‘‘He seems excessively troubled. More so than last I saw him.’’
She nodded. ‘‘It’s this house. . . .’’ She trailed off. How could she explain about the ghosts that had been haunting both her and Grayson? Chad would think she’d taken leave of her senses.
He shoved the book he held back onto the shelf, went to her and took her hand in his. ‘‘You’re correct about this house. It’s full of sorrow, Nora, and is certainly no place for newlyweds. Add to that the possible danger Gray discovered, and it’s obvious the two of you should take Jonny and return to London. Or, if you like, you may consider my Grandview at your disposal.’’
Nora was already shaking her head. ‘‘I do thank you, more than you can know. But we must remain here. I cannot fully explain the reasons, but it is of vital importance, to both Grayson and Jonny, that we all remain at Blackheath and . . .’’ How could she put it without revealing the strange, unearthly goings-on here?
And then she knew, because ghosts or no ghosts, the answer was the same. ‘‘We must face the past head-on, not run from it. We must all come to terms with what happened and learn to live with it. Live and move on, as a family.’’
‘‘You’re very brave, Nora.’’ A sad smile tugged Chad’s mouth. ‘‘I only hope Gray knows what a fortunate fellow he is.’’
He kissed her hand and released it, and bid her good night. On his way out, she called to him.
‘‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’’
He turned, an eyebrow raised. ‘‘Have I?’’
‘‘Your book. I assume you were searching for something to read, yes?’’
‘‘Oh. Yes, of course. I, ah, didn’t find what I was looking for.’’
‘‘I see. Good night, then.’’
After he left, she returned the books he’d left lying on the desk to their rightful places on the shelves. She scanned the titles and, like the earl, found nothing to interest her. No, that wasn’t quite true. This library contained no shortage of fascinating volumes. But none that could compete with the one question that claimed her thoughts tonight.
Would Grayson come find her?
She had left the door open, allowing the light from Chad’s lamp to spill across the threshold. Surely for a man intent on being with his wife, that presented invitation enough. Drifting to the settee facing the hearth, she sank into the lush comfort of the down cushions. Outside the squally winds sent their somber echoes spiraling in the chimney. She considered calling for a footman to light the fire, but, tightening her shawl about her shoulders, deemed the room and the down cushions beneath her warm enough.
So she settled in to wait . . . and hope. Swinging her feet up, she stretched out and slipped one of the velvet throw pillows beneath her cheek. . . .
She awakened with a gasp on her lips and a weight across her shoulders. She struggled to sit up, discovering an arm pinning her in place.
‘‘Shh. It’s only me.’’ Grayson crouched on the floor beside the settee, his face level with hers. His arm relaxed but its embrace remained, his fingers curling about her shoulder beneath her shawl. ‘‘I didn’t mean to frighten you.’’
A smile spread across her lips. ‘‘I didn’t know if you’d come. I’m glad you did.’’
He shook his head and studied her, his lush lips parting. ‘‘Why are you still here?’’
The question sparked a little flame of guilt that heated her cheeks. ‘‘I’m sorry. I should have waited for you upstairs in my room, but I was rather angry earlier and supposed it would be a sort of justice to make you come to me here. It wasn’t very nice of me, especially as I’ve yet to learn why you avoid this room.’’
His blue eyes darkened, and shadows fell across his cheeks as his head went down. ‘‘Tom and I argued in this room the last time I saw him alive.’’ He flicked a nod toward the open space in front of the desk. ‘‘We were standing just there when I told him to go to the devil. By the end of the day, he had.’’
‘‘Oh, good heavens, had I known that, I never would have—’’
‘‘It doesn’t matter. This is merely a room. These four walls are not responsible for what happened.’’ The rest of the thought went unfinished, but its echo reverberated in Nora’s heart.
‘‘Gray, men argue. Brothers say regrettable things.’’ She gripped his free hand. It was rigid, as cold as a grave. She rubbed it between both of hers, trying in vain to warm it. ‘‘But they are not each other’s keepers. Perhaps you wrong your brother in believing you drove him to take his own life . . . or to do anything. Perhaps he was stronger than you think, and some other reason entirely caused his death.’’
