Desire threaded through her. Even now with him so vulnerable, looking older than he used to, she thought—more troubled, more grim—she wanted him. She sighed and laid her head against his chest and kissed it gently, relishing the smell of his cologne and, underlying it, the faint scent that was Baxter. Her husband. Her love.
The man someone wanted to kill.
Or did they? She sat up, her brow puckered in thought. Gorse said that it looked as though the two men were going to drag him away. Why not just kill him there if that was the intention? Was it an abduction attempt gone wrong? He was probably bigger and heavier than they had anticipated, and they were trying to figure out what to do.
Enough was enough, though. In the morning he was going to have some questions to answer, and she would not let him off the hook easily. He must know something about why someone would want him dead. Or would want to kidnap him? She lay her head back down on his chest and closed her eyes.
• • •
It was as dark as a tomb; that was the first thought. And then, pain—blinding, searing pain that got worse when he moved his head. He lay still and it receded a little.
The next sensation was more pleasant, and he sighed and nuzzled something soft and fragrant. A pillow? No, there was human warmth beneath the fabric and . . . something else. It was a woman and she shifted a little, moving on the bed they shared. He was cradled in her arms and his face was against her breast, and as she moved it brushed against his lips, the thin material covering it catching on his beard stubble and rasping.
Belle?
No, impossible. He nuzzled the breast under his lips and it was large and soft, giving under the pressure. Belle’s breasts were small and firm. He sighed, feeling the pain again, but also a curious awakening in his body, an enlivening. But whomever she was, she was not his woman, and he must move away from the comfort of her breast before he forgot himself.
He shifted, and his head felt like it was going to crack open. He groaned. Anything was preferable to this pain, so he returned to the pillow of the woman’s soft breast, forgetting his resolution of the moment before. A sleepy sigh and her gentle hand cupped his head, cradling him, holding him to her breast. It felt too good, and the erotic sensations darting through his body relieved the pain. He fumbled with clumsy fingers at the silky ties that held her shift closed and pushed the fabric aside. He kissed soft skin, silky textured under his questing lips. The woman’s warm breath quickened against his hair and her heart leaped, the steady beat throbbing to a faster pace.
A faint whiff of lilacs. Emily! It was Emily, his wife, and he was home in her arms, cradled by the love of his life. They must be at Brockwith and she had stayed with him after they made love, as she always did. They liked to sleep together, the closeness of warm bodies cuddled close to each other.
His wife. Why hadn’t he known that right away, and why did his head hurt so abominably? No matter. He slipped his arms around her and she shifted, holding him close between her breasts with a sweet sigh.
“Baxter,” she whispered, stroking his hair with gentle hands.
He answered with kisses rained on her fragrant skin until she was sighing and moaning as he nipped at her tender flesh, her skin slick and wet from his attentions. Then he moved up and covered her mouth, smothering her outcry of passion, darting his tongue into the wet recess, ignoring the sharp burst of pain in his head when he moved. Her hands roamed his back and moved down to his buttocks as she kneaded and massaged, sending every thought of pain away to a distance. It would come back, he knew, but not while he was loving Emily.
Emily!
There was something . . . was he not angry with her? Weren’t they separated? This could not, therefore, be Brockwith. And there was Belle, his mistress . . .
Pieces of the puzzle fell into place. He remembered visiting Belle, and then leaving, but he couldn’t remember anything else. Emily pulled up his shirt. He was coming close to remembering . . . but . . . ah! His wife’s soft hands were stroking his stomach, making his muscles convulse as desire coursed through him.
Touch me, he thought. Touch me; please touch me! But Emily was not Belle. She stroked his stomach in circles, widening the circles and lowering her hand gradually, tickling and teasing until he felt he would go mad if she didn’t touch him. He claimed her mouth in a deep kiss, not letting go even as he caressed her, pulling at the dratted nightgown as he went. She froze for a moment as his hand stroked down, down to her stomach. It was slightly rounded and soft, so different from the flat plane it used to be. How curious. It was his wife, but not his wife.
She had resumed her teasing stroking, and he thought he would burst if she didn’t soon touch him. Belle would have grabbed him by now, but this was Emily, sensuous, arousing Emily.
Lost in a world of their own making, a fragrant, sensuous dream world of sweet love and delicious sensation, Baxter claimed her lips again and again as they clung to each other in the gray dimness of her chamber. How he got there, what he was doing in her bed, he cared nothing about that. The world could dissolve around him and nothing mattered but that he was holding his wife.
Dawn’s thin, pale light crept into the room, dove gray shadows falling across the bed, and Baxter, staring at his wife through dazed eyes, saw her brown eyes flutter open. She gazed at him with an expression of bewildered, wanton awareness and something else . . . something deeper and softer and more complex. Her expression cleared and lost the confusion. She smiled, then, and pulled herself up on her elbow and gazed down at him.
“Emily, I want you,” he muttered, and was startled to hear his voice as a hoarse whisper in the absolute quiet of the dawn. Soon the streets would be alive with delivery carts and hawkers, but for now all they could hear was the first tap tap tap of the rain beating softly on the window and their own heavy breathing.
