If the Viscount Falls

by Sabrina Jeffries

  He stiffened. “But the minute I saw the special constables forming two rows to force a passage from the edge of the field to where the speakers stood, I feared the worst.”

  When he began to breathe more heavily as if struggling to keep himself under control, she swallowed hard. She’d never seen Dom so agitated.

  “I even considered identifying myself to Hulton, head of the magistrates. He didn’t know the Spenceans the way I did, and I thought I might convince him to refrain from taking any violent action.”

  He scrubbed a hand over his face. “But Ravenswood had ordered me not to reveal my purpose. No matter what, I was to maintain my role so I could continue to spy on the radicals. I was to keep my connection with the Home Office a secret, even from the authorities.”

  Lord Ravenswood’s words came to her then: Blame me as much as you wish, but you know that wasn’t my doing. Nor yours. Stop tormenting yourself over something that was always beyond both our controls.

  The massacre? No, surely not. Dom wouldn’t blame himself for such a monumental disaster, would he?

  “So I did my duty.” Dom’s voice turned bitter. “Unfortunately, none of Hulton’s advisors had the good sense to recommend restraint. He grew so alarmed by the size of the crowd that he decided the speakers should be arrested. Then he listened to his damned Chief of Constables, who argued that the warrant couldn’t be served without a show of force.”

  When Dom fell silent again, his hands now gripping the edges of the table on either side of him, she prodded, “That’s when Hulton called in the militia.”

  “Yes, the bloody idiot.” He stared blindly out the harness room door into the stable. “The hotheaded young cavalrymen arrived on the field drunk. They pushed their way through the constables’ too narrow passageway, and their horses floundered in the sea of people. So the riders began slashing about them with their sabers to clear a path.”

  Sweet Lord. “Is that when the crowd began to fight back?”

  A foul curse escaped him. “You can’t call it fighting when one side has swords and guns, and the other has a few bricks and fists. But yes, when the crowd realized that the militia was there to arrest the speakers, they fought back.”

  “Which only provoked the militia further.”

  He nodded tersely. “The drunk cavalrymen panicked and started sabering and bludgeoning anyone within reach. Meanwhile, I’m told that Hulton saw the ruckus from afar and ordered the Hussars in. They unwittingly blocked the crowd from dispersing, which only made matters worse, and before we knew it, the situation deteriorated into rampant violence.”

  “And you were in the middle of it.”

  How awful it must have been for him to see the authorities attacking the people when he could do nothing to stop it. With her heart twisting in her chest, she moved close to lay her hand on his taut arm.

  He didn’t even seem to notice. “Eighteen died, most of them civilians,” he said in a hollow voice. “Five hundred more were injured, a third of them wom—” He broke off with a grimace of pain and guilt so profound that it cut her to her heart.

  “Women,” she supplied as tears stung her eyes. “Yes, I heard that.” That must have been horrible for him, given his natural instinct to protect. “Why were so many women there?”

  “There weren’t.” His breath came in harsh gasps now. “It was ten men for every woman.”

  “Then why were women a third of the wounded?”

  “Because the damned militia targeted them!” As she gaped at him, his voice chilled. “I saw it with my own eyes. And most of the women’s wounds were later found to have been caused by weapons, not trampling, which wasn’t the case for the men.” He shot her a despairing glance. “What kind of monster deliberately attacks women at a peaceful gathering?”

  She thought of Papa. “The kind who doesn’t like the idea of a woman expressing her own mind, fighting for her own freedom.”

  His jaw was as tight as an archer’s bow. “You attribute to them some semblance of thought. But those animals were beyond thought. One of the Hussars—a legitimate soldier who’d seen battle and knew how to behave in it—tried to reason with the militia. He cried, ‘For shame! Gentlemen: forbear, forbear! The people cannot get away!’ ”

  The howling pain in Dom’s eyes would have laid a lesser man low. “The arses either didn’t hear or didn’t care. I got the scar on my cheek when I kept a special constable—one of our own men—from being sabered. I got the rest of my wounds when I . . . I . . .”

