“The countess is stronger than most people know, Laclere,” Hampton said. “Although, sparing the earl from the fruits of his sins—well, of all the men who were blackmailed, I did not cry for him.”
That was the worst of this business, and a miserable irony. Not only had today taken from Pen the man she loved, it had left her shackled to one she hated.
“I will explain it to her,” Dante said firmly, darting Vergil a glance that dared him to object. “That way I will be sure that she learns the whole truth of it.”
“It is getting late, and we should depart,” Wellington said. “There is a small matter of transportation now. What with Miss Kenwood and her cousin here, there is not enough room in the coach.”
“I will ride Vergil’s horse, and Kenwood will take my place with the coachman,” Dante said. “Vergil, you and Miss Kenwood will have to wait here until we can send a carriage for you.”
Wellington’s lids dropped to half-mast. He examined the embracing couple.
Everyone else assumed utterly bland expressions.
“Your Grace?” Adrian said, gesturing to the door.
“Quite.” Wellington exited, and a line of men filed after him.
“Why not make a visit to Paris, as long as you are on the Continent?” St. John said as he passed. “My sister, Jeanette, would be happy to receive you.”
“Perhaps we will do that,” Vergil said.
The rest of the Dueling Society departed, leaving only Vergil, Bianca, and Dante.
“Going to Paris may be a good idea, Verg. Do not worry about Pen. I will take care of her. It is the least I can do.”
“Thank you, Dante.”
Dante stopped at the threshold. “It may be that the carriage cannot come until the morning,” he said. “I trust that you will be a saint, Verg, and that Miss Kenwood is safe with you.”
“Of course.”
Laughing, Dante left. Vergil and Bianca followed him and watched the men climbing into the coach.
Nigel approached them. “I would like to know if you will be bringing witness against me, cousin. I should like to return to England, but obviously cannot do so if you choose to prohibit it.”
“I will not bring evidence. When the choice came, you did the right thing,” Bianca said. “The price, however, is that you not speak against Vergil, that you keep silent about what you discovered.”
“I intended to do so anyway. I find that I do not have the taste for blackmail that some others do. It brings out parts in a man that are better left buried.”
Bianca beamed with approval, but Vergil felt less sanguine. Nigel appeared sincere enough, but who knew what the morning would bring. Good sense and constancy were not this man’s strongest virtues.
“Woodleigh is a good estate, Kenwood. With the right manager, it could be productive enough to keep you. Not like a duke, but well enough,” Vergil said. “When I return to Sussex I will ask my estate manager to visit you. He may have some suggestions for a good man to see to things for you.”
“I thank you for that. Perhaps it is time to put down roots back home. Maybe you were right, Bianca. Your grandfather may have had his reasons for arranging things as he did.”
Nigel walked toward the coach and climbed up with the coachman.
“What did you mean when you said he did the right thing when the choice came?” Vergil asked.
“Let us just say that I think that the devil has been fighting for his soul, but did not win.” She watched the carriage take him away. “Do you think that he will remain silent?”
“Probably. Not that it will matter, since Mrs. Gaston is certain to tell all to whoever will listen. Eventually her stories about me will get to London.”
“Oh, darling, can’t we find some way to stop her?”
He placed two fingers on her soft warm lips. “I do not care. I think that I will be glad for it. I am tired of the double life, Bianca. I am tired of denying part of who I am. Doing so left my brother vulnerable, and eventually killed him, and I will not live like that. I am proud of what I have done with the mill. It is important to me, essential to me, and I am not inclined to give it up, either.”
“I think that I can understand that.”
“Yes, you can. And I can understand you. I understand that embracing your dream and your art does not mean rejecting me, even if it does mean that you cannot stay with me.”
She sank against him. It felt so good to hold her feminine warmth. However, her embrace acknowledged that it was time for decisions to be made. The beauty of her sadness made his heart shake.
“What do we do now?” she mumbled.
She was asking for help in seeing it through.
“We will visit Paris and then you will continue down to Italy. I brought a bank draft that you can take. It will see you clear until more formal arrangements can be made. We will send for Jane while we are in Paris and settling the plans for your journey south.”
Her big blue eyes widened in her erotically innocent way. “That is not what I mean, Laclere. What do we do now?”
His blood fired immediately in response to her quiet invitation. He pulled her to him and kissed her with a ferocity born of relief and regret. “You are a most dangerous lady.”
She backed into the farmhouse. “Only dangerous for you, my lord. You have my promise on that.”
He followed where she led, over to a sheepskin rug by the fire. With eyes speaking of the passion to come, she dropped her cloak and began to undress him.
“I thought of you often while I walked by the sea.” She slid his waistcoat off and plucked at his cravat. “The power of the waves, the rhythm and force of them, the glory of all that untamed nature—it can saturate a person the way love and passion can. Very moving. Like music, actually. Yes, a lot like music. I would watch the sea and want to make love to you and sing my heart out.”
