“Mrs. Howard near fell down dead when she saw what Bow Street did to your things, Mr. Waring,” Halliwell said as he took Paris’s reins to lead him inside the stable. “It didn’t help when Lord Bramwell Johns came by first thing this morning and told her to stop messing about and go home.”
“Is she here now?”
“Aye. She came back a short time ago. She was sweeping up buckets of broken dishes when last I saw her.”
“Thank you.”
As Sullivan made his way into the small cottage, what he wanted most was a few moments alone to think—or not to think, as imagining Isabel’s face and Isabel’s kisses and Isabel’s voice did nothing but make his chest ache and his throat tighten. Inside the front room, he stopped. Bits and pieces of his life lay scattered and broken across the floor. The walls were mostly bare, and seat cushions were torn open, feathers and cotton spread across the floor like snow.
“Oh, Mr. Waring,” Mrs. Howard wailed as she turned from dusting feathers off his end table, “you’re alive! I thought they might have hanged you straightaway, and then what good would it be finding out you’d been wronged by that dratted Lord Tilden?”
“Thank you, Mrs. Howard.” He brushed off the plump woman, then stopped as he reached the foot of the stairs. “Mrs. Howard, I’ll see to this. Take the remainder of the day off. And tomorrow as well. With full pay.”
“But there’s such a mess here, Mr. Waring. How will you—”
“I’ll see to it.”
Slowly she set down her duster. “Very well, then, sir. I’ve a roast baking in the oven in the hope that you’d be alive and returned to us in time to eat it.”
“That’s very kind of you. I’ll see you day after next.”
“Yes, Mr. Waring.”
He listened from his small bedchamber upstairs until he heard her leave. Thank God. Another person telling him how awful people were to accuse him of theft, and he’d begin pummeling someone.
As he stood there, he was very aware that he stank. He smelled of prison, indescribable scents that couldn’t possibly be mistaken for anything else. Scowling, he stripped out of his shirt and waistcoat and boots, then returned downstairs and went outside to fill a water bucket. Standing by the well, he dumped it over his head. Christ, it was cold. He did it again. And once more.
As he straightened, tossing his head to clear his wet hair from his eyes, he abruptly forgot about the wet and the cold. She sat there on horseback, looking at him from across the yard. Isabel.
Chapter 25
“Douglas, go talk to the grooms,” Isabel said, her gaze still on Sullivan.
Water was running down his bare chest in slow rivulets. Wet and slick and delicious. Her mouth went dry.
“I’m not going anywhere,” her brother exclaimed.
She’d already forgotten he was there. Sullivan had filled her thoughts before. But now, after she’d so nearly lost him, she could scarcely remember to breathe at the sight of him.
“I say, Tibby!”
She jumped, uncertain whether that was the first or the fifth time Douglas had said her name. “What is it? For heaven’s sake.”
“I said we need to go.” Her brother frowned at her. “Don’t you realize how much trouble we’ll be in if Father finds out we came here? Not to mention Mother.”
“Yes, I know. A great deal of trouble. Go away, Douglas.”
Her brother sighed, then swung out of the saddle. “When I fall in love with a chit,” he said, helping her down from Zephyr, “I’m going to be much more sensible about it.” He lowered his voice. “This is a bad idea, Tibby.”
“So you’ve been saying for the past twenty minutes,” she muttered back. “I can’t explain it to you. I need to talk with him.”
Douglas nodded as she released his hand. “I saw you this morning. I do understand.”
She leaned closer. “Then go away.”
“Lucifer’s balls,” he grumbled. “And don’t you tell Father I said that. Because I suppose I can say anything I like as long as I’m keeping your secrets.”
“Yes, I suppose you can.”
He wandered off to the stable, and she watched as he became engaged in conversation with one of the grooms. When she turned to find Sullivan again, all that remained by the well was a large puddle and the bucket. No sign of the man himself.
