“Only, M’lord, that the kitchen maids might balk at bringing her meals.”
Thorne smacked his forehead. “What in God’s name was I thinking? We gentlefolk mustn’t feed such hardened criminals as she!” Giving up the charade, he scowled at the housekeeper. “Would you have the woman parade belowstairs thrice a day in her condition?”
The housekeeper’s chin nearly thumped her chest. “Heavens, no, M’lord!”
“Then tell Combs of her change in situation. I trust you and Lady Neville did not turn her immediately out of the Hall yesterday?”
“No, M’lord.” Dame Carswell looked both infuriated and relieved by the fact. “I shall inform her of your decision straightaway. Markham, too.”
“It pleases me,” Thorne said, his penetrating gaze fastened on the housekeeper, “to know I can depend upon you to carry out orders, and that I needn’t concern myself further with the matter.”
“I shall see to it immediately, M’lord.”
Her deep curtsey gave him pause, not for the first time, to reflect that the more ruffled Dame Carswell’s feelings, the lower she dipped her knee.
He nearly smiled. Perhaps someday her ass would hit the floor.
*
“Good day, Milady.” Hobbs bowed with a flourish. “I thought nothing could surpass the beauty of this day. I see I was quite wrong.”
Gwynneth blushed from the Kelly-green ruff of her riding frock to the roots of her hair. “You are very kind, Hobbs.”
“Kindness has nothing to do with it.” He boosted her into the saddle and watched her hook her right knee over the pommel, then secured the stirrup under the arch of her boot.
Arranging her skirts, Gwynneth glancing shyly at him from under the brim of her veiled riding bonnet, and blushed anew at the frank admiration in his gaze.
“Will you need a guide today, Milady? I should be honored to serve.”
“Thank you, Hobbs, but not today.”
“Off to meet his lordship, then.” The words sounded more clipped than he’d intended.
Gwynneth gazed westward. “Perhaps later,” she murmured. “Just now I want to ride to Beck’s Hollow.”
“Then take care on the ridge paths, Milady. Give Abigail her head. She’s cautious and canny. Enjoy your ride!” He slapped Abigail lightly on the flank, then watched horse and rider trot down the curving drive toward the road.
The perfume of roses wafted his way on a western breeze. At times their scent actually quelled the stable odors of sweat, dung and leather—much like thoughts of Lady Neville quelled, for hours at a time, the stench of Hobbs’ bitterness at his lot in life. With each passing day, he found himself glancing more frequently toward the Hall in hopes of seeing Thorne Neville’s bride.
As Hobbs watched her ride Abigail down the Northampton road toward Beck’s Hollow, an idea struck him. He was an excellent tracker, stealthy and keenly observant, on horseback as well as on foot.
He would follow her.
*
Descending the ridge, Gwynneth let Abigail pick her way at leisure over roots and stones, then brought the mare to an abrupt halt just inside the tree line.
Not more than a hundred yards to the west, Thorne Neville stood with his back to her. He appeared to be examining the trunk of an old ash tree.
Frowning, Gwynneth backed Abigail deeper into the woods and dismounted. First looping the reins over a decaying tree stump, she kept her eyes on the ground and headed for the boulder she and Thorne had used for their picnic. Pretending not to have spotted him, she doffed hat, boots, stockings and hairpins.
It was the sensual shake of her head that caught Thorne’s eye. Watching her red-gold hair fan out over her back and shoulders, he stood rooted to the spot. Concealing himself was a lost option as Raven picked up Abigail’s scent and neighed. Slowly, Gwynneth turned to meet her husband’s gaze.
Thorne’s mind raced as he strolled along the grassy bank. Reaching the boulder, he tried to sound casual. “Good morning, my lady. What brings you here?”
She hesitated. “A memory.”
Thorne lowered his eyes. A memory had brought him here, too, though likely a very different one. He lifted Gwynneth’s hand, fingered the rings on her limp fingers. “A pleasant memory, I hope?” He looked up to see her sulky expression.
“Quite pleasant—until you became angry with me.”
“Angry?” Thorne frowned, perplexed.
“Yes. Just as you were that night in London, after you kissed me in the coach.”
