Jack tried stern. He frowned down at the woman from his great height. “Where is who?”
If Jack was not mistaken, sternness offended her even more than bemusement had. The woman ripped her black lace gloves from her hands as if preparing for battle, then unpinned her black straw bonnet and whipped it from her head to flutter to the floor behind her. Dark hair gleamed, pulled tightly back from her brow, and blue eyes burned ice cold in her small, pale face. This stranger, who looked remarkably like Amaryllis except for the unholy fury in her eyes, advanced upon him. “Where is she?”
Jack drew back in surprise, then peered closer. So familiar . . .
“Bramble?”
He used to tease her with that name, saying she was too thorny to be a mere laurel bush. Impossible. Laurel was a mere girl when he saw her last—and even then he scarcely noticed her beside the more flamboyant Amaryllis.
Flinching at the old nickname, Miss Laurel Clarke—for it was indeed Laurel, all grown-up—turned a particularly enraged shade of marble white. Lips stretched tightly over her teeth, she grated out a noise of pure fury. “Where is she, Jack? Where is Melody?”
Jack stepped back once. “Melody is upstairs in her room. Why—?”
Instantly Laurel turned and lifted her skirts high, going for the stairs at a run. Shocked, Jack quickly followed.
“Laurel, what is this?” She ignored him, taking the stairs fast, her dainty booted feet flying.
“Laurel, is this Amaryllis’s doing?”
Laurel cast him a single disbelieving glare over her shoulder and kept on, taking the next story at speed. “What floor?” she snapped out.
Jack frowned. “The top story. Lady Madeleine built her a nursery—” He was losing ground. He picked up the pace, catching up to Laurel as she took the last steps up the staircase and rounded the banister into the hallway Aidan shared with Colin and the elderly but still spry Lord Aldrich.
She paused there with one hand on the polished railing, out of breath and panting. When Jack stepped closer to her, she whirled on him. “Get out of my way! I’m taking her out of this place right this minute!”
“What?” Alarm raced through Jack. “What do you mean? Has Amaryllis finally decided to confess? Did she send you to take Melody back to the Compton estate?”
Laurel made that noise again. Then she placed both palms on his chest and physically shoved him backward. “Get. Out. Of. My. Way!”
Jack didn’t budge, which seemed to add to her rage. She stopped pushing and brushed a dark curl out of her eyes with the back of one hand, all the better to glare up at him with so much hatred that then he did step back a little.
“Where are your rooms?” she demanded.
“One down, directly below here.” She was so different from the girl he’d known. “What possesses you, Laurel?”
She snarled, then turned toward the first door on her left. Thrusting it open, she ran inside. “Melody!”
Jack waited for Laurel to come back out of the unoccupied room. When she emerged, however, she simply pushed past him and made for the next door, which happened to be that to Colin’s new quarters with his wife, Pru, and her young brother, Evan. Jack blocked Laurel’s grasp for the latch with his hand. She backed out of his reach, shooting him a glare of hatred.
“What do you want, Laurel? What business have you with Melody?”
“Business,” she snarled. “You have no business with Melody. I am taking her out of this madhouse and you will never be able to manipulate her or me ever again!”
“Manipulate?”
“Melody! Melodyyy!”
A piping little voice called from Aidan’s quarters, “Papa?”
“Stay put, Melody,” Jack called back. He didn’t know what Laurel was talking about and he certainly didn’t know why she was looking daggers at him, but he did know that her wild demeanor and shouting would frighten Melody, who had already borne enough today. Holding both hands out soothingly, he advanced on Laurel.
“Calm yourself. Simply listen. . . .” Using his size to herd her away from Melody, he maneuvered Laurel back down the hall. Not down the stairs. No, better keep this to himself for the moment. There was no need to get everyone’s hopes up again until he understood why Amaryllis had changed her mind and sent her sister to claim Melody after all.
