She didn’t know. She only knew if she told a lie, if she said she did not want him and he withdrew, she would regret it for the rest of her life.
“Yes,” she said. “I want you.”
She thought he sighed with relief, but more important, his finger glided inside of her to assuage the torture.
She didn’t expect to reject him now, but she stiffened. She hadn’t realized he would feel so alien, and far too invading. Allowing him inside required more trust than she had.
Yet some sensitivity must have moved him, for in a lover’s tone he murmured, “The heart of the maze.” He stroked in and out of her. “I’ve wandered for too long, trying to find it.” Another stroke.
Within her, passion began its slow climb again. Her body tightened around his finger, and when he used his thumb outside to press against what surely must be the most sensitive place of her soul, she lost those last, lingering, vexing inhibitions.
She moaned out loud, and her eyes closed. She concentrated on one place, and that place was where he had his hand.
“That’s the girl.” He sounded breathless. “A little further. A little higher.”
He wasn’t making sense, but she didn’t care. She just wanted…
Then a vague discomfort slowed her, and she heard him say, “Can you take a little more, darling? Just one more finger.”
She couldn’t take it, and she wanted to tell him, but as the second intruder joined the first, his thumb pressed ever more firmly. She stretched. It hurt. Then it didn’t.
Soothing her with an openmouthed kiss on the breast, he murmured something; it sounded like praise. Crazed by the rhythm of his finger and thumb, she moved, trying to get close to him and to whatever destination he urged her toward.
And she reached it. Her whole body quivered, then clenched, every muscle tight, every sense shut down except the newly discovered sense of pure ecstasy. She thrashed and moaned and lived, totally caught up in her own pleasure, and totally dependent on Blackburn for every drop of rapture he wrung from her body.
When at last she came to calm, she rested, panting, on the good earth, and saw Blackburn watching her face, unsmiling, sweat beading his upper lip. Slowly she extended one hand toward him, mutely pleading, and he came to his knees. Opening his trousers, he began to push them down. Here in the open air he would reveal himself at last, and she waited, enthralled to see what a man really looked like. To see what Blackburn really looked like.
But he paused, and scrutinized his two fingers, then scrutinized her. Whether he was in pain or pleased, she couldn’t tell. She only knew his mouth twisted downward and his eyebrows shot up and he both laughed and groaned. Leaving his trousers open, but firmly around his waist, he finally, finally, separated her legs with his knee, making a place for himself. Holding himself up by his elbows, he thrust his hips against hers as impudently as a man with the right. If he had loosened himself from his trousers, he would even now be inside her, and she couldn’t have stopped him. She was too damp, too soft, too ready for him, to offer resistance.
And besides, she didn’t want to. Vaguely she told herself that this was heady stuff to a spinster aunt so firmly on the shelf, as if that explained why she lay in the grass in the open with her skirt up and bodice gaping. With shy anticipation, she clasped her thighs around his buttocks, urging him closer.
He closed his eyes in one final ecstatic struggle, then he lowered himself to her, all the way to her, chest to groin.
And as if that were a signal to the skies, they opened to release a cold and drenching rain.
Chapter 19
Jane looked as startled and horrified as Blackburn felt, slapped by Mother Nature for indulging in her greatest pleasure. Jane blinked, blinded by the wash of the heavens.
The rain flattened his hair against his scalp and dripped on her, but for one long moment he hovered over Jane, preserving the sensations of warmth and closeness and passion. Then he realized how stupid that was.
But he couldn’t move. He was protecting her from the wet. From the distant lightning and the faint rumble of thunder, and any other danger he could perceive. And that instinct was even more stupid.
Standing, he pulled her to her feet, saying, “Bloody hell damn wretched rain.”
Jane pulled her hand out of his and hunched her shoulders, wrapping her arms around her waist. With the rain sluicing through her straight, short hair and the wind plastering her wet gown against her body, she looked disconsolate and guilty.
