first concerns.
“Bramwell be a cousin of my uncle’s. He be’s a rotter and I do not like him.”
He quirked a brow. “That makes two of us, pícaro. Why do you not tell me where you are hiding so I can cease searching the chamber for you like an imbecile?”
“What is an imbecile?” asked the impudent creature.
He clenched his jaw. “I will give you all the answers you seek if you emerge from your hiding place.”
“What makes you so certain I am hiding?” he asked, his query accompanied by the rustling sound of a small body sliding across the carpet.
Cristo, the beggar had been secreting himself beneath the settee. Alessandro should have known. “Because you were lying on the floor beneath a piece of furniture,” he said dryly.
“Very well.”
Alessandro detected a flurry of movement in the darkness as the lad emerged from his hiding place. He stood to his full height, then offered a bow.
Upon second glance, the lad was taller than he had recalled, but his frame was wiry and slight. His face, too, was soft and almost feminine. Bright eyes. Rounded cheeks. The lad was almost pretty, in fact.
Suspicion crept over him.
What if the lad was not a lad at all?
He resembled a female of twelve years far more than he resembled a male.
“There you are, pícaro,” Alessandro said slowly, feeling as if he were seeing a great many things now for the very first time. “It means rogue, child. And an imbecile is—”
“A man who were swindled by another?” the cheeky miscreant interrupted.
“No,” he bit out.
“A man who be’s wandering about in the darkness when he could have as much light as he wished?”
“A fool,” he said. “A dolt. A halfwit. That is what it means.”
“Same difference,” said the squatter with a sniff.
“See here, imp,” he said. “If I had my way, you would already be back in the village where you belong. Lady Rayne has taken pity on you, and to your great fortune, my wife possesses a heart of utter gold.”
In that sense, she reminded him of his sister Leonora.
The sister who felt too much, who loved with her heart upon her sleeve. The sister he had very much feared would have her heart broken. But who was looking after the heart of Catriona? Her drunkard brother? He nearly scoffed aloud at the notion.
“Are you certain it don’t mean donkey piss?” the lad dared to inquire.
To his utter shame, Alessandro felt his lips twitch involuntarily. The boy had daring, he had to admit and admire.
But he was not about to acknowledge either of those facts. “I am certain,” he said, stoic. “Just as certain as I am you must find the bed assigned to you and get some rest.”
“I’ll go to my bed, m’lord,” the lad said. “But I can’t make any promises about sleep or rest. That don’t come easy.”
“It does not come easily,” he corrected absently.
“Right,” said the lad. “It don’t.”
With that parting volley, his unwanted interloper promptly shuffled across the study and disappeared out the door.
Leaving Alessandro to stare after him.
And to realize, much to his chagrin, the boy was right.
Rest would not come easily to him this night.
Chapter Nineteen
“What is your favorite food?” Catriona asked her husband the next morning over breakfast.
Alessandro paused, forkful of eggs raised halfway to his lips, suspended in midair. “Qué?”
Catriona flicked a glance toward the butler, who had followed them from London and who, she had discovered, knew Spanish. What mouthed the butler.
Bless him.
“Your favorite food,” she repeated, sending the domestic a grateful smile. “What is it?”
Her husband scowled at her. “Why are you smiling at the wall?”
He was in a dreadful mood this morning, was he not?
“I am smiling at Johnstone,” she informed him, smiling at him now, with a cheer that was rather forced.
He had been gloomier than a storm cloud ever since she had first met him in the dining room for breakfast. After he had escorted her back to her chamber following their torrid encounter in the temple, he had simply walked away. Sh
e could only presume he had spent the night sleeping in the chamber adjoining hers, but she did not know for certain.
“You may go, Johnstone,” Alessandro ordered without bothering to look in the butler’s direction. “Lady Rayne and I shall finish the breakfast on our own.”
“My lord,” the butler began.
“That will be all,” Alessandro clipped, interrupting what was sure to have been Johnston’s protestation against not being allowed to dance attendance upon them.
