October Revenge

by Farmer, Merry

  “They raped her,” he choked. “All four of them, Shayles twice. They held me back and made me watch. I did nothing. I was too horrified to move.”

  Angelica clapped a hand to her mouth, blinking back tears. “Didn’t anyone else in the building hear?”

  “They all heard,” Mark went on, his voice barely above a whisper. “Shayles’s friends held the door shut. Afterwards, Shayles threatened the building owner with murder and ruin. He was so effective that when the police arrived, the man sent them away, saying it was a misunderstanding.”

  “What about Kitty?” Angelica asked, a hand pressed to her heart.

  Mark shrugged and shook his head. “She was sent away. I didn’t ask where. I don’t think I would have had the courage if I’d wanted to. And shortly after that—” he swallowed, his stomach turning, “—she took her own life.”

  “Oh, Mark,” Angelica said.

  He flinched away from her attempt to reach for him. “It was all my fault. I fled the studio and never went back,” he admitted in a strangled voice.

  “Not even for the painting?”

  “Shayles took the painting,” he said. “He brought it to the dormitory to show me. He said it was his souvenir of the loveliest afternoon of his life.” He spat the words out, hatred and grief making his voice thick.

  There was a pause before Angelica said, “You stayed with him? Not as friends, surely, but…associates?”

  Mark heaved a useless sigh. “I didn’t know what I was doing,” he admitted. “At first, I believed I could exact some sort of revenge if I kept the bastard in my sight. I followed him, believing myself to be a specter, glaring at him as though I could break through his defenses to make him feel sorry for what he’d done.”

  “I don’t suppose he ever did.”

  “No, of course not.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “And then time passed. I grew numb. Whatever grand idea I’d had to be a constant prick at Shayles’s conscience dulled into nothing. I followed him because I didn’t know what else to do. My father was dead. The woman I’d loved was violated and gone. I tried to keep painting, but the only work I could create was a reflection of that day. I had an estate to run, but my father’s steward did such a good job of keeping Blackmoor Close in order that my purpose there was minimal. The only thing I found the slightest bit of joy in was the art of others, collecting, buying, seeking it out.”

  “Which explains your magnificent collection,” Angelica said. She moved to the bed to sit, as though the weight of everything he’d revealed was too much for her to bear.

  “I stand before you a shell of a man,” he said, turning to face her and holding his hands at his sides. “Whatever life there was in me was taken from me twenty-five years ago on that fateful day. I have only managed to exist since then, not to live.”

  Even as he admitted the truth, something within him rebelled. His heart pounded within him, and good sense fled. He strode across the room to kneel in front of her, taking her hands and holding them as though his life depended on it.

  “Until you came along,” he confessed, glancing up at her.

  “Mark,” she whispered, resting a hand on the side of his face and blinking back tears.

  “You are everything to me,” he told her, his voice thick with emotion. “I didn’t think I could feel anything for anyone again, but you barged into my sad, shallow, half-life and awakened things in me that I thought were long dead.”

  “Darling,” she said. She freed her other hand from his and circled his face with both hands, leaning in to kiss him. “I am here for you.”

  “You are,” he said from the bottom of his heart. “I know you are. No one has been there for me since my father died. Very few people had been there for me before that. With you, at last, I don’t feel alone. I—” His throat closed up, but he forced the words past his lips all the same. “I love you, Angelica. And I didn’t think I was capable of love.”

  “You are,” she said with passion, leaning in to kiss him again. “You are far more capable of love than you could imagine. I feel it when I’m in your arms. I see it in your eyes. You are loving at heart.” She kissed him a third time, then leaned back suddenly. “Perhaps that is why you have been so easily wounded.”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed ostensibly, not wanting to make an issue of it in that moment. “But that is also why I have to do everything within my power to protect you from Shayles now.” He stood, bringing her to her feet with him and wrapping his arms around her. “I would die if he did anything to you. I would die to keep you safe.”