Over Laurel’s shoulder, he spied the door to the attic. It would provide a quiet place to talk and one where her excited state would not alarm anyone. Keeping his voice at a soothing murmur, he had Laurel by the elbow and through the door in a moment. Up a narrow flight of dusty stairs, and then they were in the main room of the attic, a vast cavern of roof beams above and discarded furniture all around them.
Her skin was flushed and he could feel the heat of her body through the thin black stuff of her sleeve. The sensation of touching her both alarmed and confused him. Surely that was only because he’d kept to himself for so long.
Once at the top, Laurel shook off his grip and backed away from him, glaring at him in the light entering through a large, dirty window to the rear of the attic.
Laurel clapped a hand to her elbow and rubbed it, but not because he had hurt her. His firm grip had been implacable but not harmful. She massaged her arm to erase the sensation of his large, warm hand upon her flesh. Even the brief seconds of contact had reminded her. One tingling touch and she lived it all again. Flashes through her mind, moments from those hot, sweating hours of large, talented hands roaming every inch of her, driving her higher, making her shudder again and again, lost in pleasure like nothing she’d known before or since.
So he has big hands. What of it?
All the more reason to hate him, for he could do more damage with a single touch than any other man could do with hours to study the problem.
Now Jack had her here, alone in this attic, and was gazing at her with those dark eyes, like the wells of his soul, dark and impenetrable.
Unless one knew how to look into them.
Still, they lied. They must, for he could never be the man she’d once thought him and have the capacity to ruin her life the way he had.
Enough of this. She took a step back toward the stairs. He held out one hand to stop her. She backed away from his touch once more, unwilling to test her own fortitude.
“I’m taking her and we’re leaving this place and you shall never see us again, you foul blackguard!”
Jack’s brow creased. “I gathered that. Why?”
Betrayed fury welled up in Laurel. “Why?” She flung herself at him, fists raised, instantly forgetting her vow to stay away from him. With an animal cry containing echoes of every single moment of pain he’d caused her, she beat at his broad chest. “Bastard! You rotten, black-hearted, soulless—”
He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly to him. “Laurel—”
She couldn’t strike while trapped inside his embrace, which was of course his intention. She could only struggle wildly while feral noises ripped from her throat. Jack, Mama, Papa, Amy—all the people Laurel had loved most in the world, all had cut away a piece of her heart until all she had was pain and black, swallowing loneliness!
Well, no more!
So she struggled and thrashed and it was quite possible she did a certain amount of biting as well, but she could not break his unyielding embrace. His arms remained tight about her as she enacted years of soul-shattering loss with her flailing fists and her kicking feet and curses spilling from her lips that she hadn’t even realized she’d known.
At last, as her fury dulled into exhaustion, her mind quieted enough to realize that through all her violence not once had he retaliated. Not even with a harsh word. He’d simply stood there, like a granite figure, and held her while she rioted.
With her breath still catching in odd little sobs, she spread her palms across his chest and pushed firmly. “Let me go,” she whispered.
He didn’t respond. She took a deep breath and spoke more firmly. “Release me.”
When his grasp
did not ease in the slightest, she risked a glance up. His face was turned to one side and his eyes were closed. If his body was granite, that face was glacial ice. His jaw was clenched so hard that the tendons on his neck were distended. Something was wrong. . . .
Then she felt it, hardening against her belly. She recognized that hardness. For one endless night, she’d had it for her very own. Memories of his largeness, his heat, his silk-sheathed steel in her hands, in her body, in her mouth . . .
She dampened instantly, her body betraying her yet again. For all her hatred, all her pain, she had never entirely convinced herself that that night had been anything but ecstasy. If anything, that was one of the betrayals—to give her the knowledge that such sweet pleasure could exist and then take it away forever.
For a long breathless moment, an instant that felt like an hour, they remained pressed together, no longer in struggle, no longer in combat. Her fury spent, her will weakened by exhaustion and memories, Laurel even let her forehead drop to rest upon his hard chest. All by themselves, her fingers spread against that chest, feeling the warmth of him through his weskit and shirt, tracking the thudding of his heart through touch.
