He swung around, not stopping to consider whom he assaulted, reacting from pure reflex.
A muscular forearm blocked the punch he meant to throw. He rocked back, caught his balance, and stared at his cousin Devon’s forefinger waggling under his nose. “You’ve taken a good blow to the head, Gabriel. How many fingers am I holding up?”
Gabriel swatted his cousin’s hand away with a snort of derision. “You can’t fool me. That isn’t a finger you’re waving under my face. It’s your rod, scrawny article that it is. I’d be ashamed to display it in public.”
Devon laughed. “There’s no need to stoop to personal insults. Let’s go.”
“But I’m not finished.”
Devon stared past him to the cloaked figure sprawled out dazedly on Audrey’s front steps. A pair of footmen were already on hand to whisk Guy out of the view of passersby. It would not please the upper-crust guests to have to walk around an offensive sight.
The under-butler emerged from the house, cast an approving look of recognition at the Boscastles, then said to the footmen, “Take this person to the rubbish heap. Mrs. Watson does not wish him to be admitted to her house nor to dirty her entrance. We have a reputation to maintain.”
Gabriel turned to the three men gathered in a semicircle around him. He grinned ruefully. No one had ever stood up so decisively for him before, with the exception of Alethea Claridge. He’d come to think he did not deserve such loyalty.
Hell, he’d worked hard enough to prove how bad he was, and now he had to make the ultimate choice—would the people who loved him be justified in their belief that he was a good man or would he prove he was as worthless as his stepfather had claimed?
Heath placed his hand on his shoulder. “We’re going back to the party. Are you coming?”
“Party?”
“Grayson’s birthday,” Drake said, leaning against the carriage door. “You remember—the private to-do for the family and close friends after everyone else leaves?”
Gabriel smiled tiredly. “I appreciate the invitation, and at any other time I’d have been honored to celebrate Grayson’s advanced age.”
“But?” Devon said, grinning as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “Another card game?”
Gabriel shook his head. “No. I have to go home.”
Drake stepped away from the carriage door. “Home to an empty town house?” he asked wryly.
Gabriel didn’t answer. There was no point in attempting to lie to his cousins, men who had sinned as he had, but had changed their ways. They could see right through him, and it felt good to not pretend for once that he didn’t care. He was in love, about to embark on the biggest game of chance he’d ever played.
“I’m going home to Helbourne,” he said.
Heath nodded. “Well, drop us off at Grayson’s on the way. We shall raise a toast to you at the table.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
It rained for three days in a row. The ancient yew that grew over the river had been struck by lightning and fallen across the bridge to Helbourne Hall. Several plucky village boys, and a girl or two, had already made a game of crossing to the other side.
The meadow had flooded and weeds sprouted up overnight, growing waist-high with a vengeance. In the moonlight the stone walls that divided Alethea’s home from Helbourne Hall disappeared into drifts of damp mist. Autumn would indeed come soon, the farmers predicted. Their wives worried, but dared not say aloud, that some of the more defiant ghosts would risk eternal damnation by not returning to their places of rest after visiting their loved ones on Allhallows Eve. The devil always took his due. And love was no excuse.
Alethea took long walks in the rain, pretending not to gaze toward the road every few minutes for a certain dark knight to appear. Nor did she admit to staring from her window at night to count whether more lights than usual burned behind the mullioned windows of Gabriel’s house. Her brother remarked that it would be foolhardy for a man to travel in this weather, and that Gabriel had asked for her hand and would keep his word.
But she knew that Gabriel wasn’t the sort of man to let a storm stop him from doing what he wanted. Her monthly courses had come, and she told herself how fortunate it was that he hadn’t left her carrying his child. There was nothing to say that even a rake would desire damaged property as a wife.
He had fallen in love with Lady Alethea, the pure and perfect. And if he’d been upset because he’d seen her talking to Audrey Watson, she could not imagine how he would feel when she admitted that he was not the first man to have knowledge of her body.
