Mary sucked in a shaking breath. Her entire body seemed to rattle with that breath as if all the pain that had been stored inside her was clawing forth. “It is my fault.” Another gasping breath shook her chest and a ridiculously useless whimper escaped her lips. “I did that to her.”
“No,” he gritted.
Grief and anger crushed any sort of self-pity she might have felt. “I never should have gone to Yvonne for help.” She shook her head wildly. “I shouldn’t have led him to her. I knew what he was capable of. What he has done—”
“Mary.” His voice penetrated her pain like hardened steel. “If you hadn’t gone to Yvonne, what would have happened to you?”
With every fiber of her soul, she focused on his strong, avenging face. Desperately, she searched her thoughts for any reasonable answer. All she could find were memories of herself, curled up in a ditch, half dead, hugging herself for warmth and starving for lack of food.
“Where would you have gone?” he demanded again, unflinchingly.
“Somewhere.” She couldn’t think of anything but the memory of laudanum racking her bones and the icy rain trickling down her spine. “Anywhere to keep her safe. I risked her life. I risked—”
“Cease, Mary,” he commanded roughly. “Would you have yourself dead in the street, or worse?”
It was on her lips to say yes, but it wasn’t true. She still longed to live, no matter that God had forsaken her. “No.”
“Why is that?” he asked. His eyes probed hers, searching into the torturous memories that still held her prisoner.
“Because . . .” A tear slid down her cheek, unbidden and unwanted. The power of that single tear nearly undid her. Surely, now that one had slipped free she would be lost on a tide of tears. She gasped. “I don’t wish to die.”
His handsome face struggled with emotion. “Because you are worth something. You are valuable to this world. And you shouldn’t die for other people’s sins.”
Mary drew herself up, throwing her shoulders back so she wouldn’t curve in on herself like a battered child. So that she wouldn’t give in to a storm of tears. “I have so much anger, Edward.” Her voice rasped against her throat, cutting at the air like rusty razor blades.
“You have a right to be angry. The suffering you have known is greater than most know in their entire lifetime.”
She grabbed fistfuls of her gown and twisted the fabric, needing to rip and tear and destroy what was inside her. “It’s choking me. I—I can barely draw breath.”
“Then spit it out.” His large body tensed with the fullness of his own anger at her pain.
“I want to kill him so much,” she hissed. “I want to destroy him, to take from him all his self-respect and power. I want him to grovel the way he made my mother do time and again. I want to beat him with a cudgel until he cannot move. I don’t care if he ever understands what he has done—I want him to pay.”
Edward did not back away from her shocking proclamation. Instead, he vowed, “I promise, one day he will. He will pay dearly for the pain he has caused.”
“Will he?” She longed to believe justice would at long last be meted out. But everything in her past told her not to give a tendril of hope to that ridiculous dream. “Justice is not something that is consistent in this world,” she said, her voice flat. “I want to rip out whole parts of my mind so that I never have to recall what happened to me. I want to tear it from my flesh so that I never feel self-loathing or pain again. But more than anything I wish to see my father dead.”
Edward stretched out a hand to her, his face finally blanching. “Mary—”
“Do you know what it is like?” Hate laced her whole body as she gave voice to the despair that had lived in her so long. “To be taken against your will, to be used like a thing?”
Edward’s jaw clenched, but he stood silent at her onslaught.
“Do you? To be held down and fucked no matter how hard you scream? And when you’ve lost the will to protest, you simply consent because it is the easiest thing to do.” It tumbled out of her so fast, she could barely draw breath. “Can you understand that, Edward? I want that for my father. Can you give me that?”
Edward stood before her, his bleak eyes helpless at her fury. He didn’t offer false comfort. Nor did he pretend to understand. She admired him for it, for nothing he could say would appease the vengeful beast within her.
“I didn’t think so.” The fury slumped out of her and her shoulders bent. “I’m tired. I’m so tired of him. Of what he did to my mother, to me, and now to Yvonne.” A terrifying thought shot through her. “What if he does it to you?”
Edward closed the small distance between them. He slipped his arms around her, careful, gentle. “You mustn’t be afraid for me. Your father can’t touch me. Nothing can. I am here for you, no matter that I can’t understand what has happened in your past. I am here for you. Do you understand that?”
Mary half smiled. “I know.”
She stood in his arms, her arms at her sides, loving how reassuring his hands felt pressed against her back. “It is why you took me in, is it not?”
He gazed down at her, his shoulders curving to allow for the difference in height. “Yes, but now it is more.”
She raised her chin, tilting her head back. The frightening desire to lift her hands to his shoulders and return his embrace dawned upon her, but she held still lest she break this moment. “More?”
His brow creased as he struggled to speak. “You’ve come to mean something to me.”
“Tell me,” she murmured. Make me believe.
Whether he was aware or not, his hands pressed ever so slightly against her corset and tucked her in just the smallest degree closer to his body. “I—I’ve made mistakes enough to ruin a host of lives, but you . . .” He rested his chin against the top of her head. “I don’t know how to say it, but . . .”