Her own heart skittered wildly and the dampness between her legs gave way to a dull throbbing, as if she was empty and ached to be filled. The silence stretched about them, winding around and around like a spider’s silk, keeping them pressed together, breathless, waiting. . . .
Jack’s mind rioted, though he kept his body still from sheer will. This was Laurel he held pressed to his body, held tight to his growing erection. When last he’d seen her, she’d been a girl, a near stranger, a someday sister—
How was it then that his body knew her? How was it that he stood here, holding her, wanting her with an intensity that kept his jaw clenched and his gut trembling and his cock turning to iron?
Odd shreds of memory tangled in his mind. Laurel, in braids, laughing as he teased her. Amaryllis sneering as her sister, red faced and mortified, daubed at a tea stain on her bodice. Amaryllis, sweet mouthed and giving, rolling naked beneath him.
Laurel, gazing at him with blue eyes filled with longing he’d been too young and stupid to see at the time.
Amaryllis, crying as he was thrown from the house, even though she’d been the one to spur the ejection.
Something isn’t right. Think.
He couldn’t think. His mind was helpless in the maelstrom of his sudden, inexplicable lust, a black, gaping void of need—
Need for his former lover’s sister?
Appalling. Dishonorable. Utterly impossible, except for the undeniable fact of his painfully erect cock and the responsive softening and melting of her body against him. His hold tightened. Her face lifted as he opened his eyes to gaze down at her tearstained face. Blue eyes locked on brown. Her lips parted and her breath warmed his mouth—
“Papa?” Melody’s high little voice piped up the stairs. “Are you there?”
The latch of the door below rattled. Jack watched Laurel’s face as the sweet vacancy of lust left her eyes and reason—or what passed for it today—returned. She pushed hard at his chest. “Melody!” she called. “Mel—”
The door below began to open. Battle instincts took over. Shielding Melody was second nature. With a single decisive movement, Jack thrust Laurel into a side chamber of the attic. She stumbled to a stop, then turned to stare at him.
“No!” Her eyes widened and she rushed forward, trying to stop him. “Jack, no! She’s my—”
He slammed the door shut on her words and twisted the key that stood in the lock. One hand slid the key into his pocket as he turned to greet the cherubic little face peering through the crack of light at the bottom of the stairs. A dull pounding started on the heavy oak door behind him, so he masked it by trotting briskly down the stairs to where Melody waited. No danger of her pursuing her curiosity any further.
Melody wouldn’t enter the attic. Ever.
Four
“He did what?” In the quiet dressing chamber, Melody’s voice was nearly a shriek. “I cannot believe it!” She lifted her head from Button’s shoulder to stare at him in horror.
Button nodded. “It’s quite true. He told me himself.”
Melody looked ill. “But that’s ghastly! How could he do such a thing?”
Button patted her hand. “He didn’t do it to be horrible. It was a . . . mistake. A mistake that rather got out of hand in the days afterward.”
“Days? Afterward?” Melody gaped. “You mean he kept her in there? For how long?”
Button pursed his lips. “I could tell you, but then I’d be forced to skip all the good parts. Besides, you should have a little more faith in your father.”
“No! It’s too horrible!” Melody folded her arms. “I shall never speak to him again.”
Button smiled. “Be sure to tell him that when he walks you down the aisle in an hour.” He tweaked her nose. “Now, my fine, fierce Melody, do you want to hear this story or not?”
“Not!” Melody flounced, but it was a rather poor effort, since she was already sitting down. She let out a long breath. “Oh, well. I suppose.”
With his arm about her shoulders, Button coaxed her into a more comfortable position, leaning into him once again. He dropped a quick kiss on her head, taking care not to muss her bridal hairdressing. “Now where was I?”
“My father tossed my mother into the dungeon and walked away.”
“Your father was trying to convince your rightfully upset mother that she should listen to him.”
“I wouldn’t listen to someone who locked me up!”
Button chuckled. “Well, there is a definite resemblance of temperament, now that I think about it, for pretty Laurel had much the same reaction. . . .”
