She broke free of his kiss and tumbled backward, catching herself with her hands. Her eyes widened. Like a starving man watching a feast snatched from before him, he roared his fury.
She skittered away from him. He flung himself against his bonds, wrenching his arms, following her with fierce determination. She whimpered—sweet sound of abandonment!—and like an addict to the opiate, crept back to him. Her eyes searched his. Her deliciously vulnerable mouth trembled beneath the black silk mask. She settled her hand on his thigh. He ground his teeth in frustration and closed his eyes.
“What do you want?” he demanded. “Whatever the bloody hell you want, just finish this!”
Her gasp jerked him back to reality as no word could have done. He felt the ropes cutting into his wrists, heard his breath laboring like a beast’s, smelled the sweat and musk of his own arousal.
She wasn’t going to satisfy this primitive need. He could see fear rising in her, overtaking her desire.
She needn’t fear him. God, he’d have fallen like a supplicant to his knees for her touch, for her kiss, and her body. Would have—
Too late he realized his admission and recognized what she’d done. He’d have traded all the long years he’d spent fighting for a portion of control, a particle of expiation, just for the chance to rut with her. Damn her!
Savagely, silently, he wrenched against the ropes. He was a boy again, a starving workhouse roach chained by ignorance and desperation to a life of squalid imprisonment. He was a boy hurling abuse on every other tenant of that rotting hell, hating them all but none more than himself for he couldn’t stop fighting. And fighting the inevitable only made the pain worse.
The lashes the workhouse guards had used were nothing to the pain of simple want. He could shut himself off from their brutality. He could use that pain, work it, and learn from it. He’d never learned anything from the pain of wanting but to want more. Until he’d finally damned himself with it.
She bloody well should shrink. She should run. Hide in hell if she could—for what little good it would do her. He’d find her. “Let me go!”
She fumbled on the floor behind her for his sword and found it. She shoved herself to her feet and pointed its tip at his throat. “No.”
The rope scoured his wrists; warm liquid greased the hemp. His blood.
“Stay there!” she commanded, her voice shaking as much as the sword’s madly wobbling tip. She craned her head around, looking for escape.
“Why don’t you make me?” He twisted his crippled hand and yanked it free. He surged upward and the chair crashed to the floor behind him. His ruined nightshirt fell open at his side. Her gaze fell upon his arousal and for an instant her eyes fluttered shut.
He took advantage of that improbable maidenliness. He seized the blade in his hand, ripping his palm open on it. More blood.
She panicked and grasped the hilt with both her hands, trying to wrest it from him. With his free hand he seized the back of her neck and toppled her against him. She fought desperately as he pulled her into his punishing embrace, absorbing each blow.
Anne panted. She could not think. He was too big, too strong, and far too angry. Dear God, she thought hysterically, twisting madly, had she really thought to control him?
Tears coursed down her face as she fought him, but beneath the tears desire, like a ravening animal, still clamored for satisfaction. God help her, it had been so long and never like this: so elemental, so raw.
Some deep-buried part of her not only wanted this struggle and this fight but wanted his victory, wanted the smell of him hot and angry inundating her senses, the slick slide of his belly muscles against her own. His dense masculine form straining above her—
“No!” She went limp. For just an instant his hold loosened on her wrists. She skewed violently and jerked her head up hard beneath his chin. She heard his teeth crack together and wheeled the sword hilt around, smashing it into his temple. He fell back a step. It was room enough. She twisted, sprang free, and raced for the window.
She heard him behind her and then she was through the opening and swinging down past the sill. Her hands flew over the brickwork and found purchase in the crumbling mortar above the frame as her toes scrabbled for the watercourse. Her heart pounded in her temples. Her legs flayed wildly, frantically. She couldn’t find the watercourse.
Her weight began dragging her fingers from the shallow, grout-filled gully. Her feet beat like a chimney-trapped bird against the brick. Her hands cramped. She slipped. Blackness yawned greedily beneath her, pulling her—
Her wrist was seized in a viselike grip.
