“Perfect.”
Perfect.
It was not love that was preventing him from ending Laura Mayhew’s life he told the Fates. Nothing like it. Lust was stalling the completion of this mission. Her mouth, her body, her eyes that were like the vast green ocean—sex intruded on his thoughts continually. He had a beautiful girl in his power and he wanted to fuck her. Why not? He was a man and she was his mark. The girl had been handed a death sentence and he was the executioner. Why shouldn’t he enjoy the spoils first?
Laura leaned back and slid her shoulders down under the water. Her wet hair cascaded over the side of the copper tub like a glossy shower of sunlight.
“Can I ask you something?” She closed her eyes.
The girl crooked one knee awkwardly over the other, trying to cover herself and Tanner felt his blood rise. Her breasts were heavy and impossibly high given their size, the size of melons with nipples that puckered tight like new pink roses.
“If you must.”
His fingers trembled as he rubbed soap in her hair. Tanner’s gaze travelled to her flat belly, a belly he suddenly, inexplicably, wanted to fill with his seed. Good God! He didn’t even want children. He hated the brats. This damnable cock of his had a mind of its own, growing by inches and pressing against his breeches.
“Why won’t you tell me about your dream?”
There was great danger here. Tanner had never been vulnerable to his marks before. Not even Prince Edward’s conquests had been able to command him so easily, and those ladies were well-versed in pleasing a man.
“Because talking about it will cause it to return,” he said irritably. “It is not the first time I’ve had it. The details of the dream never vary. I told someone about it once and have lived to regret that decision. I will not be so careless a second time.”
Chapter Two
LAURA TILTED her head back to meet his eyes. “I am not going to hurt you, sir. I am as vulnerable as I can be right now. It can do no harm to tell me about it.”
He did not intend to tell her. He did not want to tell her. Tanner rubbed her scalp vigorously and avoided her gaze. “I have never been able to tolerate small spaces,” he said shortly. “Being trapped—confined—is hideous to me.”
“You suffer from claustrophobia?”
“Is there a name for it?”
“There is a name for everything. Claustrophobia is a fear of confined spaces; it is a fear many people share, or so I have learned from my time at Gateshead Asylum. There are several books in their library detailing a variety of phobias.”
He nodded, grimacing. “Claustrophobia then. My fear of small spaces brings on the dream. It’s always the same. I’m trapped below decks and I’m drowning. The ship I’m on is sinking and they’ve locked me in a tiny room and I can’t get out. I claw on the ceiling trying to break through until my fingers are bloody. The dream always ends with me drowning and I see my body being dragged to the bottom of the cold, dark green sea.”
The horror of the image silenced Laura. The fire crackled and popped on the hearth.
“Why did it come to you tonight?” she said at last. “You are not trapped in a small space. Is it only your claustrophobia that brings on the dream? When I first met you I thought you smelled of the sea.”
“My father was a sailor. I grew up by the sea in Cornwall. But it has been six years since I moved inland; you could not have smelled the sea on me.” He worked the suds through her hair. “Do you need an explanation for everything? I dozed off and had a bad dream. Perhaps it was brought on by having to rescue you from the briar patch. You were the one trapped, not I.”
“Did it trouble you to see me caught like that?”
Laura tipped her head back and watched him steadily.
“No. I thought it served you right.”
Her cheeks were round and smooth and tinged with pink. She had such expressive eyes. Right now, they were filled with doubt. Tanner wanted to ask what she was thinking but he was afraid of what he would learn.
He massaged his fingers through her scalp and then reached for the pitcher of fresh water to rinse away the suds.
“Close your eyes,” he instructed. Tanner poured water over her locks.
She made a noise, half-shrieking, half-giggling. “It is cold.”
“You’ll get soap in your eyes—close them.”
When her hair was rinsed clean, Tanner picked up the bar of soap and lathered it between his hands. He rose up on his knees and rubbed his soapy hands over her breasts.
Oh holy hell...
