Julia, thinking he intended to finish the job of doing up her gown, was obligingly still. Within seconds, she discovered her mistake.
“What are you doing?” she asked, reaching back to feel the bareness of her back where the buttons had been undone once more. Twisting, she tried to rise, only to find herself firmly held.
“I thought you might like to demonstrate precisely how contrite you are,” he said, nuzzling the skin above the top of her underdress, brushing it with his lips.
She stiffened as if she had been stung. “I can’t imagine where you got that idea.”
“Can’t you?” he murmured, his strong teeth nipping gently at her flesh through the thin silk.
The grip of his arm tightened. Julia lunged forward to grasp at the table beside the bed, her fingers sliding over the surface as he exerted a steady backward pull. “Is this all you think about?” she asked between laughter and exasperation.
“Of late,” he admitted.
The pressure at her midsection was becoming unbearable. “It will be dark soon,” she gasped.
“I know,” he said, a quiver of amusement in his voice. “I’m looking forward to that time too.”
He slipped his free hand under the bodice of her gown, his fingers busy at the tapes of her underdress.
“Rud—”
“Yes, my sweet?”
She drew a deep breath, letting it out in a sigh as all resistance left her. She leaned back against him. He released her, and raising his head, turned her in the circle of his arms. He pressed her close as his mouth, warm with promise, sought hers. Reaching out, he flung back the covers in unsubtle invitation.
Julia, already beginning to slip her arms from the clinging folds of her bodice, glanced across the sheets. She went still, her gaze fastened on the reddish-brown stain that marred the wrinkled expanse of the bedding. Anger and revulsion swept over her in a wave, routing her languor like a strong wind. She pushed away from Rud, springing to her feet.
“You lied to me,” she hissed.
Her loosened gown slid slowly down her hips to lie about her feet. With a furious gesture, she stepped out of it and kicked it aside. The low-cut underdress allowed a generous view of her charms. Its ebony color made a breathtaking contrast to their ivory perfection, while the quickness of her breathing threatened momentarily to reveal the coral-pink aureoles.
Rud swallowed, bringing his gaze with difficulty to her face. “About what?” he asked, his voice thick.
“You told me that you-spent the night with me, slept with me, aboard the Sea Jade on the night before we were married.”
“So, I did,” he answered, a frown beginning to draw his brows together.
“You didn’t, you couldn’t have.”
“I did, and I could!”
Julia waved her hand in a derisive gesture toward the bed. “Then, how do you explain that?”
“I never said I made love to you,” he answered after brief glance in the direction she indicated.
“Oh no?” she queried. “You certainly allowed me to think so!”
“What I said, if I remember correctly, was that you invited me to spend the night in your cabin, and that the morning afterward you were not unwilling to marry me.”
“I woke up with no clothes—”
“True, but if you will think back you will remember that it had been a foggy night that turned into rain. It was impossible to avoid getting wet climbing in and out of the carriage between the inn and the ship. I could not let you catch pneumonia from sleeping in damp clothing, could I? You were chilled with the weather and the shock of what had happened. You did not want to be alone. Was I supposed to leave you in the dark with your trembling and your fears?”
It sounded so plausible, and yet, she knew she was not mistaken. “Do you deny that you deliberately set out to let me think that I — that I had allowed — even invited you to—”
She floundered under his considering gaze, knowing full well that he would not come to her aid.
“Yes?” he said in false encouragement.
“You know what I mean!” she cried wrathfully.
“Yes, I do,” he said, smiling a little. “Why do you think I would do such a thing?”
“I’m not sure, though I think possibly to make me resigned to our hasty marriage, less likely to cause a row in front of your uncle’s servants, or even your uncle and aunt.”
“Right enough, as far as it goes. In my conceit, I also thought you might prefer to dwell on what might have happened between us during the night instead of harking back to Marcel’s rough wooing at the inn.”
The flush that dyed her cheeks gave mute evidence of the success of that gambit. Ignoring it, she placed her hands on her hips, tossing her hair behind her shoulders. “Am I supposed to be grateful to you then for that low, despicable trick? Am I supposed to thank you for using my weakness and distress to make a fool of me?”
