Claire Delacroix (122 page)

“There is something preying upon your thoughts,” he murmured, his thumb coaxing her nipple to a peak with satisfying speed. “Perhaps you reflect upon our coupling of this morn and fear you must wait until this evening for another sample.”

She laughed then, a quick startled sound, and flicked a glance over her shoulder at him. “You have no lack of confidence.”

Rowan grinned, boldly touching her beneath the refuge of the cloak. Ibernia’s smile faded and a flush stained her cheeks as her tawny lashes fluttered against her cheek. “Perhaps I was mistaken then. Perhaps you have no interest in returning to our cabin. Perhaps you would prefer to while away the days here on this cold deck rather than warm and cosseted below.”

He made to lift his hand away.

Ibernia caught at his fingers, staying his move, her fingers entwining with his. “You are a wicked tease,” she charged, her eyes sparkling so merrily that Rowan caught his breath.

He might have argued that
she
teased, but her other hand slipped between them and closed unexpectedly over his arousal. Even through the layers of cloak and chausses, her grip was sure and Rowan jumped slightly.

She turned in his embrace, her grip unyielding, and met his gaze knowingly. When her hand moved, her gesture making him catch his breath, he locked one arm around her waist and did not relinquish the weight of her breast from the other hand.

He dragged his thumb across the tightened nipple and watched her catch her breath.

“You have a choice,” he fairly growled into her ear. “You may walk demurely and immediately back to the
cabin, or I shall toss you over my shoulder and take you there.”

Ibernia lifted her chin, the bold glint that fired his blood lighting her eyes. “And if I decline either option?”

Rowan grinned. “Then I shall have you here, and the crew will be vastly entertained.” He winked. “ ’Twill be a long and thorough loving, for I should be determined to ensure that you were pleasured beyond your wildest dreams.”

She flushed scarlet and flicked a glance over his shoulder to the crew. “You would not!”

He caught her against him with a wicked grin and let his voice drop low. “That sounds like a dare,
ma demoiselle.
Do you challenge me to prove you wrong?”

“Nay!” Ibernia jumped and might have darted away, but Rowan was not prepared to let her go. Indeed, he did not intend to release her from his embrace, not before he sampled her charms once again.

He caught her around the waist and saw the delight touch her face. She knew what he was going to do and laughingly began to protest, her expression captivating Rowan as naught else could have done. He tossed her over his shoulder, his grin broadening when she twisted to fight his grip. She muttered a string of insults in Gaelic, though there was a thread of laughter beneath her words.

The crew whistled and shouted approval, her hip bumped against his cheek. Rowan gripped her knees and waved merrily to the crew, whistling as he headed for their cabin.

“Beast!” Ibernia declared. “Incorrigible creature!”

Rowan laughed aloud, knowing she was not so incensed as she would have him believe. “ ’Twill be made worth your while and you know it well.”

“Aye, and you will be poorly served in exchange for your services,” she retorted so crisply that he laughed again.

“You were the one who declared it was mediocre,”
Rowan retorted. “I would merely practice to ensure your pleasure.”

Ibernia growled though she did not fight to be released. Rowan found his anticipation rising with every step he took toward their cabin.

“Oh, I shall make you moan, Rowan de Montvieux,” she declared grimly. “I shall leave you so in awe of my touch that you will cede to my every whim.”

“Indeed, my lady, I challenge you to win that very result.” Rowan kicked the door closed behind them and dropped the latch into place before he put Ibernia down.

He deliberately reached beneath her kirtle, the bare silk of her skin beneath his hands firing his blood. He cupped her buttocks in his hands and let her slide down his front, halting her course when they were eye to eye. Her feet still dangled above the floor, her kirtle bunched around his wrists.

“You bold creature,” she charged, a twinkle lighting the sapphire of her eyes. That smile was what addled his wits, Rowan was certain. Not to mention her rare but merry laugh. Aye, he would make the lady’s eyes sparkle before this day was done!

Rowan feigned shock. “I, bold? ’Tis you who wear naught beneath your kirtle!”

Ibernia bit back her smile. “I had no choice. The chemise was so soiled that I could not don it beneath the new kirtle.”

“And too well used to stand another wash.”

She grimaced. “In all likelihood.”

“Then you shall have a chemise of mine,” he offered quickly, refusing to consider that he had never granted a woman a personal token before. Ibernia’s lips parted, perhaps to protest, but Rowan dipped his head and took advantage of the opportunity.

He kissed her deeply, gripping her buttocks in his hands
and loving the press of her breasts against him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and opened her mouth to him immediately, her ready capitulation only feeding Rowan’s raging desire. She lifted her knees, the move making her buttocks into riper curves in his hands, and locked her ankles around his waist.

Only then did Rowan recall her threat—and realize he could hardly wait to savor whatever she chose to do to him.

By the time they were done, Ibernia would not be longing to reach Dublin; she would be begging to remain in his company yet longer. But this indulgence would ensure that Rowan was fully free of the intoxicating novelty of her touch by the time they reached Ireland’s shore.

’Twould be so much easier to
set
her free that way.

He was certain of it.

ar away, to the southeast of Paris, Margaux de Montvieux was troubled. ’Twas some commentary on the mood of Rowan’s foster mother that she found herself within Chateau Montvieux’s chapel and that her steps turned in the direction of the altar. Though she sought solace of a kind, ’twas not absolution of a religious nature that would do.

Margaux had been trained young to apologize to her father directly, without evasion or delay. His death changed naught but the location where that apology was rendered.

The weight of her legacy hung heavy on this day and ’twas, Margaux knew, because she had done naught right. She strode to the altar in the chapel, pausing long enough on the threshold of a darkened doorway to take a flickering torch in her hand.