“Damn stupid bloody rain,” he said again. He wanted to kick something, anything, but his swearing and frustration only made Jane stare at her ruined leather boots with the intensity she usually reserved for him. It wasn’t fair that she should have got so close, only to have it end in a bloody damned English downpour.
Needless to say, it wasn’t fair to him, either. She stood there, drenched, her gown still unbuttoned, her nipples pointing at him, every curve of her body beneath that gown outlined for his delectation, and the rain wasn’t nearly cold enough to dampen his frustration.
If he hadn’t been so determined to make it good for this virgin, if he hadn’t been so damned noble, he wouldn’t be suffering now. With most women, he would have climaxed half an hour ago and started on another round. But no, he’d wanted to make her first time special.
Well, this was special, all right. Wet, cold rain tamping out a hot, well-kindled fire.
Damn it to hell! Worst of all, he was frustrated and all he could think of was her. He’d told this woman she was beautiful. Yet how insignificant! He’d told countless women they were beautiful. But that was before he’d gone to the Peninsula, before he’d fought in a war, back in a time when he thought the only important thing was maintaining his considerable consequence. And after the disgraceful incident of the statue, that consequence had involved making sure his bed partners adored him. Telling them lies about their beauty meant nothing.
But this woman—this woman—stood in the rain, turning blue with cold, too embarrassed or too dazed to button herself up, and she really was beautiful. He’d damned well lost his bloody mind, and he’d like to know where and why.
He wanted to snap at her to dress herself. Instead his voice came out warm and coaxing. “Here, darling, let me help you.”
She looked up, and her green eyes, her only really striking feature, weren’t even green. They were bland, colorless gray, matching the skies and the entire wretched day. “What are we going to d-do?” Her teeth chattered. “I can’t g-go back to the beach like this.”
He’d pleasured her so long, every bit of silly, female wit had abandoned her. “No beach.” He barely trusted himself to speak pleasantly. “Everyone will be rained out. They’ve got into their carriages and fled.”
“But they c-can’t. Not Adorna and Violet and Tarlin. They wouldn’t l-leave me.”
Without a thought, and with the intention of this time forcing me to marry you. But he just couldn’t say that. She was miserable enough. “They trust me to take care of you,” he said gently. Stepping closer, he pulled the edges of her bodice together and tried to match the buttons to their holes. If he concentrated on this simple task, she couldn’t utilize that discerning ability of hers to read his mind. As fragile as she was right now, she might not appreciate his sentiments.
But it was hard to fasten buttons over blue-veined breasts so beautiful his half-frozen palms grew slippery with sweat. Water slithered down her neck and gathered at the tip of each taut nipple, and if he leaned down just a little, he could catch it in his mouth, then suckle…
“Let me do it.” Her hands hovered above his as if afraid to touch him.
She’d read his mind, all right, but not the irritation.
“Yes.” He released her bodice and stepped back. “That would be wise.”
She probably thought if she laid her hand on him, his desire would overwhelm his discomfort and he’d take her right here in the sopping grass. And his treacherous, bloody damned mind flung up a picture o
f the two of them gloriously naked in the rain.
“I wish you wouldn’t look at me that way.” She’d tied her chemise, but her fingers kept slipping off the buttons and her voice shook. “You’re making me nervous.”
The picture faded, his mind reluctant to release it. “Right.” Turning his back on her, he glanced around, seeking shelter. They would have to find their way out of the maze. Jane was shivering, and he had no wish for her to catch the ague now. Not when he had come so close…
Catching sight of the portfolio, he scooped the wretched thing up. “We’ll have to go to the manor house.”
She had covered herself, had even managed to make herself look respectable except for the rivulets of water trickling down her face. “As you say, Lord Blackburn.”
Turning on her before he could catch himself, he snapped, “For God’s sake, call me Ransom. Our association has gone that far, at least.”
She didn’t answer, but stared straight ahead, her jaw flexing.
She wasn’t responding with her usual polite, society manners. Perhaps they were both a little tense. “This way.” He plunged forward, finding the passage out of the maze. Mundane conversation would help ease their disquietude. “The rain is much needed for the crops.”