Over her husband’s shoulder, the domestic sent Catriona a long-suffering look. Her lips twitched, but she suppressed the urge to laugh.
“Of course, my lord,” said Johnstone.
The servant was already much aggrieved by the state in which they had found Marchmont. But this breach of protocol would surely be viewed as an insult. She waited until the butler had gone, discreetly closing the door at his back, to raise a brow at her husband.
“Was it truly necessary to dismiss him?” she asked.
“Yes.” He lowered his fork, glowering at her. “Why are you asking me about food and flirting with the butler?”
“Why are you so angry?” she countered.
She had not particularly appreciated being abandoned at her bedchamber door last night. Not after what they had shared. Not after he had kissed her. But she had understood all too well the struggle he was facing, an inner battle being waged between his past and his present.
Catriona had told herself to ignore his cool demeanor this morning.
She had told herself to try.
She wanted to please him. She wanted to make the best of their circumstances. Lord help her, she had believed, after last night, he may have begun to soften toward her. That his feelings for her had deepened, at least to the point where he no longer felt kissing her on the lips was a betrayal of his previous wife’s memory.
But she had been wrong.
Dreadfully wrong.
On all counts.
“I am not angry, querida,” he denied, assessing her with his molten gaze. “I am merely…perturbed.”
“You are perturbed,” she repeated, pursing her lips. “With me.”
“Yes.” He frowned at her. “What is this asking me about food? I do not like it. And then all these covert looks with Johnstone. This too, I distrust.”
Had she thought him in a dreadful mood? How wrong she had been. He was being completely mad. That was what he was doing.
She settled her fork on her plate, ignoring the jarring clink it made upon the fine china—one of the few objects of value Alessandro’s steward had not robbed. “I am asking you about what you like to eat because you are my husband and I wish to please you. I am planning our menus for the next week today, allowing for the organization of this undeniably lackluster household. The staff needs to acquire provisions as there is precious little stores here remaining. Perhaps I should have asked you what you do not like to eat.”
“I do not like salmon,” he informed her.
“Then I shall ask for it at every dinner,” she returned.
“My lady.” His tone was one of warning. Menacing. His expression was carved in stone. His jaw, rigid and flexed.
It was the first time in a long time he had referred to her by that name, and that he did so now was not lost upon her. They had shared intimacies. They had kissed. And yet, now, he chose to retreat.
She ought not to be surprised. “Is your dislike of all fish, or is it relegated to salmon alone?”
“If you must know, I grew ill after I ate salmon when I was a lad, and I have not had the stomach for it since.” He paused. “What is this truly about?”
Catriona sighed. “It is about trying to please you, just as I have said.”
“You please me well enough in the only manner I require,” he said.
And there it was, in his gravelly velvet voice, the suggestion of passion. The reminder of what they had shared. Even as he sought to diminish their connection, she could not staunch the wave of need coursing through her. The familiar stirrings of desire settled deep in her womb.
But she was not going to allow him to so easily ignore that something between them had shifted last night.
“You kissed me.” Though she had not meant to blurt the obvious statement, once she had, she was glad.
He stiffened. “Lust has made many a man before me weak.”
“Has it made you weak enough to kiss another, or am I the only one?” she dared press him.
His jaw clenched. “Do not try to make more of what happened yesterday than it is. You are aware of our understanding. Nothing has changed.”
How wrong he was. For her, everything had changed.
She loved him.
And he was intent upon maintaining a distance between them, keeping her at bay, withholding his heart from her. Intent upon leaving her.
“Our understanding, yes.” She did not miss the way his eyes had dipped hungrily to her mouth. “You have a strange way of seeing the understanding to fruition, Lord Rayne.”
He drummed his fingers lightly on the table. “Call me Alessandro, if you please. I dislike being called Lord Rayne.”
“Why?” she demanded. “Is it because it reminds you of what you are?”
His lip curled. “And what am I, querida? Tell me.”
“An earl,” she charged. “A man who has been avoiding his duties.”
He flinched as if she had struck him. “Enough.”
