“Then sell. Have Gifford send me the papers to sign.” He laughed-—a soft, mocking sound—and shrugged his indifference. “How much richer shall I be, Briggs?”
“You should see a profit of two thousand pounds, I should imagine. Nothing of which to be ashamed.” Briggs’s soft gray eyes were dark with reproach.
“Ah, well. ’Tis only money.” Ridley looked at his steward’s expression and laughed again. “Shall I forever be a disappointment to you, Briggs? Because wealth matters so little to me, while you—gentle-born though you are—have nothing?”
Allegra could hear the crunch of Briggs’s jaw as he ground his teeth together. “I am content, milord,” he said at last, in a strangled voice.
“You’re a poor liar, Briggs. Content to serve me? When you might have a home, and a wife and family—if you could afford it?”
“I shall take whatever God gives me in this life, milord.” Briggs looked as though he were in physical pain. It was all Allegra could do to keep from rushing to his defense in the face of Ridley’s cruel and unwarranted attack.
Ridley’s mouth twisted in mockery. “A noble answer from a noble man. But you would do better if your brother were to graciously die and leave you his title and his fortune. As mine did, for me. At the least, you should marry an heiress, as I did. Then you will go through life without a care. Without a care,” he repeated bitterly, as though he were saying the words for himself alone. He scowled, reached for the bottle of gin, and drank deeply of its contents.
Briggs gave a curt bow. His soft young face was a mask of controlled anger and despair. “By your leave, milord. I shall write at once to Gifford.” He bowed again and hurried from the room.
Allegra stood like a stone, seething with suppressed outrage. To shame Briggs that way…
Ridley continued to ignore her. He stood up and stretched, a long, lazy, indolent gesture. He unbuttoned his ruffled shirt cuffs then, and pulled off the garment. His arms, beneath a menacing thatch of dark-brown hairs, rippled with bulging muscles as he moved, and his back and shoulders were sleek and powerful-looking. “Lay out my clothes, Ram,” he said to his waiting valet. “I feel fit as a fiddle.” He turned suddenly and caught Allegra with his piercing glance. “Well?” he demanded.
She gulped in uneasy fear. Did he want her to leave? To stay and endure a beating at his hands? To beg his pardon or—God save her—be forced to watch him as he stripped naked and dressed afresh? “Well, what, milord?” she ventured.
“What are you thinking at this moment? I should like to hear.”
She looked away. “Nothing, milord.”
“Damn it, don’t insult me further by lying,” he growled. “Your eyes are guarded, but they speak volumes. I would know your thoughts. You can speak freely. I give you leave.”
She hesitated, then faced him boldly. “Well, then. Mr. Briggs is a good man.”
“That he is.”
“You are the master. You can do and say what you wish.”
He shrugged, his eyes heavy-lidded with boredom. “Indeed, I can. The privilege of rank.”
She didn’t know whether she was angry at his callous indifference or still suffering for Briggs’s humiliation and pain. Her eyes filled with hot tears. She pointed to the array of knives and swords upon the wall. “You scarce need those weapons,” she said, her voice catching. “For you have learned to wound in a more terrible and cruel way. With your words. Such words as break the heart of every person who comes within your sway. And for that, I despise you.” She brushed angrily at her eyes. “That is what I’m thinking at this moment, milord.”
His face turned a bright scarlet and he took a step toward her. For one terrible moment she feared he would strike her. Then he whirled away and slammed his fist on a small, carved table. It collapsed into splinters. “Get out, girl,” he said in a choked voice, then turned to his valet. “I shall go to Ludlow, today, Ram. Do you understand?”
Ram nodded. It seemed to Allegra as though a secret message had passed between them. “Of course, Sir Greyston,” he said. “I shall be having your horse saddled at once. But what of your meeting with the rector in Newton?”
“Not today.” Ridley shook his head, then suddenly groaned and buried his face in his hands. When he spoke, his voice was muffled and filled with deep grief. “God preserve me, I must go to Ludlow today. Or go mad.”