‘‘God, how I want to believe that.’’ His arm tightened around her, his fingers almost digging into her shoulder as he held on. ‘‘But when I asked why you were still here, I didn’t mean in this blasted room, I meant here with me, in this marriage.’’
‘‘Oh.’’ Her first thought was the simplest. She loved him. But if she told him that, he’d only tell her not to, and claim he wasn’t capable of loving her in return. So she said the one thing he could not refute. ‘‘I am here because I wish to be. Can you understand that?’’
He shook his head. ‘‘No.’’
‘‘Can you understand this, then?’’ Her arms went around his neck. She tugged him until their lips met, and held him there while she gathered her courage and slipped her tongue into his mouth.
His response was immediate, impassioned, his arms burrowing between her and the settee to wrap her tight. A rumbling erupted inside him, a sound that built, vibrated against her lips and filled her with fiery need.
‘‘You’re insane for staying,’’ he whispered. ‘‘As insane as I am.’’
‘‘Yes, and equally stubborn.’’ She began opening the buttons of his shirt. ‘‘I know what I want,’’ she breathed against his chest. She nipped his flesh, flicked her tongue across his nipple. ‘‘I want you.’’
He groaned and lifted her higher, crushing her to him. His hands groped at the fastenings down her back. ‘‘Beyond a doubt you’ll live to regret this.’’
‘‘My only regret would be dying’’—she kissed him, gasped for a breath and continued—‘‘without making love to you one more time.’’
His tongue swept her lips, speared between them and pushed deeply, a sultry prelude to the lovemaking Nora craved so acutely. He raised his head to meet her gaze. ‘‘Only once?’’
Their hands went still. Their panting breaths stopped. They stared into each other’s eyes.
And laughed. Laughed as they hadn’t since their wedding night, following the fiasco with her eavesdropping mother and her overzealous father. Still, Nora couldn’t quite decide if the tears tricking down her cheeks were merely mirthful or the result of the immense relief surging through her at the rare sound of Gray’s laughter.
‘‘Master Grayson? Is there a problem here? I can hear shrieking all the way down the corridor.’’
Nora shrugged her loosened dress higher onto her shoulders and started to sit up, but Grayson held her fast.
He poked his head above the back of the settee. ‘‘Leave us, please, Mrs. Dorn, and close the door behind you. We are not to be disturbed.’’
The woman murmured a terse ‘‘Yes, sir’’ and did as she was bidden.
‘‘Now, then.’’ His hand slipped beneath her sagging bodice to caress her nape, then skimmed the flesh between her shoulder blades, eliciting a quiver. Next he stood, scooped her into his arms and sat her in his lap on the settee. Their lips and tongues locked in moist combat until he gently pulled away.
‘‘Make no mistake, Nora. I am what the scandal sheets say I am.’’ When she started to protest, he held a finger to her lips. ‘‘We cannot sugarcoat it or pretend otherwise. I failed my brother and now he’s dead. I murdered him, even if only in my heart.’’
‘‘So be it.’’ She combed the hair from his brow. ‘‘We shall not pretend you are a perfect being. You have made mistakes. Regrett
able ones. We must learn to live with them. I must learn to live with you. Just as you, my darling, have had to reconcile yourself to the shame of marrying London’s Painted Paramour.’’
With that she shifted in his lap until she faced him. Straddling his thighs, she yanked up her skirts to expose her legs. As she pondered how to continue, his hand obligingly tunneled beneath her petticoats. His palm settled against her underdrawers, spreading delicious heat through her nether regions.
‘‘That is a shame I can most assuredly live with.’’
She unbuttoned his collar and worked his shirt from his body. He stripped her of her drawers and tossed them to the floor. Her bodice came next as Grayson tugged her sleeves from her arms, baring her from the waist up. Her hair came streaming down around her, its softness mingling with Grayson’s sensual nibbles at her shoulders. He swung his legs onto the settee and sprawled out beneath her, his face and chest framed in the trailing fringe of her hair.
‘‘The next move, my paramour, is yours.’’ The once-hated epithet dripped from his lips like honey, smooth and sweet, setting her insides thrumming. She leaned over, nipped his lips, grazed them with the tip of her tongue.
