“I wasn’t,” Owen said.
“Perhaps you have some sort of obsession with rescuing damsels in distress,” Tess continued, as though he had not spoken. The pain sliced through her and she could not prevent herself from inflicting it on him too. “You should consult a physician for a cure before it happens again,” she said.
“I don’t need a cure,” Owen said. He got up and came around the desk. Tess could feel the controlled fury in him as he walked slowly towards her.
“Teresa,” he said. “Don’t do this. Don’t break something so fragile.”
“I am not the one spoiling things!” Tess said furiously. “Were you ever going to tell me, Owen? Or did you think I would never find out?” She turned away. The ache inside her was excruciating. “I trusted you,” she said. “I told you every last one of my secrets. I never realised that you told me nothing in return. Now I know why.”
There was a long, heavy pause in which even the tick of the clock on the mantel seemed to slow and then Owen grabbed her and kissed her. There was no warning and no time to prepare. It was so utterly out of character that her mind reeled with the shock. And this time he was not being careful. His kiss was fierce, harsh and glorious.
“Does it feel as though I am thinking of anyone but you?” he demanded, as his lips left hers. “Does it feel as though I want anyone but you?”
The turbulent expression in his eyes demanded an answer. It demanded honesty from her.
“No,” Tess squeaked. Her heart was beating hard against the silk of her bodice. She thought she should have been frightened by the anger and violence she sensed in him but she was not. Throughout the past ten days he had shown her nothing but tenderness. He had come to her bed every night and made love to her and it had been blissful. But always he had held something back. She had not realised it at the time but she recognised it now. Owen had been careful and considerate with her always, putting her needs and desires first. Not once had he betrayed her trust. He had treated her with absolute tenderness. Now Tess found she did not want that gentleness anymore. Now there was an edge of darkness in him and she responded to it instantly. There was fire here that he had not shown her before and a wild passion. She had sensed that depth of emotion in him but she had never experienced it. Now she felt her own passion rise to meet his.
She stared into his eyes. Her lips parted. Owen made an inarticulate sound and dragged her back into his arms. His mouth came down on hers again, blotting out all thought.
OWEN HAD NEVER INTENDED TO lose control. He had been angry with Tess for her demeaning of his feelings and for the way she had confronted him, but he had intended to talk the matter out calmly and with restraint. Then he had made the mistake of kissing her instead.
All week he had been holding himself back when he touched her, making love to her with exquisite care, trying to make certain that he did not frighten her by asking too much of her too soon. It had been bliss but it had been torment too. To hold her delicious, lush body and treat it like china when he wanted to claim her with everything he possessed, to exercise iron constraint over his own needs and desires when he wanted to plunder her and drive them both to the far shores of pleasure… The strength of his feelings had consistently shocked him. He had never wanted a woman as much as he wanted Tess. Yet it was not simply lust. It never had been.
Owen kissed her again and felt her response, eager and totally unrestrained, and the shock and sheer visceral power of it pushed him right over the edge. He dragged her down onto the wide chaise longue and yanked her close beneath him, moulding every last one of her curves to his, feeling her softness and the heat in her. Her mouth opened beneath his and he kissed her deeply, hungrily, his mind reeling when he heard her voice, a broken whisper, begging for more.
He raised himself above her and searched her face with an urgent gaze. Her eyelashes fanned thick and black against her flushed cheeks. Her lips were parted, stung rosy with his kisses. She was panting.
“These have to go,” he said. She was wearing far too many clothes. So was he. He dealt summarily with the buttons and bows on her bodice. Her hands bumped his, impatient as he. Something ripped. Was it his clothes or hers? He did not care. He stopped to kiss her again, and lost himself in the maelstrom of feeling. He felt her hands against his bare chest and groaned.
Her bodice hung open but her skirts, obdurate as they were, were never going to oblige him. He dropped his head to her breast and took her in his mouth so that she cried out. The need that drove him was sharper than anything he had known, blotting out reason, blotting out thought. He lifted her skirts, slid a hand up her thigh and met the hot, damp centre of her. She cried out again and he stroked her, loving the way in which she lifted her hips to beg his touch. She was all heat and fire as he drove her on, his mouth at her breast, his fingers at her core until she trembled for him so much he could wait no longer.