But she had promised him the truth. Would he return so that she could keep her word?
On a morning four days after she’d come home the sky dawned clear and a rainbow arced over the hills. She put on her old green-gray muslin frock and her battered half-boots, and helped muck out the soiled hay in the stables. The grooms gave her a wide berth as she wielded her pitchfork. If they guessed she was attacking an absent nobleman, they were wise enough to allow her; but Lady Alethea working in the stables was not an uncommon sight, so they pitched right alongside her.
Late that evening, after she had exhausted herself in paying calls that could have waited, she took a scalding hip bath and dressed for supper, then changed her mind and stretched across her bed with the windows open. She was surprised that she fell asleep, with so much weighing on her mind. But even then she could hear a horseman thundering through her dreams, the hoofbeats growing louder and louder until—
She sat up, shivering more from anticipation than cold, as the earth beneath her window thrummed, beating in synchrony with her pounding heart. Someone was riding in her garden.
She leapt out of bed and hastened to identify the mounted intruder prancing roughshod over the straggly geraniums and love-lies-bleeding that had barely survived the last storm. He was riding the most gorgeous gray Arab she had ever seen. The watery moonlight accentuated the animal’s proud arched neck and sleek hindquarters, and its rider—he was a gorgeous animal himself.
She was dying for a closer look at both of them, and just as she found the breath to call to Gabriel, he set in his heels and took the south wall in an effortless jump that stopped her heart.
“You show-off,” she shouted softly, and saw him half-turn to give her a cavalier wave.
He cantered off toward the hills, then wheeled with a grace she envied. “Don’t you break either that magnificent animal’s neck or your own,” she whispered, turning from the window.
She flew downstairs in the dark and out into the garden, half-expecting both the rider and that fineblooded horse to have disappeared again. But Gabriel was waiting for her by the wall, still astride the well-muscled Arabian, its elegant head lifting at her ungainly approach.
“You’re not dressed for riding,” Gabriel remarked, his gaze traveling over her, so possessive and wistful that she almost forgot she’d vowed to live without him.
But she could not. What Jeremy had stolen from her was nothing compared to the pain she would have suffered had Gabriel not returned. For she had given herself willingly to him, with a woman’s knowledge of what she stood to lose.
He had come back, not as a gentleman at all, which was a good thing since she considered herself more a gypsy than a lady, but as the dark unruly force he had always represented. The rebel boy who, as her parents had predicted, would lead her from the path of every virtue that Society cherished if she did not watch herself.
“Do you know what time it is?” she said.
He grinned. “No. Is it too late to go riding?”
Her heart ached with happiness at the sight of him, even though for two shillings she could have wiped that unholy smile from his face. “At this hour? You are insane. Only a madman—”
“—or one deeply in love—”
“—would be galloping about on that—that beautiful horse.”
“You do like him. Good—he’s your wedding gift. My cousins advised me to buy you jewels. I assured them that yo
u’d prefer a fine mount.”
“Sure of yourself, are you?” she challenged, raising her face to his.
“Not at all. But I would like to be sure of you.” He held out a gloved hand to grasp her wrist. Her bones felt fragile, but the spirit beneath was strong, unbroken. “Ride with me.”
She laughed with uncertain delight. “If anyone sees us—”
“—then they shall know that the rumors of my abducting maidens are true.” He leaned down and lifted her before him. Their bodies fit in perfect comfort upon the stallion’s unsaddled back.
She turned to Gabriel, her laughter dying as he wrapped her in his arms. “I promised you I would tell you the truth the next time we were together.”
“It’s all right, Alethea.”
“It isn’t. You wanted the girl I was, who I was, a long time ago.”
“I want you as you are now,” he said quietly.
“Do you? I am not pure. I am despoiled, ruined—all that innocence that you found so beguiling is gone.”
“Alethea.”