With a swift movement like a panther rising, he came up off the bed. Before she could recoil, he caught her about the waist, drawing her against him. He appeared not to notice her hands pushing without effect at his shoulders. “No, no, sweet Julia. The last thing I want from you is your gratitude. On the morning of our wedding, I saw your beautiful bruised face and the haunted look in your eyes. I felt you shrink from me, unable to bear my nearness, much less my touch.
The night before had been different. Your mind had closed off what had taken place and you were like a child, gentle, confiding, and entrancingly lovely as you turned to me for comfort. I held you in my arms, and I could not face the thought that you might never willingly lie there again. I could and would give you time for the memories of the ugly side of a man’s desire to fade. But would that be enough? I told myself that if you could be made to think, even for an instant, that you had yielded yourself to me once, it would not be so difficult for you to do it again.”
She remained rigid in his arms, ignoring, as much as possible, the hard masculinity of his body against hers and the straightforward appeal in his eyes. Her lips tightened, and then she said, “All in all, it was done for the sake of your own future pleasure, then?”
“And yours,” he said in a low voice, bending his head to seek her lips, tasting, teasing them with the promise of sensual delight.
Her mind warred with itself, one half standing back, viewing his appeal to her intellect and her senses with derision, encouraging her to feel used, manipulated for some nefarious purpose she could not discern. The other half registered an overpowering need to believe him, to rest content in the circle of his arms, drowning in the warmth of his kiss, malleable to his desire and obedient to her own amorous instincts. As his hands wandered over the curves and hollows of her body, she could feel her hostility melting away.
With an abrupt movement, she twisted out of his arms, backing away from him. “You must think I’m a simpleton to be taken in so easily,” she told him, scrubbing her hand across her lips. “Do you think I can stand for you to touch me now, knowing what you have done? You are an unscrupulous beast. You care for nothing except the satisfaction of your carnal appetites!”
“You may be right,” he drawled, stalking her in magnificent, rampant nakedness like the animal she had called him.
Her eyes widening a fraction, she retreated before him. With a few quick steps, she put the high-backed armchair between them. Rud swept it aside with one muscular arm, sending it skating across the polished floor.
Julia dashed to one side, escaping his grasping fingers by a hair’s breadth. Face grim, she swung around the foot of the bed, flinging herself into the sitting room. On a marquetry table was a chess set of carved stone sent to Thaddeus Baxter from the Far East. Julia swooped down upon it, gathering up the pieces with both hands, clutching them to her. The moment Rud came through the door, she shied a queen at his head before dropping back to the cover of the settee.
He ducked the first chess piece instinctively, and side-stepped the second, but a bishop glanced off his shoulder and a pawn caug
ht him squarely on the cheekbone. With an oath, he braved a hail of knights and pawns to charge her position. The settee rocked with his weight, teetering on its back legs as he swarmed up and over it.
With a small scream, Julia dodged the frontal attack. She would have slipped past him if his fingers had not closed on the silk of her underdress. The material held, and an instant later, he grasped the ends of her hair. Quickly, he wrapped the long strands about his wrist, and coiling the hair like a rope, he drew her to him. When she was close enough, he released her hair with a flip of his hand and closed his arms around her.
Swift as a striking snake, her hand came up, the fingers spread like claws to tear at his face. Within inches of their target, he caught her wrist, jerking it down, twisting it behind her back.
Her other hand was pinned between them. Julia closed her eyes, fighting sudden tears of frustration and chagrin.
Rud’s arms tightened around her. “Julia,” he said, his voice low and insistent. “Look at me. Am I such a monster? Have I hurt you in any way?”
She flicked him a look of scorn, but did not answer.
“Of course, it could be that I have spoiled you by being too gentle with you, too respectful of your tender sensibilities. Shall we try it the other way and see?”
