“Please sit with us,” Rietta said.
After a token protest, Mrs. Cook did so, but she perched her voluptuous figure on the very edge of her chair.
Though Rietta had only just met Mrs. Cook, she did not seem the sort of woman to be so nervous. Yet she would start at every noise, whether the tick of a fork against a plate or the shuffle of Nick’s feet under the table. When Rietta accidentally dropped her knife to the floor, she thought Mrs. Cook was going to have a convulsion. She’d leap about in her seat and start chattering on any subject that came to mind. Then she’d wind down after the manner of a musical box until the next slight noise.
Rietta could not ask Nick if this was his cook’s usual behavior, but they exchanged an eyebrow-raising silent conversation that seemed to indicate it was not. What, then, had her so on the jump?
About the time Rietta swallowed the last forkful of an excellent eggs Benedict, she found out.
The door from the outside swung open. Mrs. Cook leapt to her feet with, “Ah, look at the time! And me so tired. Sir Nick, as would—
The door swung to much faster than it had opened, but Nick was even quicker over the ground this time than before. He tore the knob out of the other person’s fingers and pushed it wide open.
Amelia stood there, her chin tilted in what should have been mature defiance but looked more like the pose of a martyr. “I’m surprised to see you, Nick.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Not nearly so surprised, I’ll be bound, as I am to see you. What the devil’s the meaning of this, Amelia?”
“You’re a fine one to demand explanations from me. You haven’t been making any yourself, now have you?”
“Don’t change the subject. This isn’t about me. What are you doing coming home at this hour of the morning? Where have you been? And who, may a brother dare ask, have you been there with?”
Rietta had enough experience to recognize all the signs of a huge family quarrel approaching at the speed of a summer thunderstorm. But it was not yet her place to make peace. She stood up. “I’ll be retiring now.”
“Stay, if you please, Rietta. You’ve more knowledge of sisters than I have. Where do you think she’s been?”
“Looking at the moonlight?” Rietta offered.
Nick didn’t listen to this feeble answer at which even Amelia stared at her disbelievingly. He stormed on. “Lying to Mother. Convincing Mrs. Cook to wait up for you. Sneaking out of the house at all hours of the night...”
“Actually, she was sneaking in,” Rietta said. “I doubt Mrs. Cook needed much convincing, as I’m sure she’s known you all since your cradles.”
‘That I have, and if I ever thought I’d live t’see the day when Master Nick acts so high and mighty over a little kissin’ in the moonlight with a man who, for all he hasn’t a grand name, has a fine future.”
“Not if I catch him, he won’t. He’ll have no future at all,” Nick responded. “May I remind all of you that it is past three o’clock in the morning? No girl sneaks home at three o’clock in the morning because of anything so innocent as stolen kisses.”
‘That’s horrid of you,” Amelia said, stamping her foot. “We didn’t do anything ... anything wrong. He’s not the kind to take advantage—no matter how I want him to.”
“What? God, Amelia, if Mother could hear you now her heart would stop like a broken clock.”
‘Then lower your voice so she won’t come in. Anyway, why should I deny the truth? If I’m not sleeping in his arms at this moment, it’s through no fault of my own.”
For all Amelia’s shamelessness, Rietta felt a pang of reluctant respect for her new sister. She had prided herself on her honesty—looking facts in the face had always been a cardinal virtue in her eyes. But she would not have had the spirit to admit openly that she wanted the love of a man.
Thus far, Nick had kissed her twice. She’d not been able to resist him, but now she wondered whether that was his doing or her own. She thought she loved him. Certainly seeing him helpless in a nightmare, her thought had been how best to aid him in her capacity as a loving woman. Yet even then, she’d been visited by a fantastic desire to crawl into the bed beside him. Were desire and compassion so closely linked that one could lead to the other? She was beginning to believe that love was much more complicated than she’d ever guessed.
“What’s his name?” Nick demanded, rounding on his sister. “It’s Arthur Daltrey, isn’t it?”