Mary allowed him to hold her so close, though a nagging argument inside continued to command her to step back. But another part of her, a stronger part, wished to remain in his arms, hearing this captivating confession of his. She allowed herself to be guided into the hollow of his body as if she was his match, his pair.
“You’ve shown me that no matter how brutalized we are, we can rise again.”
Slowly, she lifted her hands to his shoulders. Uncertainly, and without a thought for what might happen next, she rested her fingers against his crisp linen. “So not only am I Calypso, I am a phoenix?”
“You are.” His voice deepened with passionate admiration.
“No, Edward.” Her fingertips trailed up slowly to the curling hair at the nape of his neck. Oh, it was soft. Softer than she’d ever imagined it. It was intoxicating, the nearness of him. Much to her shock, she found herself pulling him, urging his face closer to hers. “I am still among the ashes. I have not yet flown.”
He lowered his head toward her in careful, slow stages. “But you will.”
The scent of leather and spice filled her senses and the sudden desire to taste his mouth and be one with this strong man burst within her.
“Yes,” she murmured before lifting herself up onto her slippered toes and giving over to her blossoming passion. “I will.”
Chapter 15
One could never fall if one felt such ecstasy. Mary slipped her hands into his hair, savoring the hot taste of his mouth and the careful touch of his lips. Was this the pleasure of freely giving oneself? With no condition or expectation?
She would never plummet to the hard earth with this feeling of wonder. She would glide free and alive in this kiss, in his glorious touch. Mary opened her mouth in a gasp of delight and immediately tasted crushed mint and the hint of red wine.
Without thinking, she pushed herself against him, as if she might climb inside his strong fortress of a body. The full bells of her skirt batted at her legs, the hoop dancing out, but she gave no notice. If anything, she longed to be divested of her garments and feel him.
Freedom was in his touch. The freedom of kn
owing that she was giving herself because she wished it, not because she had to or had anything to gain but the pleasure of the moment.
Carefully, she lowered a hand to his chest, just over his heart and its solid beat. Gently, she pushed.
He broke the kiss, his breath ragged. “Forgive me.”
Her own breath came at a rapid pace as she let her hand hover over the thin linen covering his hot skin and hard muscle. “As you are always telling me, there is nothing to forgive.”
A slight smile touched his lips and he began to step away, but she grabbed him, her fingers holding tight to his shirt. “There is something . . . I would like to do.”
Stilling under her touch, his dark eyes flashed with desire as they searched carefully over her face. “Whatever you wish.”
Every bit of her urged her to lower her gaze, but she would not be meek. She wanted this.
“Will you hold me?” She could hardly believe what she was about to say, but she said it anyway, “On the bed?”
His gaze gentled even as desire fired within it. “Are you certain?”
“Yes.” She let her muscles relax and held on to him not with any sort of fear, but with the surety that Edward would never harm her. Not as so many had done before him. “I can’t promise you any more than that.”
Though his body hummed with need, he said, “My only wish is your happiness. It always has been.”
Mary was certain Edward’s motives were guided by some pain that was integral to his soul. He truly believed all he longed for was her happiness. She would not argue the point. Not when he was regarding her with such desire and tenderness. She nodded assent for both of them and said, “Come, then.”
He took a step back, letting his muscular arms trail through her fingertips. He slipped his hand around hers, then started for the bed. Something, instigated by any other man, that would have driven fear into her wits.
She tugged against his hand. “Wait.”
“Mary?”
“I wish . . . I wish . . .” It was impossible for her to give words to her need, so she reached to his waist and before she could stop herself grabbed fistfuls of his white shirt and slipped it free of his trousers.
He held absolutely still as she worked the fabric up his torso, his jetty eyes riveted to her face.
“Lift your arms,” she said softly.
At her command, he slowly raised his arms above his head. The muscles of his waist and chest rippled into new valleys and peaks of living iron. It was a miracle of creation in a fluid series of movements. Mary’s mouth opened slightly as she took in his beauty.
She’d never seen anything like him. Her own breasts, covered in verdant silk, caressed his stomach lightly as she stepped closer, reached up onto tiptoe, and tugged the shirt above his head.
Gallantly, he bent so she might whisk it from his body. The fabric hanging limply in her hands was heated from his skin. She was suddenly overcome by a desire to bury her face in it and drink in his scent, but then she let the shirt drop to the floor. After all, she needn’t turn to his garments for his warmth. He was there for her to touch as she pleased.
With her eyes she devoured his muscles, sinuous planes, and dusky taut nipples, and she could just make out the faint tracing of veins in his strong arms. Arms that could crush or give succor to her, depending on his whim.
A slight trail of dark hair started at his navel and headed down into his black trousers. She couldn’t help but think of the keepers for one moment. They had been foul and cruel with bodies given to indulgence and domination. There had been nothing beautiful about them.
Edward was a thing of beauty and she wanted to see all of him. To see the clear difference between him and the keepers.
Wordlessly, she reached for his buttons. Hands shaking, she slipped the ivory circles free. She unfolded the flap baring the soft skin stretched taut over his pelvis and the darker hair just above his sex.
With every touch, her heart thundered in her ears. She kept expecting him to grab her and tear her clothes off, but he stood silently under her ministrations, giving her complete and free rein over him.