“For the crops.”
He strode on. “Yes, for the crops.”
“Do you farm?” She had a funny little choke in her voice.
He didn’t know if it was better that she laughed at him, or cried for herself. “Tourbillon is a rather large estate, and I pay close attention to my manager. I don’t believe in abandoning all responsibility. It encourages theft and debauchery.” He noted that he frequently sounded pompous when around Jane. Then he wondered if he always sounded that way, and only noticed it in her company.
“I found I had to be watchful with the servants when I lived with Eleazer, also.” The narrowness of the maze kept her behind him, and when he tried to do the gentlemanly thing and let her walk ahead, she put her head down and pretended that she didn’t see.
A silence fell, made awkward by her reference to the time she’d spent in virtual servitude. He suspected she utilized those years to point out the differences between them, and perhaps to feed the bitterness she must feel for her dear country.
He couldn’t allow that. She needed to realize there was really no difference between them. She needed to realize how much she loved…England. “Susan and I grew up at Tourbillon.” As they left the narrow maze, he took Jane’s arm, brooking no disagreement, and drew her forward to walk at his side. “It’s not a magnificent estate. Certainly not as grand as this.” He was wealthy, but she needed to know he esteemed things for more than their munificence. “But the land is beautiful in a primitive way. Do you…like the ocean?”
“Very much. There’s really nothing I like more than being drenched by cold water.”
Startled by her tart tone, he glanced down at her. “You’re jesting.”
“I suppose I am.”
She sounded biting, a little more like the Jane he’d come to anticipate matching wits with. “Good. Yes, with this weather today, it’s good you like a drenching. It’s good, too, that you like the ocean. You did mean that when you said it, didn’t you?”
Her voice softened. “I do like the ocean.”
He experienced an odd kind of triumph. She really did, he could tell, and that was important. He thought it important, too, that she know his plans. “When this war is over, I’ll go back to Tourbillon and live there.”
“Do you visit often?” She sounded interested, almost normal, and she didn’t struggle against his hold.
Both causes for jubilation. “Indeed I do. Brief visits only, for the Foreign Office requires my attention.” He shouldn’t have mentioned that! “Or it used to before I got bored and quit going there.”
“You get bored easily, don’t you?”
“Just last month,” he said hurriedly, “I returned for the funeral of my neighbor’s daughter. Dreadful occasion. Selma was only nineteen, a pretty ninnyhammer and out only one year, and she wandered off and fell from the cliffs.”
Jane’s arm jerked. “How awful!”
“Mr. Cunningham said the fog must be at fault, but Mrs. Cunningham said Selma knew her way around the grounds. She insists—”
“Cunningham?” Jane stopped short, and he lost his grip on her arm. “Did you say Cunningham?”
He turned back to her, wondering what had brought that distraught expression to her face. “Yes.”
She swallowed, looked him in the eyes, then swallowed again. “I heard that Miss Cunningham was murdered.”
Chapter 20
“Murdered?” Blackburn stopped beneath a large oak tree, which provided inadequate coverage from the rain. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous.” Jane looked up at him, a wood nymph indignant at being drenched and stung by his disbelief. “Miss Cunningham, and I’m sure there can’t be more than one young woman of gentle birth who died last month, was Monsieur Chasseur’s student, and he was quite desolated by both her death and the fact he had been summoned by the constable.”
“Oh, that. Selma wasn’t murdered. Her mother, a rather hysterical woman, insisted on an investigation, that’s all. She said Selma knew her way around the grounds. She insisted the girl would never have lost her way.” Yet even as Blackburn dismissed Mrs. Cunningham’s suspicions, his mind raced. “Why was Chasseur summoned to face the constable?”
“He was there to tutor Miss Cunningham that day, and he’s French. Those are good enough reasons for the skeptical, country mentality.” Jane apparently read his thoughts in his face, for she added, “Like yours.”
