“Yes.” She laughed.
He set his lips upon her throat.
Heaven—tickling, hot, delectable heaven curled into her breasts and made her nipples ache.
Slowly, delectably, he allowed his knuckles to slip around the side of her breast, and then his hand. He brought their mouths together again and the caress of his tongue made her need to feel him. Awake with need, she was shaking.
Then his hands were moving, scooping around her shoulders, down her back, drawing her closer, drawing her to him. Her thighs came against his, her hips, her breasts against his chest. His arousal was obvious, and hard, but he did not put her away, as though he wanted her to feel how he desired her. She was flushed and hot and did not know what to do with her hands. She yearned to touch him. He held her with only one hand spread across the small of her back, and as he bent to kiss her throat his hand surrounded her breast.
Soft whimpers from her throat scored the midnight silence. It was like nothing she had felt, nothing in the world—his hand holding her entirely, intentionally. His fingers stroked, touching her nipple through the gown.
“Beautiful woman,” he murmured against her throat, his voice unsteady.
Touching her was affecting him.
“Speak again,” she whispered.
He brought his lips to hers and his thumb passed across her nipple again, then circled it, playing, taunting. It seemed he knew precisely where to touch her to make her need more.
“What would you have me say?” he said, his lips brushing the corner of hers, then her throat.
“Anything. I want—” She caught her confession between her teeth.
“What do you want, wild one? Give me your order. You have but to utter it an’ thy will be done.”
“I want to hear in your voice how touching me moves you.”
“Moves me?” He drew a shuddering breath. “Undoes me.” Upon the words, his hand slipped around her buttocks, cupping it completely, and he fit her to him. “Do you feel what you do to me, wild one?”
“More,” she heard herself say.
He gave her more, urging her to him with the power of his hand until she was seeking him without any urging. Allowing him to press her knees apart, she welcomed the hardness of his body against hers. Sweet, tight heat was rising in her, tangling her inside and making her need even more. With nothing but clothing between them he was making her make love to him, and she wanted it.
Fingers sunk in her hair and mouth commanding hers, he let her bear up against him. She was wild for it—for the friction of their bodies pressed so intimately together, scandalously, beautifully. Hunger licked like flames between her legs, hot and raw and needing him there.
Pleasure fell open within her, her cry of surprise becoming a moan of ecstasy as the convulsions swept up her body. She gulped air and more tumbling whimpers sought to escape against his lips. She swallowed them back. From cheeks to toes her skin felt afire with shock and shame—and triumph. Hands gripping his hard arms, she felt his kiss on her tender lips with her whole body, as though he kissed her everywhere now.
“Gabriel.” The word was barely audible, and shaking.
“Judas, woman.” His hands were tight about her waist. “You are—your lips, your voice—”
Sliding her palm up his chest, she did what she had always wanted to do: she touched him as he had touched her that morning in the empty shop, with her fingertips, meeting the firm flesh and bone of his jaw and stroking, discovering the day’s growth of whiskers that made the hot contractions echo deep within her again, and then allowing her fingertips to stray across his lips.
“I dreamed of touching you like this.” She struggled to draw full breaths, caressing the man she had craved since before she even understood what feminine craving was. Naïve and innocent, too ignorant to imagine anything more and too in love to imagine anything better, she had fantasized this.
He remained still, his eyes dark shadows watching her, his breathing reckless.
Drawing out of his grasp, she stepped back and sliced her palm across his cheek.
He blinked hard and shifted his jaw.
“That,” he said, “was no’ quite what I expected to happen next.”
“That was for making me have wrongful thoughts about a man who was not my betrothed when you knew that I was too naïve to understand how you were affecting me.”
For a moment he said nothing. “You said you’d put it behind you.”
“I did. I thought I had.” She took a big breath. “Obviously I haven’t.”
“All right.”
“All right? Is that the sum total of your reaction? I have never struck another person in my life, yet you stand there as though being struck by a woman is a daily occurrence for you. Perhaps it is. Of course it is. Oh, dear God, have I learned nothing? Nothing?” she said, jerking her face upward.
“Being struck by a woman—by anyone—is no’ a daily occurrence for me, fortunately,” he said with beautiful control in his voice. “For, unsurprisingly, it smarts.”
She stared at her stinging hand, then at him.
“Good Lord, what have I done? You make me forget myself entirely. Forgive me.”
“Have you been wanting to slap me for five an’ a half years?”
“No. You have just inspired my memory.”
“I’d like to inspire it more. But only the part before the slap, if we can arrange that.”
Biting both lips between her teeth, she walked swiftly toward the battlements.
“Please go. I don’t want”—this weakness, this desperate desire to be near him and to have more of him and to laugh with him—“I don’t want you.”
“You do. You know you do.”
“Yes, I do. But please go now anyway.”
“What wrongful thoughts?”
“Have so few women admired you lately that you must reach back into ancient history to find comfort in the virginal fantasies of a girl?”
“Every word that falls from those lips drives me a wee bit madder. Have pity, lass.”
“I really believe that your madness needs no assistance from me.”
“If I have ever been mad, woman, ’tis entirely because o’ you.”
