by Candace Camp
Alec reached out, brushing his thumb along the line of her cheek. Damaris looked up into his face. She knew she should protest, should move away, but she could not.
“Your eyes are so beautiful,” he murmured. “Their color…” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “No doubt hundreds of men have written poetry to your eyes.”
“Hardly hundreds.”
“I have no way with words. But when I look into your eyes, I feel as if… I am drowning and I have no wish to be saved.”
“I think,” Damaris breathed, “that you are doing quite well with your words.”
His eyes widened just a fraction, his lips pulling back in a flash of a smile, and he bent and kissed her.
Damaris stiffened, her hands coming up to his chest, but instead of pushing him away, her fingers curled into his jacket, holding on as he pulled her into him. His mouth lingered on hers, answering all questions of how he would kiss her. He tasted her as one might a fine wine, his lips and tongue teasing and exploring, slowly savoring her.
A long shiver ran down Damaris. She felt as if her whole body was opening up to him as surely and completely as her mouth. Her hands relaxed and moved up his chest to loop around his neck. She stretched upward, her body sliding up his, until she stood on her tiptoes, her lips locked with his. She was washed with heat, intensified by the furnace of his body.
Rawdon was flush against her all the way up and down, his arms wrapped around her, enveloping her. His kiss deepened, his mouth consuming her, and his hands glided down to her hips, pressing her up into him so that she felt the length of his desire digging into her. She was dizzy with the taste and scent and feel of him, and she thought that she might fall into a limp, trembling mass on the floor were it not for the hard strength of his arms clasping her to him.
His hand came up to curve around her breast, and her gasp was swallowed by his kiss. He caressed her, his fingertips burning through the material and arousing her nipples to hard points of yearning. A liquid warmth pooled between her legs, spurred by the delicious ache forming there.
With a groan, he pulled his lips from hers and buried his face in her hair. She could feel the stir of his breath upon her hair, hear the thunder of his heart. She felt strangely will-less, loath to move away or to pull herself back under control.
He released a long breath, a faint shudder of a laugh at the end, and pressed his lips once, softly, to her hair. “Sweet God.” His voice trembled slightly. Then he released her and stepped back, tugging his jacket into place. “I should apologize.” He hesitated, then added, “But I fear that I cannot. I enjoyed kissing you far too much, and I am not at all sorry for it.”
Damaris glanced up at him, a laugh gurgling up in her throat. “My lord!”
“Do not ‘my lord!’ me.” He grinned at her, grabbing her by the arms and pulling her up for a hard, quick kiss upon her lips. “My name is Alec, and I should like to hear it on your lips.”
“Alec,” she whispered, and he kissed her again, this time neither as hard nor as fast.
His hands dropped away from her arms and he stepped back reluctantly. “Good night, Damaris.”
“Good night.” She watched him walk out of the house. Her legs folded beneath her and she sank down onto the bench in the entry, landing with a small thud.
What had she just done?
The next morning Damaris still was not sure of an answer to her question. Lord Rawdon—Alec—was a mystery to her, and right now she felt somewhat the same way about herself. She was rarely so careless, so impetuous. The lessons she had learned had been hard, but well remembered.
Yes, she was a woman who enjoyed life, who lived more or less as she pleased, but she made certain to always stay on a clear, easy path, one where she could not be harmed, where she would not stumble or fall. One, in short, where she was above suspicion and free from danger. From the kind of heartbreak that could never be forgotten.
But last night she had apparently taken leave of her senses and jumped right into—well, she was not sure what it was, but clearly it was anything but safe.
How could she have been so foolhardy? She had ignored all the warning signals her brain had sent her. The Season was still at its peak; Rawdon was an earl, for pity’s sake. Of course some member of her father’s family would be there. That was where they belonged; she was the one who was out of her element.
And of course they had seen her, no matter how large the ball was. She was a stranger; it would be of some note when the Earl of Rawdon singled her out for the first waltz. Moreover, she was not so foolish as to deny that an attractive mystery woman was bound to receive a certain amount of attention from all the male guests, especially since the earl had shown her such obvious favor. The cluster of men about her all evening would have drawn anyone’s eye.
Damaris could see now that she had been willfully naïve in believing there would be no harm in accepting Rawdon’s invitation. And more so still not to foresee what had happened last night when Rawdon brought her home. It had been simmering beneath the surface since they first met. She had seen the glances he sent her way during her Twelfth Night ball six months ago. Even during Matthew’s baptism four months ago, her eyes had kept returning to Alec—no, Rawdon; she must keep the formality—only to find each time that he was watching her.
She knew that the only reason she had accepted his invitation, the thing that had swept her into impetuously appearing at a ton party, was the prospect of seeing him again—of flirting with him, dancing with him, even, yes, kissing him.
Damaris could not help but smile at the remembrance of that kiss. It had been laughable, really, for her to imagine that she had any idea what Alec’s kiss would be like, just because she had been wooed and wed. She had been kissed by only one man—well, two, if she counted that silly brief struggle in the garden with an inebriated Italian count—and that had in no way prepared her for the incendiary touch of Lord Rawdon’s lips. She could not term his kiss sweet or forceful or tantalizing or, indeed, any other description easy to define and dismiss.