For a moment she froze. He’d actually gone into the house without even bothering to say hello. She knew he’d seen her. Eyes narrowing and her heart clenching, she stomped up to the front door and shoved it open.
“I told you to stay away from me,” he growled from just beyond the doorway.
“How am I supposed to do that? Yesterday I thought—”
Sullivan grabbed her shoulder and pushed her back outside. “You do it like this. I don’t want you here.”
He shut the door on her.
Isabel glared at the heavy oak. He had actually just thrown her out of his home. After what she’d felt this morning, dying would have been easy. And now he didn’t even want to look at her. People she’d known all her life had turned their backs on her and gossiped about her last night, and all she’d been able to think about was going to see him, touching him.
She turned the handle. The door didn’t budge. He’d locked her out. She was the daughter of a marquis, and he was a damned…something, and he thought he could dictate everything. She would see about that.
Isabel strode back into the yard, grabbed the empty water bucket, and returned to the door. Then she hurled the bucket at it. It rebounded with a loud thud. “Open this door!”
Silence.
She picked up the bucket and threw it again. This time it broke with a satisfying crack. “Let me in!”
Again nothing.
The planks of the bucket were a nice size to grasp in her fist. She selected one and began beating on the door. “If you’re trying to avoid a scene,” she shouted, “you’re doing very badly at it!”
“Go away.”
“I am a noblewoman, and you are a blasted commoner. I demand that you open this door at once!”
“No.”
She continued hammering. One of the grooms emerged from the stable, and then another. Then her brother reappeared. She kept beating on the door. “You think you’re being so damned noble, don’t you? You’re a coward! You’re a damned cowar—Ouch!” A splinter dug into her palm.
The door opened. “You’ve hurt yourself,” he said, and took her arm to pull her inside. “What did you do?”
He still wore nothing but his trousers, and those clung damply to his thighs. “It’s nothing. A splinter.”
Sullivan shut the door behind her. Well, at least she’d made it inside. “Let me look.” He guided her toward the window, holding her hand, palm up, in his long fingers. Artist’s fingers, she realized, even with the calluses. “It’s deep. Hold still.”
“I—Ouch!”
She tried to jerk free, but he held her hand steady, plucking the long spur of wood out from the base of her thumb. A drop of blood welled out, and he brought her palm to his lips, sucking gently. Her knees buckled.
“Isabel.” Sullivan caught her, lowering her gently to the floor and kneeling beside her. “Are you well?”
“No, I’m not, you idiot.” She shoved at his bare shoulder, trying to ignore the warmth of his skin beneath her hand. “You threw me out of your house.”
“And once again, I told you to stay away from me.”
Despite his words, he hadn’t let go of her injured hand. And his own fingers trembled a little. “We both know what the correct thing to do is,” she said, on a hunch running her fingers up his bare shoulder. “But yesterday—this morning—I thought you were going to hang. I apologize if I’m unable to…to stop feeling anything because you say I shouldn’t.”
Ice-green eyes lifted to meet hers. And then he lunged, taking her to the floor, his mouth seeking hers hungrily. With a smothered gasp Isabel kissed him back. She dug her fingers into the hard muscles of his b
ack, trying to pull him closer against her.
“You are so stubborn,” he muttered, kissing what seemed like every inch of bare skin she possessed. He unbuttoned the front of her hunter-green riding gown down the front, his mouth trailing after. As his lips grazed her breasts, she gasped again. “So stubborn,” he continued.
Isabel kept silent, afraid that if she spoke aloud he would realize what he was doing and stop. Instead she kissed him back, wanting more but letting him direct the moment. When he abruptly pulled away from her, though, sinking back on his haunches, she sat up. “Don’t stop.”
“Not on the bloody floor.” He slid an arm beneath her knees and another around her back, and lifted her up. With his free fingers he bolted the front door and then strode across the floor and up the stairs.
