Come the Dawn

by Christina Skye

  “Will you?” Her voice was a trembling whisper. “Sometimes the past seems so far away that it might as well be a dream. And other times it all feels like yesterday, the pain still bleeding like a raw wound.”

  “What are you saying, India? Damn it, what are you trying to tell me?”

  She looked down without thinking, her eyes pools of sadness. Thorne followed her gaze to the tears glinting like jewels on the white fabric.

  On the neat layers of pristine baby clothing.

  Suddenly his fingers tightened. “My — my God.” His voice was strangled. “You didn’t tell me. I never knew — never even suspected—”

  A shudder went through him, a great wrenching of muscle and tendon and cartilage that felt as if a giant hand had reached into his chest and torn everything inside out. “Is it true? Was there a child?” he asked hoarsely.

  India did not answer. Her hand simply continued to stroke the fine white linen.

  Devlyn pulled her back against him fiercely. His voice broke. “What happened, India? Dear God, I have to know the truth.”

  India felt something hot fall on her shoulder and knew it was Devlyn’s tears. She knew, too, that it was time for her husband to taste the grief that she had carried so long in silence. “He was … a beautiful little boy, with eyes as wise as his father’s. He was the joy of my life for the short time I had him. And I don’t regret anything, not even one second of time I had with him, do you hear? Even though I lost his so — so suddenly.”

  “He died so young. I never even had a chance to see him.” Devlyn’s lips locked in a tight line. “And I left you alone in a strange city. With a child, my child…” He looked away, his voice ragged. “What kind of a monster was I?” He shook his head. “Why didn’t I wait? Why didn’t I have the control to hold back until I’d come home from battle? My blindness meant the loss of my son. Our son.” His fingers clenched.

  “Don’t, Dev. I don’t regret anything about Brussels,” India said fiercely. “It was only luck that you came back to me. Don’t try to carry the weight of those choices on your shoulders.”

  “How can you look at me without hating me when I missed so bloody much? Everything of any importance.” His hand fell to her slender waist. “I missed the sight of you full with my child. I missed the sight of your joy and radiance, as you bloomed every day. And I missed the sight of a boy with wise eyes, smiling; as you held him in your arms. And all for what?” He laughed bitterly. “For an empty notion of honor and a country that cares less for heroes than it does for gold guineas and noisy parades,” he growled.

  “You had your duty, and I had mine. You can’t go back and change that.”

  “If only I could!” Dev looked down at the neat layers of clothes. He held up a tiny shirt, his eyes glistening. When he turned, the sun was slanting golden through India’s hair, glinting over the tears on her cheek. The sight made him catch a ragged breath. “I want another chance, India. I want you. I want this.” He rested the fragrant linen against his cheek. “I want a house full of laughter and children spilling everywhere. Even if I am terrified whether I can be any fit sort of father.” He smiled crookedly. “It’s not as if I had a normal childhood. My father was an inveterate gamester and my mother was…” He cleared his throat. “Perhaps I’d better not give her a name.”

  “You won’t be like that.”

  “No?” Dev laughed bitterly. “I’m damnably afraid I’ll never be able to put down roots. What if I find I’m no good as a father or a husband? What if I cut line and run, like the worst kind of coward?”

  “Then we’ll all run away with you. I do know most of Turkestan, after all. And there is still that Bedouin leader who would be only too happy to—”

  “You’ve made your point,” Thorne said darkly.

  “But I don’t want him. I want you.” India stared up into his eyes, needing. Wanting.

  Suddenly there was a universe of wanting for both of them.

  Her voice came low and husky. “I warned you, Dev. I never promised to make this easy for you.” Her hand drifted along his chest and slid between the folds of his shirt, nestling against the warm planes of taut muscle.

  “Any more of that, woman, and I’ll—”

  India eased sleekly against him. “You’ll what?”

  A muscle flashed at Thorne’s jaw as he read the hunger in her eyes. “I think,” he said huskily, “that I will give you anything you want, my lady.”

