by Susan Wiggs
He bent to skim his lips over her bared flesh, then lifted his head, pressing his brow against hers and staring into her eyes. His mouth hovered close, tantalizing, its shape imprinted on her senses, its texture and taste evoking forbidden memories of other moments.
“And when you kiss me?” she heard herself ask boldly. “Is that temptation?”
“Oh, yes, my love. Of the sweetest sort.” He bent his head, his lips coming closer and closer. “Yes indeed.” He paused when his mouth came nearer still, a mere breath away. She could almost feel his kiss. The hunger to experience it flared out of control. Passion was contrary to all of her training, all of her hard-won self-control. Lessons and lectures burned away like so much kindling on a bonfire.
“What are you feeling, Lark?” he asked in the softest of whispers. “Tell me. Describe it.”
“I feel…” She wanted to grasp him and press his mouth down over hers, to punish herself with sinful yearning. “Overly warm.”
“Where?”
“I…Everywhere,” she replied, taken aback.
She felt the soft hum of his mirth as he chuckled. “Can you be more specific?”
“I could. But there are certain things I do not…I cannot name.”
True warmth flowed through his laughter then, and genuine affection radiated from him as he slid his arms around her and pressed her cheek to his chest. “Dear Lark. You do have much to learn.”
She realized that he referred to the act of physical love. The old guilty horror crept over her, and she shuddered. “Suppose I don’t wish to learn?”
“There is no shame in naming body parts and knowing how they work. Trust me.” Before she could stop him, he let his hand stray. “Now, this is a—”
“No!” She clapped her hands over her ears. “That is vulgar.”
He lifted her hand and spoke into her ear. “Then what about—”
“Stop that!” Yet even as she spoke, she was intrigued by his game and by the strangely liberating feeling it gave her to speak frankly of things she had been taught to keep secret. She felt both shame and curiosity, wanting to know what a real wife knew. Curiosity won out, grinding the last flicker of guilt beneath its heel. “I shall listen if you promise to whisper.”
“Of course,” he said, all seriousness.
“And if you swear you won’t use those horrid low German terms.”
“Very well.”
They settled—he with vast amusement, she with uncomfortable fascination—on terms more suited to animal husbandry than lovemaking. Although her cheeks burned, she was an avid listener, forgetting her shame as he described a world of sensation, of temptation, of ravishing sensuality. It was nothing like the world she knew. It was brighter, bolder and infinitely seductive.
“Now then,” she said with false briskness when he finished, “I have confessed to what I feel. I am ready to be tempted.” She raised herself on tiptoe, so eager now for his kiss that she almost wept when he held her off once again.
“Patience, Lark. I’m not convinced that you’ve truly confronted temptation.”
“But I told you about the heat. I even told you where I felt it.”
“What else, Lark?” His hands continued to tease and torment her, massaging her shoulder blades, meandering around—just barely, to touch the fullness of her breasts.
As though I shall die if you don’t kiss me, she thought.
“I feel strange, in a pleasant way,” she confessed. “As if I could know something, see a new world, if I let myself. Have you ever stood at the edge of a cliff in the dark and wondered what lay below?”
“It’s a hard decision, is it not?” He did something new and shocking with his tongue, and shivers passed through her body, starting in the place she had just learned the name of and radiating out to the tips of her toes, her fingers, her breasts.
“Aye,” she whispered helplessly. “A hard decision.”
“So what shall it be, Lark?” His warm lips touched the pulse in her neck. “Stay where you are, in tedious safety, or fling yourself off the cliff to see what awaits you?”
“A great danger might await me.”
“Or something wonderful.”
She clutched at the front of his shirt. “It is easy for you, Oliver. You are a born cliff jumper. You have no obligations. No commitments. No responsibilities. No one expects anything from you. You can afford to take risks.”
“In other words, the world cares not whether Oliver de Lacey lives or dies, is that it?”
He spoke quietly, but she heard the venom in his voice.
“It would not be so if you would become a responsible man.” She wanted to lash out at him for making her experience this yearning, this vulnerability, this passion she had no right to feel. And for not kissing her when she needed it more than air.
“Like your precious Richard Speed. He can move the masses to tears, Lark. But can he make you feel like this?”
Oliver turned her, pressing her back against the tree, and finally, just before she screamed in frustration, he kissed her.
Truly kissed her. Deeply. Wickedly.
She responded with an ardor she knew she would be ashamed of later. But she could not help herself. That was the worst of it. The loss of control. The stripping away of her will until there was nothing left but the wanting, the ache.
His tongue slid in and out of her mouth. Slowly. Rhythmically. To her shock, she felt the echo in her newly named body part.
Her fists tightened on his shirt, then went slack and slid downward. The shape of his chest was fascinating. His midsection was still bandaged, but lower she discovered interesting ripples on his stomach. Good Lord, he was wonderfully put together!
When her fingers brushed the tops of his blousy canions, she froze. The dark time reared in her mind, but she shied from thinking about that now.
“Ah, sweetheart,” he murmured against her mouth, “we’ve barely begun.”
“We must stop.” Tears burned her eyes. She did not know if the tears sprang from grief or frustration.
