“I do not think so.”
One hand slid along her back to gently press her shoulder. “Does that hurt?”
“It is a little sore. I will probably only have a bruise.”
He had not released her. One arm still circled her and his other hand rested carefully on her arm below the injured shoulder. The cocoon of his strength felt very reassuring.
“That is much what you said after the horse threw you. You are supposed to swoon when faced with such danger.”
She knew that he referred not to rocks and poachers, but to the physical closeness both episodes had fostered.
His warning sounded as clearly as a horn blowing in her ear. She could not heed it. His masculinity made her feel small and helpless in a sinfully delicious way.
She looked up into his deliberating eyes. “I never swoon.”
His expression from the stone chamber returned, filling her with wonderful flutters. The hand on her arm slid down to her elbow, then up again. “Do you not? Never?”
The slow caress glided again. Its gentle friction created a rippling sensation. Inside her. All through her. That aria had left her vulnerable, and fear had stripped her of normal restraint. She should say something arch to end this little game, but she only wanted those fingers to glide again.
“Never.”
“Every girl should swoon at least once.”
That hand caressed up, not down. A slowly trailing touch. Gently over her shoulder, warmly up her neck, softly over her cheek, firmly into her hair.
She almost did swoon when his head angled and his lips met hers.
Warm lips. Firm and controlling like everything about him. Deliberate. Restrained but determined. He brushed her mouth with caresses before playing more seductively. Subtle nips made her lower lip pulse and quiver. Devilish tongue flicks sent scattered prickles through her face and neck. A sensitivity awoke in her breasts and she instinctively embraced him, searching for the contact that their heavy tenderness craved.
He pulled her closer and looked down in a tense, appraising way. A sigh escaped her throat with the pressure of his chest. Kissing her with fierce capitulation, he dragged her back through the threshold of the tower, into the mottled light and cool stones.
He leaned back on the wall and pulled her against his length and into a whirlwind. His arms surrounded and dominated, holding her firmly to his body and the ravishments of his mouth. Fevered kisses assaulted her neck and ears, arousing a frenzied, insistent yearning. His lips seduced hers open for an internal probing of shocking intimacy. She held on to him and submitted, dizzy with amazing sensations, soaring helplessly into a blurred euphoria.
It felt so good. Glorious. Transcendent. The exaltation of her singing made physical. The power and potential of that last aria given substance.
Here. Now. Yes. With an inaudible voice her blood pounded demands between her gasps. Here. Now. Perfect. Shocking pulses in her body joined the chant. Even her mind, the part that should know better, echoed a litany of scandalous urgings. Her hands shamelessly slid beneath his coat to caress and clutch his sides and back.
Something tensed within him. She felt a dangerous change and knew that her gesture had been an affirmation of some sort. His arms moved in possessive caresses and her arched body stretched in immodest reply. His hands explored for her through the petticoats and stays. His commanding passion and where it ventured should frighten her, but her excitement only allowed resentment that the layers of cloth interfered and separated and inhibited.
Yes. I want . . . I want . . . She did not know what. A crying hunger pulsed through her, with sources and destinations she did not understand. Closer. More. I want . . .
As if he heard her silent begging, his hand slid to her waist. Thumb on midriff and fingers on back, he caressed up the sash of her gown. Begging anticipation reduced her breath to a series of sharp inhales. A surprisingly gentle kiss accompanied the rise of his hand to her breast.
Oh . . . Oh. The luscious feelings aroused by his touch stunned her. The sensations streaked and flowed, joining those being stimulated by his inflaming kisses on her neck and his mind-obscuring invasions of her mouth. He gave and took pleasure at will and her limp, overwhelmed body could only accept and submit, too ignorant to offer more than acquiescence to a fervor that both liberated and subjugated.
Fingers playing at nipples grown hard and needful . . . yes . . . Searching now at the frill of her neckline . . . please . . . Sliding beneath fabric to explore the new wildness of skin on skin . . . Ah, yes . . . Arms pulling closer, harder, and a knee pressing between petticoats and skirt, the pressure disgracefully welcome . . . oh my . . . heavens . . . Dress loosening and puffed sleeve sliding and her naked breast being cupped up to a dark, lowering head . . . oh . . . Gently sucking lips . . . oh . . . Wickedly titillating licks . . . OH . . . Exquisite streams of pleasure descending, filling, demanding . . . YES . . .
. . . a movement, a soft crunching, echoing into the stones.
He straightened abruptly, crushing her exposure into the protection of his chest, shielding her with surrounding arms while he listened. The possible meaning of those sounds crashed through her dazed senses, obliterating the dreamy sensual world and plunking her mercilessly back into reality.
“Is someone . . . ?” she whispered, gritting her teeth against the slow unwinding of her physical excitement. She could still hear something, more of a vibration carried through the wall than an actual sound. It intruded like an invasion between the pounding of their hearts.
He pulled up the band of her chemise and the shoulder of her dress, then set her away from him. “Stay here.”
