A Dangerous Man

by Janmarie Anello

  Chapter Twelve

  Richard slapped the road dust off his breeches as he headed for the house. The hot sun burning the back of his neck was nothing to the regret seizing his gut as a vision of Leah's soft green eyes, amber flecks barely visible beneath glistening tears, rose up yet again to haunt him as they had haunted him every hour of every day that he was away. Or was it guilt making his shoulders clench and his breathing hard and ineffective?

  He had promised her civility, then he had trampled on her feelings like a rabid bull. How she must hate him now, but not nearly as much as he hated himself for hurting her so viciously.

  As he reached for the handle, the door opened and Rachel stepped into his path. "Thank heavens, you are back"

  She wore a sweet smile and a flowing blue gown that brought out the sparkle in her eyes. No one looking at this picture of pretty femininity would ever guess the evil lurking within.

  Had she stood at the window every day for the past three weeks, awaiting his arrival? Plotting how best to antagonize him?

  Richard brushed past her and headed for the stairs. He needed to seek out Leah. Not that he had any idea what he wanted to say, but he knew he needed to say something. Anything.

  "I must speak with you," Rachel said, following at his heels. "You do not know what has happened here in your absence."

  "I'm sure you will tell me all, and then some, but not now. I'm tired and I am dirty. All I want right now is a hot bath and a hot meal." And Leah, his treacherous mind added.

  Rachel stepped into his path, her arms crossed over her chest. "I fear I must insist on speaking with you now. If you like, I could order your bath. Then we could have this conversation in your rooms"

  Christ, next she'd be offering to strip off his breeches.

  No doubt she would harangue him all the way up the stairs. Short of physically restraining her, Richard had no way to stop her. Nor could he trust himself to touch her. While he had never caused a woman bodily harm-and he had no intention of doing so now-he feared the temptation might prove too strong.

  He turned and stalked to the library.

  "You must do something about your wife," Rachel said as she followed him into the room, her cheeks reddening as she spoke. "She is turning the household upside down, wreaking havoc-"

  "Stop" Richard raised his hand. "I see you are in the mood to play games, madam, but I am not. State your concerns, quickly and clearly. Now, if you please."

  Rachel thrust her chin in the air. "Very well. I wanted to be as delicate as possible, but you leave me no choice. She does not know how to go about in society and she will not heed my advice."

  "Perhaps she feels she does not need your advice." Richard grabbed a bottle of whisky from the sideboard. He was tempted to slug it straight from the bottle, just to shock Rachel into silence, but he poured a glass and took a civilized sip.

  Rachel watched his every motion, as if she were memorizing the swing of his arm, the roll of his lips as he smoothed the remaining liquid from his mouth.

  "She does not understand about calling cards and paying visits," she said, her voice slightly breathless, as if she'd just waltzed across the room. "She sees anyone and everyone who calls here. Especially that odious aunt of hers, and that young man, Andrew, Alex, oh, whatever he calls himself."

  Richard schooled his features into a mask of indifference, but he could not quite hide the tension whitening his knuckles as he gripped his glass. Jealousy was a trait he had never admired.

  When had it settled so firmly within his breast?

  "Surely you are not suggesting her aunt is unwelcome?"

  Rachel inched her chin higher. "She says whatever she thinks without regard to propriety."

  "You make her sound like a Cheapside doxy."

  "Must you be so crude? I like the child. Truly, I do. She is a sweet little thing, but she is also willful and stubborn. She brought a rodent into the house as a pet for Alison. A rodent, I tell you! I won't have it. I banished it from the nursery. Then I had to listen to Alison kick up a fuss"

  Richard bit back his laughter, but said nothing.

  It was far better to let the woman spend herself, like a thunderstorm. Then she would go away, at least for a few hours.

  He was tired, his body aching from long hours in the saddle and his never-ending desire for his wife.

