The Regency Romances

by Laura Kinsale

  Faelan stood in the hall just outside the library door, looking over his shoulder, frozen in the motion of pulling on his gloves.

  In the slanted light of dawn he might have been a vision: an illusion of heaven and hell, perfect and beautiful and macabre in his dark cloak and his eyes like ice burning.

  His gaze was fixed on her hands. Her fingers closed on the broken box in sudden protectiveness, as if he might stride across the room and snatch it away from her and fling it back into the fireplace again.

  “My lady,” he said, lifting his eyes with a faint, grim smile. “Perhaps in the future, you’ll remember your belongings when you retire.”

  He raised his gloved hand in half-salute and was gone, leaving behind only the booming echo of the great front door.

  Roddy pressed the box closer, not caring that it had been cracked and broken beyond repair. She would keep it, as she’d promised. Forever.

  Because if he was human and not marble; if his heart and his mind were flesh and blood—then he said hurtful things because he was hurting.

  And he hurt now because she had the power to wound him.

  Chapter 8

  She kept repeating it to herself.

  He’s jealous. He’s only jealous.

  He didn’t go to Liza.

  But neither did he come home. Not until long, long after darkness had fallen and the city lay in heavy sleep. In the distance a watchman called three o’clock, and as Roddy sat in the library in the chair Faelan had used the night before, she could only stare into the fire and imagine a small carved box among the flames.

  She had sent Minshall and Jane to bed, but the little maid, Martha, insisted on sitting up to keep the fire as long as the young mistress was awake and waiting for her lord. Roddy could not have borne Jane, or more particularly Minshall, who had his notions of where His Lordship might be, but Martha was too innocent—or ignorant—to suspect that Faelan had gone after all to his paramour. Poor Martha dozed off in her corner dreaming of robbers and cutthroats. Between the two opinions, Roddy was not entirely sure she didn’t wish for Martha to be right. Faelan, Roddy was certain, could handle any number of mere criminals.

  A woman like Liza he could handle only too well.

  At half past three, she felt the first touch of movement amid the sleeping streets. The horses in the stable stirred, and then the sound of metal shoes rang in the empty court. Martha snuffled and sat up with a start, looking at Roddy with round eyes.

  “Go to bed now,” Roddy said softly. “He’s come.”

  Martha jumped up and added a log to the fire, relief and reluctance warring in her mind. Soft voices drifted from outside in the quiet, and then came the sound of booted feet on the stone steps. The maid hesitated at the library door, then took hold of all her courage and drew herself up, like a rabbit preparing to defend her single nestling from the approaching fox. “It may be I ought to stay, m’lady,” she said, in a voice that shook with the enormity of her own rashness. “Beg pardon, ma’am, beg pardon, but…His Lordship’s temper—”

  “Go on,” Roddy said. She smiled as best she could manage. “I shall be quite all right.”

  Martha’s resolve failed her at the sound of the front door opening. She bobbed and gasped, “Yes, m’lady,” and fled.

  Roddy stood waiting alone by the fire.

  She felt no steadier than Martha. Roddy hardly even knew why she had waited up for him. If it had been in some tenuous hope that she could somehow make things back into what they had been, that dream vanished the moment he appeared in the doorway.

  He stood there, the same cloaked and unfathomable image she had seen in the dawn. Only this time—this time he did not raise his hand to her and pass on. Instead, he stepped over the threshold and pulled the door softly shut behind him.

  It took all of Roddy’s self-control not to take a step backward away from him.

  It was Liza’s Faelan that Roddy saw. Black night and flame. Hellfire and ice. When he smiled at her, she went cold to the tips of her fingers.

  But somewhere, deep, there was an answering flame in her. She would not have run from him if she could have made her feet move.

  “Waiting?” he murmured.

  Roddy swallowed. She nodded.

  “I’m here,” he said softly.

  It was an invitation and an order…a vortex that dragged her down into the blue depths of his eyes.

  “Where have you been?” she whispered.

  “Visiting.” His gaze held hers. “A friend.”

  Liza.