  His words grew halting, his breathing tortured. “I came between . . . a pregnant woman and . . . her attacker.” The catch in his voice was heartbreaking. “I survived my injuries. She . . . did not.” He began to tremble, like the ground before a quake.

  Jane choked back tears. She had to be strong for him. Wrapping her arms about his waist, she held him to her. How could she soothe him, when he’d witnessed such horrors?

  “I heard that the poor woman lingered for days before giving birth to her babe too early, and then . . .” He shot her a helpless glance. “She left behind children. Six . . . motherless children, for God’s sake.”

  “Oh, Dom . . . oh, my dearest.” She stretched up on tiptoe to press her cheek to his, wishing she could do more.

  “One woman was sabered to death,” he said in a harsh whisper against her cheek, “another beaten with a truncheon. Two of the special constables died on the field. And there was a child—”

  He choked off the word, shaking too violently now to go on.

  “Enough.” She clasped him close in a futile attempt to calm him. “No more.”

  Jane had heard about the child’s death because the press had made much of it. The boy’s mother hadn’t even been at the meeting. She’d been carrying her two-year-old across a road as a cavalryman raced to catch up to his companions. His horse struck her, and the child was thrown from his mother’s arms. The boy died instantly, the first casualty of a truly horrific day.

  Tears stung her eyes. She’d never guessed at the darkness he’d held inside him for so long. How could she, when he closeted his pain inside his heart, refusing to let anyone else see it?

  The poor dear fool had put the blame for the entire massacre on his own head, and he thought they would do the same.

  “That’s why you haven’t shared this with your family?” she said. “Why do you keep all of us out? Because you think we’d blame you for the massacre? Because you blame yourself for it?” She brushed a kiss to his hair. “Oh, my sweet darling, it wasn’t your fault.”

  His hands gripped her arms. “You don’t understand,” he said in a ragged voice. “I should have identified myself, made Hulton listen to reason.”

  “How?” She pulled back to gaze into his eyes, so haunted by shadows. “He had a score of magistrates behind him, not to mention years of hatred between the radicals and the local militia. How were you to change all that?”

  His voice turned fierce. “I should have broken ranks with Ravenswood. I should have behaved as my conscience dictated and tried to stop it at the source. I should have made them listen! Perhaps if I had—”

  “And perhaps not.” When he tried to pull away from her so he could lick his wounds alone, she wouldn’t let him. Catching his head in her hands, she forced him to look at her. “You did your duty. That’s all you could do.”

  “My duty was to keep people from dying,” he hissed.

  “Your duty was to survive! There were thousands of people on either side. Only God could have stopped that disaster, and contrary to what you think, you aren’t God.” When he winced at that, she whispered, “You are just a man, my darling. You did your best with the terrible circumstances you were handed. That is all any of us can ever do.”

  For a long moment, he just stared at her, naked torment on his face. Then he uttered a fractured moan and clutched her to him. Burying his face in her ha
ir, he stood there with his chest heaving and his heart thundering against her ear. His grip was so tight she could hardly breathe, but she made no protest.

  He needed her, and that meant everything. Because Dom never needed anyone. So as tears streamed down her cheeks, she held him tight and pressed damp kisses to his neck.

  It took some time for his storm to pass, some time for him to stop shuddering in her arms. But after they stood there locked together awhile, his strong arms began to loosen their grip and his shaking to subside.

  Encouraged by that, she stretched up to brush soothing kisses over his jaw, his cheek, his lips.

  He jerked back, and as he searched her face, the dark shadows in his eyes receded a little. “Oh, God, Jane, why did I let you go?” he asked in an aching voice that resonated to her very soul. “I’ve been lost ever since.”

  The words melted the last corner of ice in her heart, and when he lowered his head to hers, she rose to him like a shoot stretching for the sun.

