“Your curiosity is more than senseless, ‘tis ridiculous,” Thorne said dryly. “But to humor you, not in years. As a lad I was permitted a look with my tutor, and once I took a young lady out on the battlements, to impress her…” His voice faded away. If only the memory would, as well.
“But that was fifteen years ago,” he resumed abruptly. “Until the watch, no one had been up since. And I have never,” he scoffed, “felt an odd chill there, nor was I ever ‘pushed’ by anything but a gust of wind.”
The two men strolled back toward the revelers. “You should be dancing,” Thorne chided Hodges, “not chasing ghosts. Do you not see that bevy of unattached young ladies looking our way?”
The doctor chuckled. “I see a new wife awaiting her wandering husband.”
Thorne grinned as Gwynneth, tapping her foot with the commencement of another reel, waved at him.
“Well, M’lord,” Hodges said, “send at any time, should you or your lovely wife require my services.” Watching Gwynneth, he failed to see the smile his remark prompted.
“I sincerely hope, Doctor, we shall have need of you before the year is out.”
*
Leaving the villagers to carry on the celebration, the wedding party and guests returned to the Hall for a late supper, some to depart that evening, others the next morning.
Caroline Sutherland would be among the latter. To Thorne’s relief, she’d declined the invitation to stay, saying the sooner she faced Horace and their difficulties, the better. She promised Gwynneth to visit in the near future.
Escorting Gwynneth to her chambers before supper, Thorne felt his blood quicken. Although they would maintain separate chambers for awhile, he now had all rights to enter hers at any hour. “I shall be in the study when you come down,” he told her, hoping to relieve any anxiety she might feel, even as he lingered on the chance she might invite him in.
“I shan’t be long,” she said shyly, dashing his hopes, and then glanced behind her.
Only then did Thorne see Elaine Combs. Looking pale and somehow resolute, she stood waiting to either serve or be dismissed.
And service it was. Standing out in the gallery, Thorne closed the door, but not before seeing what could only be relief in the maid’s dove-gray eyes.
*
The door stood ajar. All tapers were extinguished. Only a small fire vied with the light of the rising moon.
Halting just inside the curtained archway, Thorne observed his bride sitting in a window seat, her posture predictably tense, her profile pensive and pale.
Her eyes widened as she turned to see him. He’d tied the sash closed on his black silk dressing gown after his bath, leaving a triangle of dark-furred chest exposed and his long, damp hair unbound.
She stood up from the window seat. With the moonlight behind her and the fire to the side, she presented a breathtaking display as she approached, her full-breasted slenderness undulating beneath a cloud of embroidered lawn and Battenberg lace.
Thorne’s heart skipped a beat.
She stopped two paces away. Slowly, Thorne began to circle her, and she to turn with him. His eyes rose, from the shadowy peaks of her breasts to her slender throat, where her pulse beat like tiny bird’s wings frantically seeking escape—and then to her face, at last fully illumed by the moon.
There the spell was broken. Never mind the rose-petal bath he could smell on her skin, or the lily-of-the-valley woven into hair that was brushed to spun gold. It was her eyes. He’d seen that look on a hare as he stared down his flintlock at it. A look that said I’m done for, and I’ve nowhere to run.
“You look…beautiful.” He ran a hand over his fresh-shaven jaw to cover a rueful smile. “Let’s have a brandy, shall we?”
“Yes, let’s,” she said hastily. “I shall pour it, like a good wife.”
And a very nervous one, he mused, seeing her hand shake as she poured a generous measure into each snifter. Seated in the oriel window with her, his bent knee nearly touching hers, Thorne raised his glass. Gwynneth touched hers to it with a tentative smile. Together they sipped the fiery liqueur and gazed across the shadowy landscape.
“We’re in for a storm,” he observed, watching the stars disappear one-by-one. A faint rumble reached his ears.
“Yes, I smell it in the air.” Gwynneth gripped the sill as the beeches across the road began swaying and waves scuttled across the moonlit beck. Strands of her hair fluttered on the first cool gust of air. “Shall we close the sash?”
Thorne shook his head as Gwynneth made to rise. “Not yet.”