He had not touched her before. Not like this. To have his hands on her tits, to feel how very ripe and full they were. Springy firm fruit ... her nipples were extremely sensitive, budding under his fingers at the slightest touch.
Laura’s eyes were on his face. “What are you doing?” Her voice was barely audible.
He could not tell her. She had dared him to try to win her love after what he had done, but he did not want to love her. He wanted to fuck her.
“Your trespass now becomes a fee,” she said softly. Her pupils were dilated.
“Mine ransoms yours,” Tanner repeated slowly as understanding dawned. “And yours must ransom me.”
It had been there from the first moment he saw her. It was the reason he married her instead of finding another way out. It was the reason he consummated their union at Haworth Hall.
It was the reason she was still alive.
Tanner bent over her quivering mouth and kissed her softly. His blood and breath stilled, suspended in time. What was happening? He was not a good man; good things did not come to him. He’d been cursed with a curse. The dream was a reminder not to get too happy, not to let his guard down. The curse was always watching him, waiting for him at the bottom of the ocean.
Tanner broke away from her and lifted the soap to scrub Laura’s shoulders. Her fingers curled around his as he washed her arms clean of dried blood, wounds she had received from her tangle with the briar at the edge of the forest.
“Tanner,” she whispered with a degree of urgency. “Tanner.”
He could not control himself. His hands were on her breasts again. Here he had to stop, slow his pulse and breathe, for Laura had closed her eyes and mewled with pleasure when he passed his calloused palms over her tender nipples.
She was destroying him in some way that he could not see. Why did he suffer this compulsion to touch her? What had she done to him? She had beguiled him like the mermaids his father had told him about: a siren of the sea, luring a sailor to his death. Laura Mayhew had bewitched him with her stormy dark green eyes.
Tanner flung himself back and lurched away from the copper tub like it was a coffin. He banged out of the kitchen leaving her to finish her bath alone.
§
HER MIND went round and round, and circled back to the man who had begun to possess her thoughts even as he concealed his from her.
Laura was not oblivious to the effect she had on men but she was clever enough to know that beauty did not last. She had developed her gift of second sight so she would not have to rely on male interest for her security.
For the first time in memory, Laura desired the interest of a man and the man was unwilling to cooperate. Tanner Caine sat opposite her at the homely kitchen table, barely speaking a word or looking in her direction. They ate bread, cheese, cold pork and onions, and there was wine as well which she had not expected. It was a feast after the meagre diet at Gateshead.
Laura had finished her bath alone and dressed behind the screen before his return. His reaction to her was baffling. The pistol, his erratic mood—she hoped that after a good meal and wine, Tanner would lower his guard sufficiently so she could read his thoughts. Simply engaging him in conversation was difficult enough. He seemed determined to put a wall between them.
The hunter does not make friends with his prey.
She lifted her eyes to him in surprise. “I’m sorry, did you say something?”
“No.” His
look was insolent as he wiped his mouth of grease. Caine seemed determined to make her despise him.
“I shall require a horse,” she said imperiously. “Or perhaps I could hire your carriage. I am a poor horsewoman; the carriage would be better. You needn’t accompany me; I can manage the journey very well on my own but I shall need to borrow some money. I promise you’ll get it back with interest. Loosey will make good my debts.”
“That will prove difficult. Princess Louise has left England for a tour of Germany. You will not be going to London. You have family in Dorset; that is where I am taking you.”
She flung down her knife. It clattered against the plate. “You will not!” Tanner grinned as if he was genuinely amused and Laura itched to stab him with her fork. The smile was the first he had bestowed on her in many hours and she wanted to slap it off his face.
“I have no intention of going to Dorset.” Her voice was like splintered ice. “There is nothing for me there. The family you speak of is one distant cousin who was glad to see the back of me when I joined the Royal Household. My father and mother have no use for me and I would rather die on the streets of London than return to them in disgrace.”
“Suit yourself.” He shrugged and returned to shovelling bread in his mouth.