“Then we will.” He grabbed up her cloak and threw it around her. “On the cliffs. We will make love there and you will sing for me, and we will join our passion to that of creation and remember this day forever.”
Flying on desire, they made their way to the cliffs, huddled together against the wind, almost spilling their love in the orchard when he stopped to warm them both in an embrace. They climbed up the walk to the highest point, where the western sun still gave a little warmth and an ethereal pink light bathed an outcropping.
Bianca faced the sea, so close to the edge one expected her to take to flight. The wind whipped her cloak and gown and hair until she appeared like the center of a tiny tempest. She closed her eyes and just felt it, and he felt it through her. Her voice warbled up and down the scales as she announced herself to the elements.
“It is divine,” she whispered.
He stepped close behind her. “Sing the Rossini,” he said. “Sing as you did the day at the ruins.”
“You favor that? Do you know what the words say?”
“The singer explains how she will not marry her evil guardian, but will find a way to be with her true love.”
“Very apt that day in the ruins, except that the true love was in fact the evil guardian.”
“In his heart the evil guardian wished for it.” He embraced her. “Sing it for me.”
At first he could barely hear her. The wind stole the sound out of her mouth and carried it to the clouds. But her breath and voice found its strength and the music flowed out of her, another wind blowing its passion, another force drenching his soul. He sensed her with him, pulling him into it, glorying in the elemental energy of her voice and womanhood.
He lowered her to the ground and took her while she sang. The joining left her breathless, unable to sound the notes, but the aria continued silently in his head, filling out the roar of wind and sea. Her soul sang it too. She expressed her ecstacy in her kisses and holds and cries until a completion erupted that merged them into the coast’s sublime fury.
She clutched the hearth wall as pleasure of stunning intensity left her limp. Only her grip
kept her upright on her knees as Laclere’s tongue made her vulva throb with astonishing sensations.
He reached for her waist and brought her down until she straddled his hips on the sheepskin rug in front of the cottage’s hearth. She laid against his chest and blinked her senses alert.
In that instant, with the solidity of his body beneath her and the heat of their passion burning, she saw her future. She knew how it must be. No regret tinged the joy that the decision gave her. In the years ahead she might experience some nostalgia for what she relinquished, but she would never grieve.
She felt him hard beneath her, his need intensified by the kisses he had just given her. She rose and sat back on his thighs and looked down at the man who had intruded on her plans, only to become the center of her life. “I want us to be lovers forever, Laclere.”
“We will be, darling. I will come to Italy often and the separations will not be too long.”
She caressed down his chest, wonderfully alert to the feel of his skin and body. “I want no distance. No separation. I cannot leave you, Laclere. My heart will not let me. I want to get married.”
Her declaration surprised him. He gripped her hands to stop their caresses and looked in her eyes.
There was no triumph in his expression. She saw only relief and love and astonishment.
Then a deeper comprehension shadowed the brighter emotions.
“You said that denying your dream would mean giving up half your soul. I do not want that.”
“I can sing anywhere, Laclere. In my chamber and yours. In a ruined castle. I do not need to be in Italy for my soul to be whole. I do not need to train for performances in order to have my art.”
Her capitulation appeared to trouble him. His fingertips skimmed her breast’s swell while he thought, as if its shape aided his contemplations. “You must continue training, darling. When you surpass Signore Bardi’s skill, we will bring another voice master from Italy, as I promised.”
He pulled her down into an embrace. He pressed a long kiss to her as he smoothed slow caresses over her body. “You will train, and then you will perform when you are ready. If I do something so outrageous as manage a mill, having a wife who performs is almost insignificant.”
It was her turn to be astonished. “It will not be so simple, Laclere. There will be a high cost if you permit this. I do not want your family hurt because of me.”
“It will be some years before you go onstage. Charlotte will be married by then, so we will not harm her future. As to Pen and Dante, they are hardly paragons of propriety themselves. Maybe everyone will just think I have become eccentric, like my father and brother. If not, I do not care. Your happiness is worth any price, my love.”
Her throat burned and her eyes misted. She loved him so much at that moment that holding the love inside her made her heart gloriously full. “Thank you for wanting to do this for me, but you are not being practical. By the time I am ready to perform, I will have children.”
“Then we will have an army of nurses and tutors go with them when you travel to your engagements. You will have your dream, Bianca. If you will stay with me, I will not allow our marriage to deny you any of it.”
She kissed him. The warmth of his lips seemed to make the sweetest connection they had ever shared. She knew with a woman’s certainty that this marriage would indeed deny her part of the dream, but she did not care about that. His desire to give it all to her was what she would always remember.
“I do not expect to travel very much. I do not have to perform on the Continent. I do not want to build a career for the fame, Laclere. However, it will be nice, sometimes, to have the opportunity to sing until hundreds of people weep.”
He lifted her body and lowered her so that he filled her. Holding her to his heart he led her back into passion.