“Soon,” she whispered. She leaned over him, kissing him, her hair falling soft around him, closing out the light from the window.
“Now,” he groaned. A deep growl emanated from the pit of his being and he roughly grasped her by her shoulders. Her expression was bewildered, almost fearful, but he pulled her into his arms and kissed those plump, luscious lips and thrust his tongue, pushing her mouth open to receive him. He rolled on top of her, his need overwhelming every other thought in his head.
He kissed her eyelid and tasted salt. Crying? His Emily was crying? What had he done? He opened his eyes and stared down at her in the dim half-light of the rainy morn. Tears streamed from her closed eyes.
“Emily,” he groaned. “Emily, my love, what have I done?”
She opened her eyes and smiled up at him, threading her fingers through his hair. “Oh, Baxter,” she whispered. “I have dreamed about this so much, I’m afraid I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone!”
“Never,” he whispered. “Never, my heart, my life.”
She was unbearably, unutterably beautiful, and his body sang with delicious desire as he enfolded her in his love. Pain was forgotten and the world could go to hell for all he cared. All that was important was here, in this bed. He had come home . . . home to Emily’s arms and Emily’s body and Emily’s love.
Home.
Chapter Fourteen
Baxter lay peaceful in her arms, slumbering after murmuring a few sleepy words of love. His weight pressed her into the bed, but she wouldn’t have had him move away for anything. She held him and caressed him and stroked his hair, kissing his forehead occasionally, the covers pulled up over them in the chill of the fireless room. She trembled still, shaken to the core by the full force of Baxter’s wildly intense lovemaking. She felt very much that she had been loved thoroughly, deeply. It was what she wanted, to carry the memory of what they had done with her every second of the day.
It had been the impulse of a moment that had urged her to shed her dress and climb under the covers with Baxter. She was exhausted, and she wanted to be next to him. She had awoken to his lips at her breast, her body already singing with desire. The first t
ime he touched her body, so changed since last they made love, she had recoiled from him. But that was soon forgotten as his desire for her had carried her beyond self-consciousness. It was glorious to touch him and stroke him and know she could arouse him still.
Had it always been like this? Had he always been able to make her tremble with desire with his merest whisper-soft touch? His kisses scorched like flame, searing her, branding her as his own. How could she ever have imagined making love with someone else?
She had no illusions that they had solved everything or that their marriage was whole again. They had to talk. There was a lot they still had to sort out. But he loved her; he had said so, and Baxter never lied. She closed her eyes and joined her husband in sleep.
• • •
Baxter stirred and opened his eyes to the unfamiliar bed, hung with curtains of a deep rose and a slant of sunlight that told him it was mid-morning. Emily! Where was she? He stretched and pulled the bell-pull, touching his forehead and closing his eyes against the ache behind them.
A pert maid told him Lady Sedgely had gone out in response to an urgent summons from a friend, but that she had ordered breakfast be ready for him if he so desired. She curtseyed and left when he told her just coffee.
Trumble, efficient and competent, had already sent word around to his house, and his valet was waiting with a complete change of clothes and his shaving implements, and so, bathed, shaved and changed, he descended the stairs.
The butler bowed and without the barest hint of humor, said, “I trust you slept well, my lord?”
The headache had receded and Baxter felt like a new man. “Slept like a baby. However that is. Will you tell my wife that I will call on her this afternoon? I have some urgent business of my own to take care of, but I will attend her then.”
He left the house whistling. His wife. It had felt so good to say that again, so right! His wife, the love of his life, the flower of womanhood who bloomed only for him. And now he sounded maudlin and foolish, but he most oddly did not care. Let them stare, let them remark, the melancholic marquess was no more.
He had waved away the offer of a carriage from a solicitous Trumble, and he walked home in a glorious frame of mind, feeling that something had been healed between him and Emily with their joyful union. He hoped she felt the same, but even if she hesitated he was willing and able to convince her that they should resume their marriage. He was convinced that when she disappeared into the conservatory with Etienne the previous night, there must have been some innocent explanation. He would ask her, or perhaps she would explain without being asked. She was his and only his.
His own butler, Cromby, was all solicitude and concern, but Baxter waved him off, too. It seemed a day for the family retainers to overreact. As for himself, he was getting used to failed attempts on his life. No doubt he would have to stop walking alone at night, but he still was not ready to concede to bodyguards.
He paused in the hall and said to Cromby, “I will have coffee in the library, and—”
A rap at the door interrupted him. Cromby, with the calm deliberation he always manifested, opened the door to an early visitor.
It was Marchant. Baxter could not very well deny himself, as he stood in his own entranceway, so with bad grace he gestured the younger man in. “Come in, come in. Little early for a call, hmm?” He turned to his butler and said, “As I was saying, coffee in the library. For two.”
It was as well, he thought, that the fellow was there now, for he had something to say to him. He was going to warn the upstart to stay away from his wife, and if the fellow did not listen, he would meet him on the field of honor. But surely the sprig would back off when he realized it was no use pursuing Emily.
