by Lucy Ashford
‘No!’
She hadn’t meant it to sound so emphatic. His mouth twisted. ‘You mean you actually want my company?’
The thunder was rumbling further away now, but the wind was still moaning in the trees. The fire and the candles he’d lit made some things better, but other things worse. The shadows, for example, were playing tricks, flickering and leaping around the walls and domed ceiling of the pavilion. She remembered the stories she and Pippa had frightened each other with, as children. The servants used to say ghosts haunted Stancliffe’s lakes by night.
She said stiffly, ‘I wouldn’t dream of putting you through the ordeal of having to swim across that lake again, Lord Conistone!’
‘Mighty considerate of you,’ he drawled. He pulled a chair across and sat astride it, his folded arms resting on its back so that he was facing her. She found herself rather unnervingly captivated by the golden skin revealed by the open neck of his shirt. ‘Mind,’ he continued, ‘it would certainly add to the interesting speculation about my various—escapades. Rumours about midnight swimming feats would make a change from the gossip that usually surrounds me. Concerning parties. And drinking. And so forth’. He looked at her questioningly. ‘Go on. Tell me exactly why I received such a frosty reception earlier at Wycherley. What have you heard about me, Miss Sheldon? Though I used to think you disdained society tattle…’
‘I do!’ she cried. ‘I do! Though it’s hard to ignore, when they say you’ve been to—oh, to the Channel Isles, with your idle friend Alec Stewart, attending some grand ball held by—by a French Countess!’
He was on his feet. For just one terrifying moment, as his lean body coiled as if for action, she was truly afraid of what he might do, because she had never seen such blazing anger in his eyes.
Then he said, almost quietly, ‘Is that what you heard?’
She gazed up at him, white-faced. ‘Is it true, Lucas? ‘
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is. Perhaps it isn’t’.
She bowed her head bitterly. ‘And with an answer like that, you expect me to—trust you?’
‘Sometimes the truth is—not so easily definable,’ he said softly. ‘Besides, I’m getting rather used to malicious whispers from ignorant fools’.
He turned to put more wood on the fire. The rain was beating down again on the wooden roof of the pavilion. She swung away from him, to look out through the windows at the cold, dark night. He’d not even troubled to deny where he’d been.
Yet she could not forget the night he had saved her, the night he got shot. Or that terrible scar, from a French sabre.
So many mysteries. Too many mysteries.…
He was standing up now from the fire, which was at last giving out a glowing heat.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Even you have to admit that at times I have my uses’.
She turned back to him, her arms clasped more tightly across her breasts. ‘We would have managed!’ she whispered rather desperately. ‘If you hadn’t come back into our lives, Lucas, my family would have managed! You are everywhere, you seem to know everything before it happens—oh, I wish I’d never met you!’
‘Really?’ he answered evenly. ‘A few weeks ago, you were happy enough to share my bed. Had you forgotten?’
A gasp came to her lips. Her eyes were wide and desperate. Forget? Oh, Lord, the things she had let him do to her. The intense, exquisite, mind-searing pleasure he had bestowed.
Her heart was hammering. ‘Lucas, you said—we were both agreed—that what happened that night was a terrible mistake! The wine I’d drunk…’
‘Ah. The wine,’ he said lightly. ‘And there was I, thinking you were seriously considering my proposal of marriage. The straitlaced Miss Sheldon, undone by a glass of madeira’.
She jumped to her feet. ‘No! Please, Lucas, don’t mock!’ He was accusing her of being a lightskirt. ‘I was weak and foolish and I’ve acknowledged it, but we decided that you must not be forced into marriage to save my reputation!’
His hands were on her shoulders. ‘Do you seriously think I could be forced into marriage?’
Looking down at her, his dark gaze searing her, he began to subtly knead her tender skin through her gown with his strong fingers, sending shivers of raging desire all through her. Reminding her of the way she had arched beneath his intimate caresses, had risen to sublime ecstasy at the touch of his knowing hands.
She closed her eyes. She was shaking.
‘Verena,’ he murmured, ‘do you think all marriages should be for love?’
