Kylemore silently admitted he’d had no idea what he was doing when he brought his mistress to his childhood home. He already suspected that keeping Verity here was a mistake. She only made him vulnerable, just as this place made him vulnerable. And if ever he needed to hold fast to ruthlessness, it was now.
He flung himself off his mount’s back in the shadowy stables and cursed at length. Hamish had followed him inside out of the twilight, and he reached for Tannasg’s reins.
“Taking the Lord’s name in vain never did much tae help a situation, laddie,” he said in a soft, reproving burr. The lanterns were already lit, and they cast a soft glow over his stern expression.
They had been riding all day. After that appalling journey, any sane man would welcome the chance to stay in one place. But then, Kylemore had never considered himself a sane man. Nor would anyone else if they knew the facts behind this latest disaster, the abduction of his unwilling paramour.
At least the hours in the saddle today had achieved one positive outcome—Hamish Macleish no longer Your Graced him to death. Kylemore hadn’t expected them to regain their old closeness. But the day together had revived some of their earlier ease in each other’s company. Not to mention that it distanced him from both the house’s agonizing memories and his troublesome mistress.
Soraya. Verity. The woman he yearned for with every breath.
The woman who, as far as Hamish’s conversation was concerned, didn’t exist. Hell, Hamish already knew blasphemy numbered among his employer’s sins. Kidnapping was just one more peccadillo.
Still, Kylemore, ruthless, heartless knave that he was, couldn’t quite summon the courage to confess why he skulked in this remote corner of Scotland with one of the world’s most beautiful women in tow.
“Look after the horses,” he snapped, tired of the censure that underlay Hamish’s manner in spite of all the reawakened camaraderie.
Perhaps because of the reawakened camaraderie.
He was tired too of battling inconvenient scruples over his captive. Everything had seemed so clear when he’d searched for her. Soraya had duped him into giving her a fortune. She’d betrayed him by running away without a word. She deserved to be punished.
And by God, he’d enjoy punishing her.
But that was before he’d witnessed her uncomplaining bravery on the long and difficult journey when she’d been so scared of where she’d been going. Of horses. Of him.
That was before he’d seen her vulnerability when exhaustion had forced her to the edge of her endurance. When she’d still summoned the strength to defy him. Even while she must have known that defiance was useless.
Now he was going to take her.
The outcome had never been in doubt. What he hadn’t expected when he’d plotted his revenge was that his body and his heart would be so divided about his intentions.
Damn her.
“Goodnight, Your Grace,” Hamish said to Kylemore’s retreating back as he unsaddled the big gray horse.
The duke slammed open the door to Verity’s room with such force that the curtains billowed and the fire flickered wildly in the grate. It was late and she lay awake and afraid in the large bed. She knew there was no escape.
There had never been any escape.
How right she’d been to feel wary of the Duke of Kylemore from the moment they’d met. She’d been tragically wrong thinking she could manage him. Now she faced the consequences of that calamitous error of judgment.
Still, she refused to shrink before him like a cringing coward. She raised herself on her elbows against the pillows and tilted her chin.
“Good evening, Your Grace,” she said coolly.
Never let him guess how hard she fought to keep her voice steady, she prayed silently. Her heart thundered with fear, and only the outer limits of her will kept her from raising the sheet against her chest like a shield.
He stared across the room at her as if he hated her. She suspected he did.
“Good evening, Your Grace,” he mimicked cruelly. “By all means, let us preserve the formalities, madam.”
She couldn’t entirely read his mood. She was familiar with how he looked when intent on sex. As the object of his desire for more than a year, she ought to.
That wasn’t how he looked tonight.
He supported one arm high against the doorframe, a picture of male power and beauty in his loose white shirt and tight dark breeches.
She’d always recognized the Duke of Kylemore as an unusually handsome man, but for many reasons, she’d never allowed herself to dwell on his attractions. Tonight, his physical splendor struck her with the force of a blow. She worried at her bottom lip before she realized it was a fatal admission of nervousness.
He straightened his lean body and sauntered toward her, kicking the door closed behind him. She flinched as it crashed shut.
“Don’t bother asking for mercy. You’ve had a week to prepare for this.”
She’d had a week to recall her loss of control the last time he’d kissed her. Which was just what the monster had intended. Whatever happened tonight, she swore she wouldn’t surrender to him as she had that stormy afternoon in Yorkshire.
He loomed above her at the side of the bed. The strongly marked black eyebrows lowered over his dark blue eyes.
“Where the hell did you get this?” He extended one long-fingered hand and flicked contemptuously at the neckline of her plain white nightdress. “I’m sure I never ordered such a rag from Madame Yvette.”
“One of the maids lent it to me,” she said sullenly.
She’d been surprised to find ready for her an armoire full of clothes from Soraya’s favorite modiste. Yet again she’d reflected on the planning the duke had put into bringing her here. She hadn’t stood a chance.
Included in the luxurious wardrobe were nightdresses so filmy as hardly to justify the name of clothing. She’d needed a flurry of sign language to convince the maids she much preferred to borrow something less revealing. She’d needed a good five minutes to divert the girls’ horrified attention from the diaphanous garments in the first place.
