“I warned you not to cross me, Pendragon,” St. George said. “Don’t ever make the mistake of doing it again.”
Footsteps moved away. Still frozen, Rafe forced up his head in time to watch the coach and its occupants race away, the sound of male laughter echoing obscenely into the night…
Rafe shuddered and returned to the present.
“That bloody bastard hurt her to hurt me,” he murmured. “And he succeeded.”
“Dear God,” Julianna whispered in horrified understanding, her eyes damp with sorrow.
His own eyes remained dry, his tears long ago burned away in the heat of his hatred and in his consuming need for revenge.
Julianna reached out and caught one of his hands, then led him to her bed. Drawing him down beside her, she slid her arms around him and hugged him tight. Leaning up, she kissed his cheek, then his temple.
“Tell me,” she murmured, stroking a consoling palm across his chest.
For a long moment he resisted, the memories too raw, too deep. But her quiet, simple entreaty called to some hidden need inside him. Without consciously realizing it, he began to speak.
“After they tossed her on my doorstep, battered and brutalized, I rushed her inside and called for the physician. She’d lost so much blood, we all feared she would die that night, but by some miracle she held on. Gradually, she began to recover, physically at least. She ate and slept. She went through all the motions of living. But the girl I knew was gone. She used to laugh all the time and smile. Pamela was one of those rare souls who never saw the bad in people. But those bastards stole that from her, snuffed out the light in her eyes.”
He paused, a leaden lump in his chest. “She couldn’t bear to look at me after that and cringed at my slightest touch. Not because it was me, but because I was a man, and it was men who had hurt her. There was nothing I could do or say to make it better. Hell, I couldn’t even give her the consolation of knowing her assailants were being punished.”
He pulled away and strode across to stand in front of the fireplace. Picking up a poker, he jabbed it at the unlighted logs in the grate.
“But surely you reported the attack to the authorities?”
He laughed, the sound hollow and bitter. “Yes, her father and I went to the so-called authorities and told them what those monsters did to her. They just stared at us and smirked, then asked what she’d done to tempt them. St. George and his friends were all respectable gentleman, wealthy, powerful men of privilege and importance. Who would believe the claims of a Cheapside watchmaker and a businessman of dubious parentage when pitted against the testimony of four wealthy aristocrats?”
“But you saw them! Middleton admitted to you what he’d done. What they had all done.”
“And all they had to do was deny it, assuming the constables had even bothered to ask. They didn’t, of course. Instead, they tossed me into a cell for making false accusations. They would have locked up Pamela’s father as well, but I convinced them to let me serve out his term along with my own. Two weeks in the London gaol.”
“Rafe, no!” She leaned forward, her expression one of shock and outrage.
That was the day he’d lost all respect for the law. The day he came to understand that a man had to take care of his own, and seek justice by whatever means he possessed.
“St. George and his fellow rapists continued their lives as if nothing had happened,” he continued in a chill voice. “They went on living with no apparent remorse, as if they had never violated a poor, sweet girl whose only crime was the mistake of loving me.”
Mercy, how I longed to kill them! he thought, remembering those times. At first he’d ached to hunt them down, one man at a time, and put a bullet between their eyes. But he’d decided that was too easy, choosing instead to give each of them a taste of his own particular kind of misery. Years may have passed, but his revenge was starting to come to fruition.
Underhill and Challoner had met their fates, while the other two would soon face their own day of reckoning. A drunkard bent on his own kind of ruin, Hurst was nearly destroyed, while St. George was beginning to feel the squeeze on his finances, squirming as one investment after another mysteriously turned sour.
Seeing them all brought down would be sweet vengeance indeed.
“What about Pamela?” Julianna ventured softly. “You told me she died.”
“Yes. Those villains murdered her, just as surely as if they had come to the house and slipped the rope around her neck with their own hands.”
He turned and met her anguished gaze. “She hanged herself, three months after the attack. She’d…found out she was pregnant. There was a note saying she was sorry but that she could not bear the idea of having such disgrace growing inside her. She’d been a virgin before that night. She couldn’t expect me to marry her, to raise an abomination as our child. She told me she could not be my wife. Could never be anyone’s wife, since she knew she would not be able to bear the touch of a man ever again.”
Taking a deep breath, he went on. “Pamela wrote that she loved me. She even begged me to forgive her. How could she not understand she wasn’t the one in need of forgiveness? It was me. It still is me.”
“You’re wrong. You must not blame yourself.”
“Mustn’t I?” he challenged bitterly. “The fault was mine. If not for me, he would never have come after her. If not for the house, he would not have had a reason.”
“The house? What house?”
He paused before answering. “My mother’s house in the Yorkshire countryside, the home where I was raised.”
Julianna waited, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, as she watched emotions shift like passing clouds across his chiseled features.
Her heart ached for him, for all he’d lost and been forced to endure. She wanted to offer him comfort, but she knew right now he would not accept her consolation, would see it as pity instead of compassion. So she kept her seat, held her silence, and waited for him to tell her more in his own time and in his own way.