She kissed his throat, feeling the deep rumble of satisfaction and arousal in his chest where he pressed against her side. Her parents knew of her fondness for him now, but she still didn’t think they understood it. Even she wasn’t certain she could put it into words. He’d helped her face the greatest fear in her life, but not only because he’d shown her how to ride. Because of him she’d realized that other things had more significance than a childhood terror. She might have lost him. She still might lose him, but that was something she could at least fight against.
Sullivan set her down on his large blue bed in his dark, masculine room. He surrounded her here, inside and out. As he settled over her again, she reached up to undo the fastenings of his trousers.
“This is a mistake,” he murmured, taking her mouth again, sliding his tongue between her lips. In the next second he grabbed her lapels and pulled them apart, baring her breasts to his very capable hands and mouth.
Of course it was a mistake. Everything between them had been a mistake. That was why it seemed so…precious. None of it should ever have happened. Isabel shoved his pants down, and he kicked out of the damp things. In almost the same motion he slid her gown up past her thighs, using one hand and his knees to bare her legs. She helped him, pulling the heavy material of her riding dress up over her hips.
“I want you,” he continued in the same desperate tone, and pushed forward, sliding deeply inside her.
Isabel moaned at the filling sensation. Tossing her head back, she clung to his shoulders with her fingers and wrapped her ankles around his thighs as he pumped hard against her. This, this was what he’d taught her. That two very different and yet not-so-different people could, for a scattering of breathless moments, be one.
“Isabel,” he breathed, in time with his motions, his gaze holding hers as she tightened and then shattered with a shaking groan.
At the last moment he yanked free from her grip and rolled away. Breathless, Isabel watched him climax. She understood why he did that, why he left her each time, why that made him a better man than his father. But the deepest part of her heart wished that he wouldn’t leave, that he would find his release in her.
“Is that what you wanted?” he finally asked, returning to her and lying on his back so she could rest against him, her head on his shoulder. The shoulder with the two nearly identical scars only inches apart. Two more times luck had kept him alive, two more times they might never have met.
“Part of it,” she admitted, running her fingers along his skin.
“It’s only partly what I want from you, too, Tibby.”
“Take everything, then.”
“You would marry me?”
Her heart pounded against her chest, reckless and much less cautious than her mind. “I would if you asked me to.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Sullivan, stop deciding what I do and don’t want of my own life. I’ve thought things through, you know.”
“I don’t think you have. I’m nine years older than you are, Isabel, and I’ve seen a great deal of how spiteful and hard the world can be to someone like me. And if you’re with me, you will suffer the same fate. Even worse, because you willingly descended to it from a great height.”
“I don’t care.”
“Yes, you do. Or you will. What would you do, live here with me? Take care of my household? That’s a task that would keep you occupied for five minutes or so. Cook and clean for me? I have a housekeeper. I don’t want you to be my maid, for God’s sake.”
“You’re making decisions for me again.” A tear ran down her cheek to land on his hard chest.
“I am not. I want to make certain you understand that in exchange for sleeping by my side you would lose everything—everything—that rightfully belongs to you. And even if you’re willing to make that sacrifice of yourself, I am not.”
No, no, no. She wasn’t going to make it that easy for him to pretend he could just say this was ended and have it go away. “Then we just continue with this as we have been. No one need know.”
“So you would stay a spinster forever? No children, no husband? Would you live with your parents? Or perhaps take work as some old woman’s companion, in a shabby bedchamber with one window always open so I could climb in during the night and do a bit of rutting, then leave before dawn?”
Sullivan watched the anger and frustration growing in her eyes as he forced her to look ahead, to see what lay before her if she remained on this path. He hated himself for doing it, but that was nothing compared to how he would feel if he gave in to what both of them absolutely wanted. He didn’t blame her for wanting more of herself than his small life could give her—he wanted more for her just as badly.
“You should go,” he said quietly, kissing her forehead and then sitting up.
“How the devil am I supposed to stay away from you?”
“I’m asking myself how I’m to stay away from you. You’re my beating heart, Isabel.”