“Nay.” He cupped his hand around the back of her head. “Lark, we can’t stop.”
“I thought your purpose was to teach me the true meaning of temptation so I could resist it.”
“I lied.”
“You did?”
“My true purpose was to seduce you.”
She ducked beneath his arm and stepped away so she was no longer pressed between him and the ancient tree.
“You’re wicked, Oliver de Lacey!”
“But I’d never bore you, dear. And in truth…” He raked a hand through his hair and gazed at her, looking genuinely perplexed. “I’ve never known anyone like you, Lark. Here’s the truth. I’ve never, ever felt so aroused as I do at this moment.”
She felt a thrill in spite of herself. “That is your problem. You won’t solve it by harassing me.”
“If I did not revere each and every member of your fair sex, I would fling you onto the riverbank and touch you in all the places I described a few moments ago.”
Though she would have died rather than admit the truth to him, his words summoned an image that excited her. At the same time, she knew that she was perfectly safe. For all of his faults, Oliver did truly respect women. She could not imagine him doing harm to her or any other.
He began to pace, restless as a stallion. His tall knee boots crunched over the loose sand and gravel of the bank. “I’m confused, Lark. I know not why, but kissing you is more fun than bedding a legion of willing wenches.” He swung around and challenged her. “Why don’t you want me?”
“Why should I?” she shot back.
“All women want me,” he said with a surprising lack of conceit. “I’ve never encountered rejection before.”
“Then you have led a charmed life,” she answered primly.
“And why you? I’ve known women more lavishly beautiful and, God knows, more worldly. I’ve known women of lofty accomplishments who have the confidence of queens.” He
seemed almost to be speaking to himself. “Why you?”
“Ah.” She was able to hold the hurt at bay, but her temper had reached the boiling point. “That is what galls you. Veritable princesses have fallen into your lap. And then there is me. Lark. Mousy and brown and timid.” She glared at his codpiece, the contents of which he had modestly referred to as “His Highness.”
She tossed her head and said, “I am surely too much an oaf to appreciate the near-sacred gift you offer me.”
“Lark, that is not what I meant.”
“It is what you meant, and you know it!” she shouted. Lord, it felt good, sinfully good, to vent her temper. She had always been instructed to keep hers in check. Now she knew the disgraceful pleasure of pouring it all out. She stalked back and forth on the bank. “I could give you a hundred reasons why I do not want you to seduce me. You are spoiled, conceited, irresponsible.” She counted them off with her fingers. “Faithless, truthless, lawless—”
“But enough about me.” He caught her raised hand in his. “You are quick to enumerate my faults. Have you none of your own? No reason of your own to deny yourself a perfectly good night of love?”
“I have a reason.” The old shame seized her in its grip. She tore her hand away and resumed pacing. So did he, following her. At the bank of the river, she stopped and turned. They both assumed the time-honored stance of a bickering couple: hands on hips, noses thrust toward each other, brows almost touching.
“Well?” he prompted furiously.
She took a deep breath. It was about time he learned the truth. He was bound to find out eventually, anyway.
“Because,” she said in a nervous rush, “I am married.”
Eight
“Married!” Oliver squawked. He cleared his throat. “Married! How on earth can you be married?”
Reeling in shock, he peered at her through the darkness. Lark. She looked the same as she ever had. Not beautiful. Beyond beautiful.
The moonlight fell like a veil over her, glinting in her dark hair like filaments of silver. She was no raving beauty, he assured himself for the hundredth time. But there was that air about her. That rare combination of delicacy and strength. That intriguing allure of self-denial and barely repressed passion.
“This is a joke,” he said. “You cannot possibly be married.”
“People get married,” she stated. “It happens every day.”
“Not to you.” The denial leaped from him. He had suffered many surprises in his time, but never one that hurt. Lark could not be married. She was sweet. She was innocent. She was his.
Apparently not.
“Not to me?” she asked, thrusting up her chin. “And pray you, why not? Ah, I see. I am too timid and mousy and plain to be the wife of anyone, is that it?”
You are too naive, he thought. Too pristine. Too…mine.
He loosened the laces of his collar, for despite the cold night he had begun to sweat. “What sort of wife goes traipsing around the countryside risking her life to rescue condemned men? What sort of husband would allow it?”
She shrugged, her defiance dimming a little. “He does not precisely allow it.”
He. Oliver’s stomach churned. He. The husband. A man who had an identity, who commanded Lark’s heart.
“Who?” Oliver forced himself to ask. “Who is this husband whose wife defies death and sleeps amongst Gypsies?”
She squared her shoulders. He braced himself, certain she would name the handsome yet oily Wynter Merrifield.
The thought that Wynter—or any man—might know her and touch her in the way Oliver wanted to know her and touch her was unbearable.
“Who?” he demanded again, preparing himself for the news that she had wed Wynter, who was bolder, stronger…and longer lived than he.
“Spencer Merrifield,” she replied.
Oliver broke into relieved laughter. “Your jest is strange indeed, Lark.”
“Tis no jest. Spencer is my husband. I am Lark Merrifield, countess of Hardstaff.”