  “You’re not going to die, Mark,” she told him, grasping his lapels. “You’ve only just come alive again. I cannot let you die now.”

  She lifted to her toes so that she could surge into him with a kiss meant to ignite the heavens. Part of Mark knew he should resist her, that he should push her away and face what had been coming for him for years. But her arms were too wonderful around him. The press of her body against his was intoxicating. She was his heart. She was the new life that pulsed through him. He owed everything to her, and he longed to give her everything she deserved and more.

  He let go of her long enough to shrug out of his suit jacket and work open the buttons of his waistcoat. His shirt was clammy with sweat beneath it, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Angelica didn’t seem to mind either. She worked with him, helping him to shed his clothes and tug his shirt up over his head. Once the soiled garment had been tossed aside, she went to work on the buttons of her blouse, racing him to see who could remove their clothes quickest.

  The ghost of a plan formed in his mind as he stepped aside to remove his boots and pull off his trousers. He loved Angelica. The words had been spoken aloud now. He would do everything within his power to keep her out of Shayles’s clutches. He refused to let the horrors that had happened to Kitty happen to her. If it meant taking actions that would end with Angelica hating him, it would be a small price to pay. Angelica would live, and if he had anything to do with it, he would live on through her.

  She’d made quick work of her blouse and skirt, and by the time he stood, naked and ready, to join her in bed, she was already pulling back the bedcovers.

  “I could paint you in a thousand ways,” he said moving toward her, longing to run his hands over her body. “Just like that, as if making the bed, or splayed across it in erotic splendor.”

  “That painting will be for just the two of us,” she said, twisting to slide herself against him as he reached her. “But it will be magnificent.”

  “Only because you are an angel,” he said, slanting his mouth over hers.

  He dropped a hand to her backside, cupping it possessively and pressing her into the insistent heat of his erection. She hummed low in her throat and lifted one leg over his hip to bring them into even closer connection. Mark was seized by the mad desire to plunge into her and mate with all the ferocity of a wild animal. Equally as strong was his need to give her as much pleasure as she could handle and then some.

  He aimed for the middle ground, lifting her off her feet and tumbling into bed with her. They were both already salty with sweat from their mission to Ravencrest Hall, but Mark didn’t care. He licked her neck, tasting her and groaning at the way she made his mouth water. She wriggled beneath him as though enjoying every second of his attention. She stretched, arching up to him as he shifted down to tease her breast with his mouth. She was so free in expressing her pleasure that he took extra time kissing the mound of her breast and teasing her nipple to a hard point with his teeth and tongue. And when he closed his mouth around her and suckled, she mewled in satisfaction.

  “Mark,” she gasped as he switched to lavish her other breast with the same attention. He slipped a hand across her belly to delve into the wetness between her legs as well. It was both powerful and humbling that she was always wet for him. “My love.”

  He wasn’t sure if her words were a confession of the sort of love he felt for her, but they encouraged him all the sam
e. She inched her thighs apart as he stroked her. The tiny movement was the most potent sign of acceptance she could have given him. In turn, he wanted to give her everything.

  He shifted lower, grabbing her thighs and opening them fully. Her answering gasp sent a surge of lust through him. She was everything erotic and beautiful that he could have hoped for. The scent of her musk drove him wild, and his cock jerked in readiness as he bent to taste her.

  She was like honey and spice mingled together. Her cunny quivered with need as he traced his tongue across her slit, then delved deeper. Her breathing turned erratic and shallow as he lost himself in her, holding her folds open so that he could rake his tongue across her clitoris. She bucked under him, moaning and gripping the bedclothes as she did. Her obvious enjoyment spurred him on, pooling heat in his groin in a way that hinted he wouldn’t last long. He needed to bury himself deep within her, but not until she climaxed.

  He didn’t have to wait long. He licked and circled her clit, feeling deeper and deeper tension coiling within her. Her breath came in shallower gasps and the sounds she made reached a fervent pitch before letting out a long cry as her sex throbbed with release.