“My friend Clara Hamilton must’ve told you something you of my history,” Laura persisted. “You said you were going to help me. Was that a lie?”
Tanner Caine remained resolutely silent.
Laura wrestled her emotions under control. “I too have been plagued by a dream,” she said, changing the subject. “Do you want to hear it?”
“I want to eat my meal in peace.”
“Spoken like a husband,” she said airily. “My father used to say the same to my mother whenever she had anything of importance to discuss. I shall tell you anyway. I’m not sure if it is a dream or a vision—something that is happening or is yet to happen. I am on horseback, riding in a wood and I hear the sound of a baby crying. His wails grow louder and I urge the horse to go faster but it is not fast enough—I feel as though I am hardly moving. Then the dream changes and I’m in a cellar, a cold place of stone and guttering light. I hear a baby crying piteously. The sound echoes down a corridor. I follow it, terrified, but unable to turn back until I come to a wall. A long brick wall, newly made, its mortar is still fresh. Behind the wall, a baby is crying. Heart wrenching shrieks that tear my heart to pieces. Someone has bricked up a living child in the cellar to die.”
Laura exhaled the breath she didn’t know she was holding and glanced at Tanner. “Then I wake up screaming. When I was in the asylum, an orderly would rush in and another day of injections and hydrotherapy would begin. They were planning to bore a hole in my skull to relieve the pressure when you showed up.”
She set her fork down and sat back in her chair, her appetite gone. “The baby is Louise’s. I just know it. Henry is in danger and I must find him as quickly as possible. The Queen is ruthless. She ordered her own grandson ripped from his mother’s arms in infancy and broke her daughter’s heart. She cast me into an insane asylum—which I could tolerate—but the baby! Henry is an innocent little life. Who knows what is being done to him? He will grow up believing we did not want him.”
Tanner eyes went cold. “It is just a dream. You told me you are not a horse woman and yet in your dream you are riding a horse. It is not real.”
She frowned. “Perhaps the horse is symbolic. I need help finding baby Henry. You could bring me to London, for example. You could be the horse in my dream.”
“I was hired to take you to Dorset.” He scowled.
“I can pay you,” she said eagerly. “I can hire you to take me to London instead. I am the only one who knows where they took him. We could begin our search there. You do this sort of work, don’t you? Your firm would agree to take the case? I can pay a reasonable sum. I am not rich, but I will pay you for your time. What are your rates?”
“No! I will not take the job, Laura. You are not the only one with oaths and demands of loyalty to uphold. Yours is not the only conscience here.”
“What do you mean by that? Why do not talk to me?”
“I thought you were clairvoyant. Read my thoughts if you want to know the answer.”
“That is just it—I cannot with you! You are in shadow.” Impulsively, Laura took his hand and pressed his palm to her lips.
“What are you doing?” Tanner stiffened.
His black eyes grew blacker still and Laura was taken by his breathtaking beauty. “I thought I would see something in your future.” She held his hand fast and closed her eyes. “Wait ... it is not your future I see ... it is your past. That is interesting. You were at sea ... brass buttons and blue serge ... an officer in the Royal Navy. You are on the deck of a ship.”
He jerked his hand away.
“Did you serve in Her Majesty’s Navy?”
“Yes. Six years ago. An unimpressive exhibition of your talents, Miss Mayhew, most Englishmen serve at one time or another.”
“Something terrible happened during your time of service.”
“I don’t talk about my past. It is a closed subject.”
“Not to me, surely; I am your wife.” She calmly sliced into her pork. “You cannot declare me your wife when you want to exercise your conjugal rights, and then insist on your independence when I question you about your past. You see the problem.”
“I see that I am beginning to understand why you were locked up.”
She flinched.
Tanner dropped his gaze. “I’m sorry,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “That was uncalled for. I am not accustomed to being questioned about my life. I am not likely to answer.”
“Is there a reason for your reticence or is the cause natural?”
