by Anne Mallory
Campbell rubbed a hand across his eyes and swayed. “Not yet. Bastard always wins.”
“Are you planning to do something to him?”
“Tired. Need to sleep.” He stumbled forward and just made it to the settee in the middle of the room before collapsing.
“Get out of the house, Abigail,” Valerian whispered harshly.
“But—”
“Now!”
She hurried through the door. Campbell made some noise behind her and then fell silent.
She took the steps none too silently as she scurried to the door—thankfully sans servants standing at watch—and tore it open to the street.
She stumbled out of Number Eighteen and onto the walk. Her borrowed boys’ trousers wrapped around her legs, constricting her in a way that skirts never did. Hindering her and pointing to the absurdity of her disguise, of the plan, of her life. She glanced at Valerian who strode next to her, full lips pinched and looking in all directions.
That had gone utterly wrong.
“You are finished. No more searching,” he said.
“But Campbell sounded like he was going to confess to something—or to exonerate himself,” she said as she hurried along the walk, avoiding late-night revelers and keeping her head down. People usually saw what they expected to see. Seeing Abigail Smart hurrying through Golden Square in a footman’s outfit in the dead of night did not fall under that category. Still, better to be cautious then ruined.
She had almost achieved the latter back in Basil’s house. She shuddered.
“I don’t care. You aren’t doing this again.”
“What is the worst that could happen? I become betrothed to Campbell and make mother and Mrs. Browning deliriously happy?”
“That isn’t amusing,” he said harshly.
“I wasn’t trying to be,” she said bluntly back.
He stopped and looked at her, dark lines shading all of his features. “If that is what you—”
He halted abruptly and she followed his gaze. Her hands froze, followed by the rest of her body. Numb.
Dr. Myers stood across the street staring back, a slow smile working its way across his mouth.
“Oh my God,” she heard someone say, even though the echo of it came from her lips.
“Move, Abigail.”
But she couldn’t. She didn’t want to turn her back on the man—every preservation instinct once more taking hold. Myers stepped from behind the high hedges and through the gate onto the walk. Steady, even steps toward her.
She took Valerian’s advice and ran.
“Stop, thief!” she heard the hated voice say behind her as she blindly ran, a parody of her own doomed chase days before.
Foreign hands reached out to catch her—hands helping a fellow patron to catch a wayward thief. One set grasped the fabric of her shirt, but she twisted and tore away, continuing to run. Unfortunately, another strong set of hands got a better grip and held tight, ripping a seam in the shoulder of her shirt.
She looked up and then quickly down again as she recognized Sir Walter.
Ruined. Utterly ruined.
“My lord, thank you. I’ll take the thief from here,” the hated voice said.
“He looks barely old enough to know better,” chided Sir Walter. “Be gentle. Rehabilitation should be sought for the willing.”
“Of course,” The doctor’s oily-slick voice said in response. “I will just give him a good talking to. Thank you for your help.”
Dr. Myers gripped the neck of her shirt and forcefully pushed her toward the end of the square. She allowed it. She couldn’t let Sir Walter identify her. She couldn’t let anyone else in the square—for surely they were staring at the spectacle—see her too closely. She’d deal with Myers just like she had before.
“Oh, this is surely my lucky day, Miss Smart,” he said softly as he marched her around the corner and into a darkened side street unlit by the gas lamps illuminating the square. “I don’t know whether to take you home to your mother and claim immediate rights or just end things here.”
He gripped her chin and she attempted to remove it from his grasp. His fingers tightened, bruising the skin beneath. “Oh, I can mark you all I want. You are outside your home. Your mother can do nothing to help—not that she would after this.”
The fleeting thought that her mother might help her anyway was chased by the doctor’s other hand closing about her raised wrist, his body pinning her other arm. Dark, livid marks stood out around the skin of his neck.
“Rehabilitation.” He laughed softly. “Such choice words. Your rogue spirit marked me the other day, Abigail Smart. And I will make you pay for it.”
She wildly looked around, but Valerian was nowhere to be seen.
The doctor followed her gaze. “I didn’t get rid of him, I see. Another task to undertake when I am finished with you. You will—”
But she didn’t allow him a chance to finish his sentence, she brought her trousered knee up, unhampered by the bulk of a dozen skirts, and into his privates. He doubled over and she raised her knee to his bent forehead.
She hadn’t grown up with Valerian, the scourge of Devonshire neighborhoods, without learning something.
As Myers cursed and fell to the ground she spared a quick look for Valerian, but he was still nowhere to be seen. She swallowed and looked down. She needed to get home before the doctor recovered and followed her, or worse, beat her home—exposing her to her mother and the servants, who would undoubtedly gossip to Mrs. Browning and ruin her anyway.
Her mother might think her behavior too terrible. Really try and send her away for her own good. Might even finally believe Myers that she needed to be watched somewhere under his direction.
Abigail closed her eyes, thought of all the man had done to her, then kicked him in the head with her borrowed boot. He splayed across the ground and she shivered at the actions—both hers and his.