He strode out of the tower. She grappled frantically with her garments, managing somehow to refasten the dress, experiencing the stark guilt of a criminal caught in the act. A pit opened in her heart.
If they had been seen, it would be disastrous.
She could hear him outside, walking around. The pit widened until it became a sick, hollow void. The full impact of her behavior hit her. This had been madness. She had been shameless. They didn’t even like each other.
She heard him returning and braced herself.
He appeared in the threshold, a lean dark form surrounded by light. She could not see his face well.
“If someone was here, they are gone. It may have just been an animal.”
She prayed so, and hoped if someone had come from the house to explore the keep, that they had not peered inside the tower portal.
He held out his hand in a gesture commanding her forth. Wondering what women were supposed to say and do after such brazen behavior, and feeling almost nauseous with confusion and embarrassment, she emerged into the morning. They started back to the house.
He didn’t say a word. It was the longest mile that she had ever walked in her life.
She tried to find consolation in the notion that she had proven she was too dangerous to keep around Charlotte, but the idea of leaving Laclere Park unaccountably increased her dismay.
He stopped in the trees near the stable.
“I find that words fail me, Miss Kenwood. My behavior has been abominable, and an apology is not sufficient. I promise that I am not in the habit of importuning young women like that. I have no explanation except that I am clearly not myself this morning.”
Aren’t you? What had occurred suddenly did not impress her as entirely surprising from this man. It struck her as a natural extension of his demeanor, something controlled but always there, like a subcurrent beneath the calm, a depth one sensed but never saw and couldn’t name. It had produced a tension between them from the start, like a dangerous undertow. She had felt its effects, but until today she had not understood them.
He still looked down the path, not quite facing her. His words blamed himself, but she wondered what he really thought. That he had proven she could not live like a nun? That she had the nature of a courtesan and should be permitted the ruination which she sought? “Importune” did not really desc
ribe what had occurred and they both knew it.
“I was not harmed.”
“If we were seen, you most definitely were.”
“I do not think that we were seen. We would have noticed someone at the portal.”
“If you are right, that only avoids the worst of the potential repercussions. It does not negate the fact that my actions were inexcusable and dishonorable, most significantly because I am responsible for you. I have compromised you, whether anyone else knows it or not. If you require it, I will do the right thing by you.”
“The right thing? You mean . . . Oh, no, that is an absurd idea.”
“It certainly promises to be a complicated one, what with . . . well, complicated. All the same . . .”
“Let us not get carried away by your sense of propriety and duty, please. I do not feel compromised or ruined.”
She received a sharp look for that. “Do you not? You are a remarkably composed young woman.”
So, there it was. The insinuation of unseemly compliance on her part. Of encouragement, if one wanted to face it frankly. That look and question revealed his mind and she was hard-pressed to blame him, considering all those ambiguities she had deliberately dropped regarding her experience.
“Let us say that I do not feel compromised enough to require such an extreme measure as marriage in order to be redeemed. Perhaps we should merely forget about this.”
“Your equanimity impresses me. I should be grateful that you prove so forgiving.”
She didn’t feel at all forgiving. She felt shattered, devastated . . . disappointed. To descend from such glory to this formal discussion on how to expiate that potent sharing . . . It made her want to hurt him, hit him, strike a blow that would defeat his cool deliberations on how to rectify their imprudence.
“I simply do not choose to complicate things further than necessary, especially in a way that removes my future from my command and requires a sacrifice on both our parts that promises a lifetime of unhappiness. I would not marry you no matter what scandal threatened. However, our further relationship becomes awkward. I think that it would be best if you agreed to my preferences regarding my stay in England. Jane and I will find a house in London and—”
“I will be the one to make myself scarce. I expect my visits to Laclere Park will be infrequent and brief during the next months.”
“It is hardly fair to your sisters.”
“When you come up to the city for the season, my presence will be unavoidable, but by then, perhaps time will have dulled my insult.”
He didn’t mean a word of it. He knew there had been no insult, not really. He had hardly forced himself on her.
She turned away, both relieved and saddened that after this house party she would rarely see him again.
chapter 7
Dante had been right. She would make a splendid mistress.
He tried to block the thought while he strode back to the ruins. It kept blurting into his head, the thoroughly dishonorable reaction of a man who had succumbed to dishonorable inclinations.
His behavior had been disgraceful. Reprehensible. Insane.
Which did not stop him from reliving it in his mind and experiencing anew her joyful consent. Feeling her soft lips and sweet breast with his mouth. Exploring her throbbing arousal with the pressure of his knee.
If the intruder had not stopped them he would have carried her up to the chamber and made love to her until those stones rang with her cries.
And she would have let him.
He stopped and slammed his palm against a tree, seeking a tangible reality that might obliterate his resurgent desire.
Confusing, Dante had said. Damn right, she was confusing.
She didn’t even like him. They rarely spoke without arguing. He might have loitered in her presence the last two days, but she never sought out his. To then jump that chasm in such an uninhibited way . . .
He paced with determination through the trees, a dangerous mood gripping him. Her calm at the stables had been further unsettling. Infuriating. Barely a blush. Total composure. He had been a mess of conflicting impulses, but her demeanor had been incredibly calm.