  “What I want is this.” India eased to her toes and slid her tongue against his ear.

  Dev’s hands clenched against her soft hips as she whispered lingeringly. “Sweet God, India, I’ll die of pain right here and now.”

  “You can’t die of what I suggested.” She frowned. “At least I don’t think you can. I’ve never tried it of course, though I suspect there were any number of men who would have been happy to show me how to—”

  Dev caught her up against his chest, his expression thunderous. “I don’t want to hear about the other men who have fallen in love with you. Don’t cast my stupidity up in my face. For me you were the only one, ever since I saw you in that muddy street in Brussels.”

  “And what about the notorious river pirate?”

  “He was never as notorious as he seemed. And he was simply a role, another of those I have learned to play too well in this chameleon’s life of mine. Only you seem to have the uncanny ability to get past my facade and find the truth of me.”

  India bent her head and nuzzled the warm skin at his neck, delighting in his instant shudder. “Prove it to me then. I want to feel your heart pounding against mine. I want to see your eyes blind with desire. And then I want to feel you against me. Driving inside me.”

  Devlyn groaned. His hands shook as he kissed her.

  They didn’t make it to the bed where Charles II had slept. Thorne lifted her back against the nearest stable surface, which happened to be the great trestle table.

  Never mind that the Magna Carta had been signed there. They had their own momentous history to make, history of a more intimate sort, against those polished wooden planes.

  In a flurry of black broadcloth and peach satin, they struggled against layers of unwanted clothes.

  “Dev, I-I can’t breathe.”

  “Neither can I, sauvage.” He tossed away her damask sash, eased her foot around his waist and slid up her skirts, his eyes dark with the sight of her creamy skin. “It will be here, ma mie. I can’t wait. It feels like forever already.”

  “Yes, here. Now.”

  And it was there, right at that moment. India met him halfway, supple and perfect, smooth heat against his hard male need. Her hands gripped his shoulders and she eased him deeper inside her.

  “Doucement, beauty,” he said hoarsely. “Too fast and I’ll hurt you.”

  But India burned in his touch, burned with months of fantasies and the raw reality of the prior night. Her Delamere blood was on fire and there was not a shred of patience left to her. “Give me tomorrow, Dev. Here in this square of sunshine help me make another child. He would want that of us, I think.”

  Her husky plea slammed through Thorne. His hands tightened and he drove deeper, feeling her clench around him. Fighting for control, he kissed her face, her hands, her neck.

  And then her hands slid low and circled him and he was lost.

  He closed his eyes. His hands were shaking as he laid her back, moving hard and fast, as deep as a man could go.

  They were both lost then, lost to everything but the desire that raged free, unbound and unfettered, in the wake of confidences shared. Thorne whispered to her with every hard stroke, hoarse words that worshiped her beauty and adored her wild courage. With his words he loved her, as much as with body and heart.

  And his prize was her wild yielding.

  He smiled darkly when she tensed against him, back arched, hands clinging to his shoulders. And when her breath had stilled, he brought her high and blind again, through a dark landscape of magic forged anew.


  She shuddered her way back down to the quiet square of sunlight in the quiet room in a quiet corner of Norfolk. When she opened her eyes, slumberous and hazy with desire, her mouth took on a determined force. “And now, you rogue, I’ve had enough of your charm.” She moved against him, her hands doing painful, extraordinary things to all his muscles.

  Thorne shuddered with each erotic slide of movement. “I meant to show you I was serious. I meant to show you how well I could grovel.”

  India’s eyes glinted as she studied their joined bodies. “You grovel, my dearest husband, quite wonderfully,” she purred. “But did I tell you about that dashing young officer who tried to convince me to elope with him after—”

  As she’d hoped, Thorne’s response was instant and fierce. His hands dug into her soft hips and with a low curse he drove hard against her, all restraints forgotten. Now they were just two people burying sad memories and forging the first of many happy tomorrows.

