Gratitude spread through Felicity. As spry as he was feeling, Nick could simply have taken Johnny and the pony then left the castle without a word to anyone. Instead, he went to Aislinn and solved the caterpillar dilemma. Was it possible that he did want the best for her and her nieces? “Thank you for telling me. For helping us.”
Nick nodded, then resumed their walk, his hand still holding hers. “I truly want to help you. I hope you can believe that now.”
Offering a smile as tremulous as the wind rushing her hair, Felicity followed his lead, ducking down as they burst out of the trumpet vine and latticework tunnel and turned off in the opposite direction from the greenhouse. She’d planned to retreat inside the glass enclosure. It would be ideal in this kind of weather. But her escort apparently had other ideas, so she followed along, curious. Her heart danced on a bizarre mix of excitement and disquietude. She hadn’t done anything so spontaneous in years and drank in the feeling—finding it every bit as sweet as the mist glazing her mouth.
“Where are we going?” she asked, resituating her gloved hand within the comfort of his large palm.
“Well, now that I know your brother’s wife is the one whose cremated remains are gathering dust in the turret, we’re going to visit Jasper’s grave.” He locked his fingers through hers, no doubt anticipating her reaction.
Felicity railed against him, stiffening as they approached the iron gate that opened into the surrounding forest. “Who told you?”
“Tis amazing, the things a man can glean from an infatuated maid.”
Felicity broke from his grasp, her cheeks growing hot. “Rachel. That little trollop. And what did ‘Yer Graceship’ offer her in exchange?”
Nick turned around, grinning. “Why Miss Felicity, you’re flushed. Are you jealous that I spent time with the maid this morn?”
“I care nothing of what you do or with whom you do it.”
“Of course. Words speak louder than actions, after all.”
Scowling, Felicity reached up and knocked the hat from his head. “You wish me to trust you, yet you go behind my back for private details about my family all so you can reach your precious wife.”
Nick bent to retrieve the hat, securing it on his head as he studied her. “You’re too damned suspicious for me to find anything out any other way. If you were to open up, even a little, I might be able to solve your ghost mystery, as well.”
Felicity hardened her jaw. “You can find the grave alone. I’m not accompanying you.”
She’d only taken one step back toward the castle when Nick dropped the basket and caught her around the waist. His hand was hot against her abdomen—a stern eroticism that could be felt even through the layers of her skirt and petticoats. Before she could escape, he twirled her toward the gate. Her shoulder blades pressed against the slippery iron bars as his hands secured her wrists over her head—gentle, but commanding. His sudden change in mood took her aback, excited her…
He bent down to level their gazes. “Not a very cordial attitude for a hostess. It seems you’ve misplaced your manners. Perhaps Lia can lend you her reserve.”
Felicity tipped her tongue out to taste the mist drizzling her lips, trying to cool the mixed sensations afire in her belly. Nick watched her mouth with open fascination.
“You know nothing of manners or propriety,” she mumbled, every erogenous zone begging his attention—pitting passion against jealousy. “You who would bed a woman simply for petty misinformation.”
A wry smile rolled over his lips. His skin glistened with moisture on the movement. “I believe Rachel’s facts to be quite credible. And it took nothing more than a comment on the loveliness of her hair. She was butter after that.” His hands glided from Felicity’s wrists to her elbows, an intimate transfer of heat that hitched her breath. “Sweet, creamy butter.”
Felicity shoved his hands away. “I knew you were like him.” Tears burned her eyes. She thumped Nick’s chest with her fists.
“Him?” Nick didn’t topple as he had last night in the greenhouse. Instead, he tightened his stance and leaned in, his hands cupping her nape. “Are you speaking of Donal? Is this why you despise him? Did the Irishman have a tryst with Rachel?”
Sometimes Felicity hated his perceptivity. “Men are all the same. Always lusting … searching … for some woman other than the one standing right before them. Someone younger or prettier. Or deader, in your case. Let me go!” She couldn’t break free.