Empowered, she felt herself slide her hands into the waistband of his trousers and work the molded fabric down his thighs. The black wool peeled from his powerful legs. She couldn’t quite bring herself to look at his sex yet. That part of the male anatomy had been a tool of pain. Right now she only wished to contemplate the other, more appealing parts of his flesh.
The fabric caught about his knees and to move it any farther, she’d have to kneel . . . and . . . A laugh rippled from her throat.
“Are you laughing at me, sweetheart?” His voice was a whiskey rumble in the firelight.
She swallowed back another laugh but couldn’t quite manage to conceal her mirth. “Of course not, but . . .” She leaned away from his glorious warmth and pointedly looked up into his bemused face. “I suppose it would have been more logical to remove your boots first.”
“Oh, my sweet Mary, what does logic have to do with you and me?” He reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Would you like me to remove them?”
She savored his intimate touch. “No.” She wished to keep going in her new sense of discovery, not stand by placidly and watch. “But I would be grateful if you sat upon the bed.”
He considered his trousers bunched about his knees and then looked to the large four-poster bed across the wide room. A slight look of consternation creased his brow before he smiled wickedly. “Whatever my lady commands.”
And he began to waddle.
It was the only word for his ridiculous movement. Edward Barrons, Duke of Fairleigh, waddled, half naked, to his bed. Only someone of his nature could have still appeared dignified while his bound boots shuffled across the burgundy rug.
Mary clapped a hand over her mouth, suppressing a giggle. Then she caught sight of his hard buttocks, the muscles shifting and tightening with each step, and her urge to laugh died away. There was something about the way his body moved that evoked the deepest need within her. How could it be so hard yet lithe?
He placed his hands atop his thick, snowy covers and hoisted his knees up onto the bed, giving her a quick view of his arse. She quickly averted her gaze so she would not bear witness to anything she wasn’t quite ready for.
He shifted about on the bed, then called, “Is this what you wished?” Palms resting on the bed, he eyed her carefully, waiting for her will.
She eyed him, her hands clasped before her. “Yes. Now stay right there.”
“Certainly.”
Mary crossed the space quickly before her burning nerves could play false with her. Only, this time, she couldn’t quite avoid looking at his sex as she neared his long, treelike legs. It wasn’t completely erect, of that she was certain. The length was hard, but not pressed up against his belly. Rather, it bobbed in the most amusing manner. As she gazed on it, it seemed to be aware of her attention. It gained ever so slightly in size, swelling the head and stretching the girth.
Good lord, the way it moved . . . She had nothing like it upon her own body, and there, just responding to her gaze—well, it seemed impossible that she had ever been afraid of such a thing. For as it moved, it seemed to be greeting her, asking in a hopeful manner for her attention.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said softly.
She jerked her attention away from his groin and up to his face. It was creased with an odd mixture of concern and desire. “You mistake me, Edward.”
“I do?”
“It is interest, not fear, that has me so transfixed.”
“I’m glad I don’t frighten you.”
“You see, I’ve never been able to look upon a man on my own terms. It has always been on his.”
For a moment, Edward’s face darkened, as if he would go out right then and kill the men who had harmed her. Instead of expressing fury, he said, “I promise, I shan’t touch you. I won’t do a damned thing you don’t ask me to.”
“And if I asked you to stand on your head?”
Edward began to scoot toward the edge of the bed so he might stand again. “It shall look rather ridiculous, but if it is what you require—”
She pressed her hands to his bare shoulders, urging him not to move. “No, no,” she said, laughing. “But I am glad to know you would go to such lengths at my command.”
“Any lengths, Mary, to see you happy.”
“Oh, Edward.” She focused on his soft lips, recalling their pleasure and longing for them again. “You say such foolish things.”
“I say only what is true.” He smiled a lopsided smile. “Not something I can always claim.”
She’d never seen such a boyish expression on his face. And it was for her. Somehow in her presence he’d found a part of himself he must have lost. The realization was difficult to take in. She’d long ago thought she’d never be worthy of a man like him. Not after what had happened to her. But when he looked at her like that, she hoped. Oh, god, she hoped.
And for the first time in as long as she could recall, her heart ached with longing to be loved. He could love her. Couldn’t he?
It was an absurd thing to wish.
“Yes, well . . .” She yanked her gaze from his face and forced herself to look at his boots. “First things first.”
She leaned back a little and placed her hands together, eyeing him with the tenacity of a determined schoolmistress. “Will you extend your legs, sir?”
Without a word, he stuck his long legs into the air. “Are you sure you don’t desire help? Boots are devilish tricky.”
She arched a brow at him. “I think I can manage a pair of boots.”
“As you say.”
Mary approached his large foot, sizing up the piece of ornately sewn leather with a mixture of determination and suspicion. She grasped the heel and toe of his right boot, then tugged at the polished bit of handy work. To no avail. She scowled down at the offending item. It was all that stood in her way of beholding Edward entirely nude and she would not be defeated.
She readjusted her grip and yanked. The boot remained in place but she nearly fell upon her face, she’d tugged so hard. “Good grief!”
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