Untouched

by Anna Campbell

  She should pull away but nothing could make her surrender this one last contact. “Kermonde is under royal decree to bring you directly to Windsor.”

  “Very well.” Matthew’s jaw took on a determined line. He’d worn the same expression when he told her she had to escape. “It’s not how I wanted to do this. But then, I never thought my chance would come.”

  “Chance?”

  To her horror, he fell to his knees, still clinging to her hand. “Grace Paget, will you grant me the transcendent joy of agreeing to become my wife?”

  Everything she wanted. Everything principle insisted she couldn’t accept.

  Oh, Matthew, Matthew, don’t do this!

  With a savage movement, she tore herself away. She stopped a few feet from him. “I can’t marry you, Matthew,” she said rawly, wringing her hands in wild distress. “It wouldn’t be fair.”

  He frowned as he absorbed her refusal. “Are you afraid of my madness?”

  “No! No, never think that,” she said frantically. How could he imagine that was why she denied him? “You’re not mad. You were sick. Now you’re cured.”

  With a slight stagger, he rose to his feet. He was even thinner than he’d been when she first saw him. Knowing his uncle, she guessed Matthew had been chained since she left. He needed rest and sustenance and a chance at happiness, not this fraught encounter with a former lover.

  Automatically she reached to help him but he drew apart with a trace of hauteur. “You told me you loved me. Was that a lie?” Then the brief coolness evaporated and his voice cracked. “Have your feelings changed, Grace? Because as God is my witness, mine haven’t. I love you. I will always love you.”

  “Stop! For pity’s sake, stop!” she cried out, lifting one shaking hand in his direction to keep him away, although he hadn’t touched her. She saw so clearly that they had no future together. Why couldn’t he see it?

  He looked even more bewildered. Her chest constricted with guilty anguish. This should be the most joyous day of his life and she ruined it. Her father was right. She shouldn’t have come here. It was cruel and self-indulgent.

  “Do you love me, Grace?” he asked with the stark honesty that always reached right to her marrow.

  She wrapped her arms around herself to stop her convulsive trembling. She’d known this time had to come, she’d known from the first time she kissed him. But the reality was so much more painful than her painful imaginings.

  “Grace?”

  He wasn’t hiding behind pride. She owed him equal honesty. “Yes, I do love you.” Perhaps she was unwise to tell him but she couldn’t lie.

  “Then why?”

  Kermonde rounded the corner of the house and stopped as he observed Grace and the marquess together. “Sheene, I can delay no longer. His Majesty awaits.”

  Matthew didn’t shift his gaze from her face as he replied. “A minute’s patience, sir.”

  In other circumstances, Grace would have laughed at the well-bred surprise on Kermonde’s face. Dukes weren’t used to people telling them to hold their peace.

  “A minute then.” It was clear Kermonde meant sixty seconds precisely. At least he moved far enough off to give them an illusion of solitude although not far enough to let them think he meant to wait much longer.

  Matthew’s eyes were unwavering. “Tell me, Grace.”

  She sucked in a shaky breath. She was right about this. She knew she was right about this. He was so intelligent, surely she could make him understand too.

  “You haven’t seen anything of the world. You think you love me but…” She lowered her voice so the duke wouldn’t hear. “I’m the first woman you’ve bedded. I’m almost the only woman you’ve seen in eleven years. Anyone would mistake the significance of his feelings. You want to make promises. You’re a decent man. But when you resume your rightful position, you’ll regret any commitment. You’ll regret it even more when you fall in love with the woman fit to stand at your side.”

  He was genuinely angry now. “Unlike the Earl of Wyndhurst’s daughter.”

  She flinched at his sarcasm then lifted her chin and faced him down. “Unlike the poor widow Grace Paget who was your mistress.”

  He drew himself up and spoke in a low growl. “So you think I’m too stupid to know what I feel and too weak to keep any vows.”

  “No, never that. But what we shared was part of your captivity. It’s time to start life as a free man. I can have no role in that life.”

  “You are that life,” he said with a snap.