Thumbs at her temples, Nick forced her to look up at him. She fought back, but her efforts only entangled her more.
“Calm down.” Nick’s voice lowered to a deep, sensual purr. “I didn’t touch Rachel. Do you hear me?” Felicity froze as he pressed his mouth to her ear. “The only connection I’m seeking is with the woman in front of me, my darling Felicity. Whether she be living or dead, twenty or one hundred years old.”
His whisper warmed the shell of her ear. Her breath caught, a gut reaction. She knew he’d meant nothing by the relativity of age … but to be so close to the truth was disconcerting.
Then it registered how he’d said her name … so casual, yet so reverent, like the secret epithet of a lover. She pulled back and squinted in the mist, grateful for its camouflage lest he see her tears.
“I would never have teased you about Rachel had I known something took place between her and that Irish bastard.” His forehead pressed to hers, lips only inches from her mouth. “I saw him leave earlier this morning. Did he threaten you again?”
Felicity shook her head on a lie.
“Good. Because I’d hate to have to pound him with the stick pony.”
Taken off guard by the untimely quip, Felicity snorted.
Nick chuckled, and his breath blended into the scent of the rain. “There’s that smile.” His thumb traced her lower lip. “Did you know, with all the oddities going on around me, you’re the one puzzle I cannot get out of my head? Your cynicism, your suspicious and fastidious nature. The woman who maddens me and infuriates me most”—his fingers cinched her hair— “is also the most enchanting creature I’ve ever encountered.”
That’s when time stopped, for his lips met hers tenderly. With his skin bared of whiskers, it was a sensation as transient and restrained as the mist.
Moaning, she relaxed into him, giving herself to his embrace. When had she ever heard such lovely words? Enchanting. Who would’ve spared such a pretty appellation for a whore?
Her mind blurred as his tongue followed the shape of her mouth, licking away the raindrops there, as if ridding any barriers between them. Then his lips brushed hers again, a pulsing heat, sweet and gentle.
His thumb tipped her chin and positioned her face to receive his ministrations. She grew still, oblivious to the downpour which pounded around them now, dousing their clothes and hair. She didn’t notice the cold wetness seeping into her skin, or the heaviness of her skirts. She concentrated only on the movement of his mouth—straying to her eyelids then her ear and her jaw line—on how it felt to be the subject of his mastery … to be the receptacle of such meticulous exploration. No man had ever taken the time to savor her slowly, and the sensation was such a potent aphrodisiac her thighs trembled in willing submission.
Her fingers found his shoulders and grasped him, holding herself up. His lips returned to her mouth. They clung there—more insistent than before. Hands moving down to graze the sides of her breasts. Felicity’s gasp leapt up to meet his, lips opening to invite him in.
A primitive sound grated his throat as he answered her supplication. His tongue sampled the roof of her mouth—a tickling pleasure she returned in kind, sweeping along the bumpy terrain then trailing the smoothness of his teeth before meeting his tongue with her own. His hands shelved her buttocks and pulled her firmly against the tensile power of his man’s form.
It was only when she found herself panting from the combination of the downpour, his hands on her body, the wildfire contact between them, and his demanding kisses that Nick drew back. H
e worked her fingers free from where they’d woven into his hair then kissed her exposed inner wrists in the place her gloves dipped low.
He blinked in the storm. “Let us find some shelter. I understand there’s an outlook post close to the grave.”
His statement shook Felicity back to reality. She’d been drowning in him and the rain … afloat in the wonderment of his exploration—so lost in this extension of herself into another human being she’d forgotten everything else. Including their destination.
Nick retrieved the picnic basket and coaxed Felicity aside so he could unlatch the gate. Then he clasped her hand and she followed, stepping out into the wilds. The confident resolve of his touch washed away any defiance she might’ve staged.
Once they’d traversed deep into the understory of the trees, she took the lead, sloshing through puddles and woody vines until they came to a platform wedged between the highest branches of two conifers. A rope ladder stretched down from its midst and led up to an enclosure—the long-abandoned treehouse.
