“I said I would kill you,” he whispered, positioning himself so that the guard could neither see nor hear him. “I said I would murder you in your bed, and I meant it. I will strangle the life out of you with my bare hands, and then I’ll fuck your sweet Angelica until she bleeds. And then I’ll do it again and again and again until—”
“I’m finished here.” Mark jerked away, marching for the door.
The guard flinched as though just realizing how threatening Shayles had become. “What did you say to him?” he asked, striding forward and pushing Shayles back toward the chair.
“I wished him well on his recent marriage,” Shayles lied.
If he said more, Mark didn’t hear it. He marched through the door and out into the hallway so fast that he might as well have been running. He only barely registered the guard leaving Shayles’s room and slamming the door with a metallic thud. He turned the key noisily in the door, but it wouldn’t do any good. Walls and locks could only hold Shayles in for so long.
The fiend couldn’t be contained. That much should have been obvious. Shayles was guilty of murder, and yet he’d only been sentenced to six months. He was a liar and a thief to boot, and yet he had it in his power to withhold something as simple as a painting from Mark. He held Mark’s soul in the palm of his hand, and nothing Mark had been able to do had wrestled it free. And now Shayles was threatening Angelica.
Mark would have been a fool if he assumed the threats were hollow. Shayles didn’t make hollow threats. As soon as the doors of his prison cell were thrown open, he would go on the rampage, stopping at nothing until Mark was utterly destroyed. It was an inevitability as much as the sun rising in the morning. Mark was a dead man, but he’d do one last thing before Shayles murdered him—he would protect Angelica. His solicitor could help to a degree, but what Angelica would need were allies. As much as he hated it, he would have to visit the one man in England who considered him a hero. But if he was turning to Dowland for help, the situation was as bad as it could get.
Chapter 11
Frustration rippled down Angelica’s back as she paced circles around the sedately decorated parlor at the front of Mark’s townhouse. The aggravating feeling that she’d been had, that she’d been left behind while the men did their work once again, wouldn’t leave her. It rankled on her every nerve, punctuated by the thump of her footsteps as she vented her energy in pacing.
She’d been so happy through the night. She and Mark had made love as though they meant it, as though they had finally developed a true connection instead of pairing out of necessity. She’d liked riding him far more than she thought she would, although she wouldn’t have said no to him flipping her to her back and taking her masterfully. What had passed between them had felt truly intimate. But in the morning, he was gone.
When she’d learned why and where he had gone, her temper had almost gotten the better of her.
“He went to Newgate Prison without me?” she barked at Templeton once he confessed Mark’s whereabouts to her.
“Yes, my lady,” Templeton said, having a difficult time maintaining a staid demeanor. “He asked me to tell you not to attempt to follow him.”
“Did he?” Angelica crossed her arms and tapped her foot, glaring at the butler.
Templeton swallowed nervously. “H-he further informed me that you are not to attempt to join him at Newgate. You may walk in Hyde Park with the protection of a footman, but….” Templeton’s words withered on his lips at the mutinous look Angelica shot him. He cleared his throat. “Breakfast is waiting, my lady,” he said, then bowed and fled.
Angelica ate, resenting the fact that she ate alone. She stared at the empty place across the table from her as she chewed, conjuring up all the ways she would give Mark a piece of her mind when he returned.
“That is simply the way of the world, my darling,” Grandpa Miles’s words echoed in her memory hours later as she paced in the parlor. “Men rule, women follow. I have indulged you, but I’m afraid you will find few other men who will do the same.”
“It isn’t fair,” Angelica grumbled aloud, snatching a pillow from a chair and throwing it onto the sofa.
“No, it isn’t,” the Grandpa Miles of her memory answered. She could see his kind face, lined with laughter and age, in her mind’s eye. Mark bore a passing resemblance to him. They had the same nose and the same determined manner.
“Perhaps someday the tables will turn,” Grandpa Miles said. She remembered well the day they’d had the conversation. She stood in the warehouse with him, humbled and frustrated after the men attending their meeting of distributers had flat refused to do business with her in the room. “But until they do, are you certain you want to continue down this path? You will be such a sterling wife and mother. I can see you as the mistress of an entire household, organizing the business of the estate while raising fine, energetic children. In fact, I understand that Blackmoor Close needs a mistress. My great-nephew never did marry, and if what my cousin Bertha writes to me is true, he’s a sad old sod who could use a strong woman by his side.”
Angelica blinked and stopped. Grandpa Miles had mentioned Mark to her before. She’d forgotten the conversation. And while it didn’t sit well with her to suspect, once again, that his will was a bittersweet way of bending her to his ideas of what she should do and be, she was even more convinced that the disinheritance scheme was for Mark’s benefit as much as hers.
“Manipulative old bastard,” she growled, resuming her circuit around the room, though fondness filled her heart at the thought of him. Still, it was utterly unacceptable that her life had been determined by an old man with an agenda. It was unfair that men saw her as weak, that they assumed they could get what they wanted from her by force.
And yet, the moment her mind shouted, “I never should have come to England,” her heart rejected it. She honestly hadn’t had a choice. Equally honestly, she wouldn’t have given Mark up for anything. But the moment he returned home, she would dress him down as thoroughly as the roughest army sergeant.