The golden light spilled down the curling staircase before her, making her path look more welcoming than she knew it was. With cane and torch, Margaux had no hand to steady herself upon the wall, and she was doubly wary of the crooked flagstones underfoot.

She would have to have them reset again, lest she take a fall as she had once before. Her cursed hip had never healed aright, but that was no excuse for catering to its complaints. The joint ached as she descended, as if ’twould protest her
return to this place, but Margaux had other matters on her mind. She could have called for aid on this day, but that would have interfered with her privacy.

She gritted her teeth and descended, one careful step at a time. The staircase wound tightly, the opening to the chapel lost to the shadows behind by the time she had taken half a dozen steps. Margaux shivered, though not due to memories of that fall. Though she would have admitted it to none, she dreaded coming to the crypt, just as she had dreaded going to her father as a child.

All the same, she could not conceive of staying away.

Her father demanded her presence, as commandingly as if he still drew breath. Her father missed no fault, he never had. No misdemeanor went unpunished, no slight went without remark.

Margaux came to a halt at the foot of the stairs, leaned heavily on her cane, and stared at her father’s tomb. Beyond the stone sarcophagus lurked the shadow of another—that of her grandfather—and behind that was yet another. She needed no further reminder that the lineage of Montvieux culminated in her—and ended with her.

Margaux lifted the torch higher, willing the light to banish the shadows lurking in the corners of this place. ’Twas damp again, the must making her nose twitch.

Aye, the river had risen high last spring. That caprice of the season felt like another failure, another inadequacy, another instance of a sole daughter failing to measure up to the expectations of her lineage.

Margaux realized suddenly that she had loathed her father, almost as much as she had revered him. Was that the gift of age, that all should become ambiguous?

She lifted her chin and stepped farther into the crypt, realizing even as she did so that it was foolish to try to impress her father with bravado. He was naught but dust and
bones after all these years, and even in life, he had not been one apt to be deceived.

She slid a hand across the sarcophagus and found it fitting that he should slumber forever thus, encased in stone as set and as cold as he had always been.

Then she chided herself for her impertinence. Just the measurement of the sarcophagus reminded her of how tall he had been, how broad and strong, how magnificent his booming laughter, how terrifying his anger. She rubbed a fingertip along the edge of the stone and felt tears prick at her eyes.

Margaux blinked quickly and composed herself. She
never
cried. She slipped the torch into the sconce to one side and eased down on to her knees, wincing at the pain that shot through her hip. She braced both hands on the head of her cane, inclined her head, and submitted to the overwhelming tide of her failure.

She had failed Montvieux. She had failed her father. She had failed the legacy of the ages, and she had done so even more thoroughly than her father had ever feared. There was no son to seize the reins of power, no blood heir to rule this estate, so long the pride of her family.

Margaux had sacrificed everything for Montvieux, and, in the end, she had only Montvieux to show for it.

It had proven to be precious little consolation. Alone with only her father’s tomb as her witness—and that of his father and his father before him—Margaux permitted herself to cry. She did so silently, her shoulders shaking as the tears rolled down her face.

She had fulfilled every dire prediction her father had ever made. Despite herself. And how she hated that, in the end, he had called the matter right.

Margaux truly had not been as good as a son.

She was so lost in her misery that she did not hear the
scrape of a boot on the stairs behind her. ’Twas only when a man cleared his throat that her head shot up. When she saw who ’twas, she struggled to her feet, hoping against hope that the torchlight hid her tears.

“Gavin,” she managed to say with a measure of her usual reserve.

For indeed, none other than Gavin Fitzgerald, the spouse she had taken hastily and nigh as hastily regretted, stood framed in the doorway behind. The man she had wed to defy her father, the man she refused to divorce lest she grant her sire another complaint against her, had returned.

God only knew what he wanted from her.

“Tears, Margaux?” Gavin shook his head and took a step closer. He was a rough man, and age had done naught to aid his looks. His complexion was tanned as dark as a peasant’s and nearly as thoroughly lined. His brown hair was shot with silver these days and was thinner on the top than when she had last seen him.

But all the same, there was a certain vigor about him. Indeed, he looked cursedly hale. And that shrewdness still lingered in his eyes. Margaux braced herself for a verbal sparring.

“ ’Tis unlike you to weep for anything,” he continued, rapping his knuckles on her father’s tomb with annoying familiarity. “Especially this old bastard.”

Margaux stiffened. “You will not speak of my father this way.”

“Aye, ’tis too late for that.” Gavin pursed his lips. “I wish I had told him what I thought of him whilst there was a chance.”

“He thought naught of you!”

“Aye. He made that clear.”

Their gazes met for a long moment and Margaux abruptly
recalled another reason she had wed Gavin Fitzgerald. There was something ruthless about him, to be sure, a self-motivated streak that was not unfamiliar to anyone raised at Montvieux.

But in Gavin, that selfishness found its greatest outlet in passion. There was no compromise with him abed—he wanted all the pleasure he could sample and he demanded that she match him touch for touch. Margaux’s heart skipped a beat and she quickly averted her face from unwelcome reminders of the past.

“What do you want?” she asked sharply. “Why have you returned here after all these years?”

She felt rather than saw Gavin fold his arms across his chest. “Is it so unsuitable to visit one’s spouse?”

“You are no longer my spouse!” Margaux spat. “It has been over twenty years since I cast you out, and you still are not welcome in this place!”

“Because I ask questions you would rather not answer?”

“Because you are a wretched liar! Because you despoil all you touch, like a vagrant dog!” She pointed imperially to the portal. “Get out.”