She stared up. Jack leaned half out of the window, his chest and arms cording with muscle and sinew, his teeth set as he struggled to pull her up. But his hand was slick with his own blood and weakened by the deep gash across the palm. Even as he lifted her she felt his grip loosen. He would drop her thirty feet to the cobbled pavers below.
“Swing me through the window below!” She gasped.
“No!” he grated out.
“Swing me through! Or I’ll die!”
Indecision, pain, and fury writhed across his fierce countenance and then, with a grunt, he leaned farther out. His torso gleamed with sweat in the cold moonlight. His face was rigid with concentration.
He gripped the sill with his good hand and heaved her sideways, pitching her away from the window, using her momentum to swing her out and away from the building. And then she was arcing back in.
The window loomed like a black flat lake of glass. She cried out once and closed her eyes. A thousand prisms exploded about her as she broke through the window and pitched into the room among a fantasia of broken, crystalline shards.
She landed tucked, rolled, and regained her feet as she’d been taught. And then she was through the archway into the dark hallway and running for the front door, her thoughts racing.
She slowed, her pulse thrumming in her throat, her chest heaving with the stimulation of having cheated death—and him. He’d saved her.
Tuning her ears for the inevitability of his chase, she slipped into a dark alcove by the front door. The beat of his footsteps raced down the staircase and past her hiding place. She heard his soft curse as he stopped before the front doorway. The glow of the streetlamps outside attached to his long, hard body.
She stepped silently behind him, filling her eyes with the sight of him: the span of his back, the straight line of his shoulders, the narrow hips, the hard buttocks tapering into long thighs and calves.
She touched the barrel of her pistol to the small of his back. He swung around and she dipped beneath the clenched fist flying above her head. She shoved the gun into his hard abdomen and wrapped her free hand around his neck. Surprise and anger flashed in equal measures across his face.
For the second time that night, she kissed him. She opened her mouth against his hard, chiseled lips and felt him swell against her. With a sound like a growl he crushed her in his embrace and lifted her against him. Heedless of the gun pinioned between their bodies, he propelled her back against the wall. Ravenously he angled his mouth over hers as his hips pinned her to the wall. His shoulders broadened as he bent over her like a falcon above its kill. He enveloped her in his masculinity.
Surrender. He’s won, she thought, drowning in sensation and need.
“Damn you!” He muttered, the curse lost and furious and hopeless with self-loathing and awful longing.
He wants this, she thought dizzily. He hates you. He’ll kill you.
She shoved him away and stumbled back. Still holding the gun on him, she groped behind her for the door handle. He stepped forward.
“No!” Her voice sounded frantic, near to shattering. He stopped.
“I’ll find you wherever you go,” he swore grimly. “However long it takes. You can’t run far enough.”
She bolted. Light and fast as a greyhound coursing over the wet, cold cobbles, she fled. She gained the rooftop and pitched herself recklessly through the night’s mockin
g stillness, her breath coming in sobs because she knew he was right; she’d never run fast enough or far enough again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The prince regent was having a dinner party. He’d planned it for weeks. Carlton House was to be filled with sumptuous food, beautiful people, and witty conversation. Afterward they would dance and gamble and then have a midnight refreshment.
The prince regent never made it to the dancing.
The weather and the renewed activities of Wrexhall’s Wraith conspired to keep many of his guests at home. Feeling put upon and unappreciated, he’d cried off directly after dining, leaving his company to look after themselves.
Those who remained were stalwart revelers, determined not to let any happenstance interfere with their pursuit of pleasure in all its forms. The Norths, along with Anne Wilder, were among their number.
Brilliant blue-white light filled Carlton House’s huge windows. The brief flash went unnoticed by the revelers. Except Anne. A few seconds later the floor beneath the crowd vibrated. She lifted her head and watched the chandeliers dance in time to thunder so low and deep it hid beneath the chattering of human voices. The storm grew nearer.