He prodded the logs again with the fire poker. Long moments passed before he set the brass tool back into its holder and turned her way.
“Despite the circumstances of my birth,” he began, “I had a good childhood. No matter the taunts and the fights other boys were forever picking with me, I knew my parents loved me, that they loved each other. My father spent as much time with us as he could, and he saw to it I had an education when the time came. He made certain my mother had a comfortable home with enough money for a few servants and as many fine gowns as she desired. But all she really wanted was him. I remember the way her face would glow whenever he came for a visit. And how she would lock herself in her room and cry after he left.”
Rafe thrust his hands into his trouser pockets. “I knew my father had another family. Another son and two daughters, my brother and sisters, whom I was never to mention or admit to having knowledge of. I thought of them occasionally and wondered what it might have been like had I been born the legitimate son and St. George the baseborn one. But by and large it didn’t trouble me. I loved my mother and our home. No matter what, I would never have traded either for all the world.”
He strolled toward her dressing table and perused the contents. As if needing to distract himself, he uncorked her bottle of rose water and raised it to his nose, closing his eyes for a pleasurable instant. With a careful hand, he stoppered the container and returned it to its place.
Drawing an audible breath, Rafe continued. “I knew St. George bore a resentment toward me, but until the time of my father’s death, I didn’t realize just how deep it ran. Papa died very suddenly, without any warning at all, the year I turned twenty. I was away at university and happened across the notice in the Times.”
His face tightened in obvious affront at the memory and the insult of not being notified of his own father’s death. “I learned that my mother was given the news in a far more brutal way. Only days after my father died, a pair of riders appeared. I
t was late January and freezing cold, with inches of snow blanketing the ground. The riders banged on the door, told my mother the viscount was dead, and ordered her to get out—and by out they meant right that minute. She wasn’t even allowed to pack a suitcase, nor take so much as a single belonging or memento. The house and all its contents belonged to the new viscount, she was told, Burton St. George.”
Julianna’s chest squeezed tight. Only by sheer force of will did she keep from going to him.
“St. George sent them to claim the property and toss his father’s whore, as they called her, out into the street. They followed his orders to the letter, leaving her with nothing but the clothes on her back. They even denied her the comfort of taking shelter with one of her neighbors. The blackguards posted a notice in the nearby village warning that anyone giving her aid or assistance would be evicted from their home. Luckily, the innkeeper defied the order and gave her a place to stay in his stables until a message could be sent to me. I came as soon as I could. By the time I arrived, she was ill, a pleurisy brought on by chills and shock.”
His face looked drawn, his sorrow acute even now. “Somehow she rallied enough to be moved. Having nowhere else to go, I took her to London. I didn’t know what else to do. I used the last of my allowance to find us a room, buy her some clothes and food, then fuel for the grate. For a few weeks she seemed better; then her illness returned. I called a physician but there was nothing he could do. She died soon after.”
A single tear slid down Julianna’s cheek, remembering the pain she’d suffered at the time of her own mother’s death so long ago. She wiped the back of her hand over her damp cheek. “Tell me the rest.”
Rafe collected himself and gave a suddenly weary sigh. “I went out into the world and made my way as best I could. For a long time I blamed my father for not making provision for my mother. Then Tony, a titled friend of mine, managed to get his hands on a copy of the will. In it, we discovered my father had indeed left money for both my mother and myself, money the St. George family did its best to keep out of my hands.
“It’s my firm belief as well that my father left my mother the house. She’d mentioned several times over the years that he’d put the deed in her name. I think St. George altered it, changed the deed so the property would come to him.”
One of his hands curled into a hard fist. “St. George stole that house from my mother and threw her out into the street like yesterday’s rubbish. So when the opportunity presented itself, I arranged things so my ‘little brother’ would have no choice but to hand the property over to me.”
A shiver of trepidation ran through her. “What did you do?”
“I quietly bought up his debt, including several promissory notes whose repayment was fully enforceable in a court of law. When it came time to pay his creditors, he discovered it was me he owed. Rather than risk dragging his name and his lack of funds out in public, I proposed a deal, the West Riding house and grounds in exchange for his outstanding notes. He had little choice but to accept. It made him angry. My mistake was in not realizing how angry. I got the house but lost Pamela. A devil’s bargain to be sure.”
He raised his gaze, sharp as green glass and filled with self-loathing. “So you see, sweeting, I had as much of a hand in her death as he did.”
“His actions were not of your making,” she stated with a shake of her head. “What he did to her was unspeakable. No matter the history between him and you, that did not give him the right to attack an innocent girl, to hurt and destroy her like some insect he could squash. He’s a monster with no morals. Considering everything you’ve told me of him, he ought to be hanged for his crimes. He is the one responsible, not you.”
Climbing to her feet, she crossed to Rafe. “You are not at fault and you must stop torturing yourself with the idea that you are. Pamela would not want that. I read the inscription in the watch she gave you. No woman who loved you like that could ever wish to see you anything but happy.”
Then, before he had a chance to refuse, she wrapped her arms around him and held on tight. Rafe stood stiff and unyielding, as if he were going to pull away. Then suddenly he crushed her to him, burying his face in her hair as his arms locked at her back.