  “Lord Sheene,” Kermonde called. “I insist we leave.”

  “Are you coming?” Matthew extended his arm as he’d extended it so often when she’d shared his imprisonment.

  She shook her head. “I promised my father there would be no scandal. For his sake, no hint must emerge that you and I have been lovers. You go with Kermonde and I go home to Marlow Hall in Yorkshire.”

  “Then I’ll come to you after I’ve met the king.”

  “No. You have to stay in London and prove your sanity publicly. You have to take your place as Marquess of Sheene. You must make it clear there’s no taint of madness.” Then the harshest words of all. And still harsher because they were true. “It’s over, Matthew. There is nothing more between us. We part here and now.”

  Still he refused to surrender. She’d been right to call him a fighter. “That’s not good enough.”

  “Lord Sheene!” Kermonde’s tone was peremptory.

  “I’m coming.” But he didn’t move. Instead, he reached out to take Grace’s hand again. She knew she should pull away but she couldn’t. If he kissed her, she’d shatter into a thousand pieces. But he merely looked at her with his familiar grave attention. He spoke very slowly. “If I prove my worthiness over a year, will you believe in my steadfastness?”

  “A year?” She hadn’t expected to haggle. She wasn’t sure what she had expected. He’d never been likely to say yes and go meekly away.

  “Yes, a year,” he said curtly. “Will that convince you?”

  “You’ve already given up so much of your life,” she stammered. “Don’t waste another year on a futile bargain.”

  “You’re the one setting conditions, Grace. I’ll marry you tomorrow and let the rest be damned. I have no doubts, as long as you love me.”

  Outwardly he was calm but she knew he hid a titanic storm of emotions. How could he not after tonight? His sudden release. His uncle’s death. The shooting of Monks. Now this clash with her. He’d been through so much. Too much.

  “Sheene!” Kermonde said sharply. Clearly ducal tolerance had reached an end.

  Matthew didn’t even blink. “Grace?”

  He had to go. Powerful men worked on his behalf. She couldn’t allow him to jeopardize that. She gave a jerky little nod. “If you feel the same in a year, ask me again. Don’t consider yourself bound. I told you, Matthew—you’re free. Of your uncle. Of your bondage. Of me. If you think of me with occasional gratitude, that’s all I ask.”

  A pathetic lie. And one she could see he didn’t for a moment believe.

  “A year then.” He spoke as if he closed a financial transaction.

  “There can be no contact between us.” While she died slowly of loneliness and he discovered he wanted a world that contained no trace of Grace Paget. The inevitability made her belly twist with anguish.

  “Agreed.” His voice was clipped. “I won’t write or try to see you. You have twelve months to mourn Josiah and decide what you want. You have your bargain. But never imagine for an instant that this is ended. You and I have unfinished business, Grace.”

  With focused ruthlessness, he lifted her hand and quickly stripped away the glove. She should protest. This moment would just become a bitter memory to taunt her.

  When he bent over her hand, his long hair fell forward to hide his face. He pressed his lips to her bare palm and she couldn’t stifle a sigh of pleasure. Impossible not to remember nights when he’d kissed each inch of her. Every cell o
f her skin remembered his possession. Every cell of her skin longed for him to take her again. But it could never be.

  Tears blurred her last image of him as he lifted his head and stepped back with a formal bow. How she loved him. She would never love another.

  He turned away and at last strode across to Kermonde. He held himself straight and moved with an unhindered confidence she’d never seen in him before. This was a man ready to embrace his challenges. Embrace and conquer.

  Only when Kermonde’s carriage left in a clatter of hooves and wild cracks of the whip did she realize he’d taken her glove with him.

  Chapter 29

  A pool of afternoon sunlight warmed Grace on the cushioned window seat inside Marlow Hall’s Chinese summerhouse.

  She stirred from her troubled doze. She’d dreamed. The dream that still visited with heartbreaking frequency although almost a year had passed since she’d seen Matthew. The dream where his long, powerful body drove into hers, where his arms lashed her close, where his deep voice whispered love.