“I’ll close the others.” She sprang from the window seat and flew about the chamber, pulling in sashes and fastening shutters. Thorne saw her glance longingly at the fireside chairs before she returned to the window seat, where she huddled in the corner and hugged her knees to her chest beneath her shift and wrapper.
“Do you mind not going abroad just now?” he asked, hoping conversation might relax her.
“Not at all. I’m quite content here. And I am glad that your home-”
“Our home,” Thorne broke in gently.
“Glad that our home,” Gwynneth amended, “is the place which holds your heart.”
He smiled. “I suppose it does rather hold my heart.”
“As opposed to your heart being held by a person,” she said, eyeing him closely for the first time all evening.
It was his turn to look away. “‘Tis a dangerous thing, Gwynneth, giving someone your heart. People are careless, fickle…and they’ve a tendency to die.”
Thunder rumbled. The moon’s halo began to disappear. Gwynneth looked out at the blackening sky and then turned wide eyes on Thorne.
“Are you afraid of storms?” he asked, surprised.
“A little.”
“Are you afraid of me?”
She shook her head.
“Then come to me,” he said gently, extending a hand. “We’ll ride this one out together.”
Gwynneth hesitantly took his hand. Thorne drew her into his lap, first tucking a small cushion beneath her hips for her “comfort,” as he told her, his smile going somewhat awry. Innocently accepting the explanation, his bride leaned back against him.
Lightning split the sky, thunder on its heels. Feeling Gwynneth stiffen in his arms, Thorne gathered her close and pressed his lips to her temple.
Blinding-white light speared the bedchamber, an earsplitting crack and explosion of thunder on its heels. Gwynneth ducked her head and squealed, clapping a hand over one ear and pressing the other other against Thorne’s chest.
With a soft chuckle, he pulled in the window sash. He gazed tenderly at Gwynneth as she opened her eyes. “You’ve nothing to fear, sweeting,” he murmured, and felt her shiver as he brushed his lips against her ear. “Neither from the storm…nor me.”
As if to mock him, the heavens roared again, this time rattling the casements and vibrating the window seat beneath them. As Gwynneth cried out, her body going rigid in Thorne’s arms, he knew it was time…time to make her forget the storm and everything around them.
*
Terrified by the storm’s rage, Gwynneth turned gladly to the distraction of Thorne’s kiss, moving her lips against his with an urgency that defied the elements. Wrapping her arms about Thorne’s neck, she desperately breached his lips and drew him inside her mouth.
His appreciative groan should have brought her up short, but the heat in her belly had quickly spread to that place she’d explored as a child and then later learned to ignore while praying feverishly to the Blessed Virgin.
Gwynneth moaned like a wanton into her husband’s mouth.
Dragging his lips from hers with another groan, he tongued a river of fire down her neck, making her gasp with pleasure. But her heart leapt in warning as nimble fingers began loosening the ribbon ties at her throat. Squeezing her eyes shut, she felt the gossamer fabric of her wrapper slide off one shoulder. Warm lips followed its descent, sending wave after wave of chills over her bo
dy before backtracking to tickle her nape.
She heard Thorne’s breath catch and quicken as he encountered a well-placed dab of lemon verbena. Her tension fled, her entire body thrilling to the touch of his agile tongue and lips as he forged a steaming trail to the notch in her collarbone. Caught up in the headiest sensation she had ever experienced, she could not utter a word of objection as he went on to lay one round breast, its peak painfully taut, bare to his gaze. The weak sound she did manage was drowned out by another clap of thunder. The sound did not faze her, as Thorne chose that moment to close his mouth over her virgin nipple and suckle like a starvling.
Gasping and moaning, Gwynneth arched her back in shameless entreaty, her ears roaring, not with the fury of the storm, but with the hot blood of lust rushing through her veins. A tug-o-war raged between her lavishly tended nipple and that mysterious core of fire inside her, making her thighs clench unaccountably as if to take something within their grasp. Failing to find it, they writhed against one another while she squirmed in Thorne’s embrace and cried out for a relief she couldn’t name.