His body was hard and aching. He tossed her skirts and petticoats up to her waist, spread her wide, lifted her hips and pushed deep into her heat. He had not intended it to be so quick but he was beyond control now. She came immediately, with a keening cry, and her body closed around his in pulses so tight and smooth that he almost lost his mind. He thrust into her over and over, deeper and deeper, his hands braced against the rough velvet of the chaise, plunging into her sleek, warm body hard and fast as he possessed her with relentless intensity. He could not seem to quench his need; it left him shaking. He wanted to conquer her completely and claim her forever.
He felt Tess’s body gather again and clasp his and he shattered too in a climax so powerful it left him dazed. He had never fallen so swiftly and so completely in all his life and he had certainly never lost all restraint with any woman.
They were both breathing hard. Owen rested his forehead against hers, utterly shocked at his total lack of control and the fierce way he had taken her.
Tess opened dazed eyes, so deep and vivid a blue that his heart clenched. She smiled at him and raised her head a little to kiss him. Her lips, deliciously soft, brushed his. He could feel her smiling against his mouth. Owen thought of Joanna then but only to dismiss her ghost, so pale now in comparison to the deep feelings he had for Tess. Loving Joanna, he thought ruefully, had been something of a habit for him. It was only now he realised how hollow those emotions had become over the years, how empty of real feeling.
“We were supposed to be talking,” he said slowly.
“I’m sorry.” Tess looked impossibly pleased with herself. “I misunderstood.”
She looked so tousled and so slumberous that Owen was ambushed by a sharp desire to kiss her again, to make love to her over and over until he had possessed her with the ravenous need he felt within. He forced himself to draw back, sitting up on the sofa, pulling her close into the curve of his arm.
Regret, bitter and sharp, pierced him for the way he had used her.
“No,” he said. “I’m the one who should be sorry.”
She shifted beside him; he felt her touch his cheek, her fingertips soft against the roughness of his stubble.
“I’ll never understand sex,” she said drily. “I thought it was delicious. Unimaginably exciting. And then you apologise.”
Owen grimaced. “I was rough. I treated you with less consideration than I should.”
“Consideration.” Tess’s voice had warmed into humour. “I can bear a great deal less consideration if it means that you make love to me like that, Owen.”
Owen glanced quickly at her. She was snuggling into his embrace, her cheek rubbing his shoulder, all dishevelled clothing and lush, warm woman. His senses tightened even as he rejected the renewed arousal of his body.
“You don’t understand,” he said roughly. He felt weighted down with regret. “I don’t lose control. I cannot. It’s too dangerous.”
The sleepiness fled her eyes at his tone. She sat up, a little away from him, tucking her feet beneath her rumpled skirts.
“What do I not understand?” she said
simply. “Tell me.”
In the end Owen found it easy to tell Tess the one thing that caused him so much shame he had never spoken of it, not even to those of his friends who knew what had happened. He talked and Tess sat with her chin resting on her hand, listening.
“You asked me if I had a compulsion to help women in trouble,” Owen said. “I had never thought of it that way before but I suppose that I do.”
Tess’s eyes narrowed but she said nothing. He had thought she might ask him about his feelings for Joanna again but there was a new awareness in her face as though she had moved beyond the jealousy that had driven her before. She waited.
“There was a woman, a long time ago,” Owen said. “A girl.” He glanced at Tess quickly as she moved a little. “Oh, not like that,” he said. “I did not love her. I did not even know her name. I was a young midshipman in those days and full of ambition. We were in Southampton, and a rougher port you’d be hard-pressed to find.” He shrugged. “We had been drinking that night and I was more than three-parts cut. As we came out of the tavern I saw that the ship’s first officer—a brute called Bates—had picked up a girl. They were arguing and then he started to hit her.” He stopped. The image of that dark alley and the woman’s pale flesh and ripped clothes, and the sound of her screams were seared on his mind, something he had never forgotten.