  Roddy looked at the floor.

  “I have your permission, have I not?” The words were gentle. Horrible. He made a careless motion of his hand, as if beckoning a servant. Come here, that meant, and like a servant she obeyed, moving out of the warm ring of firelight into the shadow.

  A trace of cold night air hung about him, a faint breath of smoke. She had expected perfume—Liza’s perfume—but instead there was something else…something familiar. A sudden and disparate memory of the fields at home in Yorkshire leaped into her mind.

  She forgot it in the next moment.

  He held out his hand, palm downward. “Lady Iveragh,” he murmured. “Will you help me with my gloves?”

  She wet her lips. This was punishment, she knew. There was banked anger in that steady hand, in every cool and controlled move he made.

  She reached out, and worked the black leather off his long fingers. She looked down at them and felt tears prick her eyes as she thought of where he had been, whom he had been with. His hands were so beautiful, so strong and perfect. Why did it have to be this way? Why couldn’t he be hers alone?

  He curled the glove in his fingers and brushed her cheek with the soft kidskin. “Your Ladyship,” he murmured mockingly. “Did you miss me today?”

  “Yes.” It was barely audible.

  His hand slid downward, his thumb tracing her throat. “In the absence of other company.” The light chill of his touch warmed as it rested against her skin. He raised her chin slowly with his fist. “‘Poppet,’” he said, repeating Geoffrey’s endearment with a trace of derision. Faelan stared down into her eyes, direct—the only one who ever did so. “Gods, the man must be blind.”

  He drew the black leather slowly upward, shaping her brows, her mouth and jaw. Her heart began to pound in anticipation. She tried to remember her pride. She tried. She did not have to let him touch her like this, not when he kept a mistress who would do the same. As his wife, she had only to allow him his rights if he demanded them. She should be cold, for the sake of her sanity. She should be stone.

  But instead, she was all melting heat and weakness.

  He saw it. He smiled, as a wolf would smile at its cornered quarry. “Can you bear this?” he asked as the glove fell carelessly from his fingers. His hands slipped beneath her shawl. He cupped her breast with his bared palm and caressed the swelling tip beneath the fabric of her gown, bending to her, pressing his mouth to the tender place below her ear. “Can you suffer my touch?” he whispered harshly.

  Roddy tried to speak, but her body was aching for his familiar torture. The sound came out a reluctant moan.

  His other hand slid around her hip. She heard his breath quicken, a warmth in her ear. “You lied,” he sneered softly. “You lied when you said you don’t want this.”

  She turned her face into his neck, trying to dam the words. Yes. Yes, I lied! Her mouth opened against his skin, defying her will, and she pressed hard to stop her lips from speaking.

  “Roddy,” he groaned as her teeth scored his skin. His grip on her tightened convulsively. He tasted male and smoky, and smelled of outside: of winter grass and frost. Cold and clean, no lingering trace of the city or Liza upon him. He pulled Roddy closer, between his hard thighs, crushed her against him with a strength he had never used before. “Tell me.” He dragged her head back. “Show me how much you dislike what I do.”

  Roddy’s throat closed as she stared up at him. His eyes were dark, his mou
th still curved in that slight, awful smile. Fell he looked: fell and wild, and fit to murder anyone. If there was pain behind his words, she could not hear it. There was only the sudden pain of his lips claiming hers, sweet and brutal, an ache that sparked fire and flamed down her spine.

  It was hopeless. It no longer belonged to her, this body that arched in pagan answer to his touch. Murder or mistress—she did not care. Only Faelan mattered. Only his heat and his mystery, and the demon-blue glitter of his eyes.

  His mouth moved on hers with a punishing demand. The gentleness she had known before from him had vanished. He dragged her down with him to his knees, moving with ruthless ease to tear away her shawl and loosen her dress.

  The muslin gown was easy: a ribbon here, an eyelet there, and his hands and his mouth had access to all of her. She felt the chill of night air on her skin, and shuddered with more than the cold as he pushed her down beneath him. The cloak swept around them, a black river of cloth. With his dark-gloved hand, he shoved the loose hair back from her temple and forced her chin up, bruising her lips with another kiss.