  She whimpered. Her cheeks were sticky with tears. How she hated to wake to a cruel present and the desolation that ran beneath her new life. The grief never faded. Slowly, reluctantly, she opened her eyes.

  Matthew stood between the open red lacquer doors at the top of the summerhouse steps. Under one arm, he carried a slim mahogany box.

  She exhaled on a soft startled gasp. Graphic, carnal images from her dream flashed behind her eyes and sent heat rushing to her face.

  His intent, unblinking stare didn’t shift from her. How long had he watched?

  His physical impact was astonishing. In their year apart, she’d forgotten quite how handsome he was. A slight breeze ruffled his thick dark hair, now cut in a fashionable style. With a pang, she remembered his wild black locks drifting like warm silk across her wrist while he’d kissed her hand in farewell. She couldn’t imagine this dauntingly elegant man clutching her with such desperation. She couldn’t imagine him clutching her at all.

  After months of thinking of him, dreaming of him, longing for him, now that he was here, he seemed a stranger.

  Awkwardly, she sat up. She felt ill at ease, at a disadvantage, sluggish with sleep. She swiped a shaking hand across her cheeks to hide her humiliating tears. She forced her lips into an uncertain smile of greeting.

  “Matthew…”

  Why did he have to find her like this? Unprepared. Vulnerable. Yearning.

  Taloned dragons carved into each door reared up like heraldic bearers to frame him. But Matthew was the one who looked ready to breathe fire. His face was hard and expressionless and his eyes were dark as burned toffee. A line of color marked his cheekbones and his body vibrated tension.

  He didn’t return her smile. Foreboding shivered through her. What on earth was wrong? He looked angry. Aggressive. And utterly in command.

  “Matthew?” she said even more tentatively. Her smile faltered and faded. “What are you doing here?”

  He didn’t act like a man on the verge of a marriage proposal. Of course he didn’t. She was a fool to imagine he still wanted her. He’d had a year to discover that Grace Paget’s charms were tawdry currency.

  Had he come to tell her he’d formed another attachment? If so, she owed him a calm reception and a generous farewell. Even while her heart shattered into a thousand jagged shards.

  She’d braced herself for this, known it must come. But nothing primed her for the chill that crept through her blood as though she died from the inside out.

  She’d avidly followed his progress in the newspapers and from letters her mother received from the London friends with whom she’d recently resumed correspondence. Ever since Matthew’s triumphant return to society, rumors had flown of his engagement to any number of well-bred beauties.

  He must have finally made his choice. What other reason could bring him here in such obvious disquiet?

  Oh, lucky, lucky girl. Grace couldn’t stifle a surge of bitter envy as she thought of the unknown woman Matthew decided to make his marchioness.

  She raised her chin and met his eyes squarely. Dear God, let him say it fast and put her out of her misery.

  For a taut instant, they stared at each other like combatants.

  “Grace.”

  He drew out the word so it became a long, deep, guttural growl. A sound as primitive as a lion’s roar for its mate. Her skin prickled with animal awareness and the breath caught in her throat. Every drop of moisture evaporated from her mouth. Low in her belly, blood began to beat slow and hard with anticipation.

  Her face must have betrayed her unfurling arousal. Or perhaps, like her, he reacted to the sudden charge in the air, as electric as the pause before a lightning strike.

  Still without shifting his fierce focus, he set down the box he carried. Then he reached to close the doors and slide the bolt across.

  Any doubt as to his purpose fled. A delicious thrill rippled through her. The summerhouse was raised on a platform so the windows opened above eye height. With the doors locked, it was a bower designed for private sin.

  Sin was clearly his aim.

  Now she looked more closely, she realized it wasn’t anger that tightened the skin over the bones of his face. It was incendiary hunger.

  She should protest. Question. Demand he tell her why he was here. But overwhelming need kept her silent and pinned to the window seat.

  Her pulse pitched into a drunken race as she watched him lift his hands to untie his neckcloth. Carelessly, he discarded the length of linen. The soft drift of the white strip to the parquetry floor made her shift restively on the silk cushions. She was already ripe for him. Her sensual dream had left her moist and ready. A year’s frustrated desire crawled through her veins.