“You thought me angry?”
“Do not patronize me, my lord.”
Thorne gazed into eyes as green as the moss on the boulder and as limpid as the beck waters, and shook his head. “If anger had any place in it, ‘twas only at myself for nearly letting my feelings overcome my good sense.”
“What feelings? Tell me. Don’t leave me mystified again.”
Thorne eyed her silently for a moment. “Very well, my lady, you asked, and I shall answer. I wanted you. I wanted you enough to take you there and then—in the carriage, and again on this very boulder.”
Scarlet flooded Gwynneth’s cheeks. She averted her eyes. “And what hindered you?” she asked, her voice barely audible.
“You were not mine for the taking,” Thorne said quietly.
Her eyes darted to his, then away again. Watching the tip of her tongue slide nervously over her lower lip, Thorne recalled with jolting clarity how those lips had closed so innocently around his finger that day, how hotly that small pink tongue had branded him with a single, reflexive flick. His groin tightened.
Gwynneth’s shoulders lifted with an indrawn breath. “And now…” she began, a tremor entering her voice. “Now that I am yours for the taking, do you want me still?”
Thorne nearly laughed aloud at the sweet absurdity of her question, his manhood already straining against the confines of his breeches. “Aye, my lady,” he said huskily, brushing his lips over her ear again. “I want you still.” Feeling her shiver, he pressed the small hand adorned with the Neville ancestral emerald to his heart. “Do you not feel my life’s blood pounding through my veins, Gwynneth? ‘Tis stirred to boiling, here…and here,” he said, lowering her hand and laying it over his hardness. “You, and only you, my lady, have the power to cool it.”
He saw her lips part, heard her sharp little intake of breath, and felt his turgid shaft extend even more beneath her fingers. “Aye,” he said, his voice thickening, “feel what you’ve done to me, Lady Neville. Feel what you’ve done more times than you know.”
Affixing wide eyes on their joined hands, Gwynneth gave the bulge beneath them a tentative squeeze.
Thorne groaned, hips flexing involuntarily. Nibbling the velvet shell of Gwynneth’s ear, he felt her hand go still upon him, but sensed no objection. Slowly, he traced the tip of his tongue over the delicate whorls of her ear, then touched it to the small opening. Hearing her gasp, he turned her face toward him.
In the brief glance they exchanged just before she closed her eyes in surrender, Thorne saw something he had only suspected until now—Gwynneth Stowington Wycliffe was a passionate woman.
He had only to convince her.
She whimpered as he slanted his mouth over hers, her body rising like an ocean wave against the rigid dune of his shores. As she slid her arms about his neck, Thorne slowly went to his knees, bringing her down with him, and stretched out with her on the boulder. There was no place on earth, he realized, where he’d rather make Gwynneth his wife.
A fierce, sweet joy replaced the caution he’d felt of late toward his new bride. Reveling in her scent and threading his fingers through her silken hair, he tasted the dewy skin at her nape before delving again into the warm honey of her mouth. One hand cupping her head, he let the other roam the planes of her back and the dip of her waist before slipping it between them, where it moved to cover one full breast through her frock.
Gwynneth’s earthy moan nearly unmanned him. As her lithe body began undulatin
g against his own hard angles and sinew, Thorne gritted his teeth, feeling the moist precursor of a much-anticipated climax. It had been so long.
He slid her fock down one shoulder, tasted the curve between it and the slender column of her neck. Gwynneth threaded her fingers through his hair and gripped the back of his head—which swam with near delirioum as she guided it down, down to the damp valley between her breasts. Freeing one supple breast from her bodice, Thorne fastened his mouth over the puckered peak.
Gwynneth clutched him to her as he suckled, her breath coming in gasps, her back arching and hips writhing as she mutely begged for completion.
And this time, Thorne swore to himself, she would have it. As would he.
*
Halfway up the ridge, Tobias Hobbs dropped to his knees.
The lying little whore.
Moaning, he deliberately struck his forehead against the trunk of the oak beside him, but nothing could match the pain in his loins.
If the girl had said she was meeting her husband, he would never have followed her. The sight of Neville’s hands on her, was more than he could bear. Why, why had she lied to him?