  I love you. Her sweet words came back to taunt him as they had taunted him every moment of every day since she'd moaned them at the height of her pleasure. He could still see her eyes dark with desire, amber streaks gleaming in the firelight. He could still feel her body quivering beneath him, her hands clinging to his hips, her legs wrapped around his waist as her passage clutched his manhood, pulling him deeper and closer to danger.

  As the longest, most emotionally devastating climax he had ever experienced shattered his senses, his reason, his control, his true danger had come crashing into his consciousness.

  He cared for her deeply, too deeply. She was touching emotions he did not wish to feel, resurrecting hopes and dreams for a future for which he did not wish to yearn, nor did he even believe possible. She was a threat to the careful control upon which he'd rebuilt his life following Eric's death. To the distance he kept from the world around him.

  To the security of his hardened heart.

  He could not allow that to happen. So he'd denied her sweet words. In the most vicious manner imaginable. She was so young, so trusting, so giving and hopeful. It was only natural for her to imagine herself in love with her husband, but what did he do?

  He'd chewed up her words and spit them back in her face.

  God, he was such a bastard. How could he have been so cruel? Couldn't he have found a better time, a better place to destroy her dreams? The taste of shame did not sit well within his mouth and no amount of whisky was going to wash it away.

  A spasm shot through his gut whenever he thought of her beautiful face, first aglow with passion and hope for a future he could never give her, then quickly transformed into shadows and pain as he'd disabused her sweet declaration.

  I love you. How her words tormented him still.

  Rachel planted her hands on her hips. "And she has undermined the staff, taken over the scheduling of servant duties and menu planning without so much as a by-your-leave."

  "Why does she need your permission?" Richard said, thankful for the distraction from his torturous thoughts. He hitched his hip on the desk. "After all, she is the mistress of the house"

  "But she doesn't understand the complexity of the task" Rachel waved her hand through the air. "Oh, I know she says she has had tutors and such. . ."

  Given all the trauma and heartache this woman had caused through the years, Richard had never seen her so agitated, not even when her husband had died, and over a domestic power struggle of all things. He would have laughed, were it not so predictably Rachel. "I begin to see the true problem. My wife is taking her rightful place as mistress of the house, and you do not like being relegated to the shelf."

  "Oh, that is not it at all," she said, approaching him on soft, dainty footfalls. Ever the lady, even in the midst of a fit of pique. "I should have known you would somehow turn this around to me and my motives. That is fine. She is ruining your house, but since you do not care, who am Ito say anything."

  She drew so close, he could smell the stench of her lilac perfume, which threatened to make him retch.

  He wanted to find Leah, to bury his nose in her rosescented hair, to wash away the filth and stain of his past in her sweet, accepting innocence, to run his hands over the smooth caps of her shoulders, the lift of her breasts, and beg her forgiveness.

  Good Lord, where had that thought come from?

  He rubbed his throbbing temples. "What exactly do you mean by 'ruining the house'?"

  "She is destroying the blue room. She is tearing down the wall and opening it up to the conservatory. She has decreed that from now on, all the family meals will be served there, as if we are servants for her to o
rder about"

  "I fail to see the problem-"

  "Do you not understand what I am saying to you? She is tearing down walls and destroying rooms. She has totally demolished the duchess's bedchamber. After I spent so many years making it perfect. It was my last link to Eric"

  She touched her fingertips to the corners of her eyes.

  Richard curled his hands as potent fury pulsed through his veins. "How pretty you look with dainty tears clinging to your sooty lashes. Why, if I didn't know better, I might even believe your pretense of love."

  "I did love Eric," she cried, raising her hands as if to clutch the lapels of his coat. His glare sent her hands back to her waist. "But I made a mistake. One terrible mistake. Will you punish me for the rest of my life?"

  "For the rest of your life and beyond," Richard vowed, crossing to the windows. He looked out over the gardens, half expecting to see Leah and Alison strolling hand-in-hand, another image that had haunted his every waking hour while he was away.