A warm hand slid up her thigh. Her protest died as Thorne lifted his head from her breast and nibbled her lower lip between husky-voiced words that eventually penetrated her fogged consciousness.
“I beg my lady’s permission,” he murmured, stroking her bare bottom with a reverence that eased her initial shock.
“For what?” she asked breathlessly.
“To pleasure her to exhaustion.”
Gwynneth forced her eyes open, and through a haze of passion beheld the burning blue gaze and sensual smile of her husband.
Just as Satan smiles on you from the fiery depths, hissed a voice in her head.
The voice of Sister Theresa Bernard.
*
Thorne’s smile and gentle patience were a bluff, his self-control flagging fast. The cushion he’d tucked between himself and his bride served its purpose all too well. He wished he could hurl it out the window.
“No!” Gwynneth cried with a gasp, her eyes widening.
“What?” His smile faltered.
“No!” She struggled to sit upright, levering against her husband’s chest with hands that only moments ago had clutched him to her in a death grip.
As Thorne met her fearful gaze with a bewildered stare, a shrill scream rose above the waning storm. Gwynneth sprang from his lap like a serving wench caught with her master.
Outside the chamber, voices hummed and exclaimed. “Wait here,” Thorne muttered. He threw the bolt back and stepped out in the gallery, where a sea of ruffled nightcaps, frowzy heads and pale but excited faces greeted him. He closed the door behind him.
“Come now, ladies, gentlemen. Someone has either suffered a nightmare or discovered a mouse. Never mind,” he said hastily at the women’s collective gasp. “We’ll find the poor rodent and make fast work of him.”
“The scream came from there, I’m certain!” Gwynneth’s cousin, Aunt Evelyn’s son, pointed eagerly at a door on the upper west gallery.
Thorne’s heartbeat slowed, his eyes scanning the throng but failing to find one guest in particular. Encouraging everyone to return to bed before catching cold, he sounded overly hearty to his own ears. “Besides, ladies, a mouse is about to meet its end. An ugly scene, I warn you.”
The crowd quickly disbanded. Thorne took the gallery on wooden legs, apprehension mounting with every step. Glancing back, he spied one lingering guest.
“May I assist?” Townsend called out softly.
The way you did on the battlements? “Not this time,” Thorne replied dryly. “The next rodent is yours, I promise.” But there was no rodent, and he knew it.
His hand weighed like stone as he lifted it to knock.
The door opened immediately, confronting Thorne with the wet-eyed, stricken face of Caroline’s maid.
“What the devil is wrong?” He was nowhere near as annoyed as he sounded, but annoyance served to mask other emotions he’d no business feeling.
“Oh, M’lord,” Ashby cried out, “‘tis my mistress, she’s had a terrible blow, sir, a dreadful shock!”
“Take me to her.” Thorne’s eyes were already searching the gloomy interior. Pushing past the maid, he bounded toward the inner chamber, where Caroline Sutherland lay motionless on the floor.
FOURTEEN
“Shut the door and stoke the fire,” Thorne ordered Ashby over his shoulder. She hurried to obey. The storm had forced an unseasonable chill through a few hidden chinks in the old wattle-and-daub masonry, and Caroline badly needed warmth.
Kneeling over her, Thorne pressed two fingers to her golden throat, his shoulders sagging in relief as he found a faint pulse. Lifting Caroline, he watched the thick fringe of her lashes for any sign of movement, and carried her to the bed. Still warm from her sleep, the sheets gave off her scent as he laid her down. Thorne felt himself harden beneath his dressing gown.
Aye, no doubt even dead she’d arouse you. He yanked the bedclothes up to her neck. “Fetch her salts,” he ordered Ashby, and was soon passing the vial beneath Caroline’s nose.
Caroline winced, turning away from the caustic fumes with a cough. She opened bewildered eyes to Thorne’s frown, then weakly waved a hand toward the bedside candle.
Next to it lay a folded piece of parchment, the sort upon which official messages were conveyed at any and all hours. Thorne picked it up with a sense of dread, smoothed out the folds, and read the message therein.