She shook her head, her pretty brown eyes hurt and furious. Whether it was with him or with the situation he didn’t know, but he preferred her anger to her tears.
“No,” she snapped. “Don’t say nice things to me any longer. It’s not fair, and it’s selfish of you.” Swiftly she scrambled off the bed, straightened her skirts, and rebuttoned the front of her gown. “And you’re a fool. You make me so…angry, Sullivan.”
Not looking at him, she left the room and thudded down the stairs. Cursing, Sullivan dragged his damp, unwieldy trousers back on and strode after her. “Isabel.”
She whipped around, facing him from just inside his front doorway. “What? I can’t love you, and I won’t hate you, so what? What do you want of me?”
Everything. “Nothing,” he said aloud. “You looked very fine riding Zephyr.”
She looked down for a moment, then lifted her gaze again. This time he couldn’t even read her expression. “Is that your way of saying our agreement is finished? No more lessons for horse or rider?”
Doom closed over him again, for the second time in a single day. “Yes.”
“You…” Her sweet mouth closed over whatever it was she’d been about to say. Then she left his home and shut the door softly behind her.
He wished she’d slammed the door, knocked it off its hinges. Sinking onto the bottom step of his stairs, he rubbed at his face. He didn’t smell like the Old Bailey any longer, but he did smell like her. Her citrus scent clung to his hair, his skin, his hands. Already he wanted to go after her, to tell her that he’d been wrong and that of course he would be content to climb through her window every night for the remainder of their lives.
He felt torn in half. With every hard beat of his heart the idea of going after her became more reasonable. “Damnation,” he muttered, pounding his fist into his thigh.
His house was a wreck, his life was a wreck, and he could think of nothing but plunging forward headlong to make it worse. Why not drag her down into hell? At least they would be there together.
“No, no, no.” He shoved to his feet. First he would set his house, and then his life, back in order. It would get easier to forget that she lived and slept only twenty minutes’ distance from him.
As he reached the kitchen, he slowed. Small piles of broken dishes lay at regular intervals; he could only imagine what it had looked like before Mrs. Howard had begun cleaning. Why Bow Street would think he’d hidden paintings in a teapot he didn’t know, though he imagined some of the carnage had been due to their frustration at not finding what they sought.
Picking his way barefooted through the carnage, he pushed open the door to his secret room and went inside. Bram and his men had returned the paintings, leaving them stacked along the back wall. The other items he’d liberated in an apparently successful effort to turn suspicion away from himself lay in a half dozen boxes on either side of the door.
And a new painting had joined the others. He squatted in front of the small rectangle and picked up the note set against it. Bram’s dark, elegant hand greeted him—as if he had known he wouldn’t be there to say whatever it was in person.
“Bloody mind-reader,” Sullivan muttered, unfolding the missive.
“One more for the collection,” he read to himself. “If you’ve lost interest in continuing the hunt, perhaps I’ll do it myself. B.”
Sullivan picked up the painting and angled it so he could look at it in the candlelight. One of his mother’s last works, after he’d left for the Peninsula. In fact, he’d never seen it before. A young girl and boy played along a stream bank, the girl gathering flowers and the boy stacking stones. The lad had the same brown and gold hair as he did; in his mother’s paintings, the boys always seemed to look like him. She’d never let go of that image—him as an adventurous youth with a world of possibilities ahead of him.
He wasn’t that lad any longer. He’d found his life, and for the most part, he enjoyed it. There was only one thing he’d ever wanted that he couldn’t have, and that was a future with Isabel Chalsey. Once he’d met her, everything else had stopped: Revenge, justice, whatever it had been, all became secondary.
Seeing the thirteen paintings there stacked against the wall made something clear. Having them back hadn’t gained him anything. Yes, he’d annoyed Dunston, but so did flies and mosquitoes. And that’s all the significance that his actions had had, except for himself. They’d nearly gotten him killed.
After the Kiss Page 28