Heartless

by Anne Stuart

  She squirmed. He’d been about to call himself an ass for his suggestive talk, but her squirm made his self-respect die a quick death. For all her seeming disinterest in the male sex, she reacted to him. In the far too quick brush of his mouth against hers he’d felt it, the spark of response that she was too startled to hide.

  “Hardly.” She was trying for asperity, but her choice of word was unfortunate. She looked flustered, and she didn’t strike him as the kind of woman who flustered easily. She rose suddenly, setting down her empty cup, and there was just the faintest bit of chocolate on the corner of her lip. “I really need to go back upstairs,” she said hurriedly. “I feel unwell. That is, if I’m to leave tomorrow I should probably rest. . .”

  She’d been backing away from him, with good sense, since he’d risen as well and was moving toward her. He caught up with her just before she reached the door and casually pulled her away from it, backing her into the corner of the room away from the windows. Near a divan.

  “I’ll let you go,” he said softly. “In a minute.” And he set his mouth against hers, his tongue licking out to taste that tiny bit of chocolate.

  She shuddered, but it wasn’t in disgust. Her hands had come up to his shoulders, but they’d moved beneath his jacket, clutching the soft cloth that covered his shoulders, and the sound she made was one of soft, unexpected pleasure.

  It was simple enough to slide his tongue into her mouth, kissing her with such thoroughness it could have melted the bones in his body. He lifted his mouth for a second, and her gray eyes were staring up into his with glazed wonder, making his need even more powerful. He could lock the door to the hallway and take her there on the divan, but the silly women noisily playing croquet outside would be certain to come back at the most inconvenient time. He kissed her again before she could protest, pressing into her, wanting to absorb her into his very bones.

  He tried to coax her tongue into play, but she was either very reluctant or simply ignorant of the intricacies of kissing, but that could hardly be possible. She’d been paid for this, a fact which bothered him not in the least. This wasn’t a commercial encounter—she was reacting to him on the most basic, carnal level, pushing her soft breasts against him, and he wanted to cup them with his hands, but he didn’t dare release her arms. She had relaxed into his hold but it wouldn’t take much to make her skittish.

  Using his teeth, he tugged at her lower lip, trying to draw her closer still into the late day shadows, and she moved, eager, seeking him, until she froze, and some sound intruded on his carnal haze.

  There were voices, noise coming from the adjoining front hall, men’s loud, excited voices, and he wanted to groan in frustration. He lifted his head, looking down at her, hoping she’d show some of that same emotion, but she’d already drawn her defenses back around her, and she pushed at him. For a moment he didn’t move.

  Her smile was cool and acid and for some reason it made him want to kiss it off her set mouth. “I can’t wait to get back to London to report on your miracle, Lord Brandon.”

  He blinked, confused. “Miracle?”

  “I’ve been informed that your war wounds were more extensive than outward appearance. Apparently that essential part of your anatomy that was blown off in the war seems to have regrown and is now pressing into my stomach.”

  He stared at her for a long, incredulous moment, and then he threw his head back and laughed, releasing her, his amusement almost stripping away his desire. Almost. God save him from a woman like her—she was the kind of woman he could love.

  Even that hideous prospect couldn’t deflect his laughter, not her stony expression, not the women herding in through the French doors as the day turned stormy, not the men crowding in from the hallway, looking grim and curious. He wanted to collapse on the sofa, but that was impossible with ladies and older men present, so he simply stood there, trying to contain his mirth.

  And then Benedick spoke, his face dark with disapproval. “What do you find so entertaining, Brandon? I could use a laugh at this point in time.”

  Brandon had known his brother all his life, and he knew the difference between simple bad temper and real trouble. This was real trouble, and the last of his delight left him.

  “Nothing of any import. What’s happened?”

  “Don’t miss a thing, do you?” Benedick muttered. “We found the missing maid.”

  “Rosie?” Emma spoke up, ignoring protocol. “What did she say?”