  Moaning low in his throat, he devoured her mouth, his kiss pure hot passion, so all-consuming that within moments she had to pull free just to breathe. Then he shifted his kisses to her cheek and ear and jaw, branding everything as his.

  “I need you,” he said against her throat. “God help me for it, but I do. All these years without you have been hell.” Kissing her neck, he fisted his hands in her sleeves. “I want to strip this gown from you. I want to lay you down in that straw over there and have my way with you.”

  The words made her exult. “Then do it,” she murmured against his hair. “Now. Tonight. Have your way with me, and I’ll have mine with you.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said darkly, but he seized her mouth again with such ferocity that it took her aback . . . then fed some feral part of her that had never felt like this with anyone but him. She couldn’t get her fill of his mouth . . . or his hands, which roamed her most familiarly.

  Wanting to touch him, too, she reached for the buttons of his waistcoat.

  He broke their kiss to stare at her, a sudden sobering awareness in his eyes. “We shouldn’t do this here.”

  There was no question what “this” meant. There was also no question that he was having second thoughts, pulling away from her. She refused to let him. “Why not? The grooms and the coachman have all gone to bed. And you did say you meant to marry me.”

  “Yes, but you’re a lady,” he said fiercely. “You deserve better than to be tumbled in a stable.”

  That was the trouble with Dom. Some part of him still saw her as the poor maiden needing his protection, not as a full-grown woman who had the same needs as he had. Who wanted and yearned just the same as he did.

  He’d sent her away last night to protect her innocence, and then had avoided her for the next day. She wasn’t giving him the chance to do that again, not now that he’d allowed her a glimpse into his soul.

  Dragging her hands free of his grip, she went to shut the door to the harness room. “Twelve years ago you decided what I deserved, and I ended up alone. So this time I will decide what I deserve.” Ignoring a twinge of self-consciousness, she faced him and began to undo the front fastenings of her pelisse-robe. “And I deserve this. I deserve you.”

  His breathing grew labored as he stared at her hands with a searing intensity. “What are you doing, Jane?”

  “What does it look like?” She slid out of her gown and let it fall to the floor, leaving her standing before him in only her petticoats, corset, and shift. “I’m seducing you.”

  Dom’s eyes narrowed on her, and she panicked. Was she being too bold? Too shameless?

  Too daft?

  She was daft, to be standing half-dressed like this in a stable, when all it would take was a groom coming down from his room above to turn this into the most mortifying night of her life.

  But she’d die before she let Dom see her squirm. With forced bravado, she planted her hands on her hips. “Well? Are you going to leave me here like this?”

  Even as the words left her lips, she spotted the rather pronounced bulge in his trousers. That’s all she had time to notice before he was striding up to grab her head in both hands and seize her mouth with his once more.

  This time their kiss was a war of tongues and teeth, both striving for mastery. Their hands darted everywhere in a thrilling flurry of unfastening and untying, a rush to see who could get the other one naked first. His boots ended in one corner, her half boots in another. Their clothes soon pooled around them on the floor of the harness room.

  He got her shift off, then stepped back before she could divest him of his drawers, and for one heart-­stopping moment she feared he was having more second thoughts.

  “Dom?” she asked, her cheeks flaming as she stood naked before him. She’d never stood naked before anyone, even a maid.

  But the way Dom was scouring her with his rough gaze felt like a caress. A very carnal caress, which loosed a bevy of butterflies in her belly.

  “I’ve spent years dreaming of you like this, sweeting,” he rasped. “Give me a moment to take it all in.”

  “If you wish,” she whispered. And that would give her a moment to take him in.

  Although, sweet Lord in heaven, it might require more than a moment. She’d seen men half-dressed in paintings and even less-dressed in sculptures. But those smooth-skinned bodies were insipid compared to Dom’s hard contours and scarred male beauty.