Laurel pounded on the thick oak door until her fists began to numb. Jack didn’t return. Finally, she turned to lean her back against the barrier and slid down it to sit with her arms about her knees.
Trapped. Locked away. Imprisoned.
Again.
She tried to keep her anger paramount, so that she wouldn’t have to feel the chill growing in her belly. Four walls. A window. A door she could not open. It was all terribly, nauseatingly familiar.
A good girl from a good family shouldn’t know about imprisonment. A girl like she had once been couldn’t conceive of a time when her very existence depended upon a tray of food passed through thrice a day.
Good girls from good families shouldn’t suddenly become with child, either.
Please, Mama, don’t lock me in! Papa, please, please let me out! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!
It hadn’t been the pregnancy that had enraged them as much as it had been her refusal to identify her lover. She’d kept the secret, waiting for Jack, believing that he would come back for her.
Yet months had passed. Months when the idea of climbing down three stories clinging to nothing but an ivy vine consumed weeks of thought. She’d never been brave enough to try it then, not with her body growing larger by the day, but now she dried her eyes and gazed thoughtfully at the large window at the other end of the room.
She wasn’t helpless and pregnant now.
Unfortunately, the window opened up onto nothing but the street far below. Mentally, she recounted the flights she’d climbed in her rush to find Melody. The main floor. One. Three turns around the landing. Four. The attic stairs. Five. She swallowed hard, gazing at the very narrow ledge running beneath the window. It was only a little wider than her palm and slick with soot and bird droppings.
Perhaps . . . not.
She shook her head and extended her gaze out over the street. There were carts and a few carriages driving by, but the drivers were intent on their horses. The sound of clopping hooves covered her calls.
She waited for the carts to pass, then turned her efforts on a young man carrying a sack on one shoulder as he unloaded a stopped cart at a storefront. Her loudest cry finally caused him to glance up. He tipped his cap back on his h
ead, flashed her a smile, and answered her frantic wave with a blown kiss.
Cheeky devil. He thought she was flirting with him!
It was no good. The street was too noisy and too far away. People tended to mind what was in front of them, not above them.
Casting a last reluctant glance at the crusty ledge, Laurel withdrew back inside the room, latching the window shut against the late-afternoon chill.
She couldn’t climb down five stories, but then again, she wouldn’t have to. Jack would come back, and when he did she was going to kill him! At least twice! Then she was going to lightly step past his battered body and stroll directly out the front door!
Pressing her fingertips hard against her eyes, she refused to let tears of frustration and remembered terror come. That didn’t stop the memories, however.
Jack. Handsome and dashing, full of laughter. He’d fallen under Amaryllis’s spell at once, just like every other young man who met Amy, but unlike the others, he hadn’t ignored Laurel’s existence. Or worse, mocked her for her shyness and her fondness of reading.
Plain Jane, the suitors had called her. Wallflower. Once they’d realized that it amused Amaryllis to mock Laurel, they’d let loose the full force of their imaginations to come up with witty little jests at Laurel’s expense.
Fortunately, those imaginations were almost universally limited. Only Jack had come up with a name both teasing and admiring.
She’d just stalked out of the parlor yet again, having had enough of Amaryllis’s admirers for the day. Her mother had ordered Laurel to attend to Amy, for Mama hadn’t felt well enough to sit in company. Though Laurel was but sixteen to Amaryllis’s eighteen, any female presence would do in a pinch, to keep the forms of propriety.
“Propriety can go hang!” Laurel muttered under her breath as she marched from the room. “Dandies! Ought to call them candies, for they’ve all got sugar floss for brains!”
A bark of surprised laughter behind her had made her whirl, one hand over her mouth in horror. Oh, heavens, if Mama learned of this!
Then Laurel saw him, leaning one shoulder on the paneling of the wall outside the parlor. On his narrow, handsome face was a flash of teasing smile and gleaming admiration in his dark eyes.
Scoundrel in My Dreams Page 5