A Duke's Wicked Kiss (Entangled Select) (25 page)

“I’d be a gentleman and stand, but I’m afraid it’s quite impossible at the moment.” A wet cough ended his casual sounding words. His face distorted in pain.

Suri started forward, her vision blurred by tears. The guard yanked on her chain and she stumbled. John’s quick scowl told her not to react.

Her shocked mind slowed until her surroundings resembled a dream state.

The guard dragged her over to the wall near where John lay and hooked the chain on a clip so high above her head, Suri was forced to stand on the balls of her feet. He turned her enough to untie her wrists and then walked out of the room with no further regard for either of them.

Already her feet wobbled, forcing her out of her torpor. “God in heaven, I can’t manage to stand like this very long.” Her breath came in short and rapid bursts. Panic threatened to force her off that jagged cliff where she’d drown in her sea of terror. “I can’t get up high enough to slip the collar over my head.”

“Listen to me, Suri,” John called out in a ragged voice stippled with pain. “You’ve got to relax so you can concentrate. Force yourself to take in a few deep breaths. That’s it. Now, close your eyes so you can use your senses to feel your way around the collar. There’s a release latch, but you have to know what to look for.”

She tried to nod but choked. “Tell…tell me what to do.” Her words came out garbled against the restriction on her throat.

“If you can manage it, get up a bit higher on the balls of your feet. Stretch as tall as you can and then reach around to where the chain connects to the collar.”

He was silent while she searched. “Got it?”

“Got it,” she muttered.

“Now use your thumb and feel around until you locate a small slit in—”

“Found it.” Her head pounded from the restricted blood flow and darkness dimmed the edges of her vision.

“Get your thumbnail under that small opening and pull up.”

The collar fell open and Suri tumbled to the floor with a thud. “Oof!”

“Are you all right?”

She turned to John, her cheek pressed to the floor while her head cleared and she struggled for breath. She rose on an elbow. “That’s a question I should be asking you.”

“Come to me, darling,” he said on a heavy exhale that exposed his weariness.

Suri scurried over to where he lay and curled her legs under her. Gently, she laid her hand on his cheek. “Oh God, John, what have they done to you?”

“Well, they didn’t kill me. That’s saying something.”

She touched the tips of her fingers to his swollen eye.

He winced. “You’ve been brave, darling.”

In his exhausted eyes, Suri saw affection coalescing with pain. Her heart fell apart in tiny little pieces. Her chin quivered. She bit her lip to keep from weeping, but it did little good. She closed her lids to try and hold back tears, but they slid between her lashes anyway.

She brushed his bruised cheek with the back of her fingers as lightly as she could manage. “I’m afraid I don’t feel very brave right now. I don’t feel very strong, either.” Tears dripped onto his bloody waistcoat, and where a button had gone missing, the wet seeped through to his shirt, mingling with his blood.

His hand touched her hair and stroked it ever so gently. “You don’t always have to be the brave one, Suri. I can’t say as I’m feeling any too courageous right now, either.”

Carefully, she touched the left side of his chest where the dark stain seemed to originate. He winced, slammed his eyes shut, and hissed through his teeth. She snatched her hand back. “They’ve broken a rib, haven’t they?”

“Or two,” he answered. “At least I’m alive. For however long that remains.”

She gathered up his hand and held it to her cheek. “What happened?”

“I don’t really know. Apparently, a couple of my guards are on the other side of the war. Someone let a few ruffians into my home. Gave me the devil of a headache, the bastards.”

Suri leaned to inspect the blue pillow beneath his head. “Oh!” A dark halo soaked the silk. Her stomach churned at the sight of the blood, but she held steady. She had to. For John’s sake. “You’re bleeding,” she managed to utter.

“I’m afraid, darling, that’s why I couldn’t rise to greet you. That and these confounded ribs.”

Rage bit at her gut, balancing the scales once more. “Ravi-ji did this to you.”

“He’s smarter than that. He put his henchmen up to it.”

“Smarter than that? But he killed your brother outright.”

“No one saw him do it, Suri. With me, things are different. He intends to become the hero who captured the lead British intelligence officer here in India. Cut off the serpent’s head right before a mutiny, he did. Maurya will be careful with how I meet my demise.”