“She was a prostitute,” he said. “Little more than a child. It was hideous. Intolerable.” He moved uncomfortably as the unbearable memories flooded his mind. “I had always been brought up to respect women,” he said. “I was young and it gave me a shock to see things differently. Oh, I knew—” He stopped and shifted his shoulders again. He could not feel comfortable. The memories were too bleak and their legacy too painful. “I was not naive. I knew such things went on. But this was my commanding officer. So perhaps I was naive after all if I thought that such men would always behave with honour.”
Tess was sitting very hunched and still. “What happened?” she whispered.
“I wanted to intervene,” Owen said, “but the others held me back. I shook them off—I was full of idealism and pride and nobility.” He gave a short laugh. “I went to plant Bates a facer. I was spoiling for a fight. And he was so angry to have his authority challenged. He was full of violence and fury. But instead of hitting me he took the girl and…” His throat convulsed and he swallowed hard. “He hit her so fast and so hard that she fell and cracked her head against the wall and was killed. He did it deliberately, like a display of power, to show me his absolute dominance over her, to prove that nothing I could do would make a difference. I hated him for it.” His voice shook. Tess was silent, watching him. “And after that, subordinate or not, I laid into him as though I was possessed by the devil himself. I lost control and let my anger drive me. The others pulled me off in the end, but by then…” He paused. “I had half killed him.”
He heard Tess give a horrified gasp. The colour left her face, leaving it white and stark. “That was why you left the Navy,” she said.
Owen raised his eyes to hers. “I had no choice,” he said. “There was a frightful scandal. I lost my commission and was thrown out. My family had scrimped and saved and gone without and I threw away all that they had given me in one careless night because I lacked the self-control to restrain my violence.”
“Oh, Owen.” Tess put her arms about him and burrowed closer into his side. She felt warm and soft and very giving and Owen felt the cold tension start to drain from his bones. He pulled her to him and buried his face in her hair. “It was not your fault,” she said, her words muffled against his skin. “That was not justice.”
“It may not have been justice but it was my fault that I could not control my anger,” Owen said. The bitter taste of failure was still in his mouth. “Over and over, time and again, I have reproached myself. I could have stopped Bates, reasoned with him—”
“You could not have known what the outcome would be,” Tess argued. “His was the crime, not yours.”
“My crime was a lack of judgement and control,” Owen said tonelessly. “And I failed the girl. I couldn’t save her. She was young and defenceless but I could not help her.” He loosed Tess a little. “And as if that were not bad enough, I threw away all that my family had given me. I owed them so much and I let them down.”
Tess touched his cheek. “You were young,” she said softly, “and idealistic. We have all made mistakes.”
“I was not making any more,” Owen said fiercely. He realised that he was holding Tess hard, tension in his grip, and deliberately freed her, running his hands down her arms to link his fingers with hers. She held him tightly. Her eyes were steady on his.
“After I was thrown out of the Navy I went my own way,” he said. “I had my own code. I worked for all I had because I had to prove myself.” He slanted a look at her. “You once asked me if I was a pirate. Well, I was never that because I respected the rule of law too much to break it again.”
“That was why you worked for Sidmouth, wasn’t it?” Tess said slowly. “Because you wanted to uphold the law and do what you thought was right. You have spent your life trying to make amends.” She leaned forwards and kissed him. Owen felt the brush of her lashes against his cheek. “You are a good man, Owen, but even good men can make mistakes.” She drew back; smiled at him. “I understand about Joanna now,” she said simply. “When you saw the way that her first husband treated her you must have hated him so much.”
“David Ware was a bastard,” Owen said. “Everyone thought him a hero but all I saw in him was abuse of power and disrespect. I had nothing but contempt for him. I wanted to kill him—that damned violence in me again—and to take Joanna away from him and show her that it need not be like that.” He shook his head. “Then Joanna married Alex and she seemed unhappy again. It made me angry.”