“Abigail.” She nearly wept in relief as Valerian appeared at the front of the alley. “There are two men headed this way. You must leave.”
She needed no extra urging and ran to the nearest cross street and hired hack she could find.
Only when they were safely in her room did she allow the shivers full rein.
Valerian put a hand on the back of her neck. She leaned into the touch.
She needed it. Needed him.
That he had turned his back completely on her once made the admission doubly painful, but there was little denying anymore that she wanted him. She was another idiotic lackey that thought the sun rose on his smile.
She stiffened, her pride telling her to pull away. Not to allow him to damage her any more than he had before.
He touched her shoulder. “My heart stopped when Myers cornered you.”
She pulled away from the nearly irresistible urge to just give in and hand Valerian everything that she was. She walked forward a step and turned. “Do you know who the two men were?”
His hands dropped to his sides and his eyes darkened. “One was from the alley. The man who held you. The other I have never seen.”
She tried not to let her shudder show. This was the life that her mother had thought to save her from once—a simple person on the street who had to run and connive to save herself.
“Myers is obsessed with you,” he said.
“Yes.” She gave a tight grin. “Hard to believe.”
He examined his jacket, brushing a hand down the bottom to smooth it. His eyes briefly drifted to her dressing table. “Not so hard, really.”
“Be careful, Valerian,” she said, trying to lighten the sudden tightening of the mood in the room. “I’ll come to think you care.”
“No, perhaps you’ll come to think that I never stopped.”
Her body stilled and she looked at him, trying to see the joke, to watch for the sudden movement of his body or mouth that would indicate that he was being cruel.
It never came. He instead looked again to the table and moved to the bed,
running a hand down the carved wood of the four-poster pole.
“So hard to admit to failure, Abigail. To admit that fear ruled my actions so long ago. Fifteen and confused.”
This was the Valerian that she had once known. Willing to put his heart forward, to lower his defenses. She wanted desperately to believe that this was truly he, and not some imprint of him that would melt away.
“It was so much easier to shut it away, Abby.”
Her heart lurched and her feet automatically moved toward him. She put a hand tentatively on his shoulder, rubbing along the fabric there. “That was a terrible year. Your brother—”
He tensed under her hand. “Yes, Thornton. Do you know that when I look at you sometimes I see the boy I used to be before Thornton passed. Before I took his place. Completely.” The last was said almost too low for her to hear.
“No, you aren’t Thornton.”
He turned around and her hand dropped to her side. He lifted her chin, his eyes piercing hers. “I am just like Thornton, Abigail. I took up his mantle and wrapped it around me like it was my birthright, which it never was. I cut out everything from my life before—those things that would keep me from becoming the perfect heir.”
“You were already the perfect heir.”
He laughed harshly. “You defend me? Even now?”
She bit her lip. “A bit, yes. There are things that I have a hard time forgiving you. But I can’t help but want to forgive the boy I knew so long ago. That I loved like my brother.”
His hand dropped from her chin. “That was part of the problem, was it not?”
“What?” She asked, confusion taking her.
“You thought of me as a brother.”
“I—” She bit her lip. She didn’t have the guts—not with their past so murky and their future relationship so uncertain. But his hand touched the lace at her wrist cuff and she inhaled a deep breath. “I had stopped thinking of you in those terms before our disagreement. Before that one quick kiss.”
Just a peck after a particularly spectacular swing they had completed with joined hands and laughing faces, the golden meadow swirling around as they’d celebrated life and friendship. Fallen into the grass, an impulsive kiss placed against rose lips.
His eyes met hers, deep brown and full of some emotion. His fingers raised to her neck and curled around the back. “Interesting, as I had done the same.”
Some part of her had known it, or at least hoped. Had banked on it when she’d gone to him for help. Had fallen into stunned disbelief at his cold rebuff. “But you cut me out completely. You—”
He pressed his forehead to hers. “I know. You can’t understand the confusion. The betrayal. The pull I felt in opposite directions.”
“There is little pull now. You are stuck here.”
“I want to be here.”
She swallowed and looked deep into his eyes, searching for the answers she wanted. There was only what she could see in the spirit though. It had to be enough for now. “I want you to be here too.”
She touched his shoulder. Shoulders that even with his thinner size projected strength and certainty. Arrogance and a hint of highborn disdain. It only made him more attractive. The lure of the forbidden. The weakness of the female mind to want the man who showed the most prowess or dominance.
Lips pressed against hers and she was lost in the almost sweetness there—though there was too much about Rainewood that was hard and sure to give in totally to sweetness of any kind.
And it begged the same question, this changing Valerian, this return to the younger and freer boy on the verge of manhood, the one who would admit fault and ask forgiveness. Was he real?
His hands skimmed down her sides and she leaned into him.
If he truly was a spirit caught in his quest, once it was over he would disappear forever. Loathsome Thornton had disappeared after his quest had been complete.
She curled a hand into Valerian’s hair and kissed him back with all the passion she could muster.
What if Valerian were truly different? If his body was somewhere out there, waiting to be reunited with his spirit? Would he become the old Rainewood, ton cock of the walk, or the new Valerian who hearkened back to the boy she had loved?