I was not harmed.
I almost stripped your clothes off and took you on a stone floor.
I do not feel compromised or ruined.
Well, damn it, I do. Men who seduce their wards are disgusting.
I would not marry you no matter what scandal threatened.
He paused at the edge of the castle’s clearing as those words echoed again and again.
He should have been grateful for her abrupt rejection. Instead he had experienced an irrational anger. In part because her composure left him wondering if it had all been a capricious game to her. Mostly because her resolve left him with the depressing awareness that he would never have her the way he wanted.
Just as well. She would make a splendid mistress, but an impossible wife.
Let Dante deal with her.
That notion incited a primitive, possessive resentment. He suppressed it by forcing his attention to the castle’s battlements.
A stairway rose at one end of the wall, so badly ruined that whole steps were missing. He could only mount it by stretching his legs for perilous footholds. A few small sections of rock fell into the grass while he climbed. He paused each time, trying to identify whether they resembled the distant sounds he had heard while he held Bianca in the tower.
The wall walk at the top existed in gaps. Someone had replaced some missing sections with new wood, but others consisted of remnants of rotten planks, themselves no doubt repairs from the last century or so. He picked his way along until he came to the spot of the wall where one whole tooth of the crenellations had just fallen away. Down below he could see the new pile of stones.
Who would expect peaceful Laclere Park to be so dangerous?
A damn good question.
He examined the rough surface from where the machicolation had lately risen, and probed at the mortar of the stones still standing. Decayed binding fell in a little shower, joining a pile of coarse dust at his feet.
Nothing so extensive could be seen near the other partial crenellations. He examined the surface of the stones again, feeling for evidence of a tool. Did he only imagine subtle scrapes created by a metal implement?
Poachers who used firearms and now a falling wall. Perhaps just a coincidence. No proof of anything else. All the same, he didn’t like it.
He climbed down from the wall, looking for evidence that someone else had come this way recently. The sounds picked up by the tower stones haunted his memory. Not the sounds of someone walking on the paths. Still, that intruder may have merely been one of the guests exploring Laclere Park’s picturesque castle.
He returned to the house. When he passed the breakfast room he saw Bianca at the table with Cornell Witherby and Daniel St. John.
She smiled and laughed at some joke Witherby made.
Incredible composure.
Possibly it had just been a capricious game to her, a way to show the saint he was not so pure. Perhaps we should merely forget about this.
He strode to his study, resenting like hell the spot of honesty that admitted she might be able to forget it, but he would not.
I never swoon.
For me you did!
He was reacting like some untried boy and that irritated him even more. He sent a footman for Morton, then threw himself into his chair and pulled out some paper.
Morton arrived while he was finishing his writing.
“I want this letter to Adam Kenwood’s solicitor to go to London by express delivery,” he said while he sealed the missive. “Take it to the town yourself, at once.” He handed the paper into Morton’s thick fingers. “I may leave you here when I go north again. I do not like the idea of leaving Miss Kenwood at Laclere Park without someone watching over her.”
“You think that she is in some other danger?” By other, Vergil knew that Morton referred to any lovely w
oman’s danger from Dante.
Possibly she was in danger. He didn’t know. However, between poachers and falling walls and assaults by the Viscount Laclere, her danger from a rake might have become the least of her concerns.
After dinner Bianca found herself sitting between Fleur and Mrs. Gaston, chatting with Pen and Cornell Witherby.
“It will be a series of epics,” Mrs. Gaston explained. “Sold by subscription, although I will finance the printing. Mr. Witherby’s poem will be first.”
Cornell Witherby smiled modestly. Penelope bestowed an admiring gaze on him.
Mrs. Gaston held herself like a queen accepting homage and bestowing favors. Her reddish brown hair glowed like copper in the firelight and her contentment in her significance showed on her face. “The printers are at work even as we speak. I expect it to be a sensation, and for many editions to be required. Not that the profit matters, of course. Exposing people of high taste and sensibility to Mr. Witherby’s prodigious talent is my goal.”
She spoke as if divine guidance dictated her patronage, but Bianca suspected that Mrs. Gaston’s own importance as a patron drove her as much as any love of art.
“Who will the other poets be?” Fleur asked.
A discussion ensued on the merits of young poets who might deserve such patronage.
Bianca barely heard what anyone said.
An afternoon of Fleur’s gentle company had induced a horrible guilt. Vergil’s cool displays of courtesy had instilled a hollow devastation. An internal clock noted the passage of every minute of the very long day with ticks of agony.
She had tried never to look at Vergil or have cause to address him, but she was aware of him at every instant. She felt him when he was nearby. She heard every word he spoke, if even from across the room.
Two Biancas reacted to his every move. The old one, the smart one, cataloged his deficiencies with a scathing anger. A new one prayed for some sign of the lord’s favor. This new Bianca demeaned herself with pitiful sighs, but the old Bianca could not make her disappear.
Somehow, somehow, she would get through this day.
The Saint Page 10