And I am not one of them.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Lying on his cot in pitch-blackness, Hobbs heard the nickering of the horses—and then another noise.
Footsteps. Slow and stealthy, they entered the passageway and approached his door, which he never bolted when alone.
The Sutherland maid again? He doubted it. Caroline had probably clipped her wings for good.
He slipped a hand beneath the mattress. Fingers curling around cold steel, he waited until the door began to move. In one fluid motion, he sat up and drew the pistol, cocking it and aiming it squarely at the dark doorway.
And then smelled lemon verbena.
“Shite!” He kicked the covers once before remembering he was naked. “Pardon my language, my lady, but I nearly shot you.” He laid the flintlock down and rolled off the cot, winding himself in the blanket. He knotted it at his waist, then lit the stub of tallow on a table. His heart sank at the look on Gwynneth’s face. This was no friendly visit.
“Milady,” he said as if he were gentling a horse, “wait in the stables while I put on my breeches. I’ll join you in a trice.”
“I shall stay where I am, thank you all the same.”
Uncertain, he took a gamble and held his arms out away from his naked upper torso, knowing his muscles would ripple and his skin gleam bronze in the candlelight. “Very well then, have at me. I deserve it.”
Before he could even register her quicksilver advance, she slapped him full across the face.
Her voice shook. “Why? When only days ago you embraced me in these very stables—” She blinked away tears, fury in her eyes. “How could you even think of taking that little trollop into your bed?”
Hobbs resisted touching his stinging cheek. “She meant naught to me,” he muttered. “A penny-arsed harlot would have mattered no less. And forgive me, my lady, but you are not entirely without blame.”
“What? How dare you!”
Already he felt his arousal hardening under the wrapped sheet. “How dare I? You know bloody well ‘tis you I want. Am I to live like a monk while your husband takes his pleasure with you at will?”
Gwynneth recoiled. “You are saying I drove you to…oh, spare me, Tobias Hobbs, I am not one of your stupid, simpering whores, and I shan’t listen to any more of this!”
He sprang for her as she rounded on her heel, but stopped short at the venomous glare she turned on him.
“If you lay so much as a finger on my person, I shall scream!”
Hobbs’ heart began to pound. “Then save your breath, Milady.” His voice lowered, turning husky. “But I vow I can make you want more than my finger on your person, and in short order.”
Gwynneth’s face flushed scarlet.
“Night after accursed night I lie on this cot, thinking of naught but you, my lady. I see you next to me in the darkness. I reach for you, only to find mocking emptiness. Thin air, my lady. And thin air does little to comfort a man suffering the agony of a denied love.”
He edged toward her. She did not retreat.
“To know that you are just behind those walls,” he murmured, his throat constricting, “and that he lies beside you in that big, soft bed and runs his hands over your milky-white skin and tastes that rosebud of a mouth—” Hobbs clenched his teeth. “And that he sheathes his sword where I would give everything I own to trespass but once—”
“Stop it!” Gwynneth said in a choked voice. She made no move to flee, only clutching her cloak tight around her neck.
“I was in torment by the time that giddy little wench offered herself to me,” Hobbs muttered, “but in my mind’s eye they were your lips I kissed, and ‘twas your body I pleasured…” With one more step, he took hold of Gwynneth’s shoulders, his face contorting with arousal. “God’s blood, my lady, don’t you know that you drive me mad?”
The green eyes narrowed on his. “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” Gwynneth said coldly.
Hobbs made a sound that was half chuckle, half moan. “Mark me, my lady, God knows the hell I’ve endured of late. He has already forgiven me.”
Gwynneth made no protest as he began to unfasten her cloak, indeed she surprised him by shrugging the heavy velvet off her shoulders and letting it fall to the floor.
He gathered her to him with a groan. All that came between them was her shift, and as Gwynneth’s breasts pressed against him, his manhood surged triumphantly beneath the blanket, his quest for Lady Neville nearly at end.
His mouth covered hers. He let out a roar as passion turned to searing pain and disbelief—Gwynneth had bitten bit his lip and then his tongue.
He wrenched free of her, tasting blood, and stumbled backward, grimacing in pain.