He pushed his fingers beneath her hair, forcing her head back. His mouth descended on hers, devouring in its heat, twisting, demanding a response. His tongue slipped past her defenses, invading her being, a foretaste of the greater invasion to come. Her swelling breasts were pressed to the rock-hard planes of his chest. The heat of his loins burned into her skin.
Did he expect her to submit spinelessly to being ravished? To bow her head to whatever punishment he decided to dole out? She would not. If it took every ounce of her strength she would best him. So she was spoiled? Then so, was he. He was far too sure of himself, too accustomed to controlling what passed between them. From this moment, let him look to himself. If he would give no quarter, then neither would she.
By slow degrees, she ceased to fight him. Instead, she began to return his kiss with every sign of hunger. Her body became pliant, and she molded herself to him. Experimentally, she moved her hips, sliding the silk that separated them back and forth against him. His sudden in drawn breath was her reward.
He drew back slightly, staring down into her eyes. And then, they came together like duelists, seeking a weakness or an advantage. He loosened his hold, transferring his hands to her hips, drawing her tightly to the lower part of his body. Her hands, freed of restraint, crept up to smooth over his shoulders to the ridged muscle of his back before locking behind his head. Their mouths clung in savage exploration, a wild ravishing of lip and breast and thigh. Julia felt a fierce exultation rising within her, a singing madness in the blood that urged her to greater fury.
She trailed the sharp edges of her nails along the strong column of his neck and drove the taut peaks of her breasts into his chest. With fingers not quite so deft as usual, Rud pushed the small cap sleeves of her underdress from her shoulders, one after the other. As Julia extended her arms, allowing the underdress to fall about her feet, he lowered his head, trailing searing kisses from the hollow of her throat to the mound of her bared breast.
The settee was behind him. Rud lifted Julia with a dizzying swing. A few steps, and she felt the cool silk upholstery beneath her back. Then, he was beside her, plundering her body with his mouth and hands as she reached out for him in a primitive instinct to grasp and hold.
A prickling sensation ran over her in waves and her skin seemed to glow with an internal heat. As he rose above her, she sought to guide his entry, welcoming the hard penetration. She closed her eyes tightly, her breath caught in her throat. He began to move and she surged upward, unwilling to lose contact, unable to contain the pleasure of the joining that rippled through her. She clutched the corded muscles of his arms, the rasp of his breathing an echo in her mind as they strove together, foes, combatants caught up in the blood lust of battle, sharing a ferocious joy in the struggle. Julia began to pant, turning her head from side to side. Her mind lost its grasp on her motives as she felt the onrush of pure sensation, an incredible, boundless expansion of ecstasy. It was so intense that a convulsive shudder raced along her nerves, leaving in its wake a voluptuous desire to encompass the man whose weight pressed her down, to forge him to her with the powerful bonds of passion.
Dazed, overwhelmed by her own emotions, Julia hardly knew when he left her. There was not room for both on the narrow settee. He knelt beside her, stroking her gold hair that spilled in a shining mass to the floor.
“Dear God,” he breathed, and leaned to kiss her trembling eyelids and the vulnerable curves of her mouth.
Slowly, she opened her eyes. Her expression was bleak as she stared for long moments into the deep, fathomless blue of his eyes. Then, with a weary shake of her head, she sat up. As unconscious of her nakedness as a pagan priestess, she got to her feet and walked away, leaving him on one knee there beside the settee.
~ ~ ~
A light tap fell on the sitting-room door. Julia looked up from the book in her lap. “Come in,” she called.
Aunt Lucinda stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. “Ready, my dear?” she asked, then went on, “Yes, I can see you must be or you would not be reading. How calm you are, to be sure. I am always in a transport of excitement before I set out on a journey.”
“So am I,” Julia said inviting Rud’s aunt to sit down with a smiling gesture. “Only at the moment I am too tired to show it.”
“I don’t doubt it. Driving hither and yon with Rud, dancing attendance on his mother, seeing to your packing and his, all on top of your stint of nursing? Anyone would be exhausted.”