“No.” She faced him across the nighttime glittering with frost and starlight. “I think you truly are mad. You must be to continue this mysterious concealment.”
His brow knit.
“More silence,” she said. “You continue to refuse to share your grand secret with me. Then perhaps you will answer specific questions. Why do the women of Glen Village hold you in such awe that they conceal your secret too? Why do the Edinburgh police allow the symbol of the so-called Devil’s Duke to decorate gateposts and alleyways all over the city? Why does no one remove those marks—marks I think have nothing to do with the Freemasons but are there to guide young women eager to find the Devil’s Duke? And why do Bess and Angus Allen still admire you—trust you despite your blackened reputation and the mysterious fire that nearly destroyed their livelihoods? Deny me answers to those questions, if you will.”
His breaths made stark plumes of starlit cold.
“How do you know Bess and Angus?”
“I went there. Months ago I went to the place that everyone said the missing girls had last been seen. I looked for you there and when I did not find you I sought information about you.”
“Months ago?” he said almost too quietly.
“I could find little trace of Penny, but I had reason to believe she was searching for you. You could not be found in Edinburgh. No one seemed to know where you were.”
“I was in London, at Westminster. The prime minister an’ the king knew where I was.”
“I did not actually wish an audience with you, specifically. I believed that if I found Cassandra Finn and Maggie Poultney I might find my friend. I went to your house that day of the fire. Inside it.”
His eyes widened. “You were in my house? My house?”
“I was ill at the time,
in a terrible fever. I don’t actually recall any of it, but in the hospital I had vivid dreams of the inside of a house I had never seen before.”
“Hospital?”
“It was weeks before I was able to think clearly again, and many more weeks before I was well enough to leave hospital and return there. It was then that I spoke with Bess and Angus.”
“Weeks? My God, Amarantha.” He shifted partially away and ran a hand over his face. The gesture was so familiar—so him—she ached despite her shaking. “I dinna know which is strongest now: anger that you didna share this with me when you first told me o’ your search for your friend, or terror for what you might have suffered if you actually were in the house when the fire—” He broke off and took a hard breath. “But the strongest feeling I’m having now, I’ll admit, is pleasure an’ pride for the brave, enterprising woman you are. Why didna you contact me, write to me, find me so that I could help you find her?”
“I tried! I went all the way to Kallin.”
“You used a false name. You didna trust that I would help you.”
“Why should I have trusted you?” she cried. “You, of all men?”
“I never gave you reason to think me a dishonorable man, Amarantha. Ever. Despite what I wanted o’ you. Despite what I could have taken from you, had I chosen to.”
He had only taken her heart.
“I have never known what to think of you,” she said. “But in truth it is my own feelings that I do not trust, my feelings for you that are tangled up with the past.”
“So ’tis easier to believe me a villain?”
“I did not want you to be the devil! Every piece of evidence was pointing toward you, and I wanted to hate you because of my own guilt for what I had done then. I had allowed it to happen between us, despite the promises I had made to others. I wanted the fault to be yours. I had to know for myself if you were truly what they were saying of you.”
Gabriel’s gut was churning with the most painful sensations. Anger and incredulity. Despair.
“You actually believed that I could be abducting an’ murdering young women.”
“No. No. How can you not understand? I was betrothed to another man yet I could not stop thinking about you, longing to be with you, even months after—I needn’t tell you this. You knew how I felt.”
Months?
“I thought I did,” he said, less certain now.
“I made such a horrible mistake marrying as I did, misunderstanding a man’s character so thoroughly, trusting him so blindly that despite what I knew, I believed his lies. When I came to Scotland and heard the rumors about you, I had to know the truth. I could not bear that the man who had made me laugh and fall in love with each moment of every day—that he could truly be a monster. A seducer of innocence, yes. I had long since known you to be that. But not what they said you were. It was simply not possible. I had to prove to myself that at least once my heart had not been entirely blind.”
Her heart.
Her eyes were glittering.
“If you have nothing to hide,” she said, “tell me the truth about Cassandra Finn and Maggie Poultney now. Where are they?”
“Kallin.”
The cold wind twisted about the battlements.
She brushed past him and through the door, and her footsteps receded swiftly down the stairs.
Chapter 23
A Prelude to a Kiss
What she had allowed him to do to her . . .
What she had done.
What she had said.
She had never imagined a man would want to touch her without putting himself inside her.
She had allowed it, shown him her hunger, and he had not been disgusted. He had welcomed it.
Wild one.
He called her wild one, as though the girl she had been years ago was more truly she than the woman she had become.
No lamp burned in the gatehouse window as Amarantha hurried across the forecourt. Tabitha must have finally closed their manuscript for the night. The writing of it exhausted her friend, but they both knew it was the right thing to do. Tabitha’s story—and other stories like hers—must be told. People in England and Scotland and Wales, so far from Britain’s western colonies but who enjoyed the fruits of those islands—the sugar in their tea and confections, the cotton and indigo that was so popular in seamstress shops, and the coffee and chocolate on breakfast tables—people must learn the horrors of the lives of the people who lived as chattel to produce those luxuries. Once they did, they would not allow it to continue.