  His mouth and his weight pressed the air from her lungs. She shifted, struggling, but he slid his bare palm down her shoulder and trapped her beneath him. “Don’t fight me,” he said, his breath harsh against her skin. “You’ll never win.”

  She met his eyes and saw the inevitable. He meant to take her now in cold anger, with nothing of affection or laughter between them. As he had destroyed her music box, he wanted now to destroy the pleasure he had given her, to shatter those precious memories with something else.

  Her lips parted in dismay. She did not want him, not like this, and yet her body responded, arching upward when he circled her nipple and caressed it with his thumb. He made her feel him, every inch of him, pushed her legs apart and lowered himself between them, pressing her bare buttocks into the silken rug. A sound escaped her, a small moan, half protest, half desire, as he forced her hips to move against his in seductive rhythm.

  He lifted his head at the sound. His palm slid over her breast, coaxing another panting whimper, while his smile and his eyes taunted her for her weakness. “You’re mine after all, aren’t you? I can hold you with this.”

  Roddy could have wept for the derision in his words, but instead she only proved them by tilting her head back and offering herself for more.

  He moved aside suddenly, taking the cloak with him, so that it slipped from her leg and her naked thigh shone pale against the black cloth. His gloved hand brushed down her skin, a dark shadow on silver. Before she could gather her wits, he lifted himself and knelt over her, his hands sliding beneath her hips. His tongue traced the path that his fingers had discovered, and Roddy lost the last thread of reality.

  He squeezed her buttocks and pressed her upward under his mouth, while her body seemed to turn to water, to flow and burn and writhe. Her breath was gone, and all her strength; she could not help the way her throat contracted, making little gasping whimpers. His tongue reached inside her, and her hands clawed at his shoulders. A cry began in her chest, that familiar long moan that expanded into sound like the blossoming explosion in her body.

  She hated her weakness, and wanted more. She wanted him: in her, around her, rising with her as she strained and ached for the thing he had set to spark. He lifted her, his tongue penetrating deep, and like a flash of powder the spark erupted. Her body convulsed. She cried out and reached for him in blindness and need.

  “Open your eyes.” He caught her hand at the wrist with a wrench that made her obey on the instant. “Look at me,” he said fiercely. “Do you pretend I’m your precious Geoffrey when I touch you? Look at me, cailin sidhe, and call me by name.” His mouth hardened in bitter irony. “There’s power in a name, little girl, and I’ve given you mine.”

  She gulped air and stared up at him as he loomed over her. Like a cornered animal, she knew that she was lost if she looked away now. He would take that as proof, as fuel for his fury: that she thought of another when she writhed with passion in her husband’s arms.

  With his demonically beautiful face so close above hers, she half feared for her life if she faltered.

  Colleen, he had called her. She knew that simple Irish word. But the other, she remembered, meant something else entirely.

  Dark and light. Magic. Sidhe.

  “Faelan,” she whispered, holding his gaze with desperate steadiness. She raised a trembling hand and touched his cheek. “Faelan. ’Tis you I want. None other.”

  His fingers loosened on her wrist. A change came in his darkened face, a slow focus, as if her words had been spoken in some half-known foreign language.

  She watched her spell work, watched the anger waver in his eyes, and found her small magic a two-edged sword. For another phrase swelled into her throat, something with a power of its own to make her tongue move. “I love you,” she said, and could have killed herself for that mistake.

  She turned her face away, as if that might somehow blunt the words. They were folly, those words. Spoken to a man who might not even exist, who might be nothing but an actor’s well-played part.

  “You love me, do you?” He caught her cheek and turned her. The savagery had faded from his hard features, but his eyes were still as light and cold as winter frost. “Little girl,” he mocked. “You love this—” He moved his hand between her thighs, and Roddy drew in her breath. “You love the devil’s touch, cailin sidhe. Not the devil.”

  She could not say that he was wrong. She could not even think when he stroked her like that.