John moved and hissed a curse. The bloody stain soaking the pillow beneath his head inched wider.

Hollow sobs tore loose from Suri’s throat. “Let me wrap your wound.”

“Better to bleed it out into the pillow.” A small grimace tipped his lips. “Besides, the pressure helps the pain a bit. I doubt I’d enjoy you moving me about right now.”

“Dear God in heaven, this wouldn’t have happened had it not been for me.”

“You’re damn right it wouldn’t have happened this way. If not for you, I’d be dead.”

“Dead?”

He managed a small, pained smile. “Ah, there you go, repeating yourself again. Maurya would’ve had me murdered on the spot had it not been for you. He wants a bit more sport here, having gathered you and me together—two of his worst enemies.”

She touched his arm. At least that seemed a safe place where he wouldn’t hurt. “He’s already paraded me past my grandmother, so why doesn’t he just kill me and be done with it? I don’t understand his rationale.”

John reached up and, with shaking fingers, tucked a loose strand of hair behind Suri’s ear. “Because much to your cousin’s chagrin, he’s quite taken with you. The fact that his heart betrays him makes him fiercely angry.”

“He demonstrated as much back in his quarters.” She had to fight against the sickening dread spreading through her. Could John be speaking the truth? If so, how had she not seen this? “But I’m his cousin. Not to mention an untouchable.”

“Which is all the worse for him, when you think on it. For those very reasons, he can never touch you in all the ways he’d like, but that doesn’t stop his mind from wandering there. Even the first night he danced with you, I saw the ravenous way he looked you over whenever he caught you unawares. He’s suffering a jealous rage now, and wants some kind of vicarious pleasure from seeing the two of us—together, but broken.”

He let his hand drop to hers, gave it a weak squeeze. “Or so he thinks.”

She hung her head and let her tears fall while she sobbed softly. “I want things the way they were the night we were together. Tell me we can get through this.”

He squeezed her hand again. “Don’t look around now, but Maurya watches us.”

Suri swallowed her sobs and wiped her tears with the back of her hand.

“Shh. He can’t hear us as low as we’re speaking but, in a bit, look around.” John motioned with his eyes. “The wall to my left contains a series of arches with small screens. He watches through there.”

She nodded. “He took me to where my grandmother presided over other women. The balcony had been fitted with similar screens. One can see quite well through those tiny holes.”

“Does it matter to you that he spies on us?”

Bile rose in her throat. “It makes my skin crawl.”

He squeezed her hand again, peered deep into her eyes. “We can shut out the world if we’ve a mind to, love. We may have a little time left together.”

She steeled herself against a new flood of tears. Did he realize he’d just called her “love?” For a moment, she wished he did care for her the way he had once loved his wife. A sensation of a fist tore into her stomach. Had she made a terrible mistake rejecting him? “Don’t say that. We must keep up hope.”

“Come. Lie with me, if only for a while.”

Sniffing away her tears, she moved to stretch out beside him.

He winced, and a small groan escaped his lips.

She drew back. “Is there any place I can touch you where I won’t cause you pain?”

A small, lopsided grin found its way to his mouth. “If so, we’ll find it.”

“Oh, John, how can you possibly manage a smile when you are hurting so?”

“Because it likely drives Maurya mad to see us like this.” He squeezed her hand again and then lifted his fingers to her lips when she began to sob once more. “Shh, darling. We can’t let him see that now, can we?”

She sucked up her cries and wiped away the tears with a corner of her sari.

He’d kept his eyes on her the whole while she fitted herself next to him, his countenance filled with what she could only describe as devotion. Was he a dying man who knew nothing in the world mattered more than what they now shared, for what little time they had to share it?
Oh, this can’t be true!

He grew serious, stroked his hand through her hair once again. “Smile for me. If I don’t get out of this alive, I’ll be damned if I want that bastard thinking he played a game of chess with live subjects.” His hand cupped her cheek and his thumb drew tender circles over her flesh.

She managed her own bittersweet smile. Yes, if this was the end, then smile she would, and Ravi-ji could go to the devil. “I’m so terribly sorry for the way I spoke to you in your chambers. I had no right. Can you ever forgive me?”