“Once I was pure, then I was not. I wasn’t a maiden when we made love.”
He kissed her nape. “I know.”
She pushed against his arm. “No, you don’t. You can’t—unless Audrey told you. Oh. She told you.” Her voice shook.
He drew a breath. The air seared his lungs, clean with no taint of soot or soap boilers or sad endings. He wouldn’t let her go, even though she was twisting to get away. “Audrey didn’t tell me anything.”
She angled her head to look at him. “Then you don’t know. You don’t understand what happened.”
“I do. I saw Lord Guy Hazlett in London after I left your brother’s house.”
She went still, white. “Guy told what his brother did?”
He swallowed over the anger that tightened his throat. He wished Jeremy weren’t dead so he could kill him. He wished he’d killed Guy when he’d had the chance. He wished he’d had the courage to stay in Helbourne so that nothing would have caused her this pain.
“Damnation,” he said in a raw voice. “I did not desire you for your purity, whatever that is supposed to be.”
“No?” She rested her head back against his shoulder. Her dark curls spilled into his lap. “You mentioned it more than once.”
He cleared his throat. “Only because I believed you would be pleased that I—well, that I was not drawn to the impure, as my reputation would have it.”
“Audrey was kind to me the night it happened.”
He felt sick inside, ashamed of the conclusion he had drawn. “I wish I had known then.”
“I wouldn’t have told you,” she said, breathing out a sigh.
“Why not?”
“You have seen me as if I were on a pedestal my entire life.”
He tightened his arm around her midsection and dug in his heels. The Arab surged. “You saw me in the pillory once, and if I put you on a pedestal then, nothing that anyone has done to you will lessen what you are in my eyes.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
Alethea caught her breath as Gabriel half-dragged her up the creaky stairwell of Helbourne Hall. “What was that thing that just flew over my head?” she whispered.
“I didn’t see it.” He laughed. “It could have been a bat or a bullet. No, it wasn’t a bullet. All the servants are drunk abed at this hour.”
“Bats?” she said, her voice echoing. “I thought that was only a rumor. I realized that this house was a disgrace, but bats…”
“The owner is even worse, I’ve heard.” He backed her into the balustrade, his hard body dominating hers. “I’d say he and this house are in dire need of a wife.”
His thick erection prodded her belly through his buckskin trousers. An unexpected urge to explore the secrets of his male body seized her. She released her breath and hooked her arms around his neck as he lifted her into the air. “I’d say the wife will need a good supply of lye soap, a ladder, and several pairs of sturdy hands.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “The husband has a pair of sturdy hands, but they’re going to be pleasuring you tonight. We could move out to the stables if you’re in the mood for a country tumble. It’s as well-scrubbed now as the Cliffs of Dover.”
“And as cold, I imagine,” she said with a catch in her voice at the thought of his hands upon her.
He strode up the rest of the steps and carried her down the hall, kicking open the door to a bedchamber starkly furnished with a huge oaken bedstead, a scratched-up fall-front desk, and a corner washstand. The tall mullioned windows stood open to the night wind, as hers had been.
She shivered as he deposited her upon his unmade bed, then curled into a pillow that held his scent. His hard face excited her. She trembled at the thought of submitting to his most wicked desires. What had she become? She cared not. She belonged to him.
“I still watch you from the windows,” he murmured, pulling off his gloves to undo her apple-green muslin supper gown, her embroidered petticoats, her silk chemise. He settled beside her naked body, his bare hand slipping down her back to the globes of her bottom. “Although I have to admit I prefer the view from here. Do you mind if I light a candle for a better look?”
She uncurled herself and grasped the lapels of his heavy woolen cloak. “Yes, I mind. Just take off your clothes and make me warm.”
His eyes darkened. “I’ll do better.”
She arched her back, felt the damp heat between her thighs. “I want you so badly.”