Leave! But he couldn’t move. Oblivious to the ropy roots and broken acorns pressing through the worn knees of his buckskin breeches, he stayed, his burning eyes riveted on the lovers.
But when Neville freed the other breast from the girl’s velvet bodice, and she herself cupped the firm, round, taut-tipped globe in her hand to offer it up to him, Hobbs could watch no longer. Gripping rough bark, he arose with a groan, then realigned the throbbing appendage in his breeches and forced his trembling limbs to climb to where Bartholomew waited high on the ridge. After three curse-filled attempts to mount the big gelding, who shied away from his master’s unusual clumsiness, Hobbs heaved himself onto the saddle and gave the horse a desperate kick.
*
“My lord!” Thrusting Thorne away, Gwynneth clutched her wadded bodice to her breasts and catapulted to a sitting position.
Groaning, he rolled onto his back and shielded his eyes against the sunlight. “God have mercy, what is it now?”
“I heard something.” Ignoring his swearing, Gwynneth searched the wooded ridge with her eyes.
“The horses, no doubt.”
“No. ‘Twas a person, I’m certain!” She yanked her bodice up over her bosom and shoulders.
With a sigh, Thorne rose on an elbow and perused the ridge, but even Gwynneth saw nothing but the dense foliage of late summer. Only birdsong and babbling beck intruded on the peaceful stillness.
Hiding her flaming cheeks behind a curtain of hair, Gwynneth donned her stockings and boots, keeping her skirts down as much as possible. “I must get back to the Hall.” For what, she couldn’t have said. She hoped he wouldn’t ask.
“I’ll ride with you.”
Gwynneth darted her eyes at her husband. Seeing his pleasant expression, she nearly sighed with relief. How close she had come to trading her soul for the temptations of carnal pleasure! But he had caught her off-guard today. Next time she would be prepared.
She gave no thought to Thorne’s escorting her up the stairs when they returned, or even to his opening her chamber door for her. Realization did not strike until the bolt slid into the jamb and she heard his long, easy stride behind her.
Dear God. So that was the reason for his patience—he’d only the ride home to endure! Now he would exact his due.
She whirled about, hoping she’d only imagined his step, but there he was—and behind him, the closed portal, bolted tight against prying eyes.
Denying the thrill of fear that surged through her veins, Gwynneth stalked into her bedchamber and tossed her bonnet onto the bed.
But when Thorne sauntered to the curtained archway, her resolve wavered. No pirate could have looked more dangerously dashing—black hair falling over his unlaced shirt, razor stubble shadowing his jaw and upper lip, his eyes as blue as the Caribbean in a painting she’d once seen, and bathing her with a heat to rival that of its tropics. All he needed was a cutlass between those impossibly white teeth.
She shivered as she imagined him slicing off her buttons with one precise flick of his gleaming blade. Her buttons! Holy Mary, she’d never manage the tiny loops at her back alone.
She tried to sound firm. “My lord, I require a maid.”
“Yes, and we shall find one presently.”
Her heartbeat quickened at the smooth readiness of his reply. “I…I meant just now.” She swallowed hard. “Can you please have Carswell send someone up?”
Smiling, Thorne shook his head. “I shall be your maid this afternoon.” He cocked an eyebrow at her soft gasp, adding in a low drawl, “I assure you, my lady, I can get you out of that riding frock faster than any maid from here to London.”
Gwynneth’s mouth went dry.
Abandoning the archway, her husband approached with the feral grace of a stalking panther, his eyes burning hotter into hers with each step. Paralyzed at first, Gwynneth sprang into motion—only to be reminded the bed was just behind her.
She veered to her right and positioned herself between the hearth and the fireside chairs.
Thorne halted, his smile going awry. “Am I reduced to chasing my own wife about her chambers?”
“Only if you move, sir,” was her breathless quip.
Slowly, he shook his head. “What’s your game, my lady? Not an hour ago you were sighing with pleasure in my arms, yet now you play the nervous maiden. Hot one minute, cold the next.” His smile faded. “Tell me whom I married, Lady Neville…friend or foe?”
