The Saint

by Madeline Hunter

  He inclined her so that he could lick and suck her breasts. Her frenzy broke and those erotic affirmations began sighing out of her. Like flames, they set his blood on fire.

  “Bring me inside yourself,” he said, bracing himself against the explosive urge to have her every way imaginable before accepting release.

  She straightened with dazed confusion.

  “Stay where you are and take me inside you. This is how I want you this time.”

  She looked down at his phallus nested between her thighs, its tip pressing visibly against her cleft. She had never touched him before. Her hesitation reminded him of the recent ignorance that her quick passion made easy to forget.

  He was about to take over when she rose up and grasped him firmly, like a woman determined to meet a challenge. Then he was sliding into her tight velvet warmth while her eyes closed with contentment and a melodic groan of relief escaped her. He pulled her down and held her motionlessly in a firm embrace so he could merely revel in the feel of her for a spell.

  She pushed up and squirmed until he was deeply imbedded. Her hands drifted down his chest in two slow inflaming paths. Cautiously, curiously, she rose up and lowered herself and blinked with astonishment.

  She found a rhythm and he let it last until she began moving and frowning as if she searched for something out of reach. Her cries and gasps and hard absorptions singed his constricting consciousness. He slid his hand to her cleft and touched the spot that would bring her to climax. With increased wildness she rode him harder until she screamed a release that filled the chamber and drove him to his own completion.

  He had to forcibly lift her in order to withdraw in time. She collapsed on him, her head resting against his chest and her body wrapped in his arms. The sweat of her passion glistened all along her back.

  Holding firmly to her warmth and heartbeat and slowing breaths, he dragged the coverlet over them both. He pressed his lips to her damp hair and allowed his soul to taste the rare, deep flavor of love.

  Morton had disappeared. Like a busy ghost, he executed his duties but never showed his face. When they finally descended for a late breakfast, the meal was ready, as if he had divined the exact moment it would be needed. Hot water awaited their return to the bedchamber, and the carriage and its horses were prepared just in time for the trip to Manchester. Old Lucas sat at the reins because, as he explained to Vergil, the valet had some business to attend in the manor.

  Bianca appreciated the total isolation that Morton’s absence created. Not because of shame. She experienced none of that at all. The old manor had become theirs alone, a little world existing in dream time, and the solitude intensified their deepening intimacy.

  It was Sunday, and Vergil escorted her around an abandoned works. He showed her where the raw cotton was received and cleaned, and the long, low buildings filled with steam-powered spinning machines. His commentary became animated and detailed when he described the improvements he had invented, and she delighted in the quiet pride he found in his achievement. Finally he took her to a new structure, larger than all the others.

  “You should see this, since you will be investing in it,” he explained.

  The building held rows of large looms connected by vertical arms to iron bars overhead.

  “They will be steam-powered, like the spinning. Only a few others have done this yet, and not on this scale. The engine is being built in the next room.” He showed her the way and explained the huge metal cauldron and water pipes and valves that would make the metal arms move the looms’ parts as required. “Most weaving is still done in homes. This will be much faster and more efficient. I have promised the jobs here to any home weavers who want to learn the new ways.”

  “Some will not want to.”

  “They will manage for a long while yet. The change will not happen overnight, but the craft will not exist for their sons. It is for them, much as your grandfather said it was for me and my kind. Their world is dying.”

  “It does not appear to me that your world is dying. I think that my grandfather was premature.”

  “Prophecies are always premature. As with the weavers, the change will not be overnight, and two hundred years from now Duclaircs and Calnes will still be lords with privileges. But we will be as quaint and picturesque as the medieval ruins in Laclere Park, I think. In my lifetime I expect our hold will be circumscribed as the cities like Manchester demand their say. My hope is that the change comes peaceably, and not with the violence that already tears at the country, reflecting the people’s impatience.”

  He checked his office for any materials Mr. Thomas might have left for his attention. She peered over his shoulder as he sat at his desk and flipped through some letters.

  “Mr. Thomas wrote these?” she asked, picking one up to examine it. “Well, that explains it, then.”

  “Explains what?”

  “Those letters in my grandfather’s desk. The ones I told you about last night, that I had thought were from Milton. This is the same handwriting. They must be letters regarding the mill, that Mr. Thomas wrote to Adam.”

  Vergil went very still. He no longer read the pages in front of him. She sensed a distraction that took him far away from her, to some place in his head where she did not intrude.

  He turned a thoughtful gaze on her. “How did you say the salutation read? The one on the top letter that you saw?”

  “My dearest friend.”

  “An odd way for an employee to address Adam Kenwood, don’t you think?”

  “They may have formed a fast friendship. Such things happen.”

  The frown turned into a scowl. “All the same, I want to know about those letters, and I don’t intend to wait until I return to Laclere Park.” He rose. “Mr. Thomas lives in the local village. If I am here, I may as well go speak with him about it now. It should not take long.”