  “Nothing,” his brother Charles interrupted, practically sneering with disapproval, and Brandon had the errant desire to punch him in the face. “She was dead.”

  There was a piteous shriek, and he turned to see his sapskull of a fiancée swoon into her companion’s tender arms, as all the women surged around her.

  All except Emma, who stood still as a statue, her face white, her mouth, that mouth he’d just kissed so thoroughly, grim. “How?”

  Charles grimaced. “She’d been. . .”

  “Charles!” Benedick snapped. “There are ladies present!”

  Charles didn’t have the grace to look abashed. “Well, then, perhaps we should wait until the ladies depart and then I can relate the gruesome details to Brandon’s doxy.”

  Melisande’s soft cry of barely registered in Brandon’s blood-maddened haze as did just what he’d been longing to for so many years and punched Charles. Someone pulled him away as Charles crumpled to the floor, shrieking that his nose had been broken, and there were various cries of distress from the women, sounding more like a flock of silly birds than anything else.

  “Enough!” Benedick thundered. “Melisande, my dear, perhaps you might escort the ladies to the salon for tea, while Miss Trimby sees to Miss Bonham. Brandon, your behavior is inexcusable; Charles, you deserved it. How dare you insult a guest in my house? First, I must apologize to you, Mrs. Cadbury, for both my brothers’ boorish behavior. They shame themselves and they shame me. Let me apologize to all my guests for my deplorable family, but we are, after all, Rohans.”

  It was just the right thing to say, and as Brandon’s fury lessened to a cold anger he had to marvel. The other men were chuckling knowingly, his family’s excesses over the decades well-known, and even the fluttering women were tittering. His hand hurt, which seemed absurd, and he couldn’t bring himself to look at Emma.

  When he did, she was already gone.

  Emma was running. Running away from the scene in the salon, the women who looked at her with their sideways, pitying glances, from the man who lay crumpled and shrieking on the floor, blood gushing from his nose, from Melisande’s concern, from Benedick’s grim knowledge. Most of all she was running away from Brandon.

  Brandon, who’d kissed her so thoroughly, his hard body pressing her against the wall, and she’d wanted to kiss him back, so badly. She didn’t know how. Men didn’t kiss whores—she knew nothing about it. She was aware that tongues were used, and it all seemed part of the general messiness of the business, but she kept tasting him, wanting more of him, wanting his mouth on hers once more, his long, lean body against hers.

  What in God’s name was happening to her?

  And he’d hit his own brother. No one had ever done that, defended her with a violence that was both shocking and arousing. Not that any other guest had dared be that rude in front of Benedick and Melisande, but with any other confrontation she was on her own. It was dangerously seductive to be championed, almost as seductive as those kisses had been.

  She could sleep with him. She could give him her body and the pleasure men seemed to take from it. There was no possibility that she could enjoy it, but with Brandon she could endure, as long as he kissed her like that. It was a frightening, enticing thought.

  She reached her bedroom, slammed the door and went straight to the window seat overlooking the courtyard. It was raining again—the brief sunshine had been only a small respite—and she leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes, catching her breath, letting her racing heart return to normal. S
he could still feel his hands on her, and she crossed her arms to touch where he’d touched. She wanted to cry, but her eyes were stubbornly dry. If Melisande and Benedick didn’t let her leave tomorrow she would run, and keep running, until no one could find her.

  Common sense returned like a slap in the face. Of course she couldn’t run and hide. She was a woman who had always dealt with life head on—she didn’t run.

  She let her head rest against the cold window, closing her eyes in weariness. Why was she fussing about Brandon Rohan? In the scheme of thing he was no more than a peripheral distraction. Dismissing him would be easier when she was back in the stimulating atmosphere of Temple Hospital, her mind absorbed in work. No, her problem was far greater than Brandon Rohan.

  Someone was trying to kill her.