A hand curved around her backside, bringing her flush, lighting all sorts of wonderful heat below.
What would happen were he never to recover his body? Would he stay with her forever? Be able to touch her and speak to her. Hers and hers alone? A seductive thought, and not one she should contemplate too hard or else she might do something stupid like stop searching for him.
She couldn’t do that—not when there was a chance that he could truly come back to life.
She pressed against him, pushing in just the way she had seen a spirit wench do once. His breath hitched.
She couldn’t do that to him—deny him true life. Not to the boy she had loved and the man she was starting to love again.
She ran a hand down his torso and dipped it below the top of his trousers. Two fingers, all she could reach beneath the band, slipped across the hardness there.
His state could be used against him, just as he had initially used it against her.
“Remove your clothes,” she said against his ear.
His entire wardrobe disappeared. She pulled back and watched the shock in his eyes, satisfied.
“What…?”
That he didn’t have enough control to keep his clothes on made her more bold and she pulled his head back to hers. Reassured that he wanted her just as much as she wanted him. That perhaps he even felt more than desire for her. To be tested, for sure, but at the moment all she wanted was for the thoughts that had collected for the past ten years to have their physical way.
She cocked her head, suddenly feeling a freedom that she hadn’t in a while. No matter which way this played out, she could live her fantasy. “Shall we try another adventure, Valerian?”
His eyes went completely dark and she curled her fingers around him, using the techniques she had seen in the past. Seen but never put into practice. She slid her fingers up and smiled in satisfaction as he jutted into her grip.
“Abigail.” There was a hint of warning in his tone, but as she drew her fingers back down and rotated her wrist she was rewarded with his breath catching, his body moving even further into her grip, his hands reaching for her.
She let him catch her. Let him cover the fabric above her breasts with his hands. She almost let go of him when his thumbs fell through the fabric and brushed her nipples, but she held on and continued the motion, memorizing every sound he made and each emotion that filtered through his beautifully darkened eyes. She changed her movements according to the reactions he made and was rewarded when he captured her lips and kissed her as if she were the only woman he had ever desired.
“And neither the Malcolm girl or any tarts in your past can make you shiver like this.” Her lips moved to his ear. “Isn’t that right, Valerian?”
He hitched her against the pole of the bed and pressed against her heat, trapping her hand between them. Moving against her so that her hand and his body rubbed against her, firing all of her blood below.
“Are you going to make me come apart, Abigail? Make me beg to be embedded inside you so deeply that we might never separate?”
He pushed her further up, the friction rubbing her against him, the men’s trousers barely a barrier. He grasped her hand and suddenly her fingers were undoing the ties at the top of the trousers and with his slight move backward to allow space, the too big fabric was pooled around her feet and she was bared to the air below her freed shirt. He ran a hand down her side, under the shirt, skimming her bare hip.
“What will it be, Abigail? How much of this adventure are you willing to travel?”
The choice wasn’t as difficult as it should have been given her misgivings about his state. She simply wanted him too badly and had for too long to deny the need. She gripped the top button of her shirt and slowly started to
undo each one as he rubbed against her, pulling the shirt open when she finished. Letting it slide down her arms and pool with the trousers on the floor. His eyes heated and his hand moved over her belly, slid along the undersides of her breasts. His movements below nudged them together and she felt so heavy and slick as they slid together, skin to skin.
She had seen enough spirits in action. Had seen what naked confidence did to the other party. She tossed off any embarrassment at her assets or lack thereof and squared her shoulder blades back against the pole, allowing her left breast to rise and fall perfectly into his questing hand. She leaned into him, feeling the gorgeous sensation of his hands wrapping around her breasts.
She wrapped her hand back around his length, which was still dancing along the entrance to her heat below. She pulled her fingers to the tip. “I want to make you beg.”
She was rewarded with a lunge, a growl, his lips devouring hers, one hand lightly squeezing her nipple while his other dropped below, curling around between them and into her. Delicious, just as before. And this time instead of the teasing thrusts he had made that had held her on edge and then sent her over, he reached inside and stroked—one long pull down a smooth slope.
She shuddered and gripped him harder, arching back, finally understanding just why the women spirits reacted in such a way to the stimulation, to the encompassing feeling of passion.
“I’m going to bury myself within you, Abigail, and you’ll never be able to forget it.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and hitched her leg up, knocking his hand away and bringing him exactly in alignment with the part of her that was demanding it—the heat nearly unbearable in its intensity. “Yes, make us both beg, Valerian.”
She didn’t know what she expected, but when the length of him suddenly surged inside her, she nearly cried out—the feeling was so intense that only the stars covering her vision made her stop the yell, the moan, that would wake the dead. He covered her mouth with his and when he pulled back an inch and pushed inside again she gave in and moaned.
She pushed against the pole with her arched back, the wood biting into her spine. He abruptly gripped her and shoved her against the edge of the mattress, somehow keeping them connected as he followed her down to the coverlet, a deeper thrust connecting the space that had been lost through the movement.