“God may have forgiven you,” Gwynneth snarled, then wiped her sleeve across her mouth. “But I haven’t! How dare you think of me whilst you paw and rut with that ignorant little slut!”
Hobbs jerked his head aside and spat, then raked blazing eyes over Gwynneth’s scantily clad body. “Easy enough, with all your teasing and come-hithering. You’ve deliberately primed my pump on more than one occasion, my lady baroness!”
“You lie, you spawn of Satan!” Gwynneth’s face turned livid. “So help me God, if ever you lay a hand on me again or speak to me unbidden, I shall see to it you’re relieved of your situation immediately!” Her lip curled. “I’ve only to lie and tell my husband you’ve admitted fathering the bastard in Combs’s womb—trust me, you’ll be out on your ear then. And now that I know you for the filthy vermin you are, I suspect ‘tis true! Lie with dogs,” she said in a vinegar-syrup voice, “rise with fleas.”
Blood thrummed in Hobbs’ veins and pounded in his ears, drowning out all such niceties as title, station and pedigree, and leaving him with but a single thought. This woman—the only one he had ever loved—might just as well have plucked out his heart and stomped it into the ground while he watched.
He lunged for her.
*
Gwynneth’s scream died as Hobbs clapped a hand over her mouth. Again she used her teeth, sinking them viciously into the web of skin between the stable master’s thumb and forefinger.
Hobbs growled like a cornered beast as he tore flesh to yank his hand free. Grabbing Gwynneth’s wrists in his good hand, he pinned them against the rough wall above her head.
Gwynneth jerked her knee upward, but managed only a glancing blow to his groin—just enough to enough to fuel his anger.
She cried out as Hobbs ripped the embroidered yoke of her shift from neck to waist with his bleeding hand.
Her cry faded as she took in the shocking sight of her bare, heaving breasts. She couldn’t afford to be rescued. Her very presence here, in these clothes and at this hour, would condemn her. Defense—survival—was entirely up to her.
Still holding her wrists, Hobbs pushed his thighs against hers, immobilizing her knees. Outraged, Gwynneth squirmed within his grasp. Her anger turned to fear as she saw the animal lust in his eyes. She froze.
The smell of man-sweat invaded her nose. As Hobbs’s golden head swooped down to capture a nipple in his mouth, his free hand smearing blood on her alabaster skin, Gwynneth found her voice. Her frantic threats turned to pleas as he yanked the flimsy shift upward and bunched it between her chest and his midsection. She struggled with renewed vigor, which only seemed to inflame his lust. In vain she strove to cross her thighs while his long, nimble fingers wriggled between them and slipped easily through her silky thatch of curls. Tears of fury and humiliation squeezed from under her closed eyelids, as he found her hidden folds of flesh with unerring deftness and grunted his satisfaction.
Gwynneth prayed she would faint. Then maybe Hobbs would unhand her and leave her limp body lying in the straw. She only wanted to be left alone—by him, by Thorne, by everyone. When Hobbs suddenly withdrew his probing fingers, hope burgeoned—and died almost immediately as he jerked the blanket from around his waist and flung it to the floor.
Gwynneth’s insti
nctive glance and horrified gasp prompted a proud, throaty chuckle from the stable master.
“Puts his bloody lordship to shame, doesn’t it?” he rasped. “Aye, Milady, ‘tis not for naught I’m in demand from here to London.”
Gwynneth could barely stifle her scream as Hobbs wedged the fleshy club between her trembling legs. Slowly, her limbs gave way under his brute strength. She moaned in desperation.
“Aye, sweeting, you’ll have it soon enough,” he assured her, his voice trembling with obvious anticipation. Bending his knees and bracing his stance with her wrists still in hand, he spit into his hand, took his proud manhood in hand and guided it up to its goal, his eyes meeting Gwynneth’s with proud excitement. His entry was slow, constricted. “Tight as a drum,” he said with relish.
Pinpoints of light exploded behind Gwynneth’s eyelids; a keening moan of pain burst from her lips. The stableman seemed to take it for surrender as he tightened his grip on her wrists, pawed a breast, and thrust deeper into her, nearly ripping her apart.