Chapter Five
Grey Ridley stumbled along the night-dark passageway in his stocking feet, holding his candlestick aloft with an unsteady hand. He stubbed his toe against the unseen edge of a table and muttered a curse under his breath. This was madness, and he knew it—at least in the part of his brain that hadn’t been numbed by an excess of drink.
He was sorry now that he had started in on the gin. His visit to Ludlow yesterday had been good for his soul. It had brought him peace, at least for a little while. He had come back late to Baniard Hall, eaten his supper with more appetite than he’d had in a long time, and then gone to bed and slept like a baby. The sleep of the innocent, sweet and untroubled by dreams.
It was a nightingale that had wakened him. Some time after four, he guessed, when the moon had set. The bird and its song had started him to thinking, there in the dark quiet of his bedchamber. It was rare to hear nightingales at the beginning of July. Their spring songs were done; their mating completed. The young were already hatched, and the family settled in its nest. The parents. The offspring. Together, as Nature intended.
And that thought, of course, had reminded him of Ruth. And of the gray and lifeless baby he had held in his hands while the bitter tears flowed. A boy. A son. A child who might have been toddling by now, instead of lying beside its mother in a moldering grave.
And suddenly the gin had seemed the warmest comfort in his cold and empty world.
But then, after a while, he had thought of the girl. A strange, intense creature. She burned with the flame of life, sending out sparks of warmth. They touched him, ignited him—even when he didn’t want to be touched. He hadn’t thought he was capable of any feelings anymore. God knows he didn’t want feelings. He’d spent too long numbing his heart with gin and indifference and ready women. Constructing a safe, thick wall of dispassion that brought him a certain release. Now, because of the girl, he had felt rage more than once in the past few days. Rage, hot and fierce—the deep, frightening, and unfamiliar sensation of human emotion. He didn’t like it at all.
But the girl was all emotion, pure and instinctive, without regard to reason. She had wept, for the love of God, merely because he’d spoken to Briggs with sarcasm! What was Briggs to her, that she should care? For that matter, what was he himself to her? He had given her no cause to love him, with his indenture contract that thwarted her plans of revenge. And yet he had seen concern in her eyes when she had ministered to him. A rare warmth and compassion that flowed from her, whether he deserved it or not.
Even the intensity of her hatred for Wickham was extraordinary, no matter what the man had done. He guessed, of course, that Tom Wickham had ruined her. That was the usual story. In the Colonies, probably, where the girl came from; he’d heard that Wickham had spent some time in America or the West Indies. But it must have been years ago, since the girl had clearly forgotten what the man looked like, and had mistaken him for Wickham the day she’d attacked him. Years ago—and still her hatred burned brightly. It bewildered him, but fascinated him as well. All that passion and fire. A glowing rocket of incandescence. How could she live with it, without being consumed?
The window at the end of the passageway showed a sky already beginning to turn gray. It would soon be dawn, and the Hall would stir to life. Madness, indeed, to be found this way.
But…what the devil. He had come this far. And he wanted to see her. He felt drawn to her like a moth to a flame. What did he see in her? His destruction? Or his salvation? He couldn’t begin to tell; he only knew she had haunted him from the first moment he had gazed into those dark, sad eyes.
He climbe
d the back staircase to the servants’ quarters in the attic story. Her room was here, just at the head of the stairs. He chuckled softly. Rutledge must have guessed what was in his thoughts when she’d conveniently put the girl into a room by herself. Not that it took much guesswork: his interest in beautiful women was common enough knowledge in the servants’ hall. And Allegra had an exotic beauty that was heart-stopping, a lush body that would take any man’s breath away.
He wanted her, that was for certain. But—unlike the parade of whores and agreeable serving girls who had warmed his bed since Ruth had died—he wanted more than just a night’s casual amusement. As absurd as it was, it seemed suddenly important that this one should bring all her fire and all her passion to their encounter. And for that he was willing to wait—to entice her, torment and tease her, beguile her, until she was madly eager to yield all to him. Until she could admit what he was sure he had already seen in her—a weakness for his touch, for his kiss. However much she tried to deny it, even to herself.
She was lying curled on her side when he crept into her room and set down his candle. The night had been warm; she had pushed off her sheet as she slept and now lay uncovered, her legs tucked up, her head resting on one hand. She reminded him of a kitten, small and soft and adorable. He felt his body growing tense with desire, just looking at her.