“Take it off,” he said, still frowning. “This game has gone on long enough. I’m your lover, madam. You’ve never evinced distaste for me before.”
He was right. And he was utterly wrong.
Kylemore might think he had her where he wanted her. Kylemore did have her where he wanted her, but she wasn’t going to deliver herself gift-wrapped for his delectation.
No, he’d find little enjoyment in her bed tonight. Or not if she could help it.
She looked away to where the fire blazed in the grate. “Things have changed. I’ve changed,” she whispered.
She heard the rustle of linen and turned her head to see him tugging off his shirt. The smooth skin of arms and shoulders gleamed golden as he dropped the garment carelessly to the floor.
“No one changes that much,” he said with such confidence that she curled her fingers into her palms to stop herself from attacking him.
Her one goal had been the chance to abandon her detestable career, yet here she was about to lie beneath a man in another loveless coupling.
She had a terrifying glimpse of a future where she’d never be free and she must play Soraya forever. Abruptly, unable to bear another moment of this torment, she flung the sheet aside and lay back.
“Go on,” she said stiffly, closing her eyes. She wouldn’t add to his triumph by begging for mercy. “Take me.”
Damn him, she should have known she couldn’t rattle him with such theatrics. His response was a softly derisive laugh.
“Oh, no, madam. That’s too easy.”
She clenched her fists at her sides and told herself she’d endure this, as she’d always endured before.
But the words had lost their power. She listened to the slide of fabric on skin as he shucked the rest of his clothing.
She didn’t look at him. She didn’t need to. She already knew what he looked like naked.
For such a lean man, the duke was remarkably well endowed—yet another indication of how laughably inaccurate his cold nickname was. Kylemore’s body spoke of driven, even uncontrollable, passions. Although he’d never before lost control with her.
Until tonight.
What was about to happen carried no deceiving gloss of courtesy or civilization. This man wanted to brand her as his in the most primitive way. She felt the mattress sag as he knelt on the bed, then the heat of his body, shocking in spite of the familiarity, when he straddled her.
“You keep up the pretense of reluctance,” he said drily.
“It’s no pretense.” She still refused to look at him. If she couldn’t see him, perhaps she could hide from what he did.
“Yes, it is,” he insisted.
The sudden shift of air should have warned her. With one powerful tug, he ripped the nightdress from neck to hem, leaving her exposed to his gaze as she’d been exposed so many times before. She fought the urge to cover herself with the tattered shreds of the gown, with her hands, with the sheet.
His face was strained and determined in the candlelight. She’d never seen him like this. He’d always approached her with eager anticipation, but there was no joy in him now. The odd thought crossed her mind that he fought his own deepest nature when he came to her in anger.
Then she looked down at his sex, hard and avid and seeking, and she dismissed her naïveté with the scorn it deserved. His nature was clear. It was to conquer and subdue. That was all there was in him.
“Anything you take, you take as a thief,” she said bitterly.
Her insult angered him, she saw, as the blue eyes narrowed. But it was too late to reconsider the wisdom of taunting a man who held her at such a disadvantage.
“I’m no thief, madam,” he said harshly. Then fleeting, turbulent emotion darkened his intent gaze and his tone softened into velvety enticement. “Verity, think what you do. It doesn’t have to be like this. The pleasure we shared was a miracle.”
Pleasure. The word slashed at her like a sword, while deep within, a tangled knot loosened as the inevitable, unwelcome memory awoke of his body moving in hers with delight. So many familiar elements here conspired to vanquish her. His clean scent, his alluring heat, his cursed, lost beauty.
“That implies something freely bestowed,” she said through taut lips. “You know that was never true.”
“I know that was always true.” The danger in his soft voice sent a shiver, not entirely of revulsion, through her. Oh, how she wished her response was as simple as revulsion.
“Never.” God help her, she lied.
His brows contracted, and fool that she was, she read sorrow rather than fury in his face. “Well, if I must take you as a thief, then I shall be a thief.”
He pushed her legs apart, moved between them and thrust inside her.
There had been no preliminaries. Verity tensed, but her betraying body had already prepared for his possession.
He rammed into her hard and gave a groan that echoed the defeat in her heart. For a long, dark moment, she lay pinioned under him. The world had shrunk to the man above her. It felt of him. It smelled of him. His weight held her motionless.
He withdrew and plunged back into her once, twice. Then he jerked convulsively as his control broke and his essence spurted into her. He seemed to shudder over her forever before he groaned once more, then rolled away.
It was over. He’d taken her quickly, carelessly, irrevocably. She was once again the Duke of Kylemore’s lover and she wished she were dead.
She took her first full breath for what felt like an eternity. The air still smelled like Kylemore. Like Kylemore and sex. She needed to wash. Slowly, as if she were an old woman, she got out of the bed.