No sooner had she resolved to give her errant husband a piece of her mind than the sound of the front door opening drifted in from the hall. Without missing a step in her pacing, she turned toward the parlor door, balled her fists at her sides, and marched on.
But before she reached the hallway, Mark came bursting through. Angelica stopped in her tracks, nearly jumping back. She’d never known Mark to burst anywhere.
“Shayles is a reprobate and an ass,” he growled, the depth of his frustration palpable.
“You went to see him without me,” Angelica said, just as she’d intended to. Unlike her intentions, her voice held far less vitriol. She was merely stating fact.
“It’s a good thing I did,” Mark told her, falling into pacing in almost the same circuit as she had been walking for the past half hour. “The meeting was disturbing to say the least. It’s entirely likely that Shayles has gone mad, though he still presents a veneer of gentility.”
Angelica didn’t know what to do with the unexpected way things had unfolded. She should be on the defensive, blasting Mark for treating her as callously as every other man. Instead, that damnable part of her heart that beat for him alone rushed straight to sympathy and concern.
“What did he say?” she asked, moving into his path so that he was forced to stop pacing.
He didn’t meet her gaze right away, which sent alarm prickling across Angelica’s skin. “He wanted money,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face. “He mocked me for coming when he called, like a dog, then insisted that I still owe him.”
“Owe him what?” Angelica narrowed her eyes.
“I don’t know, money? Fealty?” He glanced to her at last. The usual jumble of suppressed emotions that she’d come to know as uniquely Mark was definitely there, but behind the aggravation and wariness was a heap of guilt. He was hiding things from her.
She crossed her arms, not in the mood to coddle him as she usually did. “What aren’t you
telling me?” she asked.
“A great many things,” he fired back with far more honesty than she was prepared for. Angelica blinked at the unexpected answer, but Mark rubbed his face again and sighed. “We need to leave London at once,” he said with unexpected energy. “Shayles will be released soon, and his murderous intentions are still there.”
Angelica’s brow shot up. “Did he threaten you?”
Mark marched past her to the tea service that had been set out for Angelica an hour ago. “His entire being is a threat to me,” he said, pouring what had to be cold tea. He drank a cup without adding sugar or milk, then nearly threw the cup back onto the tray. Angelica would have been surprised if he hadn’t chipped the poor thing.
The teacup was the least of her worries. She’d never seen Mark so agitated before. At least, not in this way.
“I went to see my solicitor after the meeting,” he said, crossing restlessly to the fireplace. “I’ve asked him to put certain protections in place.”
“Protections?” Angelica shrugged and shook her head. “What sort of protections.”
“Protections that will ensure that, should anything happen to me, my money and estate should go directly to you in such a way that Shayles won’t be able to touch them,” he said, marching on to the window as if unable to hold still.
Angelica’s heart thumped against her ribs. “You think he’s going to do it, don’t you?” she gasped. “You think he’s going to try to kill you.”
He glanced apprehensively to her. “He’s going to do more than try,” he said in a dark voice.
Her mouth dropped open. “You think he’s going to succeed in killing you.”
He avoided her question by saying, “If anything should happen to me, turn to Sir Ch—”
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Angelica interrupted, veering around the sofa to stride up to him. “We shouldn’t just leave London, we should leave all of England. We can go to New Orleans, visit my mother’s family. If England isn’t safe, we’ll run.”
“We’ll do no such thing,” Mark said, turning away from the window to face her when she was toe-to-toe with him. “You, on the other hand, should go as soon as possible.”
“I’m not leaving you,” she said, raising her voice. “Not at a time like this.”
He huffed out a frustrated breath, studying her with a mix of aggravation and affection. “I can’t ask you to leave,” he said at last in a quiet voice.
Angelica hoped to heaven that he meant that from his heart. She certainly didn’t relish the idea of being without him. “There must be ways you can fight back,” she said. “Lord Shayles is just one man, and as I understand it, he has no money, no friends, and no power anymore.”
Mark sent her a doleful look. “He has no money and he has no friends, true. But a man who knows the darkest secrets of half the peers in Britain will always have power. Particularly as he has no scruples to go along with it.” He paused, pain pinching his pale features. “I’ve seen him kill before,” he went on in a hushed voice. “Without mercy and without remorse.” The pain etched deeper into the lines of his face and he turned away from her. “I should have done something to stop him.”
“You did,” Angelica insisted, resting a hand on his arm.
He shook his head. “Not soon enough. Not nearly soon enough.” He drew in a slow breath, then straightened, facing her once more, his energy renewed. “I can’t hide from what’s coming for me anymore,” he said, fire in his eyes. “I’ve dodged my fate long enough. It’s coming for me now, and I can’t stop it.”
“You’re not going to die,” she insisted, regretting the waver in her voice.
He didn’t answer, either to agree or to deny her words. Instead, he caught her hand and raised it to her lips. “I can’t escape my fate, but I can damn well get the upper hand.”