Like a tenderly springing trap, his lips seized her tongue and drew it into his mouth. They played a teasing game of venture and retreat, caress and suckle. He found her hands and slid them to the buttons of his trousers. She broke their kiss, conjured her most scandalized expression and decided to do him one better. With a grin she slithered lower until her chin came level with his hips. Then she used her teeth to open each button.
A groan rumbled deep in his throat. His head thrown back against the cushions, his eyes became crystalline crescents sparking at her between his lashes.
With each opened button she kissed his exposed flesh, following the narrow trail of crisp hair lower and lower. His hands swept through her hair, his fingers tangling in the loose strands. A lust-driven laugh, low and throaty, broke from his lips.
‘‘Ah, my paramour, what a wanton you are.’’
The sound of that word again, paramour, spoken in a rusty murmur, filled her with an overwhelming desire to fulfill his darkest fantasy, to be his wanton paramour in every glorious sense of the word.
Her heart beating frantically, she tugged his trousers below his hips and took him into her mouth.
A sense of power surged through her. It made her giddy, bold, to gaze upward along the taut planes of his body and watch the sensual tension shiver across his muscles as her touch guided him toward ecstasy. Her desire to take him there was exhilarating, intensely erotic.
As was the trust she sensed in him. Trust he hadn’t dared bestow before now seemed hers for the taking, and it humbled her to see how completely he surrendered control to her.
His every motion, every grind of his throat, communicated his body’s mounting response. Even before his hands found her face and lightly tugged, she’d known the time had come to recede, to let his passion ebb before rousing it again.
She kissed her way up his torso, letting her tongue slide over the contour of quivering muscle and sinew. Sliding higher until her thighs cradled his hips, she sat up and towered above him, her creature of darkness, her heart’s desire. If his love had yet to grow, if he could never fully love a woman he had been forced to marry, the trust she perceived at this moment, even if only lust driven, was enough to kindle her heart forever.
She rose to her knees, positioned herself and then slowly and deliberately slid down on his erection, staring into his fierce blue eyes—eyes blazing with an emotion so unbridled it frightened her at the same time it thrilled her.
Flinging uncertainties aside like so much more clothing, she let his length fill her, spread rippling flame through her. ‘‘Is that a move that pleases you, sir?’’ She wriggled her hips. ‘‘Or perhaps . . . this.’’ With a cry, she buried him deeper, consuming all of him.
He let out a moan. His hands slid up her sides, cupped her breasts. Pleasure spread in infinite fissures as he kneaded them, teasing the nipples between his fingers. Tiny diamonds of sweat glistened across his chest. Nora curled her fingers into the moist whorls of hair and rocked her hips, seeking leverage by tightening her knees against his sides. His arms rigid, he clutched her hips to guide her, becoming her strength when hers might have waned.
She clenched her muscles around him, squeezing, feeling the length and width of him shape and fill her. Together they moved as passion gathered into a dangerous coil, tight and ready to fracture. She felt it build to breaking, saw the glory of it in his face. It became too much, too powerful, and she let go, giving unhindered voice to the climax pulsating through her.
Afterward, she did not immediately question the glow surrounding them, thought it merely a resonance conjured by her perfectly blissful state. It wasn’t until Grayson abruptly pulled to a sitting position that she recognized the unearthly quality to that light.
‘‘What is that?’’ he whispered.
Her heart throbbed in her throat. Groping at her waist, she found her bodice and dragged it up to shield her breasts.
‘‘Good Christ!’’ Gray’s arm was like a steel band around her as a figure took shape at the corner of the hearth. His feet hit the floor. He stood, dragging Nora up behind him, his bare torso a wall in front her. ‘‘Nora, go. Quickly. Get help.’’
She peeked out over his shoulder. ‘‘It’s all right,’’ she murmured in his ear. ‘‘She isn’t dangerous.’’
He turned enough profile toward her to shoot her an adamant look. ‘‘It’s me they’re after, Nora, not you. Charlotte and Tom want justice. I won’t have you caught in the middle.’’