An innocuous French tutor, one who had access to all the best houses, one who followed his students to London during the Season and back into the countryside when they left. It seemed unlikely that there was a connection between him and the French spy network, yet Blackburn couldn’t forget the story of the Davises’ French parlormaid. The girl had stolen kisses and state secrets from Mr. Davis, and family secrets and jewels from Mrs. Davis, and had escaped to the continent where she thumbed her nose at English Intelligence.
Had Miss Cunningham discovered Chasseur was a spy and been murdered to silence her?
Then he remembered Selma, as silly a girl as he’d ever met. Dryly, he said, “If Selma stumbled on the entire French army marching onto the beach, she’d have applauded the parade. I cannot imagine what a French spy could have learned from her, or even that she was aware of the conflict between our countries.”
Jane nodded, satisfied, but Blackburn would allow a doubt to linger in the back of his mind—he doubted everyone these days—and he would bring Chasseur’s name up to Mr. Smith. Chasseur would be watched.
Blackburn watched Jane. Surely she wouldn’t be involved in anything as gruesome as murder…
Lightning split the sky and thunder rumbled, and he realized the danger they were in, standing beneath a tall tree and inviting a bolt to strike.
Quite enough bolts had struck them today.
Hurrying her away from the oak, he said, “I’m sure you’re right. Come on. Only one good run, and you’ll be in the manor and we can get you dry.”
She didn’t want to go. He could tell by the way she tried to lag behind, and he understood completely. His sister, Susan, could be discerningly blunt in a formal social situation. God knew what she would say about them in private.
But they had no choice. It was late afternoon, dark with clouds, so he urged Jane up the steps and hammered on the great wooden door. The butler who answered had been at Goodridge Manor for as long as Blackburn could remember, and bowed them into the grand entry as calmly as if dripping people regularly took shelter there.
“Greetings, my lord. We’ve been expecting you and, I believe, Miss Higgenbothem?” Jane nodded, and Ilford bowed.
“Expecting us?” Blackburn lifted his brows inquiringly.
“Lord and Lady Tarlin and that extrem
ely charming Miss Morant arrived after the start of the storm.”
“Where are they?” Jane clasped her hands. “Are we going back to London tonight?”
Her glowing eyes and hopeful expression infuriated Blackburn. Handing Ilford the portfolio, he instructed, “Dry this and put it in Miss Higgenbothem’s bedchamber, please.”
Ilford took it and managed to look regretful at the same time. “I’m sorry, miss, but no. Lady Goodridge sent them on with assurances we would care for you on your coming.” He handed the portfolio to a hovering maid. She hurried upstairs with it while Jane watched with an expression of such desolation, Ilford hurried to reassure her. “We will care for you, miss, and for your…uh…book. We have tea and towels waiting for you in the library.”
His trousers dripped noisily on the marble floor, Blackburn noticed, and the draft coming down the curved staircase turned Jane’s lips blue. He had to get her to the nearest source of warmth. He needed to remedy the lamentable mess he’d made of what should have been a spectacular seduction. He started to hustle Jane toward the open, lighted door.
Then he remembered what waited within, in an alcove behind the door. “Ilford, is that thing still in there?”
Ilford knew exactly which “thing” Blackburn referred to, and his eyes twinkled sympathetically. “Yes, my lord.”
“Isn’t there any place we can go except the library?”
“My lady Goodridge is in there, my lord, and if I may presume to say so, she asked that you greet her at once.”
Jane’s teeth chattered, and a frown of puzzlement puckered her forehead. “At once? Perhaps I should dr-dry first.”
“Ransom?” Lady Goodridge’s voice called from the library. “Is that you?”
Between his sister and the pursuing furies, there could be no escape from this moment. Blackburn didn’t even know why he tried. “Yes, Susan,” he called. But he wasn’t resigned. He led Jane through the door and into the large, comfortable room lined with books, carefully keeping his body between her and that damnable alcove. The fire was surrounded by commodious settles and comfortable chairs, one containing his formidable sister, seated with her legs tucked under her and a rug and a book in her lap.
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