  He couldn’t wait a second longer. He needed to feel her pleasure squeezing him, and with a swift movement, he climbed over her and thrust into her. The pure, carnal bliss of sinking his full, aching length into her, feeling her muscles milk him, was heaven itself. It was heaven that was only possible because he loved her with his whole heart. He moved within her, thrusting with the abandon that he had longed for from the first sparks of desire. She encased him, and friction as powerful as an earthquake ignited every inch of him and beyond.

  Already, he could feel the soaring tightness of his release about to break, and when it did, he cried out in joy as the flare of his life leaving him poured unadulterated pleasure through him. His orgasm was so powerful that it lasted through several thrusts before fading into the all-encompassing heat of love and contentment.

  “I love you,” he sighed at last as he collapsed, spent, by her side.

  She rolled with him, keeping their bodies in full contact and embracing him with so much more than just her body. “I love you too,” she whispered.

  A surge of love so powerful that it felt like a second, emotional orgasm hit him. He closed his arms around her and kissed her forehead, her cheek, her lips.

  But at the same time, a quiet, steady dread began to fill him. She loved him. It was what he’d always wanted to hear. And yet, it would mean she would hate him all the more when she discovered what he planned to do.

  Chapter 17

  Angelica woke slowly the next morning, her muscles aching slightly from running so much the night before. And from other things. A lazy grin spread across her face at the memory of how masterfully Mark had made love to her. Every bit of the hesitance that had plagued him when they were first married was gone, and in its place was a man who was well on his way to being the kind of lover poets wrote about. He’d made her feel alive and vibrant, cherished and desired. And after they’d rested for a bit, he’d done it all again. In fact, he’d pleasured her so thoroughly that she’d been worried whoever was in the next room would complain. Or perhaps the sounds she’d made had spurred their neighbor into amorous activity of their own.

  A low giggle rumbled up from her lungs and she reached across the bed for Mark.

  She opened her eyes when her searching left her empty-handed. The bed beside her was rumpled from their night’s activity, but Mark was gone and the sheets were cold.

  Angelica sat up, the last vestiges of sleep rushing away from her. She didn’t bother to cover herself as she scanned the room. It was empty, save for her. She rubbed her eyes and looked again, as if that would cause Mark to materialize out of the woodwork. But no, she was alone.

  Frowning, she tossed the covers aside and stood, anger beginning to well inside of her. She tamped it down, telling herself there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Mark wasn’t there. She rushed to the wardrobe and opened it. Sure enough, the small bit of clothing he’d brought for their mission was right where it should be, alongside her dresses. His traveling bag was there as well.

  She took out a dress and smallclothes for the day, tossing them over the bed, and moved to the washstand in the corner of the room. Chances were that Mark had gone downstairs for breakfast and that he hadn’t wanted to disturb her. She washed and dressed as quickly as she could, eager to catch up to him. But even as her head came up with a dozen reasonable explanations for why Mark hadn’t been there to greet the new day with her, her stomach roiled with worry. It wasn’t as though they had journeyed to Dorset for sightseeing. If Lord Shayles was indeed home, anything could have happened to Mark.

  By the time she ventured downstairs to the inn’s common room, Angelica was a bundle of nerves. The common room was bustling with travelers who had either stayed the night or who had just arrived on the train that Angelica had heard pulling into the station as she dressed. Crowds didn’t normally bother her one bit, but as she searched for Mark, craning her neck and walking to the far end of the common room to see if he had gone out onto the porch overlooking the town and the valley, she felt oddly conspicuous.

  The view from the porch included the sloping lawn of Ravencrest Hall in the distance and a peek of the corner of the house. A shudder passed through her at the sight of the evil place. Lord Shayles had Mark’s painting. Would Mark have gone back to get it? Would he have gone back for other reasons?

  “Lady Gatwick?”

  Angelica gasped as a man spoke her name. She turned to find Sir Christopher Dowland smiling at her from a few yards away.