  How could she have guessed that such sheer virility lay beneath his subdued clothes? His deliciously muscular chest gleamed with sweat in the warm stable, and his powerful arms lay tense at his sides. Then there was his lean waist, which gave way to rangy hips sporting quite a bulge beneath his drawers.

  Lord help her. She couldn’t take her eyes from that impressive thickness. And the more she stared, the more it seemed to grow.

  “This is what you do to me, Jane,” he said in a voice raw with hunger. He grabbed her hand to press it against him there. “I’ve desired you from the day we first met.”

  As his flesh moved beneath the stockinette, she swallowed. “I don’t recall ever seeing you like this back then—all . . . big and thrusting. I think I would have noticed.”

  He choked back a laugh. “It’s the sort of thing a gentleman generally takes great pains to keep his lady from seeing. But tonight you’re making it difficult for me to behave.”

  “Good! I don’t want you to behave. I want you to be wicked.” She fondled him shamelessly. “With me.”

  A harsh breath escaped him. “You have no idea what being wicked entails.”

  “Then perhaps you should show me.”

  His eyes glinted in the lantern light and he growled, “Perhaps I should.”

  Next thing she knew, he was sweeping the tools and carriage lanterns off the table near them. Then he lifted her onto it and parted her thighs with his hands.

  “This, my sweet, is wicked,” he warned just before he knelt to place his mouth on the secret part of her that lay in the juncture of her thighs.

  Shock gripped her. It had been one thing to have him touch her furtively beneath her skirts last night, but this blatant, outrageous—

  “Ohh, Dom . . .” She clasped the edge of the table to keep from dissolving into a puddle. “That is . . . that is . . .”

  “Wicked?” he asked hoarsely, his eyes dark with sinful promise.

  She nodded. Her cheeks surely shone as red as the tongue he now used to stroke her. Down there. In an intimate caress that sent heat licking up her belly to her breasts, which were already aching to feel that tongue on them.

  This was wicked, all right. Luxuriously decadent. It made her feel like a shameless wanton. But she didn’t care as long as she was being a shameless wanton with him.

  Then he began caressing her with his mouth in earnest, with teeth and tongue and lips, and her mind went blank.
>
  Some of what she’d felt last night echoed along her nerves, like the tinkling of bells that rose to an urgent ringing. But tonight his mouth was amplifying the sensations until it was more like a gong being struck, lightly at first, then harder, faster, louder. The vibrations shook her until she was shimmying beneath his mouth and clutching his head.

  When the final ringing bong sounded through her, she had to stifle her cry of pleasure. It was so intense, so delicious . . . so wonderfully wicked. Who would have guessed that such an outrageous act would feel that magnificent?

  Dom rose from his kneeling position, a keen hunger shining in his eyes. “Was that wicked enough for you, sweeting?” he drawled as he used his cravat to wipe his mouth.

  With her heart thundering loudly in her ears and her breathing staggered, it took her a moment to answer. “Not quite,” she managed, then tugged at the waistband of his drawers. “You still have these on.”

  That seemed to startle him. Then one corner of his lips quirked up. “I never guessed you were such a greedy little—”

  “Wanton?” she asked before he could accuse her of being one.

  But he just shot her a smoldering smile. “Siren.”

  “Oh.” She liked that word much better. Feeling her oats, she gestured to his drawers. “So take them off.”

  With a laugh, he did so. “There, my lusty beauty. You have your wish.”

  “Yes . . . yes, I do.” Now she could study him to her heart’s content.

  But the reality was rather sobering. His member, jutting from a nest of dark curls, couldn’t possibly be hidden behind a tiny fig leaf like the ones on statues. “Oh my. It’s even bigger and more . . . er . . . thrusting without the drawers.”

  “Are you rethinking your plan for seduction now?” he asked, with a decided tension in his voice.

  “No.” She cast him a game smile. “Just . . . reassessing the . . . er . . . fit.”

  “It’s not as fearsome as it looks.”