A furrow of confusion creased Angelica’s brow at his words, but she barely had time to contemplate what he meant. He grasped her hand and tugged her into motion, pulling her toward the doorway.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. Instead of turning toward the front door once they reached the hall, he whisked her toward the stairs and up. Angelica’s confusion turned into breathless, pulsing excitement as he marched on with her to their bedroom.
As soon as they crossed the threshold, he let go of her hand and turned to lock the door. “I don’t want us to be disturbed,” he said, deep and breathless.
“You don’t?” Her heart ran riot in her chest as he stalked toward her, unbuttoning his jacket.
“No.”
She knew exactly what he had in mind as he shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it aside. He made quick work of his waistcoat as well. Expectation and excitement made her dizzy, and she backed toward the bed, too riveted by the sight of him undressing with such clear intent to think about removing her own clothes. She had the delicious feeling she was about to be ravished and pressed a hand to her thumping heart.
“If this is the end for me,” he said as he threw his waistcoat aside and loosened his tie, “then I’m damn well going to enjoy every moment of it. I’m going to leave you with something no one can take from you.”
“I—” Angelica’s mouth worked uselessly as she sat on the edge of the bed. Her body pulsed with expectant energy and desire. It took her another, breathless moment before enough sense squeezed through her to prompt her to lift her skirts and remove her shoes and stockings.
Undressing was the least erotic part of making love, but Mark managed to make it titillating simply by keeping his eyes locked on her as he unbuttoned his shirt and yanked it off over his head. She fumbled with the buttons of her blouse and the fastenings of her skirt as he tugged off his boots and kicked them aside, but when he straightened and boldly divested himself of his trousers and drawers in one, swift motion, her fingers suddenly refused to work.
He stepped out of his clothes and stood before her, naked and erect and utterly unlike the Mark she’d come to know. It was her first, full sight of his naked body from head to toe, and everything she’d guessed at the night before was suddenly and magnificently before her. His muscles were firm and well-defined, like a much younger man. His skin was pale, but that was to be expected. And his staff was thick and long and growing harder and larger by the second. He was a magnificent specimen of a man.
“I’m sorry if I’ve shocked you,” he said in tones that said anything but. He marched toward her, taking her hand and pulling her to stand. “But I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in my life, and I intend to have you.”
“Ohh,” she sighed, completely beyond speech. Her blouse was open and her skirt and bustle sagged over her hips, but she didn’t have it in her to continue undressing. She didn’t have it in her to do anything but reach for him, brushing her hands along his sides and down to his hips, and leaning into him and tilting her mouth up to his.
He kissed her with all the passion of a man who refused to be denied anything. His mouth molded to hers, bruising her lips with his boldness and parting them so that his tongue could invade her. The taste of him caused the ache in her core to throb. His hands moved along her corset, pushing her skirt and underthings down her hips until they dropped to the floor around her. Then he slid his hands up her sides, over her breasts, and across her arms to slip her blouse from her shoulders.
“I want to worship your body,” he whispered as he rained kisses across her neck and shoulder. His fingers worked with surprising deftness to unhook her corset as he went. “I’ve wanted to taste every inch of you from the moment I met you.”
“Then why didn’t you?” she gasped as her corset popped free.
He dropped the constricting garment to the side, then swept her chemise up over her head, exposing her chest fully. His hands caressed her sides before one cupped her breast, lifting it so that he could kiss his way across her chest and close his mouth around her nipple. Angelica sighed loudly as pleasure soared through her. F
or a man who claimed a lack of skill and experience in bed, he knew exactly how to make her turn to jelly.
“Because I didn’t think I deserved you,” he answered her at last, brushing his hands down to pull the drawstring of her drawers. He pushed them down quickly, then slipped a hand possessively between her legs. Angelica gasped at the command of his touch and the pleasure it brought her. “I still don’t think I deserve you,” he growled, stroking her wet slit. “But I intend to have you until my dying breath.”
A twist of unease cut through the heady arousal he provoked in her, but she hardly had a moment to contemplate it. He lifted her onto the bed, laying her on her back, then covered her body with his. He pulled the pins out of her carefully arranged hair, leaving them scattered across the bedclothes, and raked his fingers through her hair until it was a wild wave around her head.
“I want you like this,” he said, his voice more aggressive than she’d ever heard it. And yet, somehow that aggression was arousing instead of intimidating. It made her want to give in to him in every way instead of fight back. He held her head gently as he bent down to steal a long, searing kiss, one that left Angelica moaning with pleasure and writhing beneath him to part her legs in readiness.
She might have been ready for him to sink himself deep inside of her, but he had more in mind. He brushed his hands over her shoulders and down her arms, his mouth following. He kissed her shoulder, then the top of her arm, then the crook of her elbow, as though learning every part of her with his hands and mouth. She never would have guessed that a man’s tongue flicking across the tender skin of her inner arm could be so erotic.
His hands continued on to her sides, where he traced the undersides of her breasts with the back of his fingers. His touch was feather-light, leaving her wanting more. When his mouth joined the sweet torture, she could hardly catch her breath. He worked first one nipple, then the other to tautness with his tongue and lips and teeth, then closed his mouth over one breast and sucked hard. The variation of soft and demanding left her panting and hot.
October Revenge Page 13