Her raven hair was braided into a single plait down her back, and it lay like a dark bridge between the bronzed skin of her face and neck and the paler flesh below. Her shift was tousled and draped loosely around her, exposing her soft shoulders and tantalizing him with a glimpse of one full breast. He rubbed his hand across his mouth like a thirsty man and lowered himself carefully to the edge of the bed. The movement disturbed her without waking her. She sighed and turned onto her face, uncurling her legs and stretching like a contented cat before settling back into sleep. The edge of her shift just covered her firm, rounded bottom; her legs were bare and spread invitingly. A small pulse throbbed softly in the hollow at the back of one knee.
Grey caught his breath, the blood pounding in his temples. She was as provocative and alluring as any woman he had ever seen. Sweet and ripe and fragrant, like a summer fruit waiting to be tasted. He burned with the desire to crush her in his arms, to explore every inch of that body with fervent hands. To force her to yield. To…
He shook his head. No! Surely he’d had too much to drink. To take her against her will? Was he a complete idiot? He hadn’t sunk that low yet. He had enough on his conscience without attempting to rape the girl. There wasn’t sufficient gin in this world to drown that additional sin, if he was fool enough to commit it. He reminded himself that he had come only for a kiss or two. Because the memory of her tender mouth still lingered on his lips.
Carefully he placed his hands alongside hers on the bed, ready to pounce the moment she awakened. He smiled in satisfaction, bent down, and planted his eager lips on the line of feathery wisps at the nape of her neck.
Someone was kissing her. Her neck and shoulders, the corner of her cheek, a sensitive spot beneath her earlobe. Delicate kisses that made her quiver with delight. It was the sweetest dream she had ever had, strange and new and thrilling. So unlike the cold meanness of her life that she prayed never to waken. She moaned, a soft, throaty murmur, and wriggled under the gentle assault. She felt a warm hand at the back of her thighs, sensuously stroking the bare flesh. It moved upward and fondled her buttocks through her shift, probing intimately and insistently where the soft mounds came together. She shivered. Oh, heavenly dream! The hand moved on and caressed her back. Even with the protection of her shift, she could still feel the soreness from Crompton’s whip.
Crompton’s whip? Godamercy, this was no dream! She blinked open her eyes to the dawn. Fighting her sleepy confusion, she tried to roll over and sit up. Instead, she found her wrists suddenly pinned to the bed, her movements restricted by the force of the hands that held her down.
She heard a soft laugh above her. “I wondered how long it would take you to become aware,” said a mocking voice. “Not that it hasn’t been pleasant for me…”
“Ridley!” she cried, frightened and surprised in equal measure. She grunted and struggled desperately against his pinioning hands. The growing awareness of her peril only added to her frenzy. She tossed her head from side to side in frustration; it was useless. She couldn’t even turn enough to see his face. He would be smirking, no doubt, the lecherous devil! “Curse you, villain,” she said, and pounded her feet in impotent fury against the bed.
“Be still,” he said. “I have the advantage, and you know it.”
By the faint slur in his voice, she could tell that he had been drinking. She wriggled again. “Cowardly rogue. Let me go!”
He laughed. “I’m content to let you struggle until you are quite spent. But I should warn you that each time you twist, it raises your shift a trifle higher. A futile effort for you, but a feast for my eyes. I think the most seductive part of a woman’s body is at the end of her spine. A place of soft hills and dales. Very captivating.”
Allegra gulped, remembering the sensual feel of his hand on her buttocks. She cursed the weakness of her body that had enjoyed such an immodest caress. She felt her face flame red and tried to hide her head against her pillow.
“Your blush is charming,” he said with a chuckle, “but I only meant that I like it if a woman has dimples there. Do you have dimples there?”
“Do you hope to find out this morning?” she asked bitterly, feeling as helpless as Mama must have felt with Squire Pringle. “Was your drunken promise worthless? Did you come to rape me, after all?”