Oliver mouthed the name and the title, but no sound came out. Please be lying.
But Lark never lied. Lark never jested. He suspected she did not even know how. In this, as in all matters, she was deadly serious.
“But he’s old!” Oliver burst out at last.
“Forty-five years my senior.”
“Then why…how…wherefore…” Oliver raked all ten splayed fingers through his hair, wishing he could comb away his sense of horror and betrayal. “I need a drink,” he mumbled.
She unbent enough to offer him a slight smile. “So do I.”
They crept back to the encampment. Lark checked on Richard Speed; he still slept a sound, healing sleep. Oliver nicked a jar of wine clad in wicker from where it hung on one of the wagons. He took a woolen blanket and two battered pewter goblets, as well, and they stole away together—like two lovers in the night, he thought with an ironic smile.
He led her up a slight incline to the top of a grassy knoll overlooking the river. The scent of the water freshened the breeze that drifted up from the valley. Oliver welcomed the coolness on his face. Lark had some explaining to do, and he would not let her rest until she confessed all.
Scowling, he spread out a blanket, sat down and patted the spot next to him. She lowered herself somewhat warily.
He uncorked the bottle, filled both goblets and handed one to her. “Drink. Something tells me this is going to be a long night.”
She took an admirably lusty pull from the cup. He pretended not to notice the arc of her throat as she drank or the way her long eyelashes fanned her cheeks. He knew nothing quite so flattering as the silver light of a winter moon.
She finished, setting down the cup. “Why do you stare at me so?”
“With such tippling skills, you’d not be out of place in one of my London haunts.”
She stared down at her lap. “Yes, I would.”
He touched her shoulder. When she looked up at him, he saw the moon reflected in her great, sad eyes.
“Lark, why did you not tell me you were married? And to Spencer Merrifield, of all people?”
“It seemed imprudent, especially at first.”
“And you are, above all, a prudent woman.”
She tightened her fist around the base of her goblet. “Of necessity. At the start, I knew virtually nothing of you. Like the court that condemned you to the gallows, I thought you a common rabble-rouser. I felt no need to share my life history with you.”
“Then why not later? Why not after you learned my true identity and came looking for me?”
“Ever since I joined Dr. Snipes and the Samaritans, I have always tried to keep my part in this work private.”
“Because Spencer has no idea about the risks you take.”
“He believes I do no more than help Mrs. Snipes at the safe hold at Ludgate and decode messages in cipher. If he should happen to hear that a woman was seen rescuing prisoners, he’ll be less likely to associate that woman with me.”
“Ah.” Oliver savored the burn of a long swallow of wine. “Is that why you act the downtrodden female when you are at Blackrose?”
She sniffed. “I shall ignore that.”
“You still haven’t said why you kept this a secret from me. I would not have told Spencer,” Oliver grumbled.
“I feared what you would think if I introduced myself as Spencer’s wife and then told you the plan to disentail Wynter.”
“You thought I’d assume you were acting out of greed, wanting the inheritance all for yourself.”
“I do not,” she said vehemently. “But neither do I want Wynter to have it. In the days before the Reform, Blackrose Priory was a place of corruption and superstition. Wynter would restore it to that state.”
Oliver held up a hand. “You need not exert yourself to make me believe that, Lark. What I was wondering about was a bit more…personal.”
She drank again, pulled her knees up to her chest and set her chin upon them. Clearly she was
unaware that the pose made her look younger and more untried than ever. Good Christ. Was she untried? Had she and that wasted old man shared a bed?
“Just start at the beginning,” he said, wishing the thought had never occurred to him. “I want—I need—to understand.”
“Shortly after my birth, both my parents died of the sweat.”
He nodded and took a drink. The dread horror of the sweat had been known to empty whole manors and towns.
“They were Lord and Lady Montmorency,” she said.
“I have heard the name. Estate in Hertfordshire?”
“Yes. It’s called Montfichet. And I, just three months alive, was the sole heir.” She held up her hand as if she knew what his comment would be. “Spencer had little interest in the land. He already possessed a manor called Eventide—that will fall to me upon his death—and Blackrose Priory, which King Henry granted to him in the first phase of the Dissolution.”
With random, nervous movements, she plucked strands of dry grass and arranged them on the blanket in front of her, forming the Roman numeral VIII with the blades. “Blackrose was granted on condition of entail, for at the time, the realm needed stability. The king could not know that Spencer’s son would embrace the corrupt Church of Rome when he was man-grown.”
She helped herself to more wine. Oliver stifled his own impatience to learn the answer to the only question that truly concerned him.
Did you bed him, Lark? Are you that old man’s lover?
“After my parents died, a number of men vied to make me their ward. I’m told the petitioning became quite competitive, for the wardship was lucrative.”
“And Spencer was among those offering to be your guardian?”
“Being a friend of the Montmorencys, he heard of my plight, learned of unsavory schemes to bribe the Court of Wards and take possession of my estate.” With a restless hand, she whisked away the bits of dried grass. “My father summoned Spencer to his bedside. He begged Spencer to look after me, to protect me.”
“Ah,” Oliver commented. “The fated deathbed promise.”