He leaned down closer and kissed her until she subsided beneath him with a sigh. “I’m yours.” And when he slipped his hand along her thigh, she quivered in unabashed anticipation and lifted herself to invite his touch.
“Gabriel.” She fell still as his fingers parted her wide and sank deep, then deeper, until she panted and surrendered any pretense of inhibition, her heels digging furrows in his mattress, her hips bucking to offer him more.
“Gabriel, I need you. I need to feel you inside me.”
“I’ve waited my whole life to hear you say that.”
He withdrew his hand. She groaned, her cleft throbbing, her arousal an ache only he could ease.
He slid back to pull off his shirt and trousers, stretching his muscles for a leisurely moment as if he knew how the sight of his sculptured body would tantalize her. He cupped his thick penis in his palms and stared down into her eyes. “I can’t breathe when you look at me like that. I want you to touch me.”
She laughed at that and opened herself willingly, allowing him to believe he’d claimed her when long ago, as a willful young woman, she had chosen him as her champion. “I won’t wait another seven years for you, Gabriel.”
“And a damned blessing that is,” he muttered, “because I don’t think I’ll last another seven minutes.”
He kissed her as he knelt between her open thighs and guided himself into the intimate heat of her body. She moaned deep in her throat and strained upward to take more of him. Her nipples darkened, and her sex moistened, easing his penetration.
But he wanted to draw out her pleasure, refusing to fill her, teasing her with shallow little stabs of his shaft, rubbing the thick knob between her swollen labia until she moved in a slow, exciting rhythm.
She rose onto her elbows. “I’ll do anything you ask.”
“Anything?” he said, his brow lifting. “Lady Alethea, I do believe I’ve led you astray.”
“Have you forgotten that I am not the paragon from your past? “she whispered as she stroked her fingertips down his impressive erection.
“And a good thing, too,” he said, his breathing harsh. “What would a man like me do with a paragon?”
“What do you suggest?”
She bit her underlip, afraid she would lose her sanity. Hot-blooded hero, she thought. She wanted to thrust, her body not only answering his demands, but on a quest of its own. He smiled down at her as if he knew. Man. Woman. Gabriel and Alethea. Why had it taken so long?
“You
’re still tight,” he said through his teeth. “I don’t think you’re ready for what I’d really like to do.”
“I’m ready to play.”
“Are you?” he muttered, thrusting slowly, his lean back arched. “I like to play.” He withdrew from her, watched as she fought for breath. “And I always win.”
“Not at whist.”
“But this is my game.”
She challenged his claim, and in that challenge broke the chains that had bound her. Upbringing, humiliation, acceptance of a lonely fate. It was all trickery unmasked by his hand. She could not believe she would have married another man, knowing deep inside that it would have been Gabriel whose face she saw in her dreams and hungered for every time she drove past the village square where he had been shamed—and stolen her heart.
And now she was in bed with Helbourne’s most wicked boy. If nature took its course, she would be chasing a child across the village green by this time next year. She gasped for breath. She prayed for strength, and ran her hands greedily down his back, his supple flanks and buttocks. She could not take him deeply enough into her body; she could never be close enough to the man she had loved her entire life.
He went deeper. She invited every thrust, welcomed him, until she felt herself splintering, in two, into him.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Gabriel awakened an hour later, his legs entangled in the sheets that bore the monogram of Helbourne’s previous owner. For long moments of incomparable bliss he did not move. He gazed in grave contemplation upon Alethea’s back as she slept.
In his prior encounters this would have been the point at which he would surreptitiously dress and steal from the chamber. Now he felt no desire to escape but only a poignant gratitude that she had not left him. “And I won’t let you go,” he said quietly.
“Yes, you will,” an angry voice said from the door.
He sat up, reaching slowly for the pistol on the bedstand. But when he recognized the figure that stepped across the threshold he drew his hand down and laid it across Alethea’s shoulders. She did not stir. He eased himself up against the headboard, his body angled to shield her.
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