  The angles of his face sharpened. His glance flickered to where her thighs clenched together under her pale blue muslin skirts, twisted revealingly tight after her disturbed sleep. Molten gold flared between his luxuriant black eyelashes.

  Oh, yes, she knew that look. She knew what that look promised.

  Delight. Surrender. Love?

  With a smooth movement that stirred her volatile senses, he shrugged out of his beautiful dark blue coat and flung it down near his crumpled neckcloth. All the time, his eyes seared her with such heat, she felt greedy flames licking at her skin. She shivered with another surge of wicked excitement.

  He now wore only a cream brocade waistcoat, a fine white shirt, and buff breeches tucked into high black boots. Now he’d discarded his coat, she could see he’d filled out during the year. For the first time he didn’t seem too thin for his height, although he’d always be a lean streak of a man.

  Her eyes traveled over his broad shoulders, across his powerful chest and down to his narrow hips. Her already heated cheeks burned as her attention finally settled on the bulge in his breeches.

  No question he wanted her.

  Her head jerked up as he muffled a groan. Her wanton focus on where his sex swelled and hardened had broken some barrier in him. Swifter than a hunting lion, he crossed the polished floor, casting off his waistcoat on the way.

  Keeping one foot on the floor, he rested a bent knee on the garish gold cushions patterned with willow trees and scarlet peonies. This close, his radiating heat lured her. The hoarse susurration of his breath was harsh in her ears. His face was stark with longing. He looked like a man at the end of his endurance.

  She didn’t know who reached out first but in an instant, she was in his arms. Shamelessly she rose on her knees to press herself against him. For a fraught moment, he stared down into her face as if it offered the answer to every question. Then his mouth crashed onto hers. She tasted passion and hunger and power. His arms crushed her as the blazing open-mouthed kiss sent her spinning into dazzling passion.

  He tasted wonderful, nourishment for her soul. She’d pined for this for a year. Frantically, she arched up. She only lived when he was near. Without him, her world was gray, cold oblivion.

  She curl
ed her tongue around his in ardent welcome. His teeth scraped over her lips. His breath filled her lungs. She lost herself in his savage heat. This was more war than seduction. She didn’t care. He touched her. She wanted nothing else.

  “Christ, I’ve missed you,” he grated out, lifting his head and staring at her out of glazed eyes.

  “And I’ve missed you. So much.”

  He pressed his mouth to hers again. Eager. Ruthless. He shook with unfettered desperation. She ran her hands up his flanks, feeling the shirt bunch under her touch. Beneath the material, the muscles of his back flexed as he kissed her face, her eyes, her neck in a fever of caresses. Soon, soon, he’d slide her skirts up and part her legs and take her. She couldn’t wait.

  She shivered with delight as he nipped at her throat. She made a low sound and rubbed herself against his erection. He seemed larger, hotter, more powerful than ever.

  His hand slid across the slope of her chest, tormenting her with its slow progress. The delay built her need until she trembled with sensual anticipation. He teased the embroidered edge of her bodice. Then he slipped under the loose curve of the neckline to palm one nipple. The crest immediately tightened.

  She hissed with pleasure as he rolled the nub in his fingers, pulled it, squeezed it. Each touch sent a spike of arousal to her loins. By the time his attention moved to her other breast, she writhed on the silk like a trapped animal.

  Leaning over her, he parted her thighs with his knees. His arms supported his weight, encasing her in a space of his making. He was close enough for her to see the wild gold kaleidoscope of his eyes.

  Familiar scents of lemon and Matthew surrounded her, made her dizzy with desire. Then she was dizzy indeed as he tumbled her back against the slippery cushions and came down between her legs.

  He shoved her skirts to her waist and placed his hand firmly on her center. She bucked under the pressure, flooding with heat and moisture. Within seconds, her drawers were on the ground. Shaking with urgency, he released himself from his breeches.