Playing the part of the gentleman, Nick helped Felicity climb onto the lower rungs before him. But she caught a glimpse of his roguish side when she looked down to find his gaze intently fixed on the ankle-length drawers under her skirts.
“Keep your eyes to the ground, Master Nicolas. I am a lady and your elder, lest you forget.”
A smirk turned his lips as he shifted his gaze off to the east. A smile tugged at her mouth, too, but vanished the instant she plunged through the trapdoor into the darkness.
She pulled her legs in and stood within the enclosure, shaking out her wet skirts. Her hair nearly snagged on the low-hung ceiling. Nick would have to hunch to stand, just like Jasper used to.
She took six steps across the floor and tugged at the hinged slats covering two round portholes. Light and fresh air seeped in to tame the scent of musty wood. Beetles and spiders scrambled into holes out of sight.
The sound of the rain pattering outside revived fresh nostalgia as Felicity glanced around the small nook. Though covered in dust and wayfaring ivy which had snaked in through cracks in the wood, everything looked just as Jasper had left it. The three-legged stool her brother used to sit upon to take notes in his journals; the kerosene lantern, now deprived of oil and thick with cobwebs, hanging from the midst of the ceiling; and the pile of scientific tomes Felicity had never bothered to retrieve after his loss.
Just like everything that reminded her of Jasper, she’d shut her eyes to this place. Forgotten it. They had spent many hours up here with the girls, viewing the forest and its native wildlife. Such broken memories she preferred to tuck away in the darkness rather than hold up to the light, for fear she might see the cracks within them.
Felicity’s mindset shifted as Nick held up the basket, easing his upper half through the trapdoor. She placed the food in a corner, her gaze locked to his as he climbed in. If only things were normal again, like they were when Jasper was with them. It would be so easy, here in the solitude, to tell Nick who she was, to remind him of their entwined paths in the past, of how he saved her. To thank him in ways only a woman could thank a man.
One side of her wanted the closeness, that bond with him, more than anything. But the other side—the cautious one that had kept her alive all those years as a courtesan—forbade the confession.
Nick would be going back into the world soon, returning to society … away from this fortress and its caustic riddles. He would forget her. And better that he did. He already held the secret that she was raising her nieces. No matter what might happen between them here today, she could never tell him her true identity. Else she would risk losing the life she’d almost died to obtain.
Chapter Sixteen
Felicity settled in the corner opposite the picnic basket, watching Nick as he unpacked the food. She studied his mouth, thinking of the kiss that still clung to her lips—a weight she hoped would never dissolve.
He laid out a linen napkin, smoothing the wrinkles with large hands which had earlier raged fires in her blood. A shot of tingling warmth burst within her breasts, swollen and heavy as she relived the feel of him so close to touching her there.
Glancing up, he held her gaze and placed a small cheddar truckle—as round as any wagon wheel—upon the napkin along with black pepper biscuits, dried beef, a fresh peach, and two goblets. Uncorking a bottle of honey wine, he poured it, the purl of golden liquid as rousing to her senses as the fermented floral scent adrift on the air.
His hat sat on his head at a jaunty slant. The grayish light from outside softened his masculine features beneath the brim. If not for the earring, he’d look just like that daring sixteen-year-old who had held her hand and coaxed her to stay alive.
Little could he know that it was his words, his gentleness, which had kept her hanging on, long after he’d gone. He’d shown her kindness at a time when she believed she deserved nothing less than disdain. The moment she’d been stabbed … everything inside of her worthy of life had died. The precious fetus she carried, that tiny, dependent soul she’d already come to love. The very reason she’d told Hayes she wished to quit selling her body.
She convinced herself that night, while her womb was being gutted, that had she not been a whore, maternal happiness wouldn’t have been ripped away from her. She deserved what happened.
Or so she’d thought.
