Ashlyn Macnamara (26 page)

With one hand, she groped for him, her fingers fluttering against his wrist as if she didn’t quite possess the energy for a firm grip. He knew what came next. This was where his mistresses wanted to purr and preen and bask. It was where he wanted to drift away, but for some odd reason, the last thing he wanted to do now was sleep. In fact, every last nerve ending in his body fairly screamed at him to run.

He’d never in his life fled from a woman, but something had happened just now with this one, something he’d never before experienced. Tenderness of an unfathomable depth filled him. More than that, it overwhelmed and drew him under the way the waters of the Channel had tried to engulf Jack. He felt the bottom roll beneath his feet, the current sucking him under. He could fight or drown, but already the shore was nothing more than a pinprick on the horizon.

Her fingers encountered his forearm and curled about bare flesh. “Wonderful,” she muttered, half-asleep.

It was possibly the most coherent thing she could utter under the influence of drowsy afterglow, but that single word encompassed so much more. She hadn’t known how good relations between a man and woman could be. That much was easy enough to surmise. Hell,
he
hadn’t known it could be that way—so intimate and intense and raw and deep—and he’d enjoyed the skills of more than one talented courtesan. But the relative skill wasn’t so important as the response.

For all his experience, he’d never known one like Isabelle’s.

Only the worst sort of scoundrel would run now and leave her utterly alone, most especially after the vow
he’d made, the vow that had led to this. So he settled beside her, fitted her slight form against him, and pulled her into his arms. She rested her head on his shoulder, and her wayward curls tickled his nose. With his fingers, he combed them back from her face.

Lucy employed a maid who used hot tongs to shape her strawberry-blond locks into ringlets. Isabelle’s curls formed on their own, wild, riotous, untamed. Like the woman herself, her hair had a mind of its own; it refused the kind of regimented order more fashionable coiffures required.

“How is it, after so many years, I’ve finally fallen on good fortune?” Isabelle murmured sleepily against the side of his neck.

“How indeed?” It was all the reply he could muster. What in blazes was the matter with him? At the least, he might invent a snappy rejoinder about his uniqueness among men, something to make her laugh and smack at him and deliver an appropriate set-down. He was long used to the sort of verbal sparring that occurred between bed-mates.

Not even lovers, but those who looked no farther than physical pleasure. With Isabelle, he was out of his depth.

“You don’t regret what we’ve done, do you?” Less drowsiness fogged her words this time.

Oh, God, here it came—the reason he preferred mistresses and courtesans. Ladies who held no expectation beyond the pleasure they could give and receive. Ladies who wouldn’t force him to examine his feelings. Not that he had any.

At least not where ladies whose name wasn’t Isabelle were concerned. The devil take it all, he was a goner.

“What makes you say such a thing?” he asked carefully.

“You seem unable to relax.” Her tone betrayed nothing.

He tilted his head to catch a glimpse of her expression, fully expecting to find her deep brown eyes turned on him. Analyzing. Perceptive. Piercing any barrier he might choose to erect. But her lids remained firmly closed, not as one asleep, but as if she made a concerted effort to shut out the world. “Why are you holding your eyes closed?”

“Because I don’t want to lose this moment.”

Her reply made him regret the question. Rather than divert the topic, he’d managed to bring it into even sharper focus, like a maid entering his chamber at noon to throw back the draperies onto a bright, sunlit day, one he did not wish to face. A flood of light after a night’s carousing that invariably caused his head to pound and illuminated the stubble on his cheeks and the shadows beneath his eyes. It only served to emphasize his flaws.

“You don’t have to lose it. You can hold it in your memory forever.” There. That sounded sufficiently sentimental.

“Yes, and by next week, a memory is all I’ll have.” Another woman might have made that reply sound wistful. Isabelle stated a fact, but the fact was tinged with an edge that implied she was trying to convince herself.

“Isabelle—”

“Don’t. Don’t make empty promises to try to convince me otherwise.”

He brushed a kiss to her hairline. “Sleep.”

He tried to do the same, but his mind refused to let him drop off. Damn it, he wanted to make those promises. What was more, he wanted the words to have substance. He wanted to make them as much a vow as the oath he’d sworn earlier.

And that realization scared the hell out of him.

*  *  *

I
SABELLE
awoke trembling. Shadows filled the bedroom, and rain drummed steadily on the roof. Beside her, the mattress lay cold. “George?”

Silence answered her question. She shook off the last vestiges of sleep and pushed herself upright, the soreness between her thighs a reminder of what had transpired in this room. Explicit images rushed through her mind—his hands, his lips, his tongue, his body had all combined to wring every last ounce of pleasure from her.

A shiver crept down her spine, and she groped for her chemise. The thin cotton was an insufficient barrier against the cold.

And why had George gone off when they might have blended the heat of their bodies to ward off the chill and night dampness? She padded to the other room. Empty. The fire had burned down to embers, but she didn’t think she’d been asleep more than an hour.

Blast the man. The least he could have done was waited until morning. He might have allowed her a few illusions, long enough to last the night, before he stripped her of the fantasy. And what fantasy was that? That she might find a man willing to care for her, to share the burden of raising her son, to lighten her load just a little? Someone willing to bring her a little joy, a little laughter, and, yes, a little love?

Hadn’t she learned the first time she couldn’t depend on a man? He’d take what pleasure he wanted and abandon her. Clearly George Upperton was no better than Jack’s father, even if he did come wrapped in a more attractive package. Charm and wit would ever be her undoing.