  “I thought that was you,” Christopher said, his smile widening. He strode the last few yards to join her, offering his hand. When Angelica extended hers, he bowed over it with gentlemanly perfection.

  “Sir Christopher.” Angelica tried to smile at him, but her nerves got the better of her. Her voice shook in a way she wasn’t accustomed to.

  “I take it things have come to a head?” Christopher asked as he let her hand go.

  Angelica blinked at the mild-mannered man’s complete lack of surprise at seeing her. “What do you mean by that?” she asked, mustering her will to face Mark’s absence with greater strength, even though butterflies raged in her gut.

  Christopher gave her an embarrassed smile. “Lord Gatwick sent me a telegram yesterday, advising me that it would be necessary for me to honor the agreement we made recently in London.” His cheeks flushed modestly at the comment, and he looked as though Angelica would strike out at him at any moment.

  “Arrangement?” Angelica had half a mind to live up to Christopher’s expectations and rage at him. “What arrangement.”

  “I recently promised Lord Gatwick that if anything should happen to him, I would be your ally.” He cleared his throat. “Is Lord Gatwick about?” He glanced back over his shoulder into the common room of the inn.

  “I don’t know where he is,” Angelica said. Her anger inexplicably gave way to the unusual certainty that she could trust Sir Christopher. Mark was a devil to set up an arrangement that directly affected her behind her back, but Sir Christopher’s calm presence stilled the beast of fear that threatened her from within. She liked the man. And if she were honest with herself, she needed a friend at that moment. “We came here on…a particular errand,” she said, not wanting to spell the whole thing out quite yet. She glanced over her shoulder to the small bit of Ravencrest Hall in the distance.

  All at once, Sir Christopher’s expression dropped. “Did Lord Gatwick come here to face Lord Shayles?”

  “Actually, he didn’t.” Angelica glanced around. Too many people stood close enough to hear their conversation. The porch was empty, though, so she gestured for Christopher to follow her outside.

  As soon as they were alone, she faced him and said, “We came here in an attempt to retrieve something from the house at Ravencrest Hall before Lord Shayles’s release from pr
ison.”

  Christopher blinked and shook his head. “But Lord Shayles was released three days ago.”

  Angelica’s brow shot up in alarm.

  “He was released two days after we met in the National Gallery,” Christopher went on. “Was Lord Gatwick not aware?”

  “No,” Angelica said, feeling as though a stone had been dropped into her gut. Mark must have guessed right. Lord Shayles and his solicitor must have deliberately deceived him about the date of the man’s release in order for Lord Shayles to catch Mark unaware.

  “You look anxious,” Christopher said, extending a hand toward her as if for support, but holding back. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

  “I don’t know.” Angelica chewed her lip, glancing out to Ravencrest Hall again. “We went to Lord Shayles’s estate yesterday, thinking it was abandoned and we could retrieve…the item in question, then leave. But Lord Shayles surprised us.” She turned back to Christopher. “I’m not too proud to admit the man was terrifying. He threatened us, as I believe he has threatened Mark before.”

  Christopher grew serious. “Yes, Shayles has made no secret of his enmity toward Mark, nor his desire for revenge.”

  Angelica swallowed, pressing a hand to her stomach. “We escaped from Ravencrest Hall without incident last night.” She carefully left out the fire Mark caused. Lord Shayles must have extinguished it, as there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the house that morning, not a hint of smoke on the horizon. “Mark was not in our room this morning,” she went on.

  “Puzzling,” Christopher said with a frown. “I take it he didn’t leave you with any idea of where he could have gone or other business he needed to take care of?”

  Angelica shook her head, then lowered her shoulders with a sigh. “All of his things are still in the room. I believe there is only one place he could have gone, one thing he could have done.”

  “To confront Shayles?” Christopher asked.

  Angelica nodded. Her nerves bristled, causing prickles to break out across her skin. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to rush to rescue Mark or whether she wanted to chastise him to within an inch of his life. Either way, she couldn’t stand still.