He stood above her, a potentially threatening figure, though Rietta had noticed that he hadn’t so much as shaken his fist at his sister. His finger, yes; he’d shaken that an inch in front of her nose. But Rietta doubted that Amelia was much intimidated by her brother’s raised voice or powerful shoulders. There was too much pride in her face as she tossed her head and refused to answer.
“If I hurry, I can be at his farm before he’s taken his first leg out of his breeches. He’ll learn that no man despoils a Kirwan and lives.”
“No, Nick,” Amelia gasped, shaken out of her martyred silence by this threat. She stumbled forward to grasp at his arm. “No, it’s not Arthur. It’s ... it’s another man.”
“You’re a poor liar, m’dear.” He looked over her head. “Mrs. Cook, I’ll trouble you to find my sword. I brought it home with me and haven’t seen it since.”
“No!” Tears filled Amelia’s widened eyes, thickening her voice. “You can’t... you mustn’t...”
Rietta came and put her arm about her new sister-in-law’s shaking shoulders. “No, he won’t. No soldier could attack an unarmed farmer.”
She looked up into Nick’s face, sure she’d see him wink. What she saw turned her cold as floating ice. His sea-blue eyes seemed to have gone black as he stared out the open kitchen door into the night beyond. Then he caught his breath and his clenched fists relaxed. “No,” he said. “No soldier could do that, not in a time of peace.”
Rietta caught his eye. Nodding toward Amelia, she put as much meaning as possible into her expression.
“Go to bed, Amelia,” he said with rough kindness. “We’ll talk about this in the morning, after we’ve all had the counsel of sleep. But you must understand that I will call upon Mr. Daltrey come tomorrow. As your brother and head of the household, I must demand an accounting from him of this night’s work. The family’s honor depends upon it.”
Rietta stopped Amelia from speaking. “Don’t say any more now. You’ll only say something you’ll regret. Come. If you’ll show me the way to your room, I’ll help you off with your things.”
* * * *
Nick had stayed behind in the kitchen to have a censorious word with Mrs. Cook. Rietta only hoped he hadn’t scolded her so much that they’d find themselves without her at breakfast. She didn’t imagine that he’d follow his own advice and go at once to bed following this scene, so she wasn’t surprised to see him when she came down the hall.
“Amelia’s almost asleep,” Rietta said.
“Is she?”
“What will you do?”
“What I said. I’ll pay a call on Daltrey.”
“From what she told me, they’re truly in love.”
“Poured out alt her girlish secrets, did she? Did she happen to mention that Daltrey used to be one of our tenants? How can I agree to a marriage between my sister and such a man?”
“I wouldn’t have thought it mattered. After all, haven’t you married a tradesman’s daughter, and not of your own free will at that?”
“Against my will? Perhaps. But not against my inclination.”
He was leaning against the frame of the door, eyeing her. Pushing himself upright, he took his hands out of his dressing gown pockets and reached out to grasp her wrist. Against the pull he exerted, she had only her words for defense.
“You said you’d not touch me.” She spoke pantingly, which robbed her words of much of their force.
“You changed that when you touched me in my bed.”
“You were asleep!”
“Riet
ta, my dear girl, your touch would rouse a dead man.” She could read his intentions in his eyes. They weren’t dark or cold now; they sparkled with a wicked fire.
He stopped pulling her toward him one instant before she would have gone to his arms on her own. He smiled. “You’d not stop your humble, grateful husband from kissing your hand, would you?”
“Just my hand?”
He laughed at the confusion and disappointment in her voice. Rietta blushed.
Slowly, Nick raised her hand to his lips, his gaze focused on her eyes. Rietta couldn’t look away let alone set herself free. She watched, fascinated, as he brushed the lightest of kisses over the thin, tender skin on the back of her hand.
“There,” she said, relieved that his leasing breach of her rule was no more shattering than that. “Now ...”
“Now.” He pressed a kiss, harder yet, to each of her knuckles and then to each fingertip. His breath stirred her skin as he turned her hand over to make love to the sensitive palm and the ticklish webs between each finger. She couldn’t think of anything but knew a tense curiosity as to where his fancy would take his talented lips next.