She strode to the fire and plucked her still damp gown from the hearth. George’s clothes, of course, were already gone. She fumbled with the laces of her stays and shook out her skirts before easing the damp fabric over her skin. She pulled where it clung until it draped uncomfortably
from her shoulders. It would have to do. She’d be more miserable by the time she returned to her cottage. Let every last raindrop that soaked her be a reminder, a layer in her armor she would use to shield herself. Men were not to be trusted.

Squaring her shoulders, she strode to the door, yanked it open—and collided with a solid wall of a man. She swallowed a cry and stepped back. The figure turned, and relief flooded her, but rather than warming her, the back of her neck heated, while her fists turned icy. “What are you doing out here in the rain? You’ll catch your death of cold.”

Darkness shaded George’s expression. Just as well. If he was about to give her the cut, she preferred it swift and silent like the blade of a guillotine.

“I thought I’d return before you woke up.” He ran his fingers down her arm, the barest of touches, but the gesture reassured. “I did not mean for you to wake alone.”

“Then why didn’t you come in?”

“I was trying to work out a solution.” He glanced away, and she almost pictured him as a boy, hands clasped behind his back, dragging a toe through the dirt. The very way Jack sometimes acted when he’d done something laudable.

“Solution?” she prompted.

“Yes, well, I was hoping for a stroke of genius, or at least a stroke of lightning, but the storm seems to have passed. I was caught up in the absurd notion I might work out what’s happened to your boy. I didn’t want to come in without an answer.”

“Oh.” Her heart doubled its pace. And she’d doubted him after that heartfelt vow. “Oh.” She stepped closer, out of the shelter of the doorway. Drops of rain struck her face and damp garments, but she hardly cared now.
“If you had something to work out, you must have some news.”

“None, unfortunately. That’s why my notion was absurd. I wanted to catch Revelstoke before he took himself off to bed and see if he’d heard anything from his riders.”

“And?”

“It’s as we feared. If there were signs to find, the rain has washed away all traces.”

“Surely they’d have made inquiries at inns and such.” George had already said straight out there was no word, but she couldn’t hold back her plea. “As we did.”

“I’m afraid the weather curtailed that bit of it, too. No one was able to get very far.” Again that fleeting touch, as if he still thought her fragile. Or perhaps not her, but whatever lay between them now. “It’ll likely be another day before we get a chance at any more news. I’m sorry.”

“It’s hardly your fault.”

“Yet I am sorry for your sake.”

She reached out and squeezed his arm, hoping this small token communicated what her tongue could not. He caught her hand, tangled their fingers and pressed back. Somehow the gesture felt as intimate as when their bodies had joined.

“Thank you, for everything. I don’t—” Something filled her throat, blocking the rest of the sentence. Goodness, and it all sounded so final. “I don’t know how I’d have got through these two days without you.”

Had it only been two days? Those two days encompassed two lifetimes—Biggles’s and Jack’s.

“However long it takes, I’ll see you through to the end.” He still clasped her hand, and through that connection she felt the sincerity behind his words.

She drew in a lungful of night air, heavy with rain and the scent of the nearby sea. Life was going to be
unbearable once he left. How had she allowed herself such an attachment in so short a time? Yet she couldn’t deny it, even if she knew better.

“I’d kiss you, but I’m soaked again,” he said through a smile.

“Then come in out of the weather.” She followed his lead and lightened her tone, although the weight still burdened on her shoulders like an overlarge cloak. “You still owe me a forfeit.”

His grin broadened in response, decadent, promising, sinful. He’d already fulfilled that promise once, yet her insides still melted. At last, she understood the attraction a man held for a woman. It wasn’t simply the creation of a child within her. It was the pleasure in the act—at least with the right man.

“Did you have anything specific in mind? I’m yours to command.”

Oh, how she wanted to take him up on that offer. Temptation nudged at her. She could ask for kisses. She could ask him to take her back to bed. She could ask him to show her something new. And yet … “You know what your forfeit is. I let you off last night. I’m calling for it now. You’re going to play for me.”

“But that would mean returning to the manor.”

“I know. I’ll take my chances.” Besides, as late as it was, the other houseguests ought to all be in bed.

His fingers curled about her hand. “Then shall we make a run for it?”

She ducked after him into the drizzle. The rain soaked into her already damp gown and chemise, but she didn’t care. George’s mere presence and the lingering afterglow of his lovemaking warmed her through. They ran across the lawn toward the main house. Darkened windows overlooked the broad expanse of grass like so many blank eyes. Heedless of the growing dampness, he skirted the side of the manor.

At an out-of-the way door, he paused. “We can go in the back way. My room isn’t too far from the servants’ staircase.”

She crossed her arms and leaned against a rough stone wall. “You have a pianoforte in your room, do you?”

“Er, no, but I have a change of clothes and a rather comfortable bed.”

“Your forfeit didn’t involve a bed.”

He placed his palms on either side of her head and leaned enough that the warmth from his body blanketed her. “It could if you changed the terms.”

“I’m not changing the terms.” She ducked from beneath his embrace. “Yet. You’ll have to convince me otherwise.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

C
LAD IN
dry clothes and raising a branch of candles, George slipped into the ballroom. “It’s safe to come in.”

The house lay in darkness, candles extinguished, fires banked. Even the servants had taken to their beds, and George had moved silently through the corridors to avoid rousing the hall boy.

Isabelle padded into the space behind him. In this room, like in George’s bedchamber, the hearth glowed with the faint orange of dying embers. Crouching before the grate, he stirred the ashes until he coaxed a feeble revival from the remains of a blaze.

He glanced up to find Isabelle standing over him. “I might still lend you something.”

“I won’t parade about the house clad in a man’s garments, even if everyone else is asleep. I’ll dry out, eventually.” She gestured toward the piano, lurking at the back of the space. “Your forfeit.”