by Jill Gregory
“Let me go,” she gasped raggedly. To her mortification, two tears slipped out and trickled down her cheeks. “I want to go back to the house.”
“Not yet.”
“Yes! Let me go!”
Instead, his hands slid roughly around her waist and he pulled her against him. His strength surrounded her. An electric heat sparked between their bodies. Josie gasped at the force of it, her head flying up, her eyes wide on the unfathomable gray gaze staring back at her.
His arms tightened. She felt the length of him, long and lean and hard, pressed against her. But instead of her shrinking from him in fear, some primitive instinct took over. Want and need had her melting against him. How strong he was. How solid, his body like sculpted iron. It felt good to be held by him like this—why did it have to feel so good?
Her hands splayed across his chest, delicate fingers trembling over the hard muscles. Her head was still thrown back as she stared at him half in trepidation, half in anticipation, trying to read beneath the cynical exterior, to see beneath the dangerous glint in his eyes.
She couldn’t read what she saw in his face, couldn’t fully understand why his arms tightened so restrictively around her and held her fast, as if he were afraid she would vanish like mist if he didn’t hang on tight enough.
“So that’s why you agreed to marry me that night—why you were so desperate to get out of Abilene pronto—to come to England.” The words rasped out of him. He wiped a tear from her cheek, so gently, it made her tremble. “So that this outlaw couldn’t find you?”
Was he angry? His eyes glittered, his jaw was clenched. But Josie thought she heard understanding in his tone.
“Yes, because of that and...” There was more, there was Miss Denby, the search she needed to commence, the strange fascination she’d had with him right from the first, but before she could say anymore, Ethan’s hands, those strong, capable hands, slid to her hair. They smoothed through the velvet skeins, caressing, stroking, and she felt her senses dwindling fast.
“Did you know, even then, Josie, that I’d never let him touch you? Never let him hurt you?”
His voice was low, growling, dangerous.
Wildly, she shook her head. What was he saying?
“If you’d told me that day in the alley, I’d have protected you.”
“I’d picked your pocket, Ethan.” A half-crazed laugh bubbled in her throat. “You were ready to murder me yourself.”
“Not quite,” he muttered grimly, then had to suppress a groan as she turned those deep violet eyes upon him with questioning innocence and he felt himself drowning in their spell.
He battled for control. Best to get her away from him, fast. To step back, take time to think. Without the sunshine-and-flower scent of her filling his nostrils, without the soft handful of her lush curves playing havoc with his blood.
“What that man did, Josie, that Snake Barker...” He drew a breath, tried to drop his hands from her, but only stroked his fingers deeper in the cloud of her hair. He had a mind, one day, to sail back to America and hunt down Snake Barker like the animal he was. That would give him infinite pleasure, to kill the bastard and leave him for the vultures. “No man has a right to do that to a woman.”
“Try telling that to Snake. Ethan...”
“What?”
“I can’t believe that you care.” She swallowed hard. “That you... Last night you said you don’t even like me, remember? Or trust me.”
“I like you a hell of a lot more than I care to admit,” he grated, the words torn out of him, and as her delectable mouth dropped open in surprise, he suddenly hauled her even closer and lowered his lips to hers.
He hadn’t meant to kiss her. Hell, he hadn’t meant to touch her, or to hold her like this, every inch of their bodies touching, with her pretty breasts crushed against his chest, her hips molded to him. But once he’d started, he couldn’t seem to stop.
Just like he couldn’t stop kissing her.
He heard her moan deep in her throat, but it wasn’t an unhappy moan, nor was the way she slid her aims around his neck an indication that she wanted to be set loose. Which was damn well good because after the first taste of those lips, Ethan had no intention of setting her loose.
He deepened the kiss as her mouth parted and shaped itself to his. Heat seared, then the sweep of his tongue found hers, and he felt her quiver all through her body. She tasted sweeter than warm summer honey. More intoxicating than the most potent, delicious wine. He wanted to drink her in, swallow her up, devour her in one long, delicious never-ending gulp.