  She couldn’t believe how dense she’d been. The fire at Melisande’s house in London had started when she was alone in the building. It had seemed like a random coincidence—there’d been threats for years about the place. No one had any charity for the soiled doves who took shelter there, and men with power never liked living with the fact that women knew their secrets. Once they no longer served their purpose, those women were disposable, and there’d been threats aplenty. That had been one of the reasons all the women had been relocated to the country, thank God, so no one else would have died but she.

  Except it was starting to look like she’d been the target in the first place. That hadn’t been an accidental push into the Thames, as she’d conveniently believed. She had no idea who had pulled her out, but Dr. Fenrush’s man had been in the crowd, and if he’d known about Benedick’s plan to have her supplant his master he probably would have thrown her back in again.

  And now the attack in the secluded field, one she’d wanted to convince herself was random. Random, except that Rosie had told her particularly to take that path, a longer, more out of the way path, and now Rosie was dead.

  Emma might prefer to ignore inconvenient distractions, but she wasn’t stupid. When you put all those incidents together it meant only one thing, and if she continued to dismiss it, other people might get hurt as well.

  She sighed. There was always the possibility that the London attempts had no connection with the danger she’d faced six hours to the northeast, that those incidents were, as she’d first believed, mere accidents, and she’d somehow run afoul of a deranged killer when she’d come here.

  She hadn’t endured and survived without a willingness to face ugly truths. It had become even more urgent that she return to London—the answer must be there, somewhere. She could talk to Fenrush’s man, Collins, his name was, and see if he’d noticed anything odd that day by the river.

  And she could be secure in the knowledge that her escape from Starlings House would have absolutely nothing to do with the man who had just kissed her so thoroughly that she felt. . . claimed. There was no claiming going on, not by anyone, she reminded herself, and the sooner she got home and concentrated on this mess the better.

  Chapter 15

  Brandon would have had a great deal to say about it if he’d been informed. As it was, his mind was caught up with the events of the day as he changed for supper with the dubious help of Noonan.

  “When the hell are we getting back to Scotland?” the old man demanded. “The longer I stay down here in this place the more nervous I get. Throwing rocks at the British Army can be considered treason, you know.”

  “It was twenty years ago if it was a day, and no one even remembers,” Brandon replied. “I’ve still got things to do down here. Besides, I’m supposed to get married.”

  Noonan dismissed that particular notion with a colorful phrase. “You’re no more going to marry that dishrag of a girl than you’re going to win a beauty contest,” he said with his usual devastating frankness. “Just leave off and let’s go home.”

  “Trust me, there’s nothing I’d like better.” But was there? Was there any other woman whose lithe, strong body felt made for his, whose mouth tasted of paradise? He’d been an idiot and a rare bastard for kissing her this afternoon, but he hadn’t been able to help himself. He’d been wanting to for so damned long, and the chaste kiss of the night before had only whet his appetite.

  But he couldn’t have her. Even if he managed to find his way out of this absurd marriage idea, he still couldn’t have Emma Cadbury. She didn’t even like him, for all that she’d put her arms around him and almost kissed him back, and she would have no interest in. . .

  “What do I do with this thing?” Noonan interrupted his conflicted thoughts, clenching a spotless neckcloth in one hand. Brandon grabbed it away.

  “You don’t crush it,” he said, tying it haphazardly around his neck. “Damned things.”

  “You’re right about that, me boy. Those things could strangle you, and there’s no way you could fight in one.”

  Not even with a blink of an eye did he show his reaction. Noonan brought up the war at regular intervals, and each time a part of him wanted to recoil. He’d accepted it: the things he had done, the trust he’d betrayed, the monstrous things. . .

  Deliberately, he looked in the mirror. In Scotland they had no mirrors, at least, none in the gamekeeper’s house where he and Noonan had lived for the last three years. The main house was shuttered, the furniture covered, and they could have walls and ceilings made of mirrors for all he cared. Noonan didn’t give a damn, and Brandon hadn’t wanted to look at his ugly mug, the constant reminder of all he wished he could forget.