He sat back, tossing his fork to his plate and exhaled in exasperation. “I am not going to be permitted to finish my meal in peace, am I?”
But Laura sensed a change in her companion. His glower had lifted. “I am only your wife for one night,” she cajoled. “There is no danger in sharing the story with me. Why did you leave the Navy?”
Tanner leaned his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands. “I was dishonourably discharged. I beat a fellow officer almost to death.”
Laura swallowed, momentarily losing her appetite. “I see. Well. I am sure you had good reason to do so.”
He lifted his face and turned so only his left side was visible. “You are, are you? You don’t know anything about me. You are a strange one, Miss Laura Mayhew. Why don’t you ask how I came to be deformed? That is usually the first question on a woman’s lips when she meets me.”
Laura reached across the table. “May I?” She pressed her hands on either side of his face and gently prodded the bones under his skin with the tips of her fingers. “There is no structural malformation. Whatever the affliction was, it happened after birth.”
“Syphilis,” he said sharply and pulled free of her touch.
He rose to his feet and cleared the dishes from the table. “My father contracted it from one of the many whores he’d fucked, and he infected my mother. It killed her and deformed me. He survived another seventeen years, unrepentant to the end.”
Her mouth tasted sand and she did not know what to say. “How did he die?”
“Drowned at sea. It was the kindest thing Bartholomew Caine had ever done for me. After I was evicted from our hovel in Cornwall, I came to London to find work but my deformity was a barrier to employment. I was starving in the street when a midshipman on the HMS George recruited me to enlist. My deformity was not a problem to a ship’s crew. Most of them were missing legs and ears. I thought I would be buried in salt water, not in Bracknell Forest.”
“You were happy.”
“I was for a time. And then I wasn’t. The man I beat was a man by the name of Treadwell. I had risen to the rank of Quartermaster and Mr. Treadwell was the ship’s First Mate. There was friction between us from the start. He had pr
ovoked me on several occasions and on this last, he saw me confined to a holding cell for insubordination. The cell was a windowless box of four feet by seven. The moment I was released, I found Treadwell below deck and beat him with my bare fists.”
“But to be shut up in a small space was torture. You were not at fault.”
“I beat a man to within an inch of his life! My God, you really are a child. I lost my temper because I could not bear to be shut up in a confined space. Every crew member had served time in the Box; it was no hardship. The attack was unprovoked. Worse still, I showed no remorse. I was glad to feel Treadwell’s bones breaking under my fist. I’m glad even now.”
Laura was troubled by his confession but only because his brutality and coldness of feeling mirrored her own. “I am the same,” she said pensively. “I believe when I meet the person who has taken Henry I will not be able to control myself. I will kill him.”
“You are confident you will find him.”
“Oh yes,” she said evenly. “I will never give up. And when I have him, I’ll go to the papers and let them take his picture. And when England sees the resemblance, Victoria will be made to answer for what she’s done.”
Tanner’s face hardened to cast iron. “You should get some sleep. We have a big day in the morning.”
He showed her to the master bedchamber, shoved a candle in her hand and then turned away, moving rapidly down the hall.
A dark shadow against an even deeper dark.
Chapter Three
THE DOOR to her bedchamber was closed. The hall was dark save for the candle he carried. Tanner blew it out and set it on the floor along with the pistol.
He put his hands together as though in prayer, palm to palm, the tips of his fingers pressed to his mouth. This was unthinkable and yet he was thinking it.
Enter the room, hold the pillow over her face, raise the pistol and pull the trigger. Just as planned.
Her bold talk of an illegitimate child—she was either mad or was deliberately trying to undermine the Royal Family. Did Laura imagine a kill order was easy thing for Victoria to issue? The Queen had suffered the loss of a husband and was trying to rear those brats alone. Did Laura consider the unnecessary strain she was putting Her Majesty under?
Mark of Caine Trilogy: Book Two: Whispers in the Shadows (Victorian Villains) Page 2