Rietta regretted giving him a far too intimate knowledge of her sighs and shuddering breaths but she found it impossible to keep silent as he drew cool patterns on her skin with his tongue. And when he gently bit the swelling at the base of her thumb, she cried out, her knees weak, losing the last of her restraint.
“I told you I only wanted to kiss your hand, my lady,” he said. Perhaps he’d wanted to sound hatefully superior, but his voice gave him away. It shook with desire.
Rietta knew later that what happened next had nothing to do with her good resolutions or even her confusion over her future. She only knew that she had to ride this eager need as far as it would go.
“Nick ...” Leaving her exquisitely awakened hand in with the other, letting it fall to the floor. Her low-cut chemise revealed the whiteness of her bosom. She breathed in deeply, making the mounds rise, and saw the fire in his eyes burst into an inferno that devoured all rational thought.
Stepping over the threshold, she reached out to caress his face, the roughness of his skin, in want of a shave, surprising her. But her hand welcomed the contrast between the velvet warmth of his mouth and the harsh scrape of his beard.
Rietta closed her eyes, her mouth opening in mute invitation, as she rose against his body. He stopped her and held her snug against his chest, his arm hard around her waist. “Say yes, Rietta.”
“Yes,” she whispered, so close to his mouth that the formation of words brought their lips into contact.
“Yes, Rietta. You are going to be mine.”
“I won’t be owned,” she gasped.
“It’s too late for that now.”
He kissed her, not with the branding possession she’d obviously been steeling herself to meet, but with a soft, gently persuasive nibbling over her tender lower lip. Her hands on his shoulders tightened, holding on to his dressing gown. What did she feel? There was heat in her; he’d be willing to swear to it. No woman could be so passionate in an embrace without being the answer to a lonely man’s prayers.
When Rietta touched his face with floating hands, Nick brought her hard against him, letting her discover the full knowledge of what he wanted from her. She gasped, and he took advantage of her open mouth with a lightning thrust of his tongue. Rietta’s hands fell to his shoulders.
He licked her neck, biting the spot before she could react. She rewarded him with a soft, wondering cry that went through him like lightning. He cherished the sound and plotted how best to cause it to break forth again.
“It’s too late,” he said again, his lips against the rising swell of her white bosom. “I’m possessed by you. You’ve been haunting me since that first day and now I’m going to have you.”
“You’ve been possessed by me?” she asked, and he could hear her disbelief. “But Blanche was there.”
“Yes, I looked at her. But I never wanted her. I wouldn’t have rescued her had your father plotted against her as he had against you. Not for anything she could offer.”
“But I... oh. Oh, my,” she said sharply as he traced a line from the base of her throat to the tip of her breast. He untied the gather tie of her chemise and slipped his hand inside.
From the first, she’d been strangely attracted to his lean, powerful hands. The thought of his hands on her body had been overwhelming; the reality was all the more stunning. They were hot against her skin. Her breasts tightened, the tips responding to his touch, and he closed his eyes and made a low hum of satisfaction in his throat.
He kissed her again, his tongue sliding slickly, hotly, over zones of sensitivity she’d never imagined. Rietta found herself moving against him wantonly, making primitive sounds, calling his name urgently.
Suddenly he took her face between his hands. Staring down into her eyes, Nick forced Rietta to look at him. “When I’m deep inside you, you’ll say you are mine. You’ll know it with every move I make and you’ll know it when you spend yourself helplessly in my arms.”
The words were forbidden, dark, indecent. Why then did she long to hear more, while, at the same time, wishing he’d kiss her and kiss her until neither of them could speak?
She pressed her hands over his, dragging them down over her skin until she brought them to the resilient weight of her breasts. Even this blatant act left her agonizingly unsatisfied.
“What is this feeling?” she asked breathlessly. “It’s like aching hunger and violent thirst together. But the hunger is devouring me. The thirst makes my whole body burn, not just my mouth. Please, Nick...” She pressed up against him, seeking his mouth, kissing his chin, his cheek, the join of jaw and neck.