*
Thorne’s heart sank as Gwynneth pressed her mouth into a thin line. He had asked rhetorically, never dreaming she harbored some grudge. It appeared he would have to risk her ire, perhaps even another scene, to discover its nature.
But she beat him to the draw. “First, you tell me,” she said, a tremor in her voice even as she narrowed her eyes, “how long you have been in love with Caroline Sutherland.”
SEVENTEEN
If Thorne had caught Gwynneth off-guard at Beck’s Hollow, she had just paid him back in full. And then some.
“Sit down,” he said.
“I’d rather not.”
“Please.”
Elevating her chin, Gwynneth perched stiffly on the edge of a chair.
Thorne took the other seat. “Forgive me if I seem stunned, but I’m having difficulty digesting the bizarre notion that I could be ‘in love’ with…your friend.” He’d hoped the name would roll off his tongue.
“I used to think,” Gwynneth said in a brittle voice, “that you disliked Caroline immensely, that you could scarcely bear to be in the same room. I never knew the reason, yet somehow I couldn’t bring myself to ask. But then, on our wedding night-”
Thorne started to speak, but she held up a hand.
“To find you sitting on the edge of her bed, bent over her so solicitously, with your hand in her hair—oh yes, I saw that! I had pulled the curtain aside to see her face. I only wanted to know what was the matter, no one had bothered to inform me. Why was I not summoned? And lest you protest your chivalry was mere pity, I am quite aware that you also brought Caroline home from the public alehouse the night before—or rather early that morn!”
“Aye, and ‘twas pity on that occasion as well.”
“Then why say nothing of it? Did you also carry her to her chambers?”
“‘Twas either that or drag her. She was in no condition to walk, I assure you. The maid let us in, and I promptly took my leave. As for our wedding night—if one can term it such,” Thorne added wryly, “I can only plead a long-standing state of affairs, that being a household with no mistress. I’m accustomed to taking charge, my lady, to doing what must be done. I apologize for my negligence. Rest assured in future I shall use better sense.”
Gwynneth folded her arms. “And why did you not mention escorting Caroline home?”
“Damnation, Gwynneth, ‘twas our wedding day. Why spoil
it?”
She gasped. “And now you utter a curse to mark the occasion?”
Biting off another curse, Thorne shot out of his seat. Gwynneth’s surfacing tears failed to move him, because in all of this recrimination, one glaring detail had been overlooked.
She shrank back as he bent over and caged her in the chair with his sinewy arms.
“If you thought I was ‘in love’ with your friend, why the deuce did you then beg me, badger me, indeed leave me bloody little choice but to accompany her to London and stay in her house? And worse yet, commission me to assuage her grief? Did you not fear that under the guise of consolation I might seduce her? Were you testing my fidelity already?”
“Aye,” Gwynneth cried, braving his fierce perusal, “but I had to know!” The tears spilled over. “I was tormented by the thought that you were secretly enamored of Caroline, that you married me only for convenience!”
“I put up a bloody good fight at the prospect of leaving you, did I not?”
“Aye, for the sake of appearances!”
Shaking his head, Thorne crouched down in front of Gwynneth and covered her clenched hands in one of his. “If you had only asked,” he chided, “I would have told you.”
She eyed him hopefully. “Told me…”
“That you were far off the mark to think I harbored any such sentiment for Caroline Sutherland.” There, he’d said her name, and with a fair amount of ease. Gently brushing Gwynneth’s tears away with a thumb, he was glad to see no flinching. “I’ll admit to pitying the woman—until I saw her in action in London,” he amended dryly.
“She will survive, then?”
Thorne smiled. “She will thrive, my lady. Mistress Sutherland is a force with which to be reckoned. Her agents and solicitors have their hands full.”
“Then I can cease fretting. On all accounts.”
“You can, indeed,” Thorne said, rising to his feet. “Now, I’ll send someone up to assist.” He silenced Gwynneth’s polite protest by playfully pressing a finger to her lips. Then, still feeling the warmth of those lips as he reached the door, he stopped to give her a long look. “After we’ve dined this eve, I shall attend you myself.”
The Heart Denied Page 14