Alec’s kiss had taken her over, had consumed and changed and shaken her.
And that was precisely why it could not happen again. She would not allow her senses to control her. She must not be swept away on a tide of emotion and desire. Already she had gone too far. The only sensible course open to her was to leave London as quickly as she could and return to Chesley. If she remained here, it was all too likely that she would let herself be persuaded to see Alec again, and it would be very wrong of her to let him or his family become any more involved with her. As it was, if her past came out, the Staffords could easily shrug it off, as surprised as anyone else. But if she was seen with Alec, if he called on her or pushed his sister into inviting Damaris to dinner, if the Staffords were seen to be “taking her up,” then they would be embarrassed by the eventual revelation of her birth.
She would tell her maid to begin to pack for the return home. She would finish up her errands here in London, and she would write a pleasant note to Lady Genevieve, thanking her for the invitation to her party and mentioning that she must unexpectedly return to Chesley. There was little joy in the prospect of not seeing Rawdon again, but it was the only sensible thing to do. There could be no relationship between them other than that of a nobleman and his mistress, and that was something she had vowed never to allow. It would be better to cut it off quickly, before any deeper feelings could take root.
Her decision made, she rang for Edith and set her to the task of packing. Damaris kept her appointment at the modiste’s for her final fitting for the clothes that were not yet finished and left her with instructions to ship them to Chesley when they were done. After that, she made stops at the glover’s and the milliner’s shops and finally ended her day at Bedford House, picking up a few notions such as ribbons and handkerchiefs and such. She had contemplated going by Gunter’s for an ice, but in the end, she hadn’t the heart for it, and it was long past teatime so she simply went home.
> The carriage let her down in front of her house, then drove on toward the mews. Damaris started toward the short walkway up to her house, but a man’s voice stopped her. “Mrs. Howard!”
She turned and lifted her hand to shade her eyes. The setting sun was shining directly behind the man, so that it difficult to make out his features. As he drew closer, she saw that he was no one she knew, and she began to frown in puzzlement. He wore the rough jacket and trousers of a workingman, with a cap pulled low on his head. Footsteps sounded behind her, and Damaris started to turn, but at that moment two arms went around her from behind, wrapping a garment around her.
Before she could move, he whipped the two sides of the garment, which she recognized now as a cloak, around her and behind her back, effectively pinning her arms to her sides. She opened her mouth to scream, but the other man, who had leapt forward, clamped his hand across her mouth, effectively cutting off any noise. Damaris struggled, panicked, but the first man wrapped his arm around her tightly, clamping her to his side, while the other man shoved a wad of cloth into her mouth, then yanked the hood of the cloak up over her head.
Damaris squirmed and fought, trying to spit out the cloth, but the two men held her firmly between them as they whisked her up the sidewalk toward a waiting carriage. There was no one on the street in front of them, and she knew that even if there was a witness to the scene at a distance, it would look merely as if two men were helping a woman who had fainted or fallen ill. No one would assume that she was being abducted.
It did not take long to reach the carriage. One of the men yanked the door open, and the other one picked her up and shoved her inside. Damaris landed on her knees and, unable to raise her hands to shield herself, she pitched forward headfirst against the opposite door. Her head cracked painfully on the handle of the door, and she crumpled to the floor.
Five
The man jumped into the carriage after her, and the vehicle rolled off. Damaris lay on the floor, dazed. When the man casually shoved her legs aside with his foot, she realized that he must think he had knocked her head so hard she had lost consciousness. Instinctively she rolled limply with the movement. It was better that he believe her immobilized, and now she was facing away from him. At a bump in the road, she turned even further, so her shoulder was now against the opposite seat, completely hiding her face and front from her abductor. The recent movements had loosened the cloak around her enough that Damaris was able to raise her hands up and pull the rag from her mouth.
Her reticule was still looped about one wrist, and she carefully edged it open and slipped her fingers inside. There was not much in the way of weapons there, but she did have a small leather coin purse, filled with coins. She tugged off her gloves and made sure the jewel of the ring on her right hand was facing out. Then she wrapped that hand tightly around the coin purse, to add a bit of weight to her fist. With her other hand, she located the small sewing kit, no more than three inches long, opened it, and pulled out the little scissors. The blades were no more than an inch in length, but they were sharply pointed. She held them in her other hand like a hilt on a knife.
Then she waited. The carriage was moving at a steady clip; it would be foolish to try to jump out, even if she could make it to the door. But she worried that the vehicle would take her so far from home that she would be unable to find her way back. What if they removed her to the countryside? Or perhaps into the dark, twisting alleys of the East End? She thought of the tales of white slavers that she had heard whispered, and she wondered if she had been too swift to dismiss them. The idea seemed absurd, but she could think of no other possibility. Why would anyone abduct her? Who would want to, and what could they hope to achieve? She was, she mused, an ordinary sort of person living an uneventful life.
The carriage slowed to a stop, and Damaris tensed. The man opened the door and stepped out of the carriage, reaching back inside to pull her out. As he did so, Damaris rolled to her back, jackknifed her legs and kicked straight out. Her feet, fortunately clad in heeled boots instead of soft slippers, hit him squarely in the chest and, caught by surprise, he staggered back, letting go of her.