Anne gazed down into her punch and swirled the ruby liquor in the glass, creating a tiny whirlpool in the center. Each day, it seemed to her, spun by as uncontrollably as the fleck of cork spinning madly around her glass. Ever since Jack—
No. Not Jack. She wouldn’t think of Jack. She looked around, hoping to seize upon some distraction, and a short distance away saw Sophia with Lady Dibbs, Lady Pons-Burton, and Jeanette Frost. They slowly wended their way toward her. Sophia, she would think of Sophia.
Anne had heard rumors lately, from concerned acquaintances, helpful dowagers, and knowing gentlemen whose words had commiserated but whose eyes told a different tale.
“High spirits, Mrs. Wilder,” they’d say. “I recall you kicked over the traces when you were that age, too, didn’t you? Didn’t hurt you any though, did it?”
The little whirlpool in the middle of her glass grew deeper as the wine swirled faster. Oh, yes, mustn’t pass any opportunity to extract a bit of late payment from the merchant’s daughter for having tricked a peer into marrying her.
Their graceless innuendos simply did not hurt her. They had no subtlety to them. Jack Seward would have killed her with courtesy. He would have—
No. Sophia. Three nights ago she’d gone to Sophia’s room and discovered the girl missing. Sophia had returned just before Malcolm arrived home.
Poor bit of luck for Sophia, Anne thought. He’d shouted abuse at Sophia and the servants and most especially at Anne herself. Fearsome sight, if you were capable of caring. But wasn’t that her stigmata? The inability to care deeply enough or love? That’s what Matthew had said. And he should have known.
Sophia and her coterie stopped a few feet away, their conversation humming like the buzzing of bees in a hive. Yes, Anne thought, studying Sophia’s low décolletage and practiced smile, she’d done a fine job of guiding Sophia. With any more of her guidance, Sophia would end up in a brothel.
She’d tried. She had honestly tried. Just as she had tried to love Matthew.
Rain began pelting the glass panes. The cold water against the heated glass caused fog to mist them over. The thunder crackled closer now, interrupting the conversation of the four women.
“Ghastly weather,” Lady Dibbs said when it had ceased. “And me in new shoes. But where was I?”
Sophia smiled politely as her gaze wandered freely among the men. Poor Lady Dibbs, thought Anne. She doesn’t even realize she’s been preempted.
Just a short while ago Lady Dibbs had ensured Anne’s silence regarding her debt to the Home by threatening to have the Norths ostracized. She didn’t have that power now. Sophia had decided to see to that task herself.
The girl’s smile deepened. Anne looked over her shoulder to see who now had attracted her attention. Strand stood a ways off, Jack by his side. Anne’s pulse quickened at the sight of him. His gaze touched her and moved on.
She’d wanted Jack Seward to abandon his courtship of the widow in favor of his pursuit of the thief. Her desires could not have been better realized. He no longer sought her company. He avoided even looking at her. He gave her only the barest minimum of what his exquisite manners demanded.
She should smile. She should feel triumphant. After all, her plan—her oh-so-clever plan—had worked, hadn’t it? Her throat closed on the welling pain.
It had been five nights since she’d gone to Jack’s room. On each subsequent night she’d gone out and stolen gems and baubles, trinkets, and heirlooms, growing bolder with each theft. She simply no longer cared.
What did it matter now? She made herself one with the role. She relished it, reveled in it. She needed it because the only thing she would ever have of Jack Seward was his pursuit. The widow wouldn’t have his regard; the thief wouldn’t know his passion.
Sophia would never suffer from Anne’s acts. They were related by only the most slender of associations. She was Sophia’s cousin’s ill-bred wife. Indeed, society might offer sympathy to the poor girl who’d been so taken in by—
“The Wraith forced himself on me last night.”
Anne’s head snapped around. Stunned attention met Jeanette’s hushed statement. She might as well have dropped a dead cat into their midst.
“He stole my broach and then he … he kissed me.”
“My dear child!” Lady Dibbs cried, her eyes alight with speculation.
“How exciting!” Sophia said. “And terrible, of course. Do tell us what happened.”
“Yes,” Anne urged dryly, “do tell us so we can contrive to escape your fate.”
Jeanette needed no further prompting. “Well,” she said, “the clock had just struck midnight.”