Her movement roused him enough to reach over and grab her arm. “Where are you going?” He lifted himself up on one elbow to look at her. “If you run away from the glen, you’ll die in the mountains. It’s hard country out there, and people unfamiliar with it don’t survive.”
She thought now that he’d taken her, he’d sound victorious, gloating. After all, he’d gone to a world of trouble to get her on her back in this bed. But his voice was flat and devoid of emotion.
“I’m not running away,” she said dully, despite herself clutching the remnants of her nightdress around her as if she’d been a violated virgin.
A laughable notion, she thought sourly. But she didn’t feel like laughing. She felt like crying, as she’d cried when she’d first sold herself.
She lit a candle with shaking hands and left the room. Only later did she think how strange it was that he didn’t try to stop her.
Chapter 10
On unsteady legs, Verity found her way downstairs to the kitchen. The banked range shed enough light for her to fill a kettle and heat some water. Her ruined nightgown provided little protection against the night air, but she was so numb that she hardly noticed the cold. Between her legs, she was sticky and wet with Kylemore’s seed.
The sensation was unusual. The duke had never spent himself inside her. In London, they’d used sheaths, or she’d satisfied him some other way. An old courtesan she’d known in Paris had taught her the tricks of a whore’s trade. Verity had learned, even while her heart had despaired, because she’d had to.
But tonight Kylemore hadn’t cared about planting a bastard in her womb. Perhaps he meant that to be part of her punishment. He wanted to give her a permanent reminder of him. She could have told him that was one revenge he’d never have.
Like an automaton, she poured warm water into a bowl and began to wash. The sheer banality of her actions gradually coaxed her soul back from the shivering hell where it had retreated. But still, she couldn’t bear to contemplate that moment when he’d invaded her body.
With trembling hands, she wiped herself with the ragged remains of her nightdress, then pitched it into the fire. To cover her nakedness, she tugged a man’s shirt, probably Hamish’s, from a pile of fresh laundry. She threw the dirty water in the drain and lit a candle, then went in search of somewhere to sleep. That morning, she’d noticed a chamber on the upper floor that contained a roughly made up cot.
Slowly—she ached all over, even though he hadn’t hurt her—she mounted the stairs in quest of a place that didn’t contain the Duke of Kylemore. She was frightened, but the fear was strangely distant, as all her emotions had been strangely distant since she’d left him. Perhaps he waited at the top of the stairs to force her back into his bed. But mercifully she made it into the humble room without encountering anyone.
She crept between the sheets and pulled the blanket high around her shaking body. Only then, in the spurious security of this narrow cot, did she begin to cry, great, gulping sobs that scraped her throat as they emerged. Sobs too loud and too heartbroken to muffle in the pillows, much as she tried.
He’d used her coldly, without care or feeling. He’d rammed into her as if he owned her. When she’d been his mistress, he’d never treated her with such callousness. Then, he’d wanted her to share the pleasure, to become his willing partner as they’d explored the world of sensuality.
But he’d used her tonight as if he loathed her.
As he must loathe her.
And the worst betrayal of all?
She’d recognized the contempt he’d expressed with each action. Even so, her traitorous body had fluttered with the beginning of response, a response owing nothing to Soraya’s practiced wiles and everything to Verity’s lonely soul.
Kylemore stirred with a startled grunt from the deathlike sleep into which he’d plunged after sex. He was alone in Verity’s bed, and the smell of their coupling surrounded him.
This was, of course, familiar.
Less familiar were the guilt and regret that lurked in the sordid vacuum within him where
most men had a heart.
Tumbling his mistress had always left him with an inner peace nothing else in life offered. When she’d gone, she had snatched away his only source of happiness. He’d been desperate to get it back, like a child who had lost his favorite toy and cried until it was restored.
Well, he had his favorite toy back and he still felt like crying.
His rage at her disappearance. Three months of miserable celibacy. Her insults. All these might explain what he’d just done to her.
Nothing could excuse it.
Groaning, he sat up. He’d pounded into her like a wild animal. He’d simply lost control. Never had he treated a woman so.
With a shudder, he remembered pouring himself into her. At that moment, he’d wanted to drown her in his essence, fill her utterly so no trace of anything but him remained in that slender body.
His conscience winced to recall what he’d done, but his unruly flesh rejoiced in how it had felt to take her fully, uninhibitedly, for the first time. Always, he’d been careful to spawn no bastards to suffer the cursed Kinmurrie blood. But in those frantic seconds when he’d pumped all his unhappiness into Verity—and to his shame, it had indeed only been seconds—no thought of future consequences had intruded. The world shrank to contain just him and the woman, and his body claiming her in nature’s most basic way.
It had been glorious.
But now he felt sick and sad and tired of the game.
He gave a harsh laugh. The game had only started. He couldn’t give up now. His desire wouldn’t permit it, whatever the better man inside him insisted he do.
Would his mad urge to possess this woman end in his destruction? Right now he hardly cared.
Kylemore found Verity easily, although he was surprised that of all sanctuaries, she’d chosen his room. But then, she probably hadn’t known it was his. Her room was larger and better furnished, befitting the house’s main chamber.
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