“Why?” She had already come this far. She would not retreat now.
He was as immovable as a boulder. He needed to be pushed.
“You think I do not feel the guilt in my chest, heavy as an anvil, when I look around here?” he charged, his eyes darkening. “When I look at you?”
“You should not feel guilt for looking upon your wife,” she told him, frustration lancing her. “You chose to marry me. But as for the guilt you feel when you look upon Marchmont, that I cannot deny. This estate, its lands, and its people, are your obligation. Yet you have been absent.”
“Suficiente!” He slammed a fist upon the table, making the china and silverware rattle. “I said enough.”
At last, she had shaken him, but his fury provided precious little comfort. She did not want his anger. She wanted his love.
“Do you feel guilty because you kissed me, my lord,” she prodded him, “or because you liked it?”
He stood suddenly, throwing back his chair with such force, it toppled over. She rose to her feet as well, watching him as he stalked around the table. His anger enhanced the severity of his features, making him somehow more beautiful than he already was. She found herself in his arms, precisely where she wanted to be, one of his large hands splayed possessively on her lower back, the other caressing her cheek in the whisper of a caress. Her nipples went instantly hard, an ache beginning between her thighs and blossoming outward.
“I feel guilty because I want to do it again,” he said grimly.
And then, his mouth was on hers. The kiss was not soft or gentle. But neither was it rough or angry. It was searing. Claiming. The way their lips fit together made her sigh. She kissed him back with all the fervent need rising within her to a brilliant crescendo.
A violent sweep of his arm on the table behind her upended the remnants of her breakfast, and she did not care. He moved them as one while he consumed her mouth. Her rump met the beveled edge of the table. He caught her lower lip between his teeth and gently nipped her, pulling back just a bit to gaze down at her.
His expression was inscrutable aside from the undeniable desire she knew he must see reflected in her own countenance. For a beat, she feared he would withdraw from her entirely. That he would push her away and resume the detachment he had been treating her to all morning.
But then, he guided her onto the expanse of table he had so ruthlessly cleared. His fingers tightened in the skirts of her gown and chemise, lifting them to her knees. He kissed her again, slower and deeper, and then he settled himself between her legs.
He was going to take her, she realized.
Here.
On the breakfast table, where they could be interrupted by a servant at any moment. She should be horrified.
Instead, heat coursed through her. A steady throb of want pulsed in her sex. Oh, how she needed him inside her. It was stronger than hunger or thirst. Powerful and wicked. He kissed down her throat, his long fingers tightening in her chignon and pulling her head back to allow his exploration.
His hand was hot on her skin, sweeping over the bare flesh above her garters and stockings. He sucked on her neck, and she felt it in her core. Her body was aflame, overwhelmed by sensation. His subtle dominance undid her. When his touch dipped between her legs, stroking her needy flesh, she moaned.
He found the sensitive nub hidden within her folds and teased it with slow, steady circles. It was too much. It was not enough. She jerked into his hand, wanting more. His lips moved to her ear.
“You want me,” he murmured.
“Yes.” Her acquiescence became a gasp when he sank a finger inside her.
But she did not want his lips grazing her ear. She wanted them on hers. Catriona grasped a handful of his cravat and yanked his mouth back to where she wanted it. On a growl, he kissed her harder. His thumb moved over her pearl.
A frisson licked down her spine. He curled his finger, touching a place inside her so deep and delicious, she lost control. Her body seized, a frenzied rush of release washing over her. She whimpered into his mouth, into his kiss, surrendering.
On a growl, he slid his finger from her channel. Between them, he undid the fall of his breeches with hasty, efficient movements. And then his thick tip was glancing over her folds. He thrust against her pearl, sending another miniature shower of spasms through her. His tongue was in her mouth, his hand still fisted in her hair as he ravaged her lips.
Movement in the hall beyond the door caught her attention briefly, sending a swift bolt of fear through her, followed by a wicked jolt of something else. Somehow, the notion of them being caught, of Alessandro about to slide into her body as the door opened, titillated her.
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