Damaris scrambled out of the carriage. He reached for her, but she jammed the tiny scissors into her abductor’s forearm, following up with a punch of her be-ringed fist into his cheek. The man howled, reeling backward, and luckily for Damaris, he stumbled over the uneven cobblestones of the street and went down on his backside. His cohort, still in the act of climbing down from the driver’s seat, stared at the scene in astonishment.
Damaris did not wait to see what they would do. She whirled and pelted back up the street in the direction from which the carriage had come. She heard a man shout, but she had no idea what he said or whether it came from a passerby or one of her pursuers. A wagon rolled down the street toward her, and at the last moment, she darted across in front of it. The driver yelled at her, but she managed to avoid the horse, and she hoped that the wagon would slow the men following her. A man stood on the street corner, staring at her, and she ran up to him.
“Please! Sir, please help me! Those men are—”
“Here! Grab her!” yelled a voice from behind her. “She’s mad!”
The stranger looked at her uncertainly, his hand coming out to take her arm. “Here. What’s going on, now?”
Damaris was suddenly aware that she probably did indeed look like a madwoman, clutching her embroidery scissors, points out, her eyes huge with fright and her hair escaping every which way from the cloak having been thrown over her head. Who would believe her wild tale of abduction? Her pursuers were almost upon them, confident man-to-man smiles on their faces.
Damaris whirled and ran, yanking her arm away from the stranger and leaving him holding only the cloak. She ran up the side street as the men let out shouts and started after her again. She knew she could not avoid them for long. However, it was reaching dusk, and deep shadows had begun to collect about the houses, so she would soon have at least the cover of darkness.
Something crashed behind her, and she risked turning her head back to look. It startled her to see how close her pursuers were, but fortunately, the one in the lead had run into a man who was stepping out from a door. The second abductor was too close behind to stop, and stumbled over them, sending all three to the ground. Damaris seized the chance and turned right at the next lane. Unlike the street she had just left, several of these houses had small front gardens. She darted across the street and threw herself over a low iron fence into a garden. Bushes grew across the foundation of the house, and she crawled in among them, squirming her way to the very deepest, darkest corner of the house, where she crouched, curling in on herself and tucking her head in so that her face was completely hidden.
She waited, doing her best to calm her gasping breaths. It was nerve-wracking not to be able to see, but she dared not look up and perhaps reveal a flash of pale face at precisely the wrong moment. She heard the sound of footsteps in the distance, running at first, then slowing and coming to a halt. There was a scrape or two of shoes upon the street, then a low curse. A shout came from a distance, and the footsteps retreated quickly.
Damaris counted to ten, then risked looking up. She could see nothing beyond her shelter of branches, so, every nerve screaming, she forced herself to crawl from her hiding space. There was no one in the yard or on the street. She thought of going to the door and asking for assistance, but the house was dark and she was afraid of exposing herself for too long to the full view of the street, knocking and waiting, without anyone answering. Besides, her recent experience had left her fearful that anyone who answered the door would assume the worst about her, given her unkempt appearance. No doubt she now had leaves and twigs clinging to her as well, after her foray in the bushes.
If her abductors appeared again, claiming she was the escaped lunatic they guarded, she might very well be handed over to them, and she could not count on being able to escape them again. No, the best thing was to find her way home, s
taying in the shadows and ready to leap into hiding along the way. She scurried over to the fence and knelt, staring up and down the street. There was no sign of her assailants. Cautiously, she slipped from the yard, using the gate this time, and started off, hoping that she had been correct about the direction the footsteps had taken and that she was headed the opposite way.
She had no idea where she was or where to go, but she kept walking, keeping as much in the shadows as she could, always glancing around for any sign of her followers. When she had been thrown into the carriage, it had taken off toward the west, and it had not taken a good many turns, so she continued moving in a generally eastward direction. The houses around her were not poor, but as she walked, they seemed to increase in size and grandeur, which heartened her. Surely she was going the right way.
When she saw a man approaching, she thought about stopping and asking him for directions, but she was too shaken. She was not sure she would recognize her abductors; the man could be one of them. She slipped quickly across the street, glancing back to see if he followed her.
Her legs ached, and she was beginning to rub a blister on her right heel. She was chiding herself for having been so distrusting of the recent passerby, when she stopped at a corner and looked around, suddenly realizing that she was not far from her house. With renewed energy, she crossed the street and hurried to the next one and turned right. Her steps quickened; she was on her own street now, less than half a mile away. She glanced across the road and saw two men walking purposefully down the street ahead of her. Her stomach lurched, and she froze, her heart slamming in her chest.
It was her kidnappers; seeing them now, she was certain. And they were walking to her house! She whirled around and started in the opposite direction, forcing herself not to run. She must not do anything to attract their attention. When she turned the corner, she glanced back. The men had stopped and were talking to each other; one of them glanced her way. Damaris slipped around the corner and took off at a run. She ran without any idea of where she was going, turning up first one street and then another, desperate only to stay away from the kidnappers.