His heart pounded against his ribs, seeming desperate to leap free of his chest. His held breath made his lungs burn while he counted the seconds. Five, then ten, and twenty. Panic overwhelmed him when thirty seconds passed without so much as a splash on the surface, the water like a dark sheet of ice.
“Cassandra!” he bellowed, bursting through the trees and stripping off his greatcoat as he dashed to the water’s edge.
He gave no thought to how cold the water would be as he tossed the garment aside and went splashing into the pond. Her ankle must be caught in the reeds that grew along the bottom, or her body convulsing and jerking as she drowned, lungs filling with water. There was no time to take off his shirt or his boots, no time to think of anything but her as he dove, fumbling about in the dark for a limb, a lock of hair, any part of her he could latch onto. Even with his eyes open, he could see nothing in the dark water, not a flash of the nightgown or a flailing limb. There seemed to be nothing except darkness and silence, leading him to wonder if he’d imagined it.
He went back up for a breath, swiping water out of his eyes and gazing about to ensure she hadn’t resurfaced on her own. No sign of her, so he plunged again.
He wasn’t mad, and he hadn’t been seeing things. She was here— she had to be.
Suddenly, something struck his shoulder—a hand or a foot. He swiveled and took hold of it, relief flooding him as he followed what turned out to be a hand along the arm attached to it. She thrashed in his hold, the strength she exerted telling him that she lived, if nothing else. Wrapping both arms around her, he kicked for the surface, struggling to keep hold of her as she fought his hold, panic making the motions uncoordinated. Tendrils of her hair lashed his face and tickled his jaw, while a glimpse of her nightgown showed itself amongst the black water.
Finally, she stilled, seeming to realize that her struggles would drown both herself and her rescuer. Keeping one arm tight around her, he propelled them up, up and out of the depths. Frigid air stung his throat and chest as they sprang free with a splash, his head spinning from so much time without air. Coughing and sputtering, she began twisting and writhing again, trying to break free of his hold.
“It’s all right,” he managed between coughs. “Cass, it’s me! It’s Robert.”
She kicked free of him, beginning to swim toward the bank. Puzzled by the evidence that she was a strong swimmer, he followed, panting from the effort it took when his rescue attempt had leeched all the strength from his limbs.
“You!” she spat, glaring at him over her shoulder as she trudged through the shallows. “What the devil were you thinking?”
His feet found the spongy ground, the wet earth sucking at his boots. His skin stung as if thousands of tiny needles prickled him, while his shirt clung to his chest.
“Me?” he replied, his breath still coming in shallow spurts as he struggled to steady it. “What about you? How could you be so reckless, wading in a pool you aren’t familiar with in the dead of night?”
She’d reached the bank now, shuddering and shaking as she swiveled to face him, hands balled into fists at her sides. “I am thoroughly familiar with this swimming hole, thank you very much. Furthermore, I wasn’t drowning, you idiot. At least, not until you came grasping about down there and frightened me half to death!”
Teeth chattering, Robert wrapped his arms around himself and stared at her, disbelief flooding him in a confused rush. Several thoughts filled his mind at once, but he couldn’t seem to form any of them into words.
She’d gone under on purpose, and stayed there for a full minute, possibly longer, without surfacing. While she insisted she hadn’t been drowning, Robert couldn’t fight the fear niggling the back of his mind. It told him she was lying, or at least not telling him the entire truth. She hadn’t been drowning … yet. But, something told him she might have wanted to, that she had come out here tonight to contemplate ending her life.
The horror that seized him at the thought proved overwhelming, panging through his entire body from the vicinity of his chest.
“I couldn’t h-have kn-known,” he stammered, his entire body now trembling against the frigid air. “I c-came upon the p-pond and saw y-you go under. Wh-when you d-didn’t resurface, I …”
She crouched to pick up a dressing gown, swirling it over her shoulder as she rose. Casting him a derisive glance, she snorted, thrusting her arms through the sleeves.
“You thought to come to my rescue like the perfect gentleman you are. How very noble.”
He wasn’t certain if it were the cold air or the contempt dripping from her words, but annoyance rose in him faster than he could squelch. Taking a few steps toward her, he clenched his teeth to stop the chattering.
“I r-risked my own neck jumping in after you,” he ground out. “Even if I assumed wrong, a s-simple ‘thank you’ might be in order.”
She snatched the belt of her robe into a knot, then stomped toward him, her face set in hard, harsh lines, nostrils flaring. His belly clenched when she drew near, his limbs tingling as his blood rushed as if preparing him to run. He held his ground and told himself he was still shivering from standing about in the cold.
Her upper lip curled back into a sneer as she came nose-to-nose with him, her voice a harsh growl.
“Other women may find your false gallantry and heroics to be romantic, but I do not. In short, Mr. Stanley, I am not some wide-eyed damsel in distress … I do not need saving.”
