Eve Silver (22 page)

“As you were disappointed?” Something flickered in his gaze, a warning perhaps, and Emma sensed he was not ready to tread that particular path this night. She shook her head. “I neither build you up, nor cut you down. I simply seek to base my choices on truth.” She moved her hand to encompass his laboratory. “Is this the castle of a prince? Hardly that. Yet I have doubt you are the monster you claim to be. My observations and deductions prove that is untrue. A moment ago, you admitted that you are a man, nothing more, nothing less. A flesh and blood man. One with noble goals. And that is what I perceive you to be. Not hero. Not monster. But man.”

“Always the sensible girl,” he murmured.

“Not always,” she said softly, knowing her heart shone in her eyes. “Once before I told you that I have no wish to be a sensible girl. You rebuffed me.”

“I did. As I ought refuse you now.” He laughed, low and soft, the sound stroking Emma like a caress. “Again, proof that I am merely a man. I have not the strength to deny you.”

He gestured at the slitted window that overlooked the yard. “Do you know that the day after your arrival I watched you playing children's games with my son. Laughing and twirling, all innocence and purity. Your skirt moved up to reveal practical boots and sensible black stockings. And all I could think was that I wanted to peel them from your naked skin and run my hands over the limbs they covered.”

A low sound escaped her, half denial, half pleasure. So he had wanted her all this time, longed for her as she had for him. The thought was heady, delightful.

“But it was more than that, Emma. I wanted to hear you laugh for me. To see your pretty mouth curve in a smile for me. To see you hold your arms wide in welcome.”

She held her breath, hanging on his every word.

“I promise you nothing, Emma Parrish. My heart has no room for love, my life no place for a wife.” He looked at her intently as he spoke, assessing the impact of his words. “But I do…care for you.”

Oh, that precious admission, dragged from him in gruff, stark disclosure. He cared for her. It would have to be enough.

Emma swallowed, fearful of the leap she was about to take, yet strangely unable to choose another course. This was the path that felt right.

“I understand,” she said. “At least you have been honest with me.”

“
Do
you understand, Emma?” His voice was hoarse, with an urgency that she was beginning to recognize as desire.

She nodded slowly. “You will not marry me. You will not love me. And you offer me nothing. These things you have said quite clearly, my lord.”

“Anthony,” he corrected her.

“Anthony,” she repeated, savoring each syllable. How many times had she whispered his name to herself in the darkness of the night, dreaming of his touch, his kiss? The slow steady pounding of her heart accelerated, beating a rapid tattoo that seemed to cry out against the enormity of her decision. Or perhaps, it beat with encouragement, hastening her fall.

Taking a deep breath, she continued, the words pouring from her in a rush. “When you are done with me, will you send me away? I do not wish to leave your son, for he has worked his way into my heart, and I believe I have made my way into his. It would be hurtful to him were I to leave. Damaging, even. I cannot make this choice at his expense. I must be absolutely certain….”

Using their clasped hands to draw her even closer, Anthony stared into her eyes. Emma's head dropped back as she held his gaze. With infinite slowness he lowered his mouth to hers, brushing a fleeting kiss across her lips. The contact singed her, a dark flame searing her body, sending a heightened awareness zinging through her limbs.

“You asked me this before, the day I came upon you washing floors and windows.” He raised a questioning brow as he pulled back, watching her. “And if I promise you this, you believe I will keep my word?”

“You would never do anything to harm Nicky in any way. Of that, I am certain. And you are a man of honor. I do believe your word is your bond.” Simple statements spoken with naked sincerity. She believed those words.

He gave a harsh bark of laughter. “A man of honor who would take my son's governess to my bed. A virgin maid under my protection, and under my control. Where is the honor in that?”

“Though your code of chivalry is your own, Anthony, I believe it is one you cleave to. Tell me, will you deny your own code?”

His nostrils flared as he drew a breath, his head tilting back. Her arrow had struck home.

“No. I will not deny my code.”

“Then I ask you again. Will you give me your promise not to send me away?”

“What? No demands for jewels? No attempt to secure the promise of a house, a coach, servants of your own?”

Emma sensed that his words were calculated to wound, to put distance between them and give her one last chance to escape.

“Do you think so little of me?” She could not help the tiny catch in her voice as she spoke.

He rested one finger beneath her chin and tipped her head back until he could look into her eyes, his gaze hot and fierce. “I think
everything
of you, my Emma.”

The breath left her in a rush.
My Emma
.

“I will not send you away.” He spoke the words in a low, hard voice, the way one would swear a vow. “But I make no promise that you will not wish to flee of your own free will and determination. The likelihood is that you will regret this foolish choice.”

Emma smiled, a bittersweet curve of her lips. “There will undoubtedly be times when I will feel regret. But there will also be times in my life when I will take out the memories of our time together, revisit them with wistful pleasure, then carefully store them away.” She remembered the times that her mother’s eyes had held pensive longing. She wondered now if that longing had been for the foolish young man who had been her one true love and only lover. “For one night, or one week, perhaps even a month...it matters not, I shall have a love affair. Do you understand?”

She said nothing more, unwilling to explain that it was
his
desire that made her burn, the intensity of it, the heat that pulsed from him in waves, catching her up and consuming her. The promise of his touch, his passion, his tenderness tugged at her until she was weak with it.

 He pulled her roughly against his chest and his lips came against hers with the urgency of a man starved.

“Remember, Emma.” She could taste him on her lips as he spoke, feel his breath enter her open mouth. “Remember that I warned you and gave you one last chance to run.”

“I have no wish to run.”

“You bare my flaws until I stand in the worst possible light.” He shook his head. “And still you want me.”

Decide. Now. She could still walk away, and she knew he would not follow, though he would want to with the same deep throbbing need that haunted her. But oh, the cost of such a choice. She could have him. Anthony, her prince of dark and shadow, and all she needed to do was say.

“Yes