‘‘Charlotte and Tom . . . and Jonny. Of course.’’ She pressed her forehead between Grayson’s shoulders as understanding dawned. ‘‘Gray, don’t you see? She isn’t here to hurt anyone. She’s here to help. Its time to put our fears aside and discover what she wishes us to do.’’
Chapter 20
"She was your brother’s wife, wasn’t she?" Nora murmured against Grayson’s shoulder. It was less a question than a statement. "How did she die?"
Without taking his eyes off the apparition shimmering a few paces away, he struggled with one hand to button his trousers while holding Nora behind him with the other. ‘‘In childbirth. Four years ago. She and the baby both died.’’
‘‘I should have realized who she was, but I suppose I was too frightened. I can see Jonny in her quite plainly now—the shape of their faces, the curve of their mouths. So very alike.’’
‘‘Exceedingly so, though I see much of Tom in Jonny too.’’
‘‘Her voice, that lovely musical accent I’d pondered over. She was Welsh?’’
‘‘Yes, from Cardiff.’’
They were whispering, barely moving now that his trousers were secure. A sizzling current ran under his skin, only partly the result of what they’d just done and the fact that Nora was pressing her length snug to his back and buttocks.
No, this was an energy he’d never before experienced, but what he imagined shivered through the clouds during a lightning storm. It vibrated through his limbs and raked his nerves raw.
‘‘What the devil do you think she wants?’’ he murmured.
‘‘She has asked me to search. To find the truth.’’ Nora started to step out from behind him, but with a jolt of alarm he nudged her back.
‘‘Stay where you are.’’
‘‘It’s all right. If she hasn’t hurt me thus far, why would she now?’’ She moved forward to stand at his side. Her fingers curled around his, and he returned the gesture, holding her fast. ‘‘What is it you wish, Charlotte? Oh, do you mind if I call you Charlotte?’’
No answer came.
‘‘It’s as if she cannot hear me.’’
‘‘No,’’ he agreed, ‘‘nor see us either. Look at her.’’
Charlotte, or at least the unsettling image of the woman Grayson once knew, stared with her oddly glowing eyes at some point across th
e room. One ivory hand fisted where her heart should have been. With the other she reached out, her face filled with such naked longing he held his breath and instinctively followed her gaze.
What he saw made him tug Nora to his chest and wrap his arms protectively around her.
‘‘What is it?’’ She went still against him as she too saw what presently robbed him of speech. In front of one of the bookcases, another image wavered like heat off a dusty road. ‘‘Is that . . . ?’’
Together they watched this new specter take on the shape of a man in a dark blue coat and gray trousers.
Grayson’s arms tightened until Nora let out a whimper.
‘‘Thomas.’’ Like a musical note, high and clear, the name echoed through the room.
The sound filled Grayson with an inexplicable sense of despair that had him blinking back a tear. Against him, Nora convulsed softly with a sob. He looked down at her pinched features and knew that she too felt that same unaccountable despondency.
‘‘The fireplace. Gray, there were no flames before.’’ Indeed, as he watched, small flares burst to life among the logs, though no kindling had been piled on top and certainly no match struck.
His gaze flicked back to Charlotte. She reached out with both hands now but didn’t move forward, didn’t attempt to meet her husband partway across the room. As he watched her, the already pale colors leached from her image, leaving her little more than a glimmering outline of light.
‘‘What’s happening to her?’’ Nora whispered.
‘‘I don’t know. I think she’s grieving. Mourning for my brother.’’
‘‘But why shouldn’t they be together now?’’
He had no answer. He peered across the room at the image he’d seen so many times before but had never truly accepted as real until now.
Tom’s hands hung at his sides, but his expression mirrored his wife’s powerful longing.
‘‘It’s as if they are suspended in separate realms,’’ he said, ‘‘and cannot reach each other.’’
‘‘That’s it.’’ Nora hugged him tighter and burrowed her face against his chest. When she looked up, tears magnified her eyes and glittered on her cheeks. ‘‘Charlotte said I must free Thomas and set his spirit to rest. I’m guessing that can only be done by uncovering the truth of how he died.’’
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