His enticing breath was warm on her cheek. She could not move. You must resist him. You must…. Somehow she said steadily, ‘I’m not at all sure that I believe in love. From what I’ve seen, love can only hurt you’.
‘What a world-weary matron you are, Miss Sheldon,’ he sighed lightly. ‘How old are you? Ah, yes, all of twenty-two. And sensibly turning your back on the frivolities of youth…’ He let her go at last, and turned to look round. ‘Dare I suggest some wine now, to lighten your despair? Since you find yourself in such—distasteful company?’
He reached for the flask and held it in front of her. The strait-laced Miss Sheldon, undone by a glass of madeira.
‘No, thank you!’ She shook her head tightly.
‘Then I’ll drink it alone,’ he said, taking a deep swig before putting the bottle down and looking around. ‘Time now, I think, to consider our sleeping arrangements…’
The room lurched. ‘I—I don’t need to sleep!’
He looked at her, his head on one side, his eyes narrowed. ‘You look ready to faint on your feet’. He started to pick out some cushions from the window seat; for a moment her heart thudded with fear, but he went nowhere near the hiding place and she relaxed.
He laid the cushions in a corner on the floor. ‘I’m sorry I can’t do better, but you should be reasonably comfortable there’.
Verena whispered, ‘What about you?’
‘I’ll stay awake for a while. Keep the fire in, and the local ghosts out, so to speak’.
He knew about her childish fears. She nodded, temporarily unable to speak. Somehow she felt so—safe with him, yet his very presence was a threat. Yes, he’d swum through flood waters, to come to her rescue—but could he somehow know her father’s diary was here? If he was after it, why? And why didn’t he just say so?
The physical longing to be once more in his arms tore through her. But—she had to remember her father’s warning. Martin Bryant’s warning. She couldn’t afford to trust this man again, ever. The cost of a betrayal, this time, would be too high.
Her heart aching sorely, she settled on the cushions upon the floor, with the shawl to cover her. He was sitting on a bench, staring into the fire, his curling black hair still wet, his hard-boned face bleak. I think about the war all the time, he’d once told her. Were his thoughts ravaged by guilt, at not being there? Was he remembering past battles? Fallen comrades?
Her eyes rested again on the cushions beneath which she’d hidden the diary in its case. Could it possibly be true what the old Earl had said? That someone had actually killed her father for what he knew?
Her mind full of warring emotions, she closed her eyes and slept, exhausted.
Chapter Eighteen
Lucas Conistone watched the shadows from the fire play on Verena’s face. How beautiful she looked as she lay there sleeping. How wildly he had longed, on the instant of his arrival here, to gather her in his arms and peel those wet clothes from her lovely, slender form; kiss her sweet lips, her breasts, and teach her how sublime love between a man and a woman could really be.
Damnation.
His arousal still burned darkly. He hated his lies to her. Hated not being able to tell her everything. She was lovely, brave and innocent—until he, Lucas Conistone, had started to take away that innocence. Deliberately.
She didn’t realise so many things.
She didn’t realise, for instance, that as she got changed earlier she’d been reflected—many times�
�in the windows of this octagonal room, which in the blackness of the surrounding night acted like mirrors. He’d tried his best not to look. But, damn it, he was only flesh and blood, and even with his back to her, he couldn’t help but glimpse a slender thigh, a delicate shoulder, even one rounded, pink-tipped breast.
It had taken all Lucas’s considerable will-power not to jump on her then and there. Just the thought of it made him hard and hot for her. He wanted to sweep her to the ground and make ardent, delicious love to her. He wanted to kiss her into oblivion and protect her from her enemies. From the world.
It was quite damnable that, thanks to his grandfather, it had to be Verena of all people leading him here to what he had been seeking for so long. What would she say, when she found out the truth? Lucas could not bear the thought of her suffering. Of her being in danger, because of her father’s past. There was, as he’d decided earlier, only one sure way to protect her.
Marriage. She had to become his wife.