  In truth, though, he wasn’t ready to let go of it, of the harsh, damnable past. He looked at the monster in the mirror with steady regard. It was no wonder his pathetic little fiancée had screamed and almost fainted at the sight of him. The thought of being forced to look at him across the breakfast table must have horrified her.

  “No beauty contests, eh?” he said out loud, surveying himself.

  The left side of his face had looked like raw, bloody minced meat in the beginning, but now it was merely a spider web of scars, his nose had been broken several times before the last battle, and he couldn’t say much for the rest of him. The scars tugged his mouth into a perpetual glower, his left eye was tilted, though praise be he still had vision in it. He could stand there and catalogue the deficiencies, the damaged ear, the deep vertical scars, but he didn’t bother. He was repulsed enough by his reflection, knowing that he deserved it. It was the outward sign of all his inner torment, a punishment for the horrors he’d committed. He’d never shirked responsibility—he took his punishment like a man.

  “I pity that poor girl having to look at the sight of this every morning,” he said.

  “She’ll get a crick in her neck if she keeps trying to avoid the sight of you,” Noonan said with a certain malice. “I’ve always told you that if someone won’t look you in the face then they aren’t worth knowing.”

  Brandon grinned, turning from the mirror. “You think I’m pining for my lost beauty, Noonan? I mind my bad leg more. And I’m more than used to people staring at my shoulder instead of meeting my gaze. It no longer bothers me.”

  “I know, laddie,” Noonan said, and there was an unexpected note of sympathy in his scratchy Irish accent. “You know one thing that’s odd? That woman—the pretty one, what used to be a doxy. What’s her name?”

  “Emma Cadbury,” Brandon said in an expressionless voice. For some reason he’d bristled at the word “doxy” but it was nothing more than the truth, and a man like Noonan would pass no judgments.

  “Aye, that’s the one. That one looks you straight in the eye and— she doesn’t flinch. To my mind she’s worth ten of anyone else here, saving your family.” He took a step back and ran his eyes over Brandon. “You look as pretty as you’re going to, though I don’t know why you bother. I’m going down to the kitchen to get meself a drop of good whiskey and maybe an armful of that plump scullery maid while you have to sit all stiff and proper. When you come to your senses and are ready to head north all you have to do is say
the word and I’ll have our horses saddled.”

  It was tempting, so tempting, just to run away from this mess his once simple life had become. Running away from Emma Cadbury made even more sense—she upset his hard-won equilibrium.

  “Soon,” he promised. Turning away, he moved toward the window as the door closed behind Noonan. It was still raining—did he need to build an ark to get out of here? He was used to rain in Scotland—liquid sunshine, they called it, and then ignored it, going about their business anyway. Here it seemed to call a halt to everything, and he was ready to explode.

  Damn, damn, damn. Why had he kissed her? She was broken, perhaps as broken as he was, and despite her prickles she needed to be treated gently, and instead he’d been on her like a teenage boy, ignoring her injuries, perhaps even ignoring her dislike of the whole situation. He’d been so aroused, had been fighting it for so long that once his infernal lust had slipped its bonds he might have been too far gone to notice her dislike.

  But no, she’d put her hands on him, closer than he’d expected, and her body had melted against his, and he’d felt, absolutely felt her own longing. He wasn’t a man who deluded himself, and he knew that, despite her antipathy, despite her very rough history, she was as deeply attracted to him as he was to her. Strange—he’d never had such an instantaneous feeling that someone was important to him, someone seemingly so strong, yet he suspected was far more vulnerable than she let on.

  He’d once had a baby hedgehog when he’d been a boy—he’d always been collecting animals back then. His mother had told him his room was like a zoological garden, but she never forbade him to bring in the wounded birds, the motherless rabbits, the companionable ferret with the missing leg.

  Emma was like a broken bird, he thought, staring out into the rain. A raven in a wren’s costume, that mesmerizing beauty banked down and hidden.

  She was neither a raven nor a wren. She was a robin—bright and smart and strong, but she was hiding, and he wasn’t the man to lure her out into the sunlight, not when he lived in darkness himself.