“Not at all. I wanted you willing, and I still do. But you crept into my room to look at me as I slept. Yesterday morning. I thought to return the favor. And then I couldn’t forbear the desire to do more than merely look. ’Tis a pleasant way to waken, is it not? With the softness of kisses?” He brushed his lips against her bare shoulder.
She tried to shake him off. “A pox on you, you plaguey dog.” It was madness to speak so boldly to him, but her anger was driving out her fear, her common sense.
“Why do you resist me? Is it that you fear to succumb to my charms?” His voice was filled with mocking humor.
“’Od’s blood, no! Never in all this world,” she added scornfully.
“Then grant me my few kisses, without so much stir. And then I’ll go on my way.”
She was beginning to realize that he enjoyed tantalizing her as much as anything else. It was chancy to trust him, she supposed. But her instincts told her that she was probably safe from rape, as he had sworn she would be. At least if she didn’t fight him or anger him. And what did it signify, a few kisses? The sooner he was satisfied, the sooner he would leave her in peace. She sighed tiredly and relaxed against the bed. “Take your pleasure, milord. I cannot prevent you.”
Allegra waited for the touch of his lips on her flesh. Instead—and without releasing her wrists—he curled his fingers around her hands until they reached the tender vulnerability of her palms. He scratched gently, a delicate, tickling sensation that sent unexpected thrills racing through her body. God save her. How could she be so weak, so susceptible? She closed her eyes and turned her head away from him, lest he see how easily she could be beguiled. And when he bent again to stroke her neck and back and shoulders with warm, velvety lips, she prayed he wouldn’t know that she had begun to tremble inside. “Have you done yet, milord?” she said, forcing her voice to sound hard and indifferent. She bit her lip in helplessness and buried her face in the pillow.
He laughed, clearly aware of her weakness. “The fair Allegra. Your ears are charming. Did you know that? Golden shells, like ripened apricots from the sun. And behind your ears, where the sun never touched you…pale crescent moons, cool and inviting…”
She suppressed a gasp of pleasure when she felt his lips on her ear, the tantalizing current of his breath as he blew softly across the whorls and passages until they tingled, alive with feel
ing. Aroused by his skillful seduction, it was impossible for her not to luxuriate in this sweet torment. To give in to the gentleness of his mouth. She had known only the lecherous mouths of the men of Charles Town—hungry, greedy, selfish. They had wanted a passing kiss, no more, for the payment of a few coins. But Ridley wanted her surrender. And he seemed willing to pay in time and patience until she crumbled.
His voice at her ear was as seductive as his lips. “You enjoy this, do you not?” he whispered. “Does it make your body feel warm? Are your breasts swelling against the bed in hungry desire? Your breasts are very beautiful. I picture myself touching them, kissing them…Can you imagine it now? The feel of my lips upon your breast?”
She could imagine it…and more. She had never been more aware of her body than at this moment, even as he reminded her of it. She was vividly alive to every sensation—the tense fullness of her bosom pressing against the mattress, the pounding of her heart, the strange and wonderful fluttering deep within her vitals. She groaned in frustration. She couldn’t endure any more of this torment. She was only human. “For the love of God…stop!” she cried.
He gave a bored, drunken laugh and released her wrists. “I think you will be remarkably easy to seduce.”
He was enjoying her suffering, the villain! She couldn’t prevent the tears from filling her eyes. “You devil,” she said, choking back a sob. She struggled to turn and sit up. Dear heaven! She looked down at herself in horror. Would her humiliation never end this morning? Her shift had slipped off one shoulder, exposing her breast. She wanted to die.
Before she could adjust it, Ridley—a lazy smile on his face—reached out and pulled up the garment so it covered her modestly. Then he stood and bowed, the mocking, florid gesture of a cavalier. “I bid you good morrow,” he said, and left her alone.
She was shaking so hard that her bedstead creaked. He had said that he planned to seduce her into his bed. He had promised he wouldn’t rape her. But where was the need for rape? He clearly had realized—from that first trembling moment when he’d examined her back in the kitchen parlor—that she was vulnerable to his kisses and caresses. She was filled with self-disgust. She rubbed an angry hand across her tear-stained face. Little fool! Where was the need to take her by force, when she would be undone by her own weakness?
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