Lucas looked outside. The rain had stopped at last. Verena was soundly asleep, her face tender and trusting as a child’s. He gazed down at her. I’m sorry, Verena. Then he moved across the room, towards those cushions to which her eyes had wandered so often. Too often.
* * *
Verena dreamed a horrifying dream. The wind was howling and the rain was lashing at her cheeks and hair. At first she thought she was standing on the narrow bridge to the island, but then in her dream the lake had turned into the sea, and she was on board a ship with Lucas; the ship had struck a rock and was sinking fast.
In her dream Lucas was trying to call out to her as the stormy surf churned around them, then Verena realised that Lucas himself was in danger, for an unidentified dark figure was standing over him with a knife. She was struggling to get to Lucas across the wildly tilting deck to warn him, but the mainsail was in tatters, and she couldn’t see him any more, and great black waves were pouring across the deck.
‘Lucas, don’t die!’ she cried out. ‘Please, please don’t die!’
Then she saw that the man holding that knife over Lucas was—her father.
She woke, crying out Lucas’s name, only to realise he was kneeling at her side and holding her in his strong arms, soothing her. ‘You were having a bad dream. But it’s all right, querida. Everything’s all right’.
She shuddered. ‘I dreamed there was a storm, at sea…’
‘Hush, Verena’. His arms around her were warm and comforting.
‘But—someone was trying to kill you, Lucas! I was trying to get to you, but I was too late…’
‘Oh, my dear’. He was cradling her in his arms now. ‘For so long, you have carried such a weight on your shoulders. You have been so utterly brave!’
His fingers were gently tracing the line of her throat. She tried to pull away from him, suddenly realising what was happening. To her. To them both. ‘Lucas…’
‘It’s all right,’ he murmured. ‘I’m here. I’m safe. I’m with you…’ His mouth twisted a little. ‘At least, I think that’s all right—but—do you?’
His fingertip had found its way to her lips. That warm, dry touch on the delicate skin of her mouth sent great tremors juddering through her body. She found her arms slipping around his shoulders. Somehow he was tilting her chin, lifting her face to his, and he was kissing her cheek, then bending to kiss her throat, causing her to arch back her head so he could roam freely with his lips across the delicate skin of her neck and shoulders, making her tremble with delight.
Then he was kissing her mouth. She realised there was nothing she wanted more on this earth than for Lucas to kiss her.
She felt herself warming. Melting. Memories flooded back, of the time he had kissed her before. Of the way she had sworn never to let him kiss her again. Her brain remembered her vow of resistance, but her body did not. Besides, now his tongue was probing her lips and exploring, so sweetly; his hand was caressing her breasts, finding one delicate peak and teasing it between finger and thumb, until it was tight and hot—a caress so firm, so insistent, that her whole being was throbbing in time to the deliberate movement of his fingertips, while at the same time his tongue was thrusting into her mouth and retreating lingeringly, then delving again, deep, and slow, and firm.
She was trembling wildly. He released her from his kiss, but only to stroke back her wild and wanton hair from her face. His molten grey eyes were gazing down at her in the shimmering half-light from the fire. Verena’s heart was hammering. Dear Lord. How, how could she tell herself she must not trust him, when her entire being yearned to be at one with him?
Perhaps her father was wrong. The cruel, treacherous hope began to snake its way into her desire-hazed mind. After all, hadn’t Lucas done all he could to help them? Hadn’t he saved Wycherley? Perhaps her father had mistakenly surmised that Lucas hated them all as much as the Earl did.
Impossible. Impossible.
His hands were sliding round her back this time, caressing her, sending darts of flame along her body. Behind him, she could see, through the small window, that the moon was out again, dancing behind wild clouds, its light casting Lucas’s handsome face into harsh relief, and glittering on that thick mane of midnight-black hair, the straight brow, the clear eyes and starkly moulded jaw and cheekbones.
‘Ah, Verena. If I asked you to marry me again now,’ he was murmuring huskily, ‘what would be your answer, I wonder?’
His mouth was about to cover hers again. She put her hands on the hard wall of his chest, resisting him. She must end it, she must. She said, trembling, ‘This is impossible. I am no one in your world. You would lose everything if you courted me’.