  The village was a quarter-mile west, a single lane of cottages pressed shoulder to shoulder. The age of some of them indicated this spot had been inhabited for generations, and had been a farming community before the mill was built. Now many of the homes burst with people, and the lane this Sunday showed the community relaxing from the week’s work.

  “There are a lot of men here,” Bianca said as she craned her neck to survey the commotion through the window. “It appears that some of these homes are crowded.”

  “We have been building new cottages, but give them to the families first. The men who come from elsewhere have to make do for now.”

  “I think that we will have to build faster, Laclere, if you intend to bring weavers in as well.”

  “If Adam Kenwood’s granddaughter has decided to remain a partner, I’m sure that we can afford to build faster.”

  She smiled contentedly, in a way that reassured him. However, the points he had made last night, about her marriage to another man jeopardizing control of the mill, had not disappeared with their passion.

  He really needed to settle their future together. Not now, however. Now he needed to have a conversation with his secretary, a young man who probably knew far more about the mill and the Duclaircs than previously suspected.

  “I should speak with him alone,” he said as the coach rolled to a stop in front of an old stone cottage that had seen recent improvements.

  “I understand. We can hardly go calling together.”

  It wasn’t that. He did not want her hearing this conversation. In fact, he could not even have it if she were present.

  He walked to the door quickly. All the same, he was noticed. He sensed the lane go quiet, and felt eyes watch his progress.

  Mr. Clark never visited this village, at least not in ways that its inhabitants noticed. His inspections had been as subtle and secret as the rest of his life in this region.

  His secretary showed astonishment equal to the villagers. Taken aback at the call, he brought Vergil to a little sitting room and quickly took a chair near a table.

  Vergil noted the man’s guarded expression. �
�I have not come to criticize or chastise, Thomas, and certainly not to release you. This is a social call.”

  Harry Thomas was a large-framed, fair-skinned man, the sort whose face colored easily when he was angry or ill at ease. It was very ruddy now. His pose in the chair, with legs and arms crossed, made it appear that he braced himself for unpleasantness, or restrained himself physically from revealing his reactions.

  He knew that, social call or not, the unexpected presence of his employer was not good news.

  He was correct about that, but Vergil guessed that the news would be worse for the employer than the secretary. Rather than delay the pain, he threw himself right on the blade after they had exchanged some banal talk about the fair day and the village’s growth.

  “You know who I am, don’t you?” he said. “You knew who the last Mr. Clark was, too, I think.”

  The face got ruddier. The eyes glazed with caution. “He confided in me. I kept it to myself then, and I still do with you.”

  “I believe you.” Did he? Was he looking at the answer to it all, right here in this chamber? Did Harry Thomas betray Milton’s confidence and threaten to reveal the viscount’s déclassé dabbling in industry?

  It might have been Thomas, but the mill was not reason enough. Not for Milton. It was something far more damning.

  The solution wanted to force itself into his mind, and his heart’s rebellion barely kept it at bay.

  Vergil strolled around the chamber, wondering how to proceed. His gaze lit on a low case of books, and one caught his eye. He slid the volume out of its spot. As he did, he heard a movement behind him, that of a man shifting in his place. He felt Harry Thomas’s alarm.

  “Homer’s Odyssey. My brother loved this work.” He cradled the book in his hands. He recognized the binding. This had been Milton’s book, a part of his private library. It had been given to Milton by their father.

  And now it belonged to Harry Thomas.

  “He loaned it to me. I should have returned it. Take it now.”

  Vergil came close to accepting the explanation. He wanted to nod, take his leave, and stride back to the coach and Bianca.

  Except this had been no loan. He just knew that. He suspected if he opened the cover he would find an inscription that made it a gift.

  He kept the cover closed and looked at the other books, all of them new and with impressive bindings. Too impressive for a secretary of dubious fortune. He scanned the authors. Poets, philosophers, and historians. Milton had given Harry all of these, he was sure.

  Had it been an exercise in education? An attempt to improve a naturally sharp mind with some culture? A Voltairian experiment?

  The answer, he guessed, was inside the volume that he held. Milton would not have given away his own boyhood treasure to a mere student of literature.

  “I have come to ask you some questions about my brother,” he said, setting the book down on the table where they both could see it. Harry looked for all the world like a man who would like to snatch it and hide it under his coat.

  “There are some letters from you to Milton. I am wondering about them.”

  “I wrote to him. Was my job, wasn’t it? He came here less often than you do, and after Kenwood got ill, the mill was left to me to manage day to day. I had to keep him informed.”

  “I saw those letters. They were among his business papers, and sent to a London address, and addressed to Mr. Clark. I speak now of different ones, probably sent to Laclere House in London, and to Laclere Park in Sussex. These were kept separate from the others, and saved together. In them you address my brother as ‘Dearest Friend.’ ”

  Harry’s face turned so bland it might have been made of stone. “We formed a friendship. Here, at the mill, in the works, he was not such a grand man. Not the sort to think he was better than such as me.”

  No, he had not been that sort at all. Nor had he been the sort to worry that his friendship might be betrayed.