His hand cupping her cheek stilled. His eyes burned into hers. And then he smiled, the effect incongruous amid a bruised and swollen face. “On the contrary. You set me on my arse to splendid effect, my dear. Should’ve been done long ago. Brava.” He let go her cheek and swiped his hand over his damp brow. “Do you think we can manage a kiss?”

Carefully, she lifted up and studied his beautiful face. “I think we can manage.” She bent over, careful not to move him about, and set her lips to his. Even in the terrible shape he was in, even with the strength he lacked, the effect his kiss had on her was still above her ability to give it expression. Here was a kiss beyond sensuousness, beyond the physical, beyond warmth and sweetness. And then she knew—here was where their souls were connected. That first kiss ten years ago had done it.

She lifted her head and touched her lips to his forehead. “We’ll get out of this, John. Somehow we’ll manage this. Tanush…”

He set his fingers to her lips and whispered, “No names.”

She nodded.

“Listen to me, Suri. If there is a child out of our night together and you find yourself in a fix, go to my brother Edward. He’ll see to your care.”

“Would he accept a half-caste bastard in his household?”

John barked a small laugh and then moaned. “Damn, that hurt.” He looked at her, humor laced with his pain. “Ah, yes. That thing I was going to tell you if you would’ve agreed to marry.” He motioned for her to come closer so he could whisper in her ear. “You and me? It just might be that we’re both a couple of bastards.”

She lifted her head and stared into his eyes. Had she heard right? “Whatever do you mean?”

“Don’t pull away, come closer.”

She bent her ear to his mouth once again. “Tell me.”

“When I was twelve I became acutely aware of a wall that existed between my parents. They used to go to the apple orchard whenever they had strong words to exchange. Standing in the middle of our small copse of fruit trees was their way of keeping servants from overhearing. One day I was up a tree, gathering apples for Cook’s tarts, when my mother stomped into the orchard with my father at her heels. They stopped under the very tree I sat in and argued about not taking in another bastard. That was when I found out the extent of my father’s philandering. It seems at least one of us brothers—if not all three—was the product of a few careless nights with a couple of young servants.”

Suri’s jaw dropped. “What? You mean, you might be a—”

“Exactly. On at least one occasion of which I learned, my mother took a servant girl to one of our outlying estates on the premise that my mother was the one carrying a child and had gone off to await the birth. My mother saw to the birth by herself. Mum’s a decent sort, wouldn’t have mistreated the girl. After the child was born, the servant girl received a new name and was removed to the opposite side of England—so far away, no one knew her. She was gifted with a cottage by the sea and a decent enough stipend with the strict understanding that if she ever said a word, she’d be stripped clean of everything.”

“And your mother never told anyone?”

“And risk losing everything upon my father’s death if all three of us were declared bastards? The entire inheritance—titles, entailments, would go to a third cousin twice removed who openly detests my mother. He would oust her in the time it took to heave her out the door.” John managed to lift a brow. “Mother is smarter than to have uttered a word. Casting doubt on one child would’ve cast doubt on all three.”

He regarded Suri for a long while as he gathered his strength to continue. “Who knows, perhaps my mother is barren and we were all begat the same way. I’ve often wondered if that were the case.”

“Were you ever curious about the woman who might be your real mother?”

He tried to nod but couldn’t. “Yes,” he winced. “It got so whenever I caught my parents heading for the orchard, I’d beat them there and climb the tree they always stood beneath. Overheard a great deal that way—even got the name of the village and the woman’s new name. When I was sixteen, I located her. I dressed like a pauper and went to her cottage looking for work, but she turned me away. I don’t think she caught on that I could be her son. She regarded my smooth hands a bit suspiciously though.”

“What was she like?”

“Still attractive. Sweet appearing. But honestly? Mum was my mother at heart. This woman I stood staring at was a complete stranger. I felt nothing. On the trip back home, I realized what a privileged life I possessed, and to stir things up would only destroy my future, not to mention those around me. There were Edward and James to think of, as well. So, at least one of us is a bastard, but who? Perhaps all three, if my mother was barren—at least one of my parents’ arguments suggested that might be the case. If so, my father’s nocturnal visits to the occasional female staff preserved my mother’s destiny. Warped reasoning perhaps, but it suits me fine.”