‘You’ve never given me a chance to say whether I thought you were worth the loss,’ he whispered. His lips touched her throat. ‘Everything I’ve done, I do for you. I think of you when I’m far away, meu amor. You are my dream of a better life’.
He kissed her again and she surrendered. Willingly she gave him her mouth, her tongue twining with his. His hands had deliberately parted her gown; this time he was running his palms flatly over both her breasts until her nipples were hard, jutting peaks of desire. Her hips were lifting, grinding instinctively against his; she could feel, as his heavily muscled thighs pressed against hers, the hardness of his aroused manhood through the taut cloth of his breeches.
Then he bent his head suddenly, to lick and curl with his tongue round one scarlet nipple, sucking and drawing it between his teeth. Her moan of pleasure became a sharp gasp as her body was seized by a violent shuddering of delight. Of ardent longing.
‘Everything,’ he was repeating huskily. ‘Everything, for you…’
Still gazing at her, he stood up and began to unbutton his shirt. His magnificent, muscular torso gleamed in the firelight as he shrugged the shirt off. The outline of his proud erection was all too evident beneath the fabric of his skintight breeches.
Her throat was dry, her pulse racing. A primitive instinct seemed to take possession of her whole body, snaking wantonly over each nerve-ending and stirring her flesh into pulsating life. Now he was down at her side again, kneeling on the cushions, his thumb brushing her swollen mouth, running down her throat, to her breasts. Her hands flew to cover them, the twin stiffened peaks humiliating evidence of her reaction to him. He caught them and held them away, his iron strength tempered by gentleness. He breathed, ‘They’re beautiful. You are beautiful’.
He must have made love to so many exquisite women, she told herself. He must have said these things so many times to so many others.
Even now his eyes were dark, unfathomable. Yet, as he took her hand and lifted it to his lips to kiss it, the shafts of longing rippled through her body, again and again. She gasped as the dark heat pooled at her abdomen and lower, realised his fingers had slipped down to caress the apex of her thighs. She heard a soft moan—oh, Lord, her own—as he parted the delicate folds of skin and began to stroke with his forefinger, up and down, seeking and revelling in the silky moistness
there.
Her hips arched suddenly, wanting him, finding him; her hands were clasped round his strong shoulders, clenching on firm, warm male muscle. ‘Lucas…. ‘
‘Hush,’ he was saying softly between kisses, ‘hush, you are beautiful, so beautiful…’
He was dealing with his own garments now, reaching to the fastening of his breeches, and the colour flooded her face as he drew her close and she felt the lengthy silken heat of him tense and quiver against her stomach. The strength. The power. The desire there. For her. Then he was kissing her again, savouring her lush mouth with his tongue.
She wanted him. Her body was a whirlpool of passion, of desire; and this man was at the heart of her longing. ‘Tell me,’ she whispered huskily. ‘Tell me how to give you pleasure, Lucas, as you give pleasure to me…’
‘Kiss me,’ he breathed. She did, flickering and darting with her tongue inside his mouth, tasting the silken flesh there.
‘Ah, Verena—’ He guided her hand down to his hard shaft and she gasped as her fingertips explored the hot, pulsing flesh.
Now he was cradling her slender hips, lifting them, and she could see, in the flickering half-light, the core of his masculinity poised to enter her. She dug her fingers into his iron-hard arms as he lowered himself gradually and she felt the engorged head of his manhood probing at the very heart of her femininity. She felt the tightness, as her most secret place sought to accommodate him, then the hard, pulsing surge. Her cry of surprise, and wonder, rose involuntarily; and then came the beginnings of the most exquisite pleasure as he supported his upper body’s weight on his arms and began to move, gazing down at her, all the time.
‘Verena. Beautiful one. I’m not hurting you, am I?’ he whispered.
‘No. Oh, no’. Instinctively she lifted her hips, already delighting in this most intimate of caresses. He bowed his head and kissed her, his tongue plunging sensually to match the thrust of his manhood. She welcomed every touch ardently.
She had not dreamed it would be like this. Power. Fulfilment. Love.