  Vergil laid his hand on the volume. “I want you to think now. Were any of these letters indiscreet?”

  “What are you insinuating? I’ll not be—”

  “Do not feign indignation with me. I was his brother. I may have ignored what I saw, but I saw it all the same. I need to know now if anyone who read those letters might surmise the depths of your friendship.”

  Harry’s jaw tightened in anger, but his eyes were those of a man trapped and frightened.

  “You are safe with me. I would never do anything to harm his name,” Vergil said quietly.

  Harry’s stiff pose slackened, more in defeat than relief. “I suppose, it is possible, if they were read—but I thought they were destroyed.”

  “A sensible man would have burned them, but my brother could be foolish sometimes, and sentiment ruled him in this.”

  Beneath his dismay, the notion that his letters had been saved seemed to touch Harry. He nodded his head toward the bookshelves. “Had me reading philosophers and such. Wanted to open the world to me, he did.” He smiled nostalgically. “Interesting stuff, but not much help when the workers got mad after he decided no children could work. They depended on the wages, those families did. I got him to agree to let the boys stay on for some hours, at least. Kenwood couldn’t get through to him on some of his notions, but I could. Real life isn’t so neat as in those books, I told him. Even good deeds can have bad results. You are more practical than he was. Kenwood said so too. Said this was in your blood more, and not only an experiment for you.”

  “It is good that you were here to help him. When he came north, did he visit you in this house?”

  “None saw him. He was discreet. Didn’t come up in a fancy coach as you just did.”

  In villages such as this, no discretion was great enough. “Did you and he ever visit Manchester together?”

  “Sometimes. Nothing untoward was seen, if that is your question. It was natural for us to be together at meetings and such. We worked together.”

  That was true, but one wrong glance, one wrong laugh . . . “I regret that I must return to those letters. Did you ever write another sort of letter to Milton, asking for something of value from him?”

  Harry’s soft expression snapped away. “What are you saying?”

  “Did you make any demands on him? His friendship with you made him vulnerable to anyone who knew of it, including you.”

  “Made me vulnerable as well. No point in my making demands.”

  “That is not true, and we both know it. He was a peer. Any scandal, let alone a trial, would affect him more. Men no longer hang for such things, but they can be destroyed. You could disappear if it came out, but he could not.”

  “Damn you. Damn all of you. Assuming that I’d be grasping, just because I’m not born to silver as you are. It wasn’t like that, but I’d never expect the two of you to understand.”

  “What do you mean, the two of you?”

  “You are not the first to come have this chat with me, Mr. Clark.”

  “Another man has approached you about this friendship? Who?”

  “Not a man. A lady came, all veiled and sneaky. Said she knew about the mill, and me, and worried for his reputation and that of his family.”

  “She knew who Mr. Clark really was?”

  “To be certain. She said he was careless, and asked if there were letters to him as the viscount that should be destroyed. She was going to do it, you see. To protect him. Before she left she threatened me. Said if I ever told anyone, if I ever tried to use this for my own gain, she’d see me hang.”

  “Was this before or after my brother’s death?”

  “A good four months earlier. I didn’t want him to know that she had figured it out. If he knew, he might . . .” He shrugged.

  “She may have been veiled, but you must have known who she was if you spoke of anything at all with her.”

  Thomas sneered at him, as if he were an idiot. “I knew who she was, because she told me straight-out. It was your sister, the Countess of Glasbury
.”

  The child peered at Bianca and Bianca peered back. The little girl had been scrubbed for Sunday, and her red hair blazed in the sun. Her big eyes examined Bianca’s garments with astonishment, then she ran back to her mother who watched from the doorway.

  Their cottage was small and tidy and new. A little row of them flanked the lane, facing the older homes that showed their age and indifference to care.

  Vergil came out of Mr. Thomas’s house and noticed her down the lane. He walked toward her with a troubled expression.

  “Did you learn what you wanted?” she asked as he joined her.

  “More than I wanted.” He appeared tired and lost.

  “The letters were from Mr. Thomas?”

  “Yes.”

  “See, they were friends, as I said.”

  “They were not to Adam, but to my brother.”

  She shrugged. “A different friendship, then. Charlotte always speaks of Milton as being reclusive, so it must have been a joy to him to have some dear friends. It must make you feel better to know that he did, that he wasn’t lonely in his life.”

  He gave her an odd look. “Yes, I suppose it makes me feel better knowing that. Now let us return to the house. Of the many lives I find myself living today, the one that includes you is the one I need right now.”

  As soon as they entered the coach, he took her hand and pulled her across the carriage to sit on his lap. “What did you think of your mill?”

  “I think that perhaps I will let the manager continue for a few more years, at least. I am not sure that Nigel will be so sanguine, however. How have you managed to keep him ignorant of your role in it?”

  “He was in France, and since his return Mr. Clark has dodged meeting him. We have a lively correspondence going. I am counting on him being content if his income surpasses what he could get in the funds, but if necessary, I will offer to purchase his share at a generous profit.”