As she’d fallen to the floor, doubled over from the slash of the vicious blade, choking on the blood she’d shared with her baby, she was praying to pass into death. But then Nick came out of the shadows—young, courageous, compassionate. He showed her through his outraged concern that every human was put in the world for an honorable purpose. That everyone merited a second chance to get it right. Had she not held onto life, her nieces would be in an orphanage today, most likely growing up apart, just as she and Jasper had. Nick’s bravery had made her second chance possible.
Gratitude overwhelmed her as she watched him, now a powerful man, still possessing that same ardent humanity, still driven to rescue her. She wondered why it had been so difficult for her to trust him once he’d fallen back into her life, after everything he had done for her on that fated night. In spite of his thievery, in spite of the laudanum, he was still the same person. She could see that now. The only difference was the sadness and remorse which clouded his gaze at times he didn’t know she was looking.
She wished he could be as forgiving to himself—as blind to his own sins—as he seemed to be to others’.
He bent low, the blanket draped from one elbow as he carried the goblets over then knelt in front of her. Felicity clasped her arms around her legs where they folded up against her chest beneath her skirts, trying to stave off the shivers radiating from her scar.
“You’re cold.” Nick set aside the wine and slipped the blanket off his arm. He wrapped the scratchy heaviness around her shoulders, pulling her slightly forward to tuck the excess between her back and the wooden slats. Next, he picked up a goblet.
“Drink this mead. You look as pale as death itself,” he said as the liquid drizzled down her throat like warm nectar. “I think we should get these wet clothes off of you.”
“No.” Felicity hugged her knees tighter beneath the blanket, at a loss to tell him this wasn’t a physical chill, but a spiritual freeze. In truth, her deformity was the one thing keeping her from stripping naked and begging him to take her. Modesty had fallen by the wayside years ago. Yet in this moment, she felt as exposed as she had the first time she’d been with a man—a different kind of vulnerability, since she’d only been a girl then.
She was a woman today. It was that hard-won experience for which she’d bartered her innocence that caused this trepidation. She knew what a man found beautiful about a woman’s body: flawless skin, a perfect valley between round breasts, a stomach that curved just enough he could envision her with child at some point. All the things she’d once possessed, now foiled irreparably by a hideous scar that ran the length of her torso—deep and pi
tted like a dried-up riverbed.
She shivered again, a full body shake from her toes to her lips. “Perhaps”—her teeth chattered— “if I eat something. It will w-w-warm me.”
Tipping his head in a concerned gesture, Nick made his way to the food. After cutting two wedges of cheese, he placed them on biscuits then tore up some beef to sprinkle on top. He carried them over. She started to work her arm free from beneath the blanket but Nick stopped her.
“Allow me.” Setting his biscuit aside on a napkin, he crouched in front of her again, eyes shaded by his hat’s brim as he held out her food.
Felicity leaned forward and sank her teeth into the peppery morsel. Nick pushed the biscuit into her mouth too quickly, and bits of it crumbled then rolled down her chin.
“Sorry.” Grinning, he tried to catch them with a fingertip. “I would make a shoddy momma bird.”
She giggled as she chewed, but amusement quickly traded for searing desire as he fed her the fallen crumbs off his fingertips, watching her take each warm digit into her mouth and wind her tongue to lick it clean. Eyes flashing in the lightning, he offered another sip of mead to help soften her food and ate his own biscuit, stopping between bites to give her more. He made a point to touch the corners of her mouth at each serving, to capture every crumb until nothing remained uneaten, not even a grain of pepper.
Flushed from the sensuality behind his every movement, Felicity thanked him then tried to put some distance between them. She gestured with her head to the opening in the wall at her right. “If you look out that portal, you shall see it.”
Eyebrows furrowed, Nick set aside his goblet. “See what?”
“Jasper’s grave.”
“Ah.”
“Tis why we’re here, is it not?”
A ruminative expression crossed his face. “I’d rather forgotten why we’d come.” He crawled over to the porthole, knelt in front of it, and glanced out. “Do the girls visit him often?”
The Glass Butterfly Page 16