  Two people who had by some wondrous miracle discovered that death could sometimes hold the seeds of life.

  CHAPTER 29

  Two counties away in London the Duke of Wellington looked up from his crowded desk at the secretary holding out a sealed message. “Not another death threat, I trust, Stevens?” Three such letters had already arrived in the last week, and one angry ex-soldier had even attacked his carriage. “I must be back to the Continent soon.”

  But this time when the duke opened the vellum sheet, his face broke into a broad smile. “Damned good work by the lot of them! The little girl is safe, Stevens. We must drink a toast of thanks.”

  “Of course, Your Grace.” Wellington’s aide turned away. With the meticulous movements that had first caught the eye of his superior officer, he slid open a decanter of brandy and carefully tipped the mellow spirits into a cut crystal tumbler.

  “Take one for yourself, Stevens. This is an event worth celebrating. With any luck, Thornwood will have caught the rest of the brutes at one stroke, and we’ll have no more trouble from this group called l’Aurore.”

  Glasses clinked. The two men savored their drinks in silence. Then with a long sigh, Wellington turned back to his desk and the mound of paperwork that seemed to grow higher during his visits to London. Meanwhile, his aide turned away to straighten up some outgoing correspondence carrying Wellington’s signature.

  Silently Stevens pulled back his cuff, revealing an odd curving scar just above his wrist. It was not the jagged mark of an accidental wound, but precise and sharp, almost as if made by design. The pattern was simple, a straight line running beneath a half circle. The crown of radiant lines at the top might have depicted the sun setting in the west.

  Or the sun rising.

  At dawn.

  After smoothing back the cuff, Stevens looked out at the small garden, remembering how that scar had hurt him when it was cut into his skin five years ago. Their numbers had been far fewer then. Stevens had been among the very first to obtain access to Wellington’s select circle, and he had used his position carefully and cleverly. No one had guessed his real beliefs — or his secret identity as the leader of the group known as l’Aurore.

  His jaw hardened. No matter that Waterloo was done, they would still win. His whole existence was dedicated to that goal. One day soon, Napoleon would walk down the hillside at St. Helena and board a boat for France. When he did, his supporters would return to Paris in grandeur, and the course of Europe would be changed once more.

  And he would be there to watch it, glorying in his triumph.

  Stevens thought of his father, a graceless, impoverished younger son openly mocked in his village. Jonah Stevens, his only son, had also been an outsider, first in the Hampshire village where he was born, then in the lonely halls of the school where his father had scrimped and saved to send him. The loneliness had only grown worse when Stevens entered the tight, clubbish world of the officers who surrounded Wellington. Soon his efficiency and skill for organization had been noticed, resulting in access to more secret materials.

  Now he would show them all. This time, he would belong! Soon everyone else would be made to suffer the pain he had known all his life.

  “Stevens, are you forgetting those letters must be out within the hour?” Wellington’s voice had an edge to it.

  Dangerous, the aide thought angrily. He must be especially careful not to draw suspicion now. “I was simply looking over the rear garden, Your Grace. I thought I saw someone hanging about near the gate. They have asked you to make a public appearance at Hyde Park, but it is hardly advisable after all these threats you have been receiving.”

  Wellington laughed harshly. “The day that it is too dangerous to walk in Hyde Park is the day in which Waterloo might as well not have been won,” the general said fiercely.

  Stevens shrugged. “One cannot be too careful, you know.” His face held a thin smile as he turned away to complete his tasks for the duke.

  It was true, he thought. These were dangerous times. No one knew that better than he.

  And as he picked up the duke’s silver letter opener, he was thinking with cool delight of Wellington’s impending death.

  CHAPTER 30

  Devlyn and India walked slowly down the stairs, hand in hand. En route from the attic they passed at least seven servants. All were too well trained to reveal any surprise at seeing the two walking hand in hand; obviously in love and obviously disheveled. But India knew that within five minutes rumors would be raging through Swallow Hill.