Afterward she lay drenched by his presence. The soft words of love that he had spoken at the end still played in her ears, and she slowly realized that he still repeated them. She forced her sated senses back in order.
And realized that for the first time he remained inside her.
She rose up on her forearms and looked at him.
Unconditional love looked back.
They shared a flawless unity in that honest gaze.
What a terribly wonderful thing love could be, she thought. One both found oneself and lost oneself within its quiet power. Love was more transporting than the ecstasies of music and nature. More thrilling than the edge of a sea cliff or the release of passion.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Madeline Hunter has worked as a grocery clerk, office employee, art dealer, and freelance writer. She holds a Ph.D. in art history, which she currently teaches at an eastern university. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, her two teenage sons, a chubby, adorable mutt, and a black cat with a major attitude. She can be contacted through her web site, www.MadelineHunter.com.
Also by Madeline Hunter
BY ARRANGEMENT
BY POSSESSION
BY DESIGN
THE PROTECTOR
LORD OF A THOUSAND NIGHTS
STEALING HEAVEN
THE SEDUCER
Coming soon
THE CHARMER
THE SINNER
Journey back to an age of seductive danger,
passionate intrigue, and scandalous love as nationally
acclaimed author Madeline Hunter draws you into
the hearts of three irresistible men:
THE SEDUCER
Daniel St. John Charismatic and mysterious, this dangerously seductive man has survived a treacherous revolution: a master at the arts of war and intrigue, he knows the secrets of winning a woman’s heart . . . and body.
THE SAINT
Vergil Duclairc This dashing nobleman leads a dangerous double life: beneath his perfect composure and self-control is a sensual master whose mere touch can tempt a woman to the wildest abandon.
THE CHARMER
Adrian Burchard This virile aristocrat was used to having women at his command: darkly handsome, sensuous, magnetic, he lived in a world of mysteries and secrets . . . a man dangerous to love, impossible to resist.
Fighters, protectors, and lovers, they live in a dazzling
and treacherous world of glittering ballrooms and sinful
gaming halls, in a time of heart-stopping duels and
soul-searing passion.
These are their stories . . .
And look for two other tales of
seduction and scandel . . .
Madeline Hunter’s
THE SEDUCER
Daniel’s story
On sale now
and
THE CHARMER
Adrian’s story
December 2003
Read on for a preview . . .
And look for the glorious finale
to Madeline Hunter’s “Seducer” series
in THE SINNER, Dante’s Story,
in January 2004!
THE SEDUCER
On sale now
“. . . if she goes unpunished, I must insist that she leave. I cannot have the virtue of my girls corrupted. . . .”
Madame Leblanc rambled on in severe tones. Distracted by thoughts of the unfinished business he had left in Paris, Daniel St. John only half-listened.
Something about a book. Of course the girl would have books. It was a school.
He forced his attention to the gray-haired, buxom schoolmistress and broke her incessant flow. “Your summons said that this was serious, madame. I assumed she had taken ill and lay on death’s door.”
Madame lowered her chin and glared at him. “This transgression requires more than bread and water for a few days, m’sieur, and you gave strict orders she was not to be punished with the rod without your permission.”
“Did I? When was that?”
“Years ago. I told you that such leniency would lead to grief, and now it has.”
Yes, he vaguely remembered the earnest expressi
on on a gamine-faced child, asking him for justice. He could not recall giving instructions about it. If he had known it would prove this damned inconvenient he would not have been so generous.
He straightened in the chair, prepared to rescind the order. His gaze fell on the willow rod lying across the desk. The memory of tearful eyes and a choking voice accusing Madame Leblanc of unwarranted brutality came back to him again.
“You said something about a book. Let me see it.”
“M’sieur, that is not necessary. I assure you that it is of a nature to be forbidden, to say the least.”
“That could mean it is only a volume of poems by Ovid, or a religious tract by a dissenter. I would like to see it and judge for myself.”
“I do not think—”
“The book, madame.”
She strode to a cabinet. Using one of several keys on a cord around her neck, she unlocked it and retrieved a small, red volume. She thrust it at him and retreated to a window. She took up a position with her back to him, physically announcing her condemnation of the literature in his hands.
He flipped it open, and immediately saw why.
Not literature. In fact, no words at all. The thin volume contained only engravings that displayed carnal intercourse in all its inventiveness.
He paged through. Things started out simply enough, but got increasingly athletic. Toward the end there were a few representations that struck him as totally unworkable.
“I see,” he said, snapping the book closed.
“Indeed.” Her tone said he had seen more than was necessary.
“Call for the child, madame.”
Satisfaction lit her face. “I would like you to be here when it is done. She should know that you approve.”
“Send for her.”
Madame Oiseau escorted Diane in.
As expected, a visitor waited in the headmistress’s study. The Devil Man lounged in Madame Leblanc’s chair behind the fruitwood desk. Madame stood beside him rigidly, a bulwark of censure. Two items lay upon the spotless desk. A willow rod, and the book.
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