23 August 1728
Mistress Horace Sutherland
in care of The Right Honourable Lord Neville
Wycliffe Hall, Northamptonshire
Mistress Sutherland,
I regret to inform you that your husband passed away this morning in the vicinity of six of the clock. The body is held herewith in custody of the London coroner, who upon your orders alone will proceed with a post-mortem to determine cause of death. Extenuating circumstances require your immediate return. I await your instructions.
Yours in sympathy,
Frederick Holstaad
Holstaad, Camdenfield,
and Griggs, Solicitors
Fleet Street, London
Minutes ticked by on an open watch locket on the table, accompanied by Ashby’s muffled sobbing at the hearth. Caroline had lost consciousness again at sight of the paper in Thorne’s hand.
“Ashby.” He was taken aback by the huskiness of his voice. The maid stepped into the archway and dragged her sleeve across her dripping nose. “Mistress MacBride sleeps next to the larder,” Thorne told her. “Go and knock sharply. Say that your mistress sleeps poorly and needs an herbal, but reveal no more. Do you understand?”
She did, she told him with a curtsey, and he soon heard the latch click.
He used the smelling salts again. Caroline came around immediately. Seeing him, she closed her eyes with a sigh, tears trickling from their corners.
Without a second thought, Thorne gently stemmed the warm flow with his fingers.
“I wondered what had become of you,” said a cool voice behind him.
He jerked his hand back as if stung, then swept the bed hangings aside to meet the steady stare of his wife. Putting a finger to his lips, he rose and showed her the courier’s message.
Gwynneth stifled a cry, then shook off Thorne’s solicitous hand and took up his post at Caroline’s bedside.
The chamber door opened. Ashby entered, Bridey behind her bearing a tray, and Elaine Combs bringing up the rear.
Thorne turned a withering look on Caroline’s maid. “No doubt the rest of the household will be along shortly?”
Ashby shrank back, her sniffles resuming.
“Must you be so harsh, my lord?” Gwynneth arched her brow at him as she took the tray from Bridey. Thorne saw Elaine Combs’ furtive glance from him to his wife as she turned to assist Ashby. Gwynneth sat down at bedside again to hold Caroline’s hand and offer comforting words.
“My lady.”
Gwynneth turned
her cool gaze on him. “My lord?”
“As I suddenly find myself in a hen house, I shall take my leave. When you’ve done here, come to my chambers, please. I require a word with you.”
*
An hour before dawn, Gwynneth crossed Thorne’s threshold without a word, only gazing pointedly at his open windows and rubbing her arms.
“Sit by the fire, my lady, please.” He closed the door and the sashes. Leaning against the mantel, he silently marveled that the young woman perched so primly on his settee had, scant hours ago, writhed with passion in his arms.
“Gwynneth, I’m aware you’ve lived more than half your life without servants.”
“I was a servant,” she said tartly. “A servant of God.”
“Let’s leave God out of this, shall we?” He saw her frown. “Domestic servants are a fickle lot,” he went on. “Even the most loyal keep their eyes peeled and their ears to the ground. Any discord sensed between master and mistress will set tongues to wagging.”
Gwynneth cocked a delicate eyebrow.
“When a wife chastises her husband in the presence of servants,” Thorne explained patiently, “their respect for his authority is quite naturally diminished. And without his servants’ respect, a man’s household is soon in chaos.”
“You refer to my chiding you for your harshness with Caroline’s maid.”
“I do indeed.”
“I should hardly call it chastisement. Very well, then I apologize, but I’ve never heard you speak so to any of your servants.”
“Gwynneth, I ordered the girl not to say a word of circumstances, only to bring the items I’d requested. Yet she returned with the cook—and your maid!”
“Combs happened to be in the larder. Eating, would you believe, at such an hour! No wonder she’s plumped up since my first visit. Never mind, I’ve put a stop to it. But I’ve half a mind to tell Dame Carswell.”
“No need, I’ll do it myself,” Thorne lied, knowing it would be the last straw. Combs’ morning bouts with nausea seemed to have passed, but eventually—sooner than Thorne cared to admit even to himself, for some odd reason—the maid’s predicament would be general knowledge. What then?
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