They held each other for a long minute, drawing strength and succor from their embrace, their bodies pressed together warm and vital and alive, so very much alive. Instinct urged an even closer bond, his lips seeking and finding hers, his kiss soft and slow and tender. She responded, opening her mouth and urging him to take his fill.
Her senses spun in a dizzying whirl, boundless pleasure taking her in its grasp. She met his every move, teasing his tongue and nibbling at his lips, playing a tantalizing game that made her head hazy with yearning.
Passion billowed through her blood like steam heat, setting her nerves afire. Burrowing closer, she urged him to deepen their kiss, to raise the level of intensity between them in ways that should probably have frightened her, but didn’t.
Craving more, she ran her hands across his chest and over his shoulders, clutching him tight as she put everything she had into her kiss. He responded, trailing his thumbs along the sensitive length of her spine.
With a sigh of almost feline satisfaction, she arched her back. Seconds later, she literally purred when he gave her bottom a caressing squeeze, then lifted her off her feet for a second time that evening.
All restraint fell away, her kisses turning as wild as his. Two weeks apart had been too long, leaving both of them eager to make up for lost time.
Rafe took a few steps forward, then stopped, obviously recalling that they were not in the Queens Square house, but instead inside Julianna’s bedroom in Mayfair. She felt a shiver of repressed need go through him as he reluctantly broke their kiss. “I should probably go.” He caught her lower lip between his teeth for a quick second before pressing another pair of kisses on her throbbing mouth.
“Hmm, probably,” she sighed as she strung a line of kisses across his jaw and over the faint roughness of his cheek. When she reached his ear, she traced the edge of her tongue along the rim, then blew out a light stream of air.
He shuddered.
“You could stay.” She tunneled her fingers into his thick hair.
He nuzzled her neck, then lifted and angled her hips so her femininity brushed against the hard tip of his erection, only the barrier of their clothing separating them.
This time she was the one to shudder.
“We might get caught,” he whispered, taking a few more steps toward the bed.
“We might,” she agreed, curling her legs around his hips. “Oh, heavens, please do not stop.”
In that moment, she wanted him so much that no amount of risk could have kept her from him.
With a low growl, he carried her the rest of the way to the bed. After he laid her down upon the mattress, she expected him to strip off her nightgown, then hurriedly work to remove his own garments, leaving both of them naked.
She watched as he shrugged out of his jacket, then unwound the cravat from his neck, tossing both to the floor. After unfastening the short placket of buttons on his shirt, he toed off his shoes. But instead of continuing, he set a knee onto the bed and eased down so he lay full-length at her side.
Reaching out, he stroked a slow palm along the length of her hair, fanning her tresses out across the cool expanse of her pillow. Her pulse jittered, his simple touch sending her senses aloft. She began to reach for him, but he captured her hands and bore them back down.
“Let me,” he whispered, dusting a kiss across her cheek. “Let me pleasure you. We have ’til dawn. Why not indulge our desires? There’s no need to rush, is there?”
With a shake of her head, she agreed. Relaxing her muscles, she willed herself to do as he wished, knowing he would bring her delight, certain he would take her all the places she most longed to go.
Leisurely and lazily, he began to play, starting with light caresses and kisses, dappling her skin with a stroke here, a nib
ble there. Without removing a single scrap of cloth, he roused her need, making her ache as damp heat burned between her thighs. With restless need, she shifted her limbs beneath the skirt of her peignoir, wishing he would take it off and touch her bare flesh.
Instead he stroked her through the thin silk, the cloth growing wet when he fastened his mouth to one of her breasts and began to draw upon her with the most exquisite suction. Moaning, she bit the edge of her lip and closed her eyes, her brain buzzing, knowing her bliss was just out of reach. But he held her there on a wire-thin edge of need, stretching out each moment in a torment of glorious delight.
She cried out in relief when he finally drew off her nightgown, leaving her completely naked. “God, Rafe, take me,” she urged, her control breaking as she reached for him.
But he slipped out of her grasp, sitting up to peel his shirt over his head and slip out of his trousers. “Be patient,” he whispered as he turned back. “I haven’t pleasured you enough yet.”
She wanted to disagree, but couldn’t seem to form the words, especially not when he set his wide palms upon her and began moving them in a long, gradual sweeping glide across her exposed flesh.
Capturing her mouth in another series of hot, wet kisses, he buried his face against her neck. A groan escaped her lips as he caught her nape between his teeth and gave her a gentle bite, adding a soothing lick and a kiss at the end.
Time took on a dreamlike quality as he repeated the process—bite, lick, kiss—working his way over her body, leaving no inch of skin untouched.
She whimpered, nearly feverish with need, when he reached the last spot, spreading her legs for the most intimate caress of all. Before he did, he pressed one of her hands across her lips. She didn’t understand until a moment later when the barest brush of his lips and teeth sent her flying, her scream of release muffled against her skin. With a control that amazed her, he brought her to another peak before levering his body up and over her.
My Fair Mistress Page 18