A Rake's Midnight Kiss (28 page)

Richard made himself smile, although his soul bayed for Fairbrother’s liver. It took every ounce of will to sound reassuring. “Let me take you home, Miss Barrett.”

Slowly she straightened and raised her chin. Richard’s heart swelled with love as he watched her gather tattered courage. Staggering slightly and catching at the doorframe, she stepped from the carriage.

Richard wound his arm around her waist. She trembled as reaction set in. Much as Richard burned to make Fairbrother suffer, he needed to get her away. In this light, he couldn’t see how badly she was hurt. Any injury at all made him feel like he’d swallowed a volcano.

He turned to Fairbrother. “If you touch her again, I’ll kill you. Nothing, not pity, not the law of the land, will save you. And if you or your henchman utters one word about what
happened tonight, I’ll hunt you down and end your miserable lives. Do you understand?”

Fairbrother regarded Richard with virulent hatred. “Roast in hell, you bastard. Nobody makes a fool of Neville Fairbrother, let alone some trumped-up cit who thinks the gold in his pocket compensates for breeding.”

All his life, people had called Richard bastard and mongrel. He waited for the familiar anger. Instead he found he couldn’t care what this evil, selfish old man thought of him. All that mattered was to get Genevieve to safety and place himself at her service.

“Can you walk?” he asked softly, backing her into the shadows and keeping his guns trained on Greengrass and Fairbrother.

“Yes,” she whispered, although he felt her unsteadiness as she moved.

His hold firmed. “Let’s get out of here.”

O
nce they were well clear of the carriage and Genevieve had stopped mistaking every noise for pursuit, she wriggled free. She dearly needed to bolster her pride, although Christopher’s embrace offered the only sanity in a world gone mad. “Where are we going?”

He stepped back, granting her distance as he pocketed his pistol. “To Leighton Court. Your father and aunt are there.”

Terror had lodged behind her tonsils. “I want to go home.”

She waited for an argument, but didn’t get one. “Very well. But you can’t be alone.”

Still that annoying lump wouldn’t vacate her throat. “Dorcas is there.”

“Dorcas can’t look after you.”

“I don’t need looking after.” Even as her soul cried out for him to wrap his arms around her forever.

The compassion in Christopher’s face brought her closer to crying than Lord Neville’s assault had. He touched the hands she twined together at her waist. Her belly, only just
settling, lurched in reaction. His hand, there against her solar plexus, felt breathtakingly intimate.

“Just tell me if you’re hurt,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to say anything else.”

She closed her eyes, reliving those hideous moments before the door opened and the man she believed was a scoundrel transformed into a hero. “You don’t want to know what happened?”

His fingers curled around hers. He’d touched her so often, but this was different. Calm. Reassuring. Comforting. No trace of seduction. “I want what you want.”

That wasn’t true. That wasn’t true about any man. When one came down to it, they were all selfish monsters. They hid their agenda under ineffectuality like her father or, like Lord Neville, they blatantly expected the world to bow down in worship. She opened her eyes and tried to summon a defiant answer, but the words wouldn’t come.

“You’re cold.” He released her to shrug off his coat and drape it around her shoulders. His tenderness made her eyes prickle with tears. Strange that she’d stayed strong resisting violence, but gentleness split her in two.

“You’ve made a powerful enemy,” she said hoarsely, huddling into the coat. His scent enveloped her. Clean male. Lemon verbena.

Christopher shrugged. “I can live with that.”

She loved his careless courage. “He was jealous that my father favored you.”

“Don’t be a goose, Genevieve. He was jealous because you liked me.”

“You risk making a fool of yourself, saying such things.” She tried to dampen his presumption, but for once, her heart wasn’t in it.

His brilliant smile always made her witless with longing,
even when she’d believed him an unrepentant miscreant. “I made a fool of myself over you long ago. But of course you know that, don’t you?”

Did she? She knew he wanted her. She had no idea what else he felt. Except that tonight he acted like he cared. She was too tired and heartsick to talk herself out of the idea that perhaps he did. In his fashion.

“You were clever to scream,” he said.

“I wasn’t clever. I was terrified.” She pressed an unsteady hand to her aching throat. “He… he choked me to keep me quiet.”

“Hell, I should have shot the bugger.”

Once more he took her hand. She returned his clasp, preternaturally conscious of the strong bones and long, sensitive fingers. His warmth made those horrid moments with Lord Neville seem distant and unimportant. “Shooting’s too good for him.”

“I could lock him in a room with your father and an alternative theory for the demise of the princes.”

Surprisingly she laughed. It was strained and short-lived, but nonetheless it was a laugh. Tonight she’d thought laughter lost to her.

Something rustled behind them and her amusement evaporated. Panicked, she cringed closer to Christopher, who raised his pistol.

“Surely they wouldn’t—”

“Shh,” he said gently, pressing her to his side.

She hid her face in his shoulder, his silk waistcoat slippery beneath her cheek. She couldn’t bear to see Lord Neville or to remember his hands on her. Although the grim reality was that she’d relive those suffocating moments in the coach for a long time to come. Beneath her ear, Christopher’s heart pounded and his body vibrated with wariness.

He relaxed when Sedgemoor and Hillbrook emerged from the trees carrying lanterns.

“About time you turned up.” Christopher sounded relieved as he lowered his pistol. She gathered her torn bodice although the coat preserved most of her modesty.