  Alison deserved a mother who loved her, a mother who would not use her daughter's life as a weapon to gain her way, a mother like Leah. "You will never know a moment's peace, even in death, as Eric never knew a moment's peace in life."

  Rachel closed the distance between them, walking so close her skirts touched his shins. "You are a cruel man to hate me so, after all we meant to each other in the past"

  "The past died eight years ago-"

  "The past will never die."

  "-on the day you married my brother."

  "You know why I did that," Rachel said, her voice shrill, desperate. She clutched his arm. "My parents forced me ""

  Richard peeled her fingers off his sleeve. He twisted his lips in a thin, cruel smile. "My, what an accomplished liar you are. Why, I even begin to think you believe your own words. You married Eric for one reason only. You thought you could have your stud and your coronet, too. Unfortunately, you were wrong"

  "That is not true. I loved you, then. I-"

  "Do not say it." Richard towered over her, his breath harsh in his throat. "Or I swear, I will throttle you"

  He turned toward the desk. He heard her walk up behind him. He wished she would go away. But he knew it was impossible. He might haunt her through eternity, but she would haunt him, too.

  They were partners in their misery.

  "Although you don't believe me," she said, coming to stand beside him. "I did love you with all my heart. But I grew to love Eric after I wed him. He was such a kind and gentle man. Who could help but love him?"

  Richard turned to face her. "Save your lies for your friends. The past is not the issue here. Your sensibilities are twisted about because my wife is taking her rightful position as mistress of this household. As you find your situation here so intolerable, I repeat my previous offers to provide you with an establishment of your own and a comfortable maintenance. You shall never want for anything."

  "This is my home. Why would I want to leave it?"

  "For one thing, you would be free of my presence. As I am so odious and cruel and disrespectful of your tender feelings, that should be reason enough"

  "Hardly." Rachel crossed her arms over her chest. "I have learned to tolerate your animosity. I rarely, if ever, notice anymore that you are an ill-bred, ill-mannered lout."

  "If you cannot accept your new status here, a move would be the best solution for all of us"

  Her blue eyes narrowed as she contemplated his words. Then she smiled, a cold, calculated twisting of her lips. "Of course, I shall do what you think best. But if I leave, I take Alison."

  Richard yanked a leather-bound volume off the nearest shelf. It was either that, or strangle the woman where she stood. He did not reply. It was an old argument, one he'd heard hundreds of times. He was ashamed to admit, even if only to himself, that he was finding it harder to fight the temptation to let the scandal fly, to let the resulting fragments fall where they may, but sanity always returned, along with the pain.

  He would never allow a hint of scandal to swirl around Alison, or tarnish the memory of his brother's name.

  Even if it meant he would never be free of Rachel.

  "Were you to attempt to take her from me," Rachel was saying, "I would certainly weep to my dearest friends how abominable you were to deny me the comfort of my daughter's presence ... not to mention why you felt obliged to do so. I know you do not want that to happen. How else could you explain taking her from her loving mother."

  "Loving mother? The cruelest jest of the century." He dropped his book on the desk, the thud echoing through the chamber. "You do not care if Alison lives or dies."

  Rachel shot her hand through the air.

  Richard grabbed her wrist, twisted it away. He lowered his face until they were nose to nose. "Alison does not leave this house. If you ever attempt to remove her, I will hunt you down like the bitch you are. There is no place you could hide that would be safe from my vengeance"

  Rachel slid her free hand along his stubbled jaw.

  "You would never hurt me," she whispered, then pushed up on her toes, her eyes closing, her lips parting breathlessly.

  "Do it," he said through his teeth, "and I will kill you"

  Rachel hesitated a moment, her eyes meeting his, widening beneath the menace in his gaze. She dropped her hand, backed away, but she did not leave. She simply stared at him.

  Her breathing grew shallow. Her chest rose and fell, as if she could not quite catch her breath.