  “Save your affection for those children you want so much,” he recommended, moving away abruptly. “I have my talents, but you’re a fool to think the way I make you feel has aught to do with love.”

  She had said the same thing to herself, over and over, but the self-scorn in his voice gave the words a sudden new meaning. He sat up, yanking at the lacing on the cloak, and tossed it across her as he turned away.

  She pulled the scratchy softness up over her shoulder. Its smell made her think of the winter pastures at home again, and when her hand came away a tiny clod of earth fell from the folds. She turned on her elbow, frowning, and picked up the fragment. It dissolved into dust between her fingers.

  Faelan was staring into the fire. Roddy lifted her hand and sniffed at the lingering traces of soil. “Faelan—” she asked softly, “where have you been?”

  He gave a short, harsh laugh. “Breaking ground in a damned frozen field,” he said without turning. “Would you believe that?”

  As if to emphasize the absurdity of his claim, the far-off voice of the watch cried four past midnight. Faelan slanted a look toward her, with a faint lift of dry humor at the corner of his mouth. “The field was in Bedfordshire.”

  Roddy blinked. It had taken them nigh on a full day’s driving to reach London from Bedford on the trip from York. “Why?” she breathed.

  “Because,” he said, with that self-mocking sneer, “I felt the need to break something. Soil comes much cheaper than music boxes, my dear.” He paused, and then looked back at the fire. “I’ll buy you another.”

  Roddy blinked, and realized suddenly that she had just gotten the best apology over the destruction of his gift she was likely to get. After a moment, she asked carefully, “You have a friend in Bedfordshire?”

  “Several.”

  “But that’s who you were visiting so long—a friend in Bedfordshire?”

  He massaged the back of his neck. “If you’d call opening five acres with a plow and a pickax visiting.” He threw her a challenging look. “And where did you think I’d gone?”

  “To Mrs. Northfield.”

  For a long moment, he just looked at Roddy, and then he said, “You’re remarkably acute, little girl.”

  She glanced down and shrugged.

  “Who told you of Liza Northfield?”

  “No one. I guessed.”

  She found her chin jerked up by a firm hand. “You guessed! And gave me permission to keep h
er? For God’s sake, you stupid, brainless chit—was that what you were about?”

  She pulled away from him. “Don’t call me that.”

  Her escape was halted by his hard grip on her bare shoulders. “Tell me the truth. How did you find out?”

  “You sent her a note.” She hadn’t meant for him to hear the accusation in her voice, but it came out clearly.

  “It’s customary,” he said in a cold tone, “when terminating an arrangement.” He shoved her away. “But you wouldn’t know that, would you? I doubt you’ve sent one to Cashel.”

  At that, Roddy lost her last shred of patience. He had led her on and left her alone and made love to her and frightened her to death, and now he had ruined what gladness she might have felt over Liza’s dismissal with a shaft that was worthy of a sullen schoolboy.

  Roddy scrambled up, clutching the cloak to her breasts. “Perhaps I’m a brainless chit,” she cried, “but you’re a—a—” Words failed her in her fury. “A muttonhead!” she spat, for want of a better epithet. “I’m not half so childish as you and your vile temper and your absurd jealousy and your damnable pride! Geoffrey is my friend. He’s not my lover. Have you forgotten that I was a virgin on our wedding night? Have you forgotten that? My God, I never even knew how to kiss before you happened along! I was a virgin, a nice, proper, innocent, stupid little virgin who was just naive enough to think she’d fallen in love with her own husband! And if you have a heart any bigger than a—than a—” She struggled for a suitably vile comparison. “—a piece of pea gravel, then by God you’d better say so right now, because I’m going back home tomorrow!”

  She shut her mouth then, because her lower lip was quivering alarmingly, and stood glaring down at him with her hair tumbling free and the cloak dragging folds on the floor at her feet.

  After a long moment of silence, he drew one knee up and leaned on it. “No,” he said softly, “you’re not.”

  Roddy stiffened. The words were even, unemotional, but there was a new gleam in his eyes as he surveyed her. “You’re laughing at me,” she wailed.