Something warm and dribbled down her thighs. Hobbs grunted his pleasure and drove himself in and out of her body with increasing speed and violence. She wanted to scream, to sob hysterically, but the risk of discovery terrified her even more. Nor would she give Hobbs the satisfaction. She would bear the consequences of this rash visit the way martyred saints had endured torture before their deaths. It was the only grace she could salvage from this abomination. Her pain receded into blessed numbness as she imagined various ways Hobbs would be tormented in hell for his unforgivable crime.
His guttural gasp jolted her to awareness, and her body stiffened as his rutting motions accelerated to a frenzy. Sensing the end of her ordeal was at hand, she held her breath, then uttered a muffled cry as she felt the explosion and heat of his spewing seed deep within her.
With each spasm of Hobbs’s release, Gwynneth was bitterly reminded why she had come to the stables tonight, as over and over through clenched teeth her ravisher chanted the words like a mantra—
“I love you…I love you, Gwynneth…I love you…”
*
Hobbs looked away as Gwynneth pulled the two useless halves of her shift together. Knotting the blanket at his waist again, he glanced at the bite wound on his hand, where the blood had long dried. He picked up her cloak and handed it to her.
“You’d best be getting back. He might come looking for you in your chambers. God knows I would.” His eyes roved Gwynneth’s pallid face. “I’m sorry for the damage to your shift. Burn it, no doubt you’ve another. Next time we’ll remove it properly.” He guided her as far as the outer doorway. “I dare not walk you to the Hall,” he said, growing unnerved at her silence. “The moon is still high. If worse comes to worst and you’re seen, you can say you were unable to sleep and visited Abigail as I slept. Are you all right?”
“Yes.” Her voice sounded far away.
“Good. Come to me again as soon as you can.” He pressed his lips to the back of one limp hand. “Goodnight, Gwynneth…my love.”
Her eyes met his for the first time since he’d ravished her. They may as well have belonged to a stranger. “I gave you no leave to call me by my Christian name,” she said tonelessly. “Nor shall I acknowledge your term of endearment. You have presumed far too much this night, Tobias Hobbs, infinitely more than my own husband has, and you shall pay for it.”
“My lady,” he protested, but broke off at the sudden hardness in her expression. Watching her go, he shook his head. One never knew with gentlewomen. One minute ice, fire the next, and then ice again.
Back in his cramped quarters, he lit the lamp and poured fresh water into a basin. Cleaning away the sticky evidence of his tryst, he rinsed the cloth, then stared with growing wonder at the water’s odd tint. He glanced down at his nakedness.
He knew immediately the blood wasn’t his. Nor had he felt a trace of moisture when he’d entered Gwynneth.
Smeared from tip to base and onto his thighs, it mocked him—thin but abundant, and garishly bright.
TWENTY-EIGHT
“I’ve no desire to be presented at Court.” Gwynneth turned her back on her husband so Byrnes could lace her stays.
Thorne watched from the doorway. “My lady, I did not invade the sanctity of your chambers for my own amusement. There stands a messenger in the anteroom awaiting a reply, which I would have given but for deference to you.”
“And must I reply in the affirmative?” she sulked.
“When the king requests your presence at one of his ‘Drawing-rooms’, particularly for his birthday reception, there is no reply but ‘yes.’ And no excuse but death.”
Gwynneth ignored his dry humor. “And if I refuse?” She held up her arms as Byrnes slipped an azure underskirt over her head.
“A sure way to gain immediate notoriety.”
“Meaning?” Gwynneth demanded, her head emerging from the overskirt as it rippled down swaying panniers.
“Meaning that your name would instantly be anathema at Court.”
“And yours as well,” she ventured sourly.
Thorne kept a bland face. “Once Parliament has opened and we are in residence at your father’s townhouse, you’ll change your mind. I’ll convey our acceptance. I daresay the messenger has never waited so long for a reply to a royal summons. Good morning, my lady.”
As Thorne turned to go, Gwynneth fixed a baleful eye on the maid, who could not conceal her excitement. “Well, Byrnes, it seems you shall see the palace after all.”