Nick groaned—a sound like nothing she’d ever heard from him. Was his damnable good control slipping at last? Her own was long since gone, leaving not a trace.
His fingers sank under the line of her chemise, pushing down thin linen. When her breasts were exposed, Rietta didn’t care about modesty anymore. It seemed so unnecessary. This moment had been inevitable from the first. Even if her father hadn’t interfered, she would have given herself to Nick at the first opportunity. Destiny had brought them together; let destiny have its way.
He stroked her skin with a feather-light delicacy, building with maddening slowness toward the rosy point. Rietta looked down at herself, seeing his hand moving over the whiteness of her skin. She could not force him to go faster, to give her some ease from the uncontrollable fire he’d lit. She looked up to find him watching her. She saw such passion flare in his brilliant eyes that she was humbled by a sense of her own power.
Still meeting her eyes, as if daring her to object, Nick bent to take the pink tip of her breast into his mouth. Rietta threw her head back as the heat washed over her in long, rolling breakers that picked her up and carried her away.
She felt the impact as he pressed her back against the wall, his so-hot mouth moving on her breast while his broad thigh lifted between hers, carrying her petticoat skirt with it. The brush of the hair on his thigh aroused her wherever it passed. When she was straddling it, she stilled the instinctive and repetitive motions of her hips.
“Something’s happening to me,” she said on a gasp.
“Yes, I know. Let it,” Nick said, and even in her dazed state she recognized the tone of male satisfaction and superiority. She wanted to reprimand him for taking that tone but then he started to rub his thigh back and forth in the same rhythm she’d unconsciously adopted while flexing her hips. A sense of expectancy, as if she were waiting for a marvelous gift she had only to find to possess for always, Filled her. “Come on, Rietta—I promise you’ll like it. Let me show you.”
She clung to his shoulders, quivering, shaking her head, trying to speak. “Please....”
“No,” he said, slowly lowering his leg. “It’s not enough. Come to bed.”
Nick moved back to arm’s length and began taking off his dressing gown. He tos
sed it toward the bed but it fell short, floating in billows to the floor.
Rietta lolled against the wall, needing its support for her suddenly boneless body. She knew a wiser woman would take this chance to steal away, virtue intact. But she couldn’t bring herself even to close her eyes as Nick continued to disrobe.
As deliberately as though he were alone, Nick pushed the buttons through the cuffs of his nightshirt. He left them hanging and eased other buttons through the buttonholes at the throat. When he reached down to pull the shirt off, Rietta moved at last, reaching out to close Nick’s bedchamber door behind her. The key was in the brass lock plate. Rietta turned it with a clear snap of the tumblers.
The curtains were still wide open and in the pearly light of the approaching dawn, Rietta saw him without the misrepresentation of clothes. Hair spread over his chest right where a woman’s hands might go. Thinking of the arousing abrading of his thigh between hers, Rietta trembled at the idea of brushing against his naked chest with her breasts. His belly was flat, as muscular as his arms and legs. In addition to muscles, his limbs and torso showed something else in common. Scars, some pale, some twisted, reflected the dawn.
“My God,” she said. “Where were you wounded?”
Nick chuckled. “Now is not the time to talk of the past. Come here, Rietta.”
She’d had a willful blindness when it came to looking below his waist. She’d noticed his hard thighs, honed by months in the saddle, but nothing else had registered. Now it did. She was appalled, curious, and strangely thrilled.
“Don’t be afraid.”
He kissed her so tenderly, one hand beneath her chin, that she forgot everything but the touch of his lips. She felt the coolness of the morning air about her legs as he loosened the drawstring of her petticoat and it fell away. The chemise followed a moment later.
Nick eased back to look at what he’d uncovered. “Jay-sus,” he said reverently. “Oh, Rietta, what a woman you are. Concave, convex, hills and hollows, so smooth and so strong ...”
The Irish Bride Page 19