  Slowly, she flicked her tongue over her lips.

  In his youthful ignorance, Richard would have found her display erotic, enticing. Now what clenched his jaw and hardened his hands into fists was the depths of folly that had caused him to fall so deeply under this woman's spell. He had been so young, so deeply in love. He sneered at the memory. He could almost hear the water as it had bubbled over the rocks below the cliffs on the day he'd lost his idealistic innocence, when he'd learned love was nothing but lust wrapped in a pretty disguise.

  The dizzying scent of wildflowers and heated skin had drugged his mind as he'd eased Rachel onto her back. The wild beating of her pulse beneath the softness of her skin had burned through his blood as he'd pushed her gown up her legs until her mound of honeysuckle hair gleamed against the darkness of the blanket, forbidden fruit, forbidden no more.

  His first taste of passion. Through his years at university, he had never been able to casually bed another, not when his heart had been pledged to Rachel for years. Instinct had guided him to her entrance, or perhaps it was Rachel's grasping hand. Never once had he noticed her lack of pain, her lack of shock, her lack of innocence as he'd given himself to her. At the last possible moment, he had withdrawn. He would not leave her with a babe in her belly, not before they could wed. Three weeks later, she had married his brother and Richard went off to fight the French, all the while hoping to die.

  He'd gone home only once, just after Waterloo, but he'd soon discovered there was a place worse than hell for sinners like him. Now he would never escape.

  The memory of this particular betrayal had long since lost the power to hurt him. No, what galled him now was how easily and completely he had fallen for her lies.

  His hands itched with the urge to smash his knuckles into the wall. Instead, he rubbed his fingers over his face as he paced to the windows. How artfully she had drawn him in, ensnared him more thoroughly than the fangs of a man trap, drawing him into her body with pledges of undying love and devotion.

  Never could Richard have imagined such deceit.

  He looked out over the gardens, but his mind dragged up an image of Rachel as she'd stood before him on the cliff face, backlit by a slate gray sky, mist blowing up from the churning sea. Hands raised, begging him to understand, her blue eyes as turbulent as the gathering clouds and brimming with tears, vowing her love, even as she confessed she was to marry Eric his brother!-but nothing need change between them.

  As if he would bed his brother's wife.

  Rachel
watched him silently, staring at him through seductively half-opened eyes, as if she thought passion would overwhelm him and he would drag her into his arms.

  Did she honestly believe he would ever touch her again?

  He stalked past her and out the door. He blamed his folly on youthful ignorance and indiscretion, lust run rampant with no control. He could not so easily excuse the lies and betrayals that came later, that destroyed everyone he loved.

  As he passed the blue room, he decided to see what changes Leah had made. The last thing he expected to see was his wife hanging in the air on a ladder propped against the wall, fiddling with the draperies. "What are you doing up there?"

  His bellow echoed off the windows. Leah shrieked. Her hands flew up in the air as she teetered on the edge of her step.

  Heart pumping, Richard lunged and caught her in his arms.

  She clutched his neck, her arms tangling around his shoulders, her fingers threading through his hair.

  His body clenched and tightened. He fixed her with a stony stare. "What were you doing on that ladder?"

  Her bewitching eyes met his, and he lost himself in their deep green depths, their dusting of gold mesmerizing him as swiftly as any sorcerer's spell.

  "I missed you," she said, her voice a soft whisper, her warm breath fluttering over his cheeks. Her lips curved into a gentle smile. Her golden hair framed her face, her eyes reflecting the afternoon light, making them sparkle, a ray of sunshine in his desolate world. "I am happy you're home"

  He searched her face for some trace of deceit. After the way he left, she should be hurling pottery at his head, but all he saw reflected in her smile was happiness and love shining in her eyes. He stomped on the tender emotions bubbling to life within him, forced a sternness into his voice that belied the desire and lust and need curling within his gut, tightening his muscles and tendons and groin. He would not fall for her spell.