  She looked at Dev and smiled. “You know they will be talking about us. They will say the most outrageous things. That you held me at gunpoint. That I held you at gunpoint. Will you mind?”

  Thorne slid a curl of auburn hair away from her cheek. “I doubt, my sweet, that they could say anything as amazing as what I’m thinking right now.”

  “You’re sure? You didn’t care for gossip after the balloon ascension.”

  “Let them talk,” Devlyn said huskily. “In fact, let the whole world talk. I think I’d like to figure in a few sordid Delamere scandals. Besides, we have a great deal of making up to do, you and I.”

  India bit her lip. “I wonder what the children will think.”

  Devlyn laughed dryly. “The children? They will be ecstatic, no doubt. They’ve loved you from the first second they saw you.” His eyes darkened. “Just as I have.”

  “Rake,” India scoffed.

  “Reformed rake,” Thorne corrected gently. Their fingers tightened.

  “But what about the rest of the diamonds?”

  They had come to the bottom of the staircase now, and Devlyn stood looking down the sunny, polished corridors of marble, in a house that was filled with the treasures of five centuries, acquired by a buoyant, stubborn family whose history was a good part of the history of England itself.

  He smiled to himself for a moment. He only hoped he was smart enough and strong enough to keep pace with these Delamere women. “Now that we have three of the band, we’ll soon have all the rest. They’re not the sort to hold their tongues. Besides, we have another clue. We are told they carry a peculiar scar above their right wrists.”

  “A rising sun,” India said thoughtfully. “L’Aurore.”

  “Very quick, my wife. You have a natural flare for this kind of work.”

  “I must remember that. Unless you keep me very well occupied, I might just disappear on some dangerous mission or other.”

  Dev’s face darkened with a scowl. “Not if you value your life, you won’t. There’ll be no more jaunting off in the middle of the night to interview river pirates, I warn you.”

  “Not even if they are very handsome? Not even if they hurt their shoulder swinging across the deck trying to rescue me from problems of my own creating?”

  Dev studied her thoughtfully. “I suppose something might be arranged, ma mie. The crew of the Gypsy took quite a liking to you, as a matter of fact. Perhaps a run downriver could be arranged.” A smile played over his lips. “If the
terms were favorable, of course.”

  India ran her hand lightly along his shoulder. “I suspect that the terms could be very favorable.” They were nearly at the end of the marble corridor when a ripple of sultry laughter drifted out of one of the salons at the rear of the house.

  Dev stiffened. His eyes locked on India’s. “It couldn’t be—”

  But it was. At that moment Lady Helena Marchmont sat next to the Duchess of Cranford drinking tea from a fragile Sèvres porcelain cup.

  “Let’s go back,” Devlyn muttered. “If we hurry, she’ll never see us.” But it was too late.

  “Ah, there you are,” the duchess said, rising imperiously to her feet. “Lady Marchmont and I were just talking about you.” A devilish gleam lit the duchess’s keen blue eyes. “I was telling her how delighted we all were to hear of your upcoming marriage.”

  Lady Helena studied the two figures in the doorway, her expression unreadable. “It did seem rather sudden to me, but then I suppose that’s the soldier in Lord Thornwood. It is the soldier’s way, to see a target, plan a campaign, and move forward without thinking.”

  “It worked well enough for us in Brussels,” Dev muttered. He looked down at India, smiling. “I find it has worked well again.”

  The countess rose to her feet in a flurry of lace and satin ribbons. “I must not intrude. I merely came up from London because I was concerned about the children. I have brought a gift for Alexis, if I may see her.”

  After a look at Thorne, the duchess nodded. “I believe you’ll find her in the rose garden. She was playing hide-and-seek with Ian and the other two ragamuffins.”

  The countess smiled at India. “I wish you every happiness,” she murmured before turning toward the open french doors. Her heavy perfume seemed to hang on the air long after she had gone off in search of Alexis.