She stood close enough now that he could make out her every feature, illuminated by the moonlight shining from a cloudless sky. The icy water had stolen the warmth that usually kissed her skin with a healthy glow. Her eyes seemed larger, gleaming a silvery blue in sharp contrast to her pale face. Her hair looked more red than blond, wet and hanging around her face in slick coils. She achieved the sort of spirals other women used curling tongs or papers for with no effort, making him want to toy with them, pull each coil and watch it spring and bounce back into place.
But, touching her would be a horrible idea, so he kept his hands to himself, despite wanting to pull her into his arms and kiss that disagreeable frown right off her face.
“What were you doing on my property in the middle of the night, anyway?”
“Technically, I was still on my property until I approached the pond,” he retorted. “I am your neighbor now, in case you weren’t aware, and I often walk and ride in these woods.”
Her raised eyebrows seemed to ask if he always traipsed about in the middle of the night. After a while, her silent, probing perusal made it difficult to stand still. Before he could begin squirming under her scrutiny, he turned to walk away.
“Right, then,” he muttered. “It’s a long walk back to Briarwell and it’s bloody freezing out here.”
He began picking his way around the edge of the pond, keeping an eye out for his greatcoat. He had no idea where it had landed when he’d cast it off. He’d just located it when Cassandra called out to him.
“Mr. Stanley!”
He turned to find she still stood where he'd left her, clutching at the lapels of her dressing gown as she watched him.
“Yes?” he replied, shrugging into his coat.
His toes had begun to grow numb from the water pooled in his sopping boots, but his coat offered a bit of protection from the elements.
Cassandra’s expression shifted as she stared at him, as if wrestling with annoyance and sympathy. Finally, she heaved a sigh and motioned for him to follow her.
“I cannot very well send you back to Briarwell in such a condition. The least I can do is allow you a place to warm up and dry off. Come along.”
Without waiting to see if he would follow, she turned and began trudging up the sloping path through the trees and toward the dower house. For a moment he contemplated refusing, turning back the way he’d come and returning home, the cold and his wet clothes be damned. She hadn’t seemed happy to see him, which only made the fact that he’d been thinking of her for the past four months
all the more embarrassing. Besides, it was clear she was doing this because she didn’t want to be responsible for the consequences of sending him out into the night in such a condition.
But then, that nagging curiosity about her reared its ugly head, prompting him to follow wherever she might lead. There was also the prospect of a warm fire and dry clothing, so the choice seemed clear enough.
He rushed to follow her, unsteady on shaking legs and numb feet. He blew warm air into his cupped hands to keep them thawed and followed her through the trees and toward the cottage.
Even in the dark, he could see that the abandoned property had been prepared for its new occupant, the overgrown yard and garden tamed into some semblance of order, the roof repaired, and the door freshly painted. The manor itself, several acres deeper onto Easton Park lands, would need a bit more attention before the Duke of Penrose could visit or invite guests. After Bertram’s indiscretions had bankrupted the family, his father had attempted selling off all his unentailed property, including Easton Park. But, the destroyed reputations of the Fairchilds had kept any potential buyers away. So, the family had been forced to abandon the property, and here it had sat, crumbling and falling deeper into ruin while its tenants found new homes and the servants sought employment.
“Will your uncle take up residence in the manor soon?” he asked, the silence putting him on edge.
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye as they passed a small garden enclosed by a stone wall with wrought iron adornments along its top.
“Not anytime soon … at least, not until after the end of the coming Season. Penrose is partial to London and so are the rest of my family. I wanted out of the city, so he offered the dower house.”
They neared the back of the cottage, where a pair of doors hung open to a terrace.
“Have you found Suffolk to be preferable?”
“It is quiet and isolated without being too far from Town … which is all I required. I suppose the manners of some of our neighbors leaves much to be desired, but I expected nothing less.”
He scowled to know she might have been treated poorly, but was hardly surprised. His own mother had spoken of Cassandra as if she had the plague.
Holding a finger over her lips, she led him into a darkened drawing room. On the table near the door sat a taper in a brass holder. She gestured for him to close the doors behind them and took up her candle.
The place remained silent and still as they moved through a narrow corridor toward the front of the house. Then, he followed her up a steep staircase to the second floor, careful to keep his footsteps as light as possible.
Cassandra's taper cast their shadows against the wall, oblong shapes stark and exaggerated in the circle of yellow light. Opening the second door on the right, she ducked into a bedchamber. Robert followed, sighing with relief as the heat of a crackling fire began warming his face. He still shivered a bit, but no longer felt as if he’d been stabbed in the heart with an icicle.
“Take off your clothes.”
The command came so suddenly, her voice shattering the silence of the room, that for a moment Robert could only stare at her. He flushed, her words calling all sorts of erotic memories to mind. He thought of taking off his own clothes, then hers, then laying her before the fire and …
“So that I can lay them near the hearth to dry,” she added, raising an imperious eyebrow at him.
Where before he’d been freezing cold, he was now burning up with embarrassment. He felt like an utter dolt for his wandering thoughts. Of course she only wanted to make sure his clothes were dry.
“Here. Wrap this around yourself once you’ve disrobed.”