Midnight? It had been three hours shy of dawn.
“I awoke to the feeling of a shadow passing over me. I opened my eyes. He was bending over me. I was terrified.”
“I should say,” Anne said. Jeanette Frost had been snoring like an asthmatic mastiff during the entire time Anne had rifled through her drawers and jewelry boxes.
Jeanette clasped her hands to her bosom. “ ‘Blackguard!’ I shouted. He leered down at me, a tall broad-shouldered brute of a man, and said, ‘Aye, wench! And since I’m a blackguard I may as well take the blackguard’s portion.’ He seized me and kissed me and laughed again when I slapped his face.” She giggled.
“Is that all?” Sophia asked.
“Oh!” Jeanette’s maidenly gasp didn’t come accompanied by the slightest of maidenly blushes. She glanced about her audience, undoubtedly deciding what ending would lend her the greatest cachet. “But of course that’s all.”
The other women’s faces collapsed in disappointment.
Cowardly, Miss Frost, Anne thought. But definitely the wiser course. She looked over at where Jeanette’s red-eyed father divided his glowers between his daughter and Jack. A ravished daughter in the Frost household might as well be dead.
“One kiss?” Lady Pons-Burton asked, her plump cheeks distended in a pout.
“Just one kiss.” Jeanette nodded, her eyes straying toward her father.
“How awful for you, Miss Frost,” Sophia said, and Anne had the disturbing notion Sophia wasn’t consoling Jeanette on her adventure but on its tame ending.
“I must tell you all something,” Jeanette said, looking about. “I don’t think the Wraith is a commoner.”
“And why is that, Miss Frost?” Lady Dibbs asked.
“I can’t exactly say. He just had such an air about him. And he was well spoken, if gruff. I should think he may well be some”—her voice dropped as her gaze slanted to where Jack’s broad back stood against them—against her—“nobleman’s by-blow.”
“Well, we know how interesting they can be.” Lady Dibbs bit her lower lip provocatively.
“A lot of commotion about nothing if you ask me,” Sophia replied blandly. “Or wishful
thinking.”
“Why, Miss North,” Lady Dibbs said, glancing at her companions to see if they shared her feigned amazement at the unsolicited opinion of so young and—ostensibly—inexperienced a girl. “Whatever are you referring to?”
Jeanette and Lady Pons-Burton snickered.
“I’m speaking about Colonel Seward, of course,” Sophia said, her eyes narrowing slightly. “I don’t think the man nearly as transfixing as the stories about him.”
“But how would you know, child?” Lady Dibbs purred. She looked over Sophia’s head directly at Anne. She blinked as if she’d forgotten she was there. “Perhaps dear Mrs. Wilder here is better qualified to tell us about Colonel Seward, seeing how he quite shadows her. Or did. I thought you’d adopted a new pet there for a while, Mrs. Wilder. But then, they call him ‘Whitehall’s Hound,’ don’t they?”
The four ladies dipped behind their fans and tittered.
When Anne didn’t respond, Lady Dibbs turned her bright gaze back on Sophia. “And then what with the two of them having such similar histories and all … Oh, dear! I haven’t offended you, have I, Sophia?” Lady Dibbs’s bright-red mouth dribbled artificial laughter. “I mean, it’s not as if no one knows, is it? One must be apprised of what and with whom one associates. And Mrs. Wilder never did care who knew how … unassuming her ancestors are.”
Despicable woman.
“It’s his manner,” Jeanette broke in, utterly oblivious to the byplay. “Such a violent history and such refined manners. The combination is simply galvanizing.”
Anne refused to look at him. It would be as if she’d never mated her tongue with his, as if she’d never strained against him, stroked the warm, hard wall of his chest, felt his pulse thundering in the silk-hard manhood.
God help her, when would she forget? She bit the inside of her cheeks as hard as she could until she tasted the metallic tang of blood. In the last days she’d resurrected a specter of the girl who’d once dazzled London society. No one seemed to mind that her laughter sounded brittle, that her sharp wit had no kindness, and that the promises she made with her eyes were empty.
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