"I don't remember a time when I wasn't aware of them. They were like shadows, vague and indistinct, but always there. It wasn't until I was older that my nocturnal journeys began. Of course, having waking conversation with them has only started since I came here."
He stared at her for a moment, searching her face, her eyes. “If we have children, will they see them as well?"
Emme felt a shiver of apprehension at his questions. Was he having regrets? “It is impossible to say. Many people in my family have gifts, but there are many who do not.” The fear crept into her voice, when she asked, “Why are you asking these questions, Rhys? What has happened?"
He shook his head. “I think—no, I know. I know that I saw Melisande this morning."
It was not what Emme had anticipated that he would say. Rhys was so very adamant that such events could not occur. “You saw her? Did she speak to you?"
He nodded. “I went to the southern wing this morning. It had been the portion of the house that Elise preferred to use for entertaining, when she wasn't up in that bloody tower. Unfortunately, there have been other, very worldly, visitors to that wing. There were footprints, numerous sets, in the corridor. Apparently our villain is searching for something."
He pulled the cravat pin from the pocket of his waistcoat and held it out. “I think this may have been what he was looking for."
Emme examined the small stickpin. It looked strangely familiar. The filigreed tip with the small diamond was a unique design. “I've seen this before, but I can't think where. Did it look familiar to you?"
"To be perfectly honest, no. I've never paid much attention to other men's jewelry."
"I will think of it, eventually,” she said and carried it over to the desk to examine it beneath a magnifying glass. She noted the engraving upon the shaft. “To A., with love, E. The E is obviously for Elise, but who is A?"
He shook his head. “I don't know, but there are several possibilities."
"Alistair?"
"He is one of them. Lord Pommeroy's given name is Ambrose, so we cannot eliminate him either. And that is assuming that this stick pin does belong to our killer and that the person looking for it isn't just attempting to avoid scandal or trying to recover a favorite possession."
"This is so frustrating! I don't understand why Elise won't just simply tell us what she discovered!"
Rhys’ blood went cold. For his part, he didn't care if Elise ever imparted information to them again, given the method in which she did it. Thankfully, there had been no further episodes of ghostly nocturnal visitors. “I hope she doesn't."
His tone alerted her. She had never heard fear from her husband before, but she recognized it in his voice. “What happened the last time? What aren't you telling me?"
He didn't want to alarm her, he didn't want to tell her of the threats Elise had made, but he needed to. She needed to be aware and if there was some way to stop those episodes they needed to explore it to its fullest. “When I found you in the tower you were standing before the open windows and when you looked back at me, somehow, you were Elise in that moment. She looked back at me from your face and told me that she could make you jump."
Emme leaned forward and placed her hands on either side of his face, “There is no power on this earth or beyond it that would make me leave you. Elise’ threats are idle. We will find the killer and then she will be gone."
"How do you know that? Perhaps it isn't justice that keeps her here—perhaps it is her desire to torment me even beyond her death?"
"I don't know that. But I am going to give her the benefit of a doubt, and if she remains after, there are steps that can be taken."
"Then let us take them now."
"We need her Rhys. It isn't just about Elise's murderer. It's about Melisande's murderer and whatever danger we may face, she deserves justice. All of you do. It was her life that was taken, but it was your life and your mother's life that was irrevocably altered, as well. She was stolen from you and that cannot go unpunished any longer."
He knew the truth of her words, but they did little to dispel the growing unease that gripped him. He felt as he had in the war, on the eve of battle. The faint prickling of danger that made him hyperaware of everything and everyone around him had saved his life in battle more than once. His only injury in the war had come when he ignored those instincts in order to save Ellersleigh from what would have been a fatal wound.
"We have very real dangers present, both worldly and otherworldly. For your own protection, you will not leave the house alone and you will not be sleeping alone either."
"Is that why you've been coming to my bed every night?"
"No. That is why I've been waking in your bed every morning. My coming to your bed is for purely selfish reasons,” he said, settling his hands at her waist and pulling her closer.
"Not purely selfish,” she said. “For I benefit from it, as well."
He chuckled. “Perhaps we should move to my bed permanently? It is significantly larger and I rather like the idea of you there."
"Then I should come to you tonight?"
"I think you should come to me now."
He pulled her to her feet and once again they were traversing the secret passage that he had led her through that first night. This time, his touch no longer unnerved her. The scent of him was familiar and comforting, and she knew precisely what awaited her at the end of the short journey. There were stolen kisses in that darkened stairwell, touches that left her gasping and aching. Somewhere along the way, the pins were pulled from her hair and lost in the darkness.
When they entered his chambers, he skillfully unbuttoned her dress while his wicked mouth played over hers, coaxing and seducing. His tongue swirled against hers in an artful dance that mimicked what was yet to come. But she was not a passive recipient. She pushed his coat from his shoulders, and his waistcoat. His cravat followed, and then her hands were beneath his shirt, smoothing over the satiny skin of his back and mapping the contours of his ridged abdomen. Her fingers slid through the crisp hair of his chest and found the flat disks of his nipples. Then her garments fell away, her dress pooled to the floor, her petticoat and stays following, until she stood there only in her chemise and stockings.