She offered him the counterpane from her bed, then began undressing herself. Robert laid the blanket over the back of a nearby armchair and began peeling off his clothes. While he let each garment fall into a pile on the floor, he could not help but stare at Cassandra, who neglected the privacy screen on the other side of the chamber as she let her dressing gown slip down her body. He paused, his fingers trembling at the buttons on his trousers as he watched her work the fastenings down the front of her nightgown.
The rapidly opening gap of the garment displayed the swells of her breasts, the wet fabric clinging here and there, leaving little to the imagination. Biting his lip, he lowered his gaze when she glanced up to catch him staring. Stilling his numb, shaking fingers, he began working his own buttons again.
“You can turn your back if it offends your sense of modesty to look,” she said. “But … well, you’ve seen all of me, haven’t you?” God, had he ever.
“Right, of course,” he replied, daring another glance at her.
She had moved to the fireplace and stood there in the buff, brushing her wet hair with smooth, rhythmic strokes.
His next words fell out before he could think better of them. “Not that I’d look away because I … I mean, I like looking … you …”
No woman had ever robbed him of words. Even with Daphne he’d always had the perfect, honeyed words on the tip of his tongue.
Cassandra turned him into a bumbling idiot, and he wasn’t certain he liked the feeling.
“I think you’re beautiful,” he finally managed.
She paused mid-stroke, the brush pressed against her hair. The curls began to frizz as they dried, leaving her looking like some wild goddess, the flames turning the blond tones to pure gold.
“Another thing other women might enjoy that I do not Mr. Stanley … empty flatteries.”
He frowned, taking a step toward her before remembering he stood there in only his drawers. Clearing his throat, he took up the counterpane and wrapped it around his shoulders. Then, using one hand to keep the blanket closed over his body, he used the other hand to push his small-clothes down around his ankles. Then, he knelt to gather the clothing and approach, careful to use the blanket as a shield.
And it was, indeed, a shield—against her probing eyes and her notice of the erection growing between his legs. The sight of her standing about nude affected him in the most primitive of ways, and he did not wish to flaunt it.
“I did not say it for the sake of having something to say."
He offered her his clothes, then lingered near the fire to soak in its heat.
Already, the feeling had come back to his toes and he was quite warm beneath his counterpane.
“The word ‘beautiful’ gets thrown about so casually, it has no meaning any longer,” she said while spreading his clothes out over a small loveseat facing the fire, smoothing her hands over them as she did. “It’s used against every empty-headed chit to make her feel special, when the same word is applied to trees and flowers and the sky. In truth, it reduces a person to being no more than an ornament to their surroundings, and I have no interest in that.”
Her words spoke to a deep-seated part of himself—the part that had longed for people to see him as more than the ‘pretty’ Stanley boy, the one people only wanted to be around because he was pleasant to look at. He had very few close friends because of it, the interest of others proving shallow at best.
“I didn’t mean to be cliché,” he said. “It is just … well, instead of saying that, I ought to have said that I think your hair is quite the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen. Not quite blond or red … sort of gold at times. Your eyes, too … not blue, but not gray either.”
To his surprise, she smirked at him, the expression both teasing and mischievous. “Mr. Stanley, are you calling me a conundrum?”
A little chuckle bubbled up in his chest. “You are, indeed. Which is why …”
Staring into the flames, he bit his tongue, cursing himself for almost embarrassing himself yet again. What was it about being in her presence that made him want to spill his every secret—even the deep, dark thoughts he’d never whispered to another soul?
She turned to face him, letting her hairbrush drop to the floor, the grayish glint of her eyes turning to molten silver as if heated by some internal fire.
A lump rose in his throat, swift and hard, making it difficult to breathe let alone speak. Her breasts swayed with every step, the pink tips earning his full attention. They were the perfect caps for the teardrop-shaped orbs, and he remembered them being quite sensitive to the touch. Her reaction when he’d teased them with his tongue had been electrifying.
She took hold of the counterpane wrapped around him and gave it a sharp tug, yanking him even closer. He sucked in a sharp breath and struggled to stay on his feet, the throbbing organ between his thighs making it difficult to think. She was touching him, pulling him close and looking at him as if ready to devour him whole.
Heaven help him, he wanted to let her.
“Tell me,” she demanded, a sharp command thinly veiled under a seductive purr.
And just like that, she’d snared him like she had that night at the White Cock. He’d do or say anything to have her touch him, command him, rule him.
“Why I haven’t stopped thinking about you since … that night,” he murmured, lowering his gaze to her lips. “I have tried for four long months, but to no avail. You have been like a fever in my blood, always raging with no relief in sight.”
A cat-like smile curved her lips, and she used both hands to cast the counterpane aside. He stood naked before her, every bit of him exposed—including the cockstand pointing straight at her as if to indicate that the thing it wanted stood right there.
Her eyes glittered even more, her gaze sliding down his bare chest and abdomen before landing on his cock.
“Have you thought about how I fucked you?”
“Y-yes,” he stammered, nearly doubling over when her fingers closed around his shaft. “God, yes.”
“Have you stroked this cock to the memory, wishing for it to happen again?”
The Damsel: A Villain Duology Sequel Page 11