The library was a dark room, much smaller than the one at Brockwith Manor. Fitted with ceiling-high bookcases and wood paneling, its design was from the previous century, or even the one before that. He took a seat behind his desk and offered a cigar to Marchant. They both lit up and Baxter sat back in an expansive mood. As the winner of Emily’s affections he could afford to be gracious.
“What can I do for you, Marchant?” The lad must have some reason for coming to his home, Baxter thought, so they would dispose of that business first, and then get down to the important matter of him bowing out and leaving Emily alone.
“I felt I should clear the air between us, milord.”
“Call me Sedgely,” Baxter said easily, taking a puff on the cigar, relishing the mellow smoke that drifted up and dissipated. A footman came in with the tray of coffee, poured at Baxter’s indication, and left on silent slippers.
Marchant waited only until the door was closed and then said, “You saw me going, with your wife, into the conservatoire last evening.”
“Yes. I did.” Baxter waited. Etienne had, perhaps, come to tell him that it only looked bad, and that he and Emily had just gone in there to talk. Marchant was probably afraid of how it must have looked and wanted to ensure the wrong impression had not been received.
“I do not need your permission, of course, but I feel you should know.” The young man’s chin went up, and a martial light glowed in his light brown eyes. “Emily and I, we are having an affaire de coeur. We spent an hour in the conservatory making love.”
Baxter heard a buzzing noise in his ears. How curious, he thought. He would have sworn the young vicomte had just said he had made love to Emily. Impossible!
“I do not need to tell you, my lord, how passionate she is, how abandoned, and with what delicious fervor she makes love.”
Baxter’s hands fisted.
“She was afraid I would not find her attractive, but mon dieu! I ask you, who would not? She is lovely and soft . . .” The young man paused and smiled, baring his white, strong teeth. “But then, I do not need to tell you that, heh?”
A mist of red descended and Baxter thought he would lunge across the desk and strangle the popinjay or break his neck with one twist, like a farmer would snap a chicken’s. He clutched the edge of the oak surface, clenching the cigar between his teeth. He would not give the little coxcomb the satisfaction of seeing his anger and jealousy. He had learned after years of effort how to master his violent impulses, but this was a test of gargantuan proportions.
So Emily was playing them both. Perhaps she hoped for a romantic duel. Some women liked that kind of thing. It occurred to him that he must not know her very well anymore, for he would have sworn she had not been loved for a very long time. Shouldn’t he have known? Wouldn’t it have been evident . . . ah, but he had been dazed at first, from his head injury, and then eager with sexual excitement. She could have made love with a legion and he wouldn’t have been aware.
“Let me get this straight. Are you telling me that you and Emily have had . . . are having a physical affair? A sexual liaison? And that you did that in the Duttons’ conservatory last night?”
Marchant looked wary. “Yes,” he said slowly. “We made love. I should not divulge the details to another man, but we made love hidden from view by the Duttons’ forêt des plantes, and it was delicious, milord. The spice of the forbidden, you know, imminent discovery.”
“And why did you feel you must tell me this?” Baxter said through gritted teeth, carefully guarding his tone. It all had too familiar a ring. He and Emily used to make love in unusual places, and the danger of discovery had added to the thrill. He glanced once at the dueling pistols hanging in a case above the fireplace. He stabbed out the cigar in a dish and clutched his hands together on the desk in front of him.
“I felt it was just . . . civilized. She is your wife, even if you let her slip away from you. I will treat her well, you may be assured. Like all the French, I have a talent for love.”
Damned little coxcomb. “I could call you out for this, you know,” Baxter ground out, letting the dark anger surge to quell the pain.
“But you will not, for that would expose you to ridicule, yes? I am willing to make my affair with your wife very discreet, and you will suf
fer no loss of reputation as a result.” He stood and smiled, a triumphant gleam in his dark eyes.
Filthy little lecher! Baxter glared as the young man turned on his heel and left the room, pausing to bow at the door before exiting. Then from anger he was dropped into a pit of despair. He put his head down on the desk. Why had she made love to him? For comparison? For old times? For revenge? Did it matter? He felt desolation flood him. To have found her and lost her again so swiftly; it was more than he could stand.
• • •
“Less! I just this minute got home. Your timing is impeccable, as is everything else about you!” Emily almost sang with happiness. She had gone through the whole morning wanting to cry at every beautiful flower, every pretty child. She carried the awareness deep within her of what she and Baxter had done, and she pitied lesser mortals. Even as she had visited Grishelda—the unhappy young woman had summoned her with an urgent note that could not be ignored, even though she longed to stay in bed with her husband—and commiserated with her over her difficult position, she had clutched her secret delight to herself like an infinitely precious treat, to be savored later.
Her friend looked at her and cocked his head on one side. “You look . . . you look like a woman in love!”
Emily’s eyes misted over and she hugged herself. But the secret was too priceless, too sacred. She could tell no one, not even her dear friend. “It is a glorious spring day. March is upon us, and daffodils and crocuses! What other reason does anyone need for feeling wonderful?”
Married to a Rogue Page 13