“I’m sorry,” Tess said. She was looking down at their interlinked hands. “Sorry that she hurt you.”
Owen smiled ruefully. “It was lucky that she did,” he said. “Joanna was wiser than I. She knew that to run away with me was no answer. She loved Alex and he loved her and they were able to resolve their differences. I am glad for them.” He rubbed Tess’s bare shoulder very gently beneath the loosened bodice of her gown, relishing the silken smoothness of her skin, her warmth. She felt so bountiful, so giving. He had not known such generosity in a woman and had not thought to find it in Tess.
“You should not think that I love Joanna still,” he said, wanting to meet Tess’s openness with the honesty it deserved. “It is not true. I stopped loving her a while ago but I did not realise it.”
He saw Tess’s face light with soft pleasure. “I am glad,” she admitted. “I was very jealous. It hurt so much and I was so unprepared for it.” Her lips curved into a smile. “You had been patient with me and generous and endlessly considerate.” She laughed. “I thought you a saint and then when I heard you had wanted to run off with your best friend’s wife I felt disillusioned as well as horribly jealous.”
“A saint!” Owen said. He started to laugh. “I am very far from sainthood, I assure you.”
Tess looked down at their dishevelled clothing. “So it seems,” she murmured. “And actually I find I much prefer you as a mere man.” She leaned forwards and took his face in her palms, kissing him. Her bodice gaped open, and Owen saw her breasts, lush and round, pink-tipped, so tempting. His whole body leapt to arousal.
“I understand that you feel a need to keep control,” Tess whispered, against his mouth, “but you need not be so careful with me anymore.” She nipped his lower lip, sliding her tongue into his mouth where it entwined with his in an erotic dance.
“I like what I have learned about myself,” she whispered, “and I like what you do to me.”
She slid her hand into his pantaloons and took his cock, already hard, in her hand. Owen groaned and grabbed her, tumbling her back into his arms where she lay smiling up at him, all wanton provocation.
“I suppose we s
hould not do it again,” she said quickly, regretfully. “The door is not locked and anyone might walk in. Poor Houghton might announce a guest. Your aunt Martindale, for example. That would sink my reputation with her beyond repair.”
“God forbid. You are quite right.” Owen freed himself and strolled over to the door, registering the look of keen disappointment on Tess’s face as she started to button her bodice.
“Don’t do that,” he said, turning the key. “I shall only be obliged to undo them all over again.” He tugged his cravat off and threw it aside as he walked back towards her.
“Owen!” Tess’s face flushed rosy-pink. “Can we? Again? Here? Now?”
“Certainly we can,” Owen said. And did.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IT WAS MUCH LATER, WHEN OWEN had left belatedly for his meeting with the maritime broker, that Tess wandered upstairs to her bedroom where Margery was stolidly placing clean linen into the armada chest, folding it in with sprigs of lavender and rosemary. The room was fresh with the scent of herbs and bright with the cold winter light of early afternoon.
“Is all well, milady?” Margery asked, viewing Tess’s crumpled gown and inexpertly pinned hair with some amusement.
“All is very well, thank you, Margery,” Tess agreed, and the maid smiled and turned back to the linens.
“Perhaps you should change gowns if you are thinking of going out, ma’am,” she said.
“Perhaps I should,” Tess agreed dreamily.
It had been a long journey, she thought, but now, against all odds, she felt whole again. In the beginning she had been a frightened girl who had lost so much, and endured so much. She had taken up Robert’s political cause to fill the empty spaces in her life and she had developed a true passion and loyalty to it. But now her loyalties had changed.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and took Robert Barstow’s miniature out of the drawer and looked at it for a moment. His painted picture smiled at her, young, boyish, idealistic. He had had so many hopes for the future. Death had robbed him of his plans, but she had picked up his cause and she had done her best, and now it was time for others to take on her role. There were many, many people now who supported the radical movement. In time they would achieve the reforms that they sought, fair wages and food on the table for all and the right for their voices to be heard. And she might no longer draw satirical cartoons or run the Jupiter Club but she could still fund her charities and be a philanthropist.
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