Opening the door to the gatehouse quietly, she rubbed her palms over her frozen cheeks. On the rooftop she had not felt the cold. He had not allowed it.
“Amarantha?” Tabitha said from the darkness.
“Forgive me for waking you.”
Tabitha came into the moonlight. She wore her cloak, gloves, and boots, and she clutched her traveling bag in one hand.
“Why are you dressed for travel?”
“The courtyard gate is locked, so I knew you were not at the church. I did not know where you had gone, but I could not search for you in the castle. I have waited only for your return.”
“For my return? What are you doing?”
“I must climb out that window,” she said, gesturing, “and down to the stream bed. But I require assistance. There is nothing sturdy enough to tie the rope I have fashioned in place. The drop to the stream bed is steep.”
“No. Of course I will not assist you in running away in the middle of the night, into the cold and darkness, alone. Have you gone mad?”
“I cannot remain here.”
“Has someone given you insult? Mrs. Tate is horrid, I know. Or was it one of the men? Has Mr. Bellarmine—”
“No. He is kind and respectful, as are Dr. Shaw and the duke.”
“Then the servants? Have any of them—”
“No, Amarantha.” Her eyes were fraught. “You do not understand. You cannot understand, no matter how sympathetic and compassionate you are. You will never have this fear.”
“But you are angry, too. I can see it. Let me at least try to help you, if I can. Tell me what you fear here.”
“I wished never to speak his name, never to reveal him for fear of his retribution, on both myself and you.”
“Him?” Sickness crawled up her throat. “The man who caused Jonathan to be murdered?” The man who wished to replace Tabitha’s freedom with shackles again.
“Amarantha, I saw him here tonight. He is Jonah Brock.”
Morning sunlight slanted through the kitchen windows.
“Mrs. Hook, where is—” Gabriel still could not say the name. Not even now. “Where is she?”
“Mrs. Garland’s gone with the others.”
“Gone riding?” She was indefatigable. She needed more than cards and tea and passive pursuits to slake her thirsts. She needed him.
“To Kallin, Your Grace, as you gave Mickey instruction yesterday.”
“To Kallin? No.”
“Now there,” she said with a shake of the rolling pin, “I canna say I’ve the hearing o’ a girl, but I’m no’ deaf yet. The lad said Kallin.”
“Did she go alone?”
“Mrs. Aiken an’ Mr. Bellarmine went along.”
Judas, he was a fool. She had filled his head with a fantasy and he had played right into her hands.
No. He could not believe that. She had spoken sincerely, honestly. And he had been a fool anyway.
He found Mick polishing tack.
“Yesterday you said I was to give her any vehicle or mount she pleased, Captain,” he said earnestly. “She ordered up the light carriage an’ said she an’ Mrs. Aiken and Mr. Bellarmine were to leave before sunup, by your orders.”
“My orders?” As though that woman would do anything he ordered.
“Aye, Captain. The gentleman drove, o’ course, ladies being weak as they are.”
Not those ladies.
But it was some comfort. In the company of two o
thers, she could not travel swiftly. He would ride, and either catch them on the road or bypass them. Then he and the intrepid girl who had become a woman of passion would have a good long talk.
Right after he kissed her again.
PART V
1823
The Duke
Chapter 24
The Secret
Glen Irvine, Scotland
After two days in a light carriage journeying over roads pocked with late-winter’s displeasure, it was too much to expect Tabitha to remain calm, but she made a valiant effort.
Arriving finally at Kallin, the greeting they received was not, however, what Amarantha hoped.
“His Grace is no’ in residence,” the young woman at the outermost gate said firmly. She had yellow hair plaited tightly beneath a straw hat, and she wore a long coat, heavy boots, and lines of worry across her pale brow.
“Yes, indeed, for he is currently at Haiknayes,” Thomas said cheerfully. “He has sent us here with instructions to await his arrival.”
It was the story Amarantha and Tabitha had told him. Though he was clearly suspicious of it, he had assisted them without question.
“Fret not,” Amarantha said when they had turned back toward Glen Village. “They will give us warm welcome at the Solstice Inn.”
Mary Tarry, the keeper of the Solstice Inn, showed no surprise at Amarantha’s elegant gown, costly bonnet, or fine kid gloves. Instead she received their party with the same forthright welcome she had given Anne Foster months earlier.
“Welcome back, Mrs. F—”
“Garland,” Amarantha supplied.
“Mrs. Garland it is,” she said with a wise eye. “I’ll have refreshments in the parlor for ye an’ yer companions immediately.”
Amarantha glanced at her friends. Thomas was directing Plum in the distribution of luggage to their bedchambers.
“That would be lovely, Mrs. Tarry,” she said quietly. “But I would prefer a spot in the corner of your kitchen.”
Mary Tarry smiled reluctantly. “I’ve no doubt, lass.”
It was clearly a rare occurrence: the local laird striding into the inn’s kitchen and spearing every person there with the dark fire in his eyes. Everybody—from the cook plucking chickens, to the maid stirring a pot, to the inn’s fiddler plucking a tune, to Sophie sharing news with Amarantha as she sewed an exquisite undergown—everybody halted their activities and stared.
The Duke Page 21