*
Relegated to a cramped apartment with other visiting ladies’ maids at Saint James, Byrnes seemed thrilled enough just to be in the vicinity of royalty.
Gwynneth found the palace daunting, despite its rundown condition, and forgot her vow not to be impressed by the pomp and finery of the king’s forty-fifth birthday celebration. The Drawing-room on that tenth of November was such a noisy, scented blur of silks, velvets, jewels, swords and fans that it was hard to be jaded, especially with King George II and Caroline of Ansbach presiding from their ornate thrones.
She felt all eyes upon her as she walked the aisle to the dais, curtsied, and murmured a few words to the Royal Couple. She noted the king’s ocular dip into her cleavage with mixed feelings. The queeen’s own remarkable and renowned bosom, a source of pride to the king, was stunningly displayed in a jewel-encrusted gown of embroidered silk and velvet.
The presentation was over in seconds—an interminable time by Gwynneth’s reckoning. She clung to Thorne’s arm as they wended their way through the crowd of powdered and perfumed guests, and between introductions confided a longing, not for the house in Covent Garden where they were in residence for the opening of Parliament, but for her quiet existence at Wycliffe Hall.
Aye, back to your chambers and prayer retreats, thought Thorne, fighting yet another wave of hopelessness. Gwynneth had been fretful and cross for weeks now, but the one time he’d mentioned it, she had burst into tears and fled the room. From then on he’d taken silent note of her mood swings. He suspected they had to do with ending her rides now that Hobbs had been caught in flagrante dilecto with Caroline’s maid. Gwynneth loved Abigail, but not enough to tolerate the presence of such a “sinner” as the stable master. This suited Thorne fine. In his estimation Gwynneth had already spent entirely too much time in Hobbs’s company.
Caroline had left for London just a week after her early-October arrival. Oddly, Gwynneth had seemed relieved at her departure.
Meanwhile, Thorne’s vision of a house full of guests and laughing children had grown dimmer by the day. He’d spent late evenings alone in the library, where he often imagined hearing a light step outside the door or the quiet turning of a page somewhere in the room. He would grit his teeth at those imaginings, fearing that if there was a lingering spirit in the room, it might not his father’s, but Combs’ instead. He could not bear the notion she might be dead.
He could turn to no one, not even Arthur, and had felt unusually glad w
hen the time came for Parliament’s opening. Though this year’s session had little import for the Lords and Commons, the familiar order of procedure and protocol reassured him. Even more comforting were visits to old haunts, namely the taverns of Fleet Street, with his peers.
Gwynneth had found her own diversion in the abbeys, priories, cathedrals, and churches. Saint Paul’s, Westminster Abbey, Saint Bartholomew-the-Great, Saint Martin’s, Saint Clement Danes, Saint Mary-le-bow; the list went on, as did the days, with poor Byrnes wearily in tow. The mists rolling off the Thames and the frequent cold drizzle were no deterent. “At least ‘tis dry sanctuary,” Thorne had heard Byrnes quip of yet another church on the agenda.
He was jerked back to the present as two royal armsmen appeared to escort Gwynneth to the king himself for the next dance. In seconds the floor was cleared, all eyes turned their way. When the minuet ended, the monarch escorted Gwynneth directly to Thorne’s side.
“Bezaubern, Lord Neville. Und schon.”
Thorne bowed. “Danke, Ihre Majestat.”
“Bitte schon.” The king kissed Gwynneth’s hand, lingering over it before turning away with his attendants.
“Oh Thorne,” she breathed, once they were out of hearing range. “I think I shall faint. I’m so glad that is over.”
The king had stopped to converse with a plump, attractive woman well-known at Court, and as Thorne watched, the two of them turned and looked his way. “Your social life has just advanced,” he murmured to Gwynneth.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I predict you’ll soon receive at least two invitations, one to the Queen’s salon. She’s fond of cribbage.”
“So I’ve heard. And the other invitation?”
“Will likely come from Marble Hill House.” Thorne lifted a pint of ale from a passing tray.
“I’ve heard of the place. Is it one of the king’s residences?”
The Heart Denied Page 25