Ethan had thought his blood couldn’t grow hotter than it was, but suddenly, as her tongue touched his, and tentatively flickered between his lips, the fiery heat and knife-edged need in him intensified by several hundred degrees.
His hands stroked down her hips and cupped her bottom with a need that was fast building to a raging obsession.
Josie felt herself spinning through waves of pleasure, pleasure so deep and fiery and joyful, it burned out everything else. Reason, sanity, dignity—gone, gone, gone.
Her fingers curled in the thick silk of Ethan’s hair. Her mouth covered his with giving surrender. Heat swept through her body, sultry flames that incinerated every rational thought and left only the hunger of need, the hot raging of desire.
As she clutched him to her, she felt his tension and his strength and his incredible, powerful need answering her, demanding her.
Wondrously, she responded, her body unable to fight the primitive response. It began deep inside the lonely feminine reaches of her soul and burst forth like an avalanche.
“Josie, do you know how long I’ve been wanting to do this... ?”
“When you kissed me at our wedding, I never wanted you to let me go.”
“I never should have.” His mouth pressed against her throat.
“You had to... you p-passed out.” Her laughter tickled against his mouth. He kissed her bruisingly.
“Shows you what a damned fool I was... and still am.”
Laughter trembled through her, then turned to a pleasured gasp as his hands found her breasts.
Oh, in the name of heaven, what was he doing to her?
Taking her to heaven, she thought, and then all thought dissolved in a bathing cascade of delight.
Ethan’s thumbs brushed the hard peak of her nipples, sending shock waves of pleasure. She closed her eyes, letting sensation flutter lightly at first, then deepen until she clutched him in desperation.
His mouth burned ruthless kisses down her throat, then claimed lower territory, nipping and teasing through her gown even as his hands circled and stroked, driving her wild.
When he backed her against the trunk of a tree, and proceeded to run his fingers along the buttons of her gown, Josie felt her knees wobble.
She’d never felt anything remotely like this before—Snake had taken her, hurriedly, greedily, slamming against her, even his kisses hurtful and wet and disgusting. Never, never, had he touched her with this rough magic that brought a different kind of pain, a desperate ache so intense, so simultaneously bitter and sweet, it made her yearn and shiver and cling like ivy to stone.
Ethan’s kisses scorched, but the pain was pleasurable, like strong, hot wine warmed by the sun that burned clear through to the soul.
And then suddenly, as they sank to the grass, their bodies locked and entwined while Ethan lowered her upon the velvety streambank, a sound reached them from just over the rise. It was a soft sound, but distinct, and so oddly intrusive, they both heard it and froze.
“What the hell?” Ethan’s head flew up. He frowned, the instincts that had always alerted him to danger, and that had kept him alive in the untamed West for so many years, asserting themselves in a rush. He dropped Josie into the softness of the grass and sprang to his feet.
The sun shimmered in her eyes, and reality came crashing back. Josie found herself with her gown unbuttoned, her hair wild, her lips bruised and hot from the force of his
kisses. She was lying on the grass, heat flowing through her body in palpable waves. And Ethan was standing over her, very still, listening, his face dark and dangerous.
But Josie was less concerned about the sound they’d heard—a strange sound, rather like a hiccup, or a sneeze—than she was about the situation in which she found herself now that the madness of passion had fled. Good Lord, what had she been doing? What had she been thinking?
That was the problem, she decided dazedly. She sat up, a trembling hand fluttering to her throat. She hadn’t been thinking at all.
Ethan moved slowly, in a smooth, catlike prowl, toward the rise that cut up from the landscape just ahead of the clearing. But at the sound of Josie lurching to her feet behind him, he turned his head to look at her. He halted.
She knew from the intent expression on his face that he was listening for another sound, but she was too upset to care.
“You broke your promise!” she burst out in a strangled whisper.