The older woman’s understanding was, as always, balm to Julia’s spirits. “I will have plenty of time to rest when we are at sea — more time than I will know what to do with, no doubt. Let me thank you again for the box of books you are sending with us. As you can see, I could not resist dipping into them at once.”
Aunt Lucinda reached to pat Julia’s hand in absent approval. “I’m glad, but I find myself wishing you did not have to go just yet. I have so enjoyed your stay with us, especially at this time. Thaddeus and I feel that Rud could not have chosen better for a wife than you, my dear. We will miss both of you exceedingly.”
Touched by the tribute, Julia said everything that was appropriate for both herself and Rud.
“There is another reason I wish it were possible for you to delay your departure,” Aunt Lucinda went on. “I am worried about Rud. He does not seem himself to me, not at all. He never used to be so edgy and temperamental. And that bruise on his cheekbone when he was nearly well. I never understood exactly how that came about. I didn’t like to pry, of course, but I could not help wondering if he had tried to get up too soon and fallen. He was so uncommunicative about it.”
The accuracy of her aim with a chess piece had caused Rud no small amount of discomfiture. The bruise had been magnificent, even spreading to his eye. “I don’t think you need worry. I promise you he is completely recovered. He is plagued with an occasional headache still, and he will always have an extra part in his hair from the scar, but he is as strong as ever.”
Aunt Lucinda sighed. “It would be foolish not to take your word, but I cannot be easy in my mind. I assure you he never used to be so dour. He was always of a serious turn, but he did not act as though he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.”
“He is a married man now,” Julia said quietly.
“Oh, my dear! I never meant to suggest that there was any connection, truly I did not. No bridegroom could be more loving and affectionate than he is with you. It quite reminds me of how Thaddeus and I were many years ago. No, I would far rather suspect he has some secret trouble he does not wish to discuss, something to do with the Sea Jade, perhaps.”
“I suppose it is possible,” Julia said in a neutral tone. Though she had had more reas
on than Aunt Lucinda to notice Rud’s moodiness, it was not a thing she could discuss with the other woman. The causes were many and varied; the responsibility of going forward with the expedition, the irritation of having to pander to his mother’s wishes or risk exposure, the last-minute arrangements to satisfy himself that the Sea Jade would rendezvous with the David in Rio de Janeiro at the proper time, and last of all, his relationship with her. Add to these his headaches and the feeling that valuable time had slipped away while he was tied to his bed, and it was no wonder that Rud was not himself.
“Well, I’ll not say any more. He is a grown man and knows his limitations, while I am a silly old woman who should have more to worry about. Only, you will keep an eye on him, won’t you? I am certain you can persuade him to have a care of himself if anyone can.”
“Of course I will,” Julia promised, the warmth in her tone more for Aunt Lucinda’s thwarted mother instincts than for the prospect of being Rud’s appointed keeper.
“Ah! Silly old woman indeed,” Rud’s aunt exclaimed. “I was supposed to tell you to make sure your trunks are ready, for they will be coming for them at any moment. Also, Rud is with his uncle just now, but he said he will be ready to leave for the David as soon as you see the trunks taken away and come downstairs.”
The words were hardly out of her mouth when a commotion was heard in the hallway outside. With a quick embrace and the assurance that she would see Julia downstairs before she left, Aunt Lucinda took herself out of the way. Julia hardly had time for more than a nod before she was surrounded by maids, footmen, and draymen. Signaling to Masters, who stood in the doorway, she pointed out the boxes and trunks gathered in one place and left the task of seeing them transferred to the vehicle outside to him. Moving through the bedchamber into the dressing room, Julia took up her bonnet of gray-and-black straw banded with black ribbon and set it on her hair. While she tied the strings beneath her chin, she surveyed her traveling costume of French twilled silk. Though well enough in itself, its gray-and-black severity did not suit a pale complexion. With a faint shrug, she touched the gold bee at her throat to be certain it was secure, then picked up her gloves and reticule and turned away.
Love and Adventure Collection - Part 1 (Love and Adventure Boxed Sets) Page 19