“We let you play Sir Galahad,” Hillbrook drawled. “You’ve had so few opportunities.”

“Very droll, old man.” Christopher kept his arm around Genevieve. She should object, but fear had cut too deep tonight for her to stray from his side. “Better aim your barbs at Fairbrother.”

“You needed to step in?” Hillbrook sounded like he already knew the answer.

“He tried to force Miss Barrett’s consent to marriage.”

“The sodding scum.”

“Good evening, Miss Barrett,” Sedgemoor said calmly from beside Hillbrook. “I hope you’re unharmed.”

“Yes, thank you, Your Grace.” Shame burned her cheeks. At being found with Christopher. At her fatal naïveté in going with Lord Neville. At the way that both these men would surely speculate on what had occurred in that carriage.

“I’m appalled that this happened.” The duke struck her as a man who concealed his emotions, but now she couldn’t doubt his outrage. “Where’s Fairbrother?”

Christopher pointed back through the bushes. “He and his bully boy are armed. Be careful.”

“Miss Barrett, your father and aunt remain at Leighton Court while we await news. It’s so late they’re probably better staying in the rooms I arranged.” The duke spoke as if finding his friend clutching a lady was nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps it wasn’t. Even that thought didn’t scare her enough to disentangle herself. “Would you like to join them?”

“Thank you. But my maid is at the vicarage.”

“Your men are still on watch, aren’t they?” Christopher asked.

“What men?” Genevieve asked sharply. Tonight had produced too many revelations, turning her perceptions topsy-turvy.

As usual when he’d done something commendable, Christopher looked sheepish. “After the last break-in, I asked Cam to set a guard on the vicarage.”

An hour ago, she’d been convinced that Christopher was responsible for terrorizing her aunt and father. She should be surprised to discover that he’d been guardian, not enemy. But since he’d saved her, she’d admitted that out of every man in the world, she trusted this one. “Thank you.”

“Confounded little good it did.” Christopher said wearily, then turned to his friends as Lord Hillbrook passed him a lantern. “Please remember that a lady’s name is at stake.”

The duke sighed. “Good God, man, we’re not complete dullards. I can handle Fairbrother without damaging Miss Barrett’s reputation.”

Once Hillbrook and Sedgemoor left, Christopher extended his hand. The lantern created a golden circle of intimacy around them. “Let’s go.”

Without hesitation, she took his hand. Odd that earlier tonight she’d wanted to brain him with the soup tureen.

He stepped ahead, white shirt glowing like a beacon. She followed, sinking into a daze where all she knew was his touch and the vivid reality of his nearness. Every moment in this dark forest, the bond between them strengthened without a word spoken. It was like that day on the river, but deeper.

They reached a familiar part of the woods. “Stop,” she said breathlessly, feeling like she emerged from a trance.

He raised the lantern to see her. “Do you need to rest?”

“No.” Although the hike in evening slippers hadn’t been easy. The wet grass was slippery, and damp soaked through her soles, chilling her feet. Her body ached, every step a reminder of Lord Neville’s violence. “Can we go to the pond?”

Her request, seemingly out of the blue, made him frown. “The pond?”

“It’s through those trees.” Once they left this forest, she’d lose her nerve. Or weigh consequences.

Right now, she didn’t want to consider consequences.

She waited for some remark about their meeting there. But he merely shrugged and turned down the overgrown path. When they reached the water, the lantern light spilled across the still, dark surface. Painful yearning rose in her like a spring tide. Yearning to wipe away tonight’s cruel events. Yearning to replace ugly memories with something beautiful.

His coat slid to the cool grass. She straightened her spine and took one uncertain step forward. “Kiss me, Christopher.”

Kiss me, Christopher.

G
enevieve’s words hung in the air as if etched in letters of fire. Slowly he turned toward her, the lantern dangling forgotten from his hand.

She faced him, shoulders straight and luxuriant hair drifting around her. She looked so beautiful, she made him want to weep. And of course he couldn’t touch her. Hell, he still didn’t know what Fairbrother had done. At the very least, the swine had frightened and brutalized her. The last thing she needed was another rapacious male mauling her.

Standing before Richard in her torn dress, she was breathtaking. Irresistible. Still, he had to resist. He ground
his teeth on a silent prayer for control to a God who by all rights should ignore such a miserable sinner. Frustration roughened his voice. “Let’s make for the vicarage. It’s cold out here.”

She flinched as if he’d struck her, but didn’t budge. “No, it’s not.”

“I’m cold.”

Her lips curled into a seductive smile that set his heart capering. “I doubt that.”

Good Lord, what was she doing? Desperation frayed his question. “How can you want a man near you? After—”

“He didn’t rape me.”

Richard dragged in his first full breath since she’d left Leighton Court. “Thank God. I thought… When I found you… He was…”

He stopped. No woman except Genevieve reduced him to incoherence.

Her gentle expression pierced his heart. “So will you kiss me?”

He faltered back. “After tonight, you should hate every man alive.”

“What happened tonight made me feel… sullied.” Her voice emerged low and fervent. “When you touch me, I never feel like that. When you touch me, I feel… beautiful.”

Astonishment and guilt struck him speechless. After all his deceit, he didn’t deserve her longing. Or her agonized honesty. He fought against taking her into his arms. So difficult to do what was right when she offered everything he wanted.