For a moment he seemed torn between investigating the sound and coming back to her. But when she whirled away from him to begin fastening the buttons of her gown, and he heard the sob break from her throat, he started toward her.
He caught her as she was trying to run back toward the house.
“You’re not going anywhere yet. What promise did I break?”
“About us... our... marital relations. We had a b-bargain.”
“Seems to me I wasn’t the only one breaking it. Or am I wrong, sweetheart?”
There was laughter in his eyes. And tenderness. But because he was right, and she knew herself to be equally to blame, Josie’s anger mounted. She thrust his hand from her arm.
“Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me again.”
“Josie...”
“I mean it. Everything was easy before. We had an agreement, a business arrangement, and we both knew what was involved. Now you’re changing the rules. I won’t have it. I won’t!”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed on the blazing whiteness of her face. “You weren’t so all-fired-up about the rules a few minutes ago, Josie.”
“That’s not fair!” Shame and rage vibrated through her voice. “You promised me! I only wanted to play my part and then g-go—just as we agreed. You’re treating me like... like a harlot....”
“No,” he said sharply. There was an odd, challenging light in his eyes. “Like a wife. My wife. That’s what you are, Josie.”
But she wasn’t. She was Snake’s wife.
She broke free of his grasp and started back toward the house. Part of her wanted him to stop her, to kiss her again until her senses whirled, and nothing mattered but the sweetness she felt in his arms. And part of her wanted to race as far from him as she could get, a safe distance, whatever that might be, where she wouldn’t be subject to the power he had over her.
But he didn’t stop her. She didn’t even know if he watched her. She ran on, her skirts clenched in her fists, her feet flying over the meadow. And she didn’t stop until she had sped in a blur past Mrs. Fielding and Perkins and reached the solitude of her own room.
By then two truths were hammering through her, both so huge and frightening, she collapsed onto the bed, unable to stand.
The first truth was that she had left everyplace that had ever been home to her, every person who could have been called family. She was destined to run, to leave, to wander. And she would leave this place too: Stonecliff Park, London, England—whatever “home” she might know during this marriage with Ethan Savage.
That was one truth, but it was the other, larger one that brought tears springing to her eyes and caused her chest to ache with unspeakable pain.
The other truth was that she had fallen inescapably in love with Ethan Savage. And if she didn’t find a way to fall out of love with him, this time when she left, she would leave a chunk of her heart behind.
A chunk? Her whole heart.
He may as well cut it out with a Bowie knife and set it on his mantel. It would be his.
Josie knew she’d die from the pain of leaving him. Unless she could stop what had already begun. Unless she could stop herself from loving this black-haired man whose hypnotic lips and riveting gaze and powerful arms aroused her as no other man’s ever had, whose voice could be cutting, or unexpectedly gentle, who made her want to tell him everything and know everything of him, who made her ache and smile and cry and think about him night and day, when there were a hundred other things she ought to be thinking about....
Stop loving him.
But how?
They were going to London today, to continue this charade—if they could bluff it past Miss Crenshaw’s whispers. They would be together in the city, even more than they had been here.
The sob broke from her then, a long, low, agonized cry muffled behind shaking hands.
How was she to stop the very beating of her heart?
* * *
Ethan Savage did not go straight back to Stonecliff Park when Josie fled. He turned instead and went immediately in search of Ham Tyger.
The former groom was buttering bread for a sandwich. A wedge of ham sat on the kitchen table as he held the knife and glanced up at Ethan in the doorway.
“I’m leaving for London this afternoon, Ham.”
“So I’ve heard. Will you have a bite of lunch with me before you go, lad?”
Ethan shook his head. “That’s not why I’m here. There’s something I need you to do.”
“Aye, lad. Just ask it.”
Ethan came forward and leaned both hands upon the back of the chair. “Listen then. Here’s what you must do.”
* * *
He waited until all sounds, all footsteps, had faded away. Until silence claimed the clearing near the stream. Then, when only the chatter of the birds and the harried scrabbling of a squirrel remained, he sat up from within the curve of the rise and drew a deep breath.
He’d gotten drunk last night, after all he’d gone through, and slept it off for the most part at the inn. But then, of all the damnable things, he’d awakened early with a raging headache and a restlessness that no amount of strolling around the courtyard of the inn could relieve.
He’d rented a horse from the landlord and ridden out, thinking the air would do him good. Naturally he’d come here, to Stonecliff Park.
Not to the house, of course. Ethan mustn’t see him or he’d hit him again. But he’d needed to ride the glorious meadows and pastures, view the fishpond, the fine trees, the salutary stream, which should have been his... his!
He’d known it all along. The bitch was no more a lady than he was! What had she said: she’d been a dance hall girl? And a cook! And a thief!
Oliver Winthrop wanted to laugh out loud. But Ethan might still be nearby, so he clapped his flabby fingers over his mouth and silently thanked his lucky stars that his horse had thrown him, that he’d ended up sleeping off the last effects of the liquor here beneath this bloody rise, just out of sight of the stream.
That had been a bad moment though, when he’d sneezed. Fortunately, his luck held and Ethan had been too distracted by the girl’s charms and her tears to investigate properly.
But then my big handsome cousin has always been a fool for the cheap little tart, hasn’t he? Winthrop smirked to himself as he reached for his bowler nestled in the grass.
Ah, now he had ammunition. Now he had a way of getting what was rightfully his—of snatching it right back from his lying, cheating cousin. He’d make Ethan pay for hitting him, for trying to steal Stonecliff Park from him under false pretenses.
And that little hussy would pay for helping.
Dusting off his trousers, and setting his bowler on his head, Winthrop stood unsteadily and glanced around to get his bearings. Then, picking his way as quickly and quietly as he could, he headed back toward the Green Duck Inn.
He wanted to get the afternoon train to London. That would put him in the city this very afternoon. There were matters of great importance to see to—and not a
moment to lose.
Sixteen
London.
It was a city of striking contrasts. By day there was a panorama of fashionable shops, elegant homes, grand carriages, and fashionable parks. By night the glimmer of moonlight and fog and hissing gaslight across damp cobbled streets, the gaiety of dinner parties, and card parties, and balls, of opera at Covent Garden, and Gilbert and Sullivan at the Savoy.
On one side of town, beggars and drunkards and prostitutes prowled the streets of the rookery. On the other, often only a few blocks away, ladies in velvet cloaks and silks and taffetas chatted and flirted with gentlemen in swallowtail coats, walking sticks, and silk top hats.
London was a great city, a monstrous city, a mysterious city, where the grand homes of those in society, the pleasant streets and footmen and gardens, stood in stark contrast to the smoke and factories and gin houses that choked the slums of the poor.
Josie saw much of it—the gaily magnificent part of it—on Ethan’s arm during the week.
And everywhere she went, with everyone she spoke to, she asked about a young woman named Alicia Denby.
All to no avail. Lady Cornish, who invited her to walk in Hyde Park, had never met any such person. Miss Peabody and Mr. Himple, whom she met at the Savoy Theatre one night, looked puzzled and assured her that if the young lady lived among fashionable people in London, they would surely have known of her. And the very old, very intimidating dowager Lady MacCormick, whom she screwed up her courage to ask while shopping in Regent Street, only stared at her from beneath haughty silver brows and sniffed that she had never heard of such a young lady, and therefore this Miss Denby person must not be a young female whom the Countess should care to know.
Ethan had happened to stroll by the window at that moment and spotted her, and she had quickly changed the subject before he came through the door. The last thing she wanted was for him to discover she was searching for an English girl named Alicia Denby—she didn’t know how he would react to the idea of her searching for a possible relative, and she had no desire to find out. This was her secret, her dream, Josie told herself. It had nothing whatsoever to do with Ethan Savage or his plan to attain his inheritance.