He pressed her back against the door and knelt before her on one knee, his strong hands stroking her calves and thighs, his face only inches away from the nest of curls that shielded her sex. He placed a hand behind her knee and lifted it, until her leg rested upon his shoulder, opening her. Her body tensed in anticipation. He leaned in and traced the now slick folds with only the tips of his fingers, the touch light and teasing. She whimpered. His eyes were hot as he met her gaze, and then he dipped his head and pressed his lips against her.
Had it not been for his hands at her hips, holding her against the door, she would have collapsed. The first touch of his mouth on her heated flesh, and her strength had fled. Then he parted her, his tongue delving into the cleft, laving and caressing until she was mindless. Her hands gripped his hair, holding him close, but it was not his intent to leave. He continued the sensual torment. With lips, teeth, tongue and the scrape of his whiskers over her tender flesh, he brought her to a shuddering climax. She sobbed out his name, but still he was not finished. He soothed now, with a softer and more tender touch, until she gasped and shuddered again.
One orgasm bled into the next, until Emme could no longer tell where one ended and the next began. The room faded, her entire body had faded except where he touched. She was acutely aware of the heat and pressure of his mouth, the hard grip of his fingers on her hips. When at last he released her, when he settled her foot back on the floor, she was both bereft and relieved. She swayed, but his body pressed against her, holding her upright. He kissed her, claiming her lips, plundering them voraciously. She slipped her arms around him, her fingers cupping the back of his head through his thick, dark hair, and held him. She met his questing tongue stroke for stroke, inflaming them both.
Then her hands slid down his
body, knowingly, confidently. She gripped him through the snug buckskin breeches, sliding her fingers up and down the hard ridge of his erection, alternating the pressure, sometimes light and soothing, others firm and mind numbing. Skillfully, she freed the buttons until she could slip her hands inside. He hissed at the contact of her silken hands on his shaft. She gripped him, moved her hand up and down. He knew that if she continued, he would not last but the sensation was so exquisite he didn't have the strength to stop her. Then her mouth left his, and she kissed his neck, her small teeth scraping against his flesh. Then further, she burned a trail over his chest with her lips and tongue and the occasional nip of her teeth.
Then she knelt in front of him and he stared down at her, her beautiful mouth only inches from his throbbing erection. He'd dreamed of this, fantasized about her glorious mouth.
She smiled up at him. “I don't really know what I am doing."
"You don't have to do anything."
"Can I please you as you have pleased me?"
He could have come right there. In that moment, with her looking up at him so sweetly, offering him paradise, it took every ounce of self-control not to spill himself like a randy, eager lad. “Yes."
She gripped him tighter, and leaned forward ever so slightly. She exhaled and her warm breath fanned over his heated shaft. He groaned. Tentatively she kissed him, moving her lips over the satiny flesh. Growing bolder, she traced him with her tongue, stroking boldly over the turgid flesh. He braced his hands against the wall and dipped his head to watch her.
Driven by some instinct she had not known she possessed, Emme opened her mouth and drew his engorged member between her lips. She pressed with her tongue and he shuddered. Emboldened, she repeated the caress, increasing the pressure of her mouth. He cursed then, the expletive hissing out between clenched teeth. Then, experimentally, she drew him deeper and then released. His hips thrust forward and she found a rhythm, sucking him deeply into her mouth, using her lips and teeth and tongue to caress him.
He slid his hands into her hair, cupping her head as she used her mouth to drive him mad. When he could stand no more, he withdrew from her mouth completely, holding himself back from her. “If you continue—"
A small, pearlescent bead of moisture glistened. She gripped him and flicked her tongue over it, tasting the essence of him. “I have a fairly good idea of what will happen if I continue. I want to taste you."
She took him into her mouth again, and he was lost. Her hands slid over his thighs and then she gripped his shaft, her soft hand cupping his balls, massaging them as she sucked him deeply into her mouth. His legs trembled, his breath rasping from him as the pleasure built to a fever pitch, and then she scraped her teeth over the sensitive head of his cock, as her hand slid down the shaft, and his vision went dark. There was only the heat of her mouth and the pleasure that erupted through his body.
She licked and sucked, milking him, until he thought the pleasure would kill him. When the last of the shudders ceased to rack his body, he pulled her to her feet. He lifted her and carried her to the bed, where they both collapsed, sated and weak.
They lay there for some time, her head on his chest, as his hands stroked her now tangled hair and the silky line of her back.
It was Emme who broke the silence. “Will it always be like this?"
He paused. “I wish I could say yes, but this is not something I have ever experienced before. I've never felt this way with anyone."
Emme sighed and snuggled closer. It was not the admission she had wanted from him, but it would do for now. She had recognized that somewhere along the way she had fallen hopelessly in love with him. It was a precarious thing to fall in love with one's husband. If her feelings were not returned, if he did not come to love her, there would be no escape from it. What greater hell could there be, she wondered, than to love someone, to know that she stirred his blood, and to live with him, day after day, knowing that she would never stir his heart?
He stood in the darkness of the passageway and listened, watching through the peephole. He couldn't see everything, but he had seen enough. He'd heard their moans and cries. She was a whore, just like the other ones. He'd recognized it from the moment he'd first spied her. She would pay he thought. She would service him, just as she'd serviced the duke. It was his due after all.
As he thought of it, the fantasy began to grow in his mind. He could hear her crying out, but it wouldn't be cries of pleasure. No. She would cry out with agony and fear. She would plead with him to stop. She would beg him for mercy and when he had taken her in every way imaginable, when he had used her body and sated his every desire, then she would plead for her life.
He slid his hand into his pocket and felt the length of wide satin ribbon. He'd taken it from her dressing table days earlier. The black ribbon would look lovely as it tightened about her white neck. Her face would flush and her lips would part as she gasped for air, for a breath that would not come.
With his other hand, he clumsily freed the buttons of his breeches, popping one in his haste. It landed on the stone floor with a solid ping, but the sound did not carry to the couple on the bed, so engrossed were they in one another. He eyed the length of her legs as she stretched. He could see the swell of one breast. He took his engorged member into his hand and began to stroke, pulling roughly, almost violently. In his mind she was lying in that bed, naked as she was now, but the black ribbon was tightening about her delicate throat and her eyes were going wide and sightless as the breath left her body.
Two more quick jerks of his hand and his seed spilled into the waiting handkerchief. Soon, he thought, it would not be his hand bringing him pleasure, but her lithe, supple body in the throes of death.
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Chapter Thirteen
Several days had lapsed without incident and a hush had fallen over the household. Rhys had revisited Elise's journal again, hoping that perhaps he had missed something. He had forbidden Emme to search the tunnels beneath the house in spite of the fact that she felt sure something would be discovered there.
Emme was in the library when Lord Ellersleigh was announced. He had returned for the holidays. He looked, Emme thought, haggard. His color was slightly off and she could only imagine that he had drunk himself to near oblivion during his weeks in town. “Hello, Michael,” she said, kissing his cheek warmly as he entered the library. “I would ask you how you've been, but then you would tell me. I would be scandalized and my husband would undoubtedly be furious. Suffice to say, I'm glad you've come to Briarwood to recuperate from your excesses."
He chuckled in spite of the splitting headache that plagued him. “It happens from time to time. Excess."
Michael observed her for a moment, taking note of the healthy glow that illuminated her porcelain skin. He also noted that her bosom was significantly fuller, and that the new abundance was not the product of her artfully cut gown. “You're with child,” he said.
Emme's jaw dropped. “Don't be silly!"
Could she really not know, he wondered? “My dear, you have been married for six weeks. Not to be indelicate or to embarrass you, but have you missed your flow?"
Emme's face flamed at the mere mention. “How do you know about these things?"
Michael cursed. “While we were in the army, Emme, Rhys might have been a soldier but my duties were as a physician. There were numerous women in our camp."
The prostitutes and fallen women who followed the soldiers were no secret. Emme was aware of them. She didn't have to speak. The truth was written on her face as the startling realization assailed her.
"Then congratulations, my dear, for you are expecting the heir."
Emme couldn't speak. She couldn't do anything. As the implications of what Michael suggested fully began to sink in, the room spun dizzily around her.
Michael noted the sudden pallor of her face. Concerned, he stepped forward just as her knees buckled and she collapsed. He caught her, but only barely. He could
n't lift her, for what she had observed to be illness brought on by his excess drinking was in fact the result of having taken a ball to his shoulder.
Straining to hold her, her lush bosom pressed indecently to him, he looked down. He was a man after all, and it was a remarkably fine bosom. And that was how Rhys discovered them.
"I will shoot you, Ellersleigh. I will bloody well kill you."
"Someone already has shot me, Rhys, which is why I was unable to lift your lovely wife after she fainted. Would you be so kind?"
Rhys moved forward and lifted Emme effortlessly. Her head lolled against his shoulder and she stirred but did not awaken. “Emme doesn't faint."
Taking a little more joy in it than a good friend ought to, Michael said, “All pregnant women faint."
Rhys was halfway to the settee, his still unconscious wife in his arms, when the words fully penetrated the concerned fog of his brain. His steps slowed but did not falter. When he reached the settee, he laid her down gently and then slid to the floor in front of it. “She told you? She told you before even whispering a word of it to me?"
Had he been given to prayer, Michael would have uttered his thanks to the Lord for preserving him from the foolishness of love. Lust and like were as far as he ever wanted to be entangled with a woman, and truthfully, of the two, he would choose lust.
"You really are a damned idiot. No, she did not tell me. I guessed and when I said as much to her, it was apparently not a possibility she had been considering. She was quite overcome at the thought, hence the fainting."
Rhys stared at his friend incredulously. “You just walk around informing women that they may be increasing? With your usual lack of tact, no doubt. Is it any wonder she fainted? And how the hell did you guess?"
"Your lovely wife has quite a voluptuous figure, my friend, but have you not noted that certain areas have been more bountiful of late?"
He had noticed, but he wasn't going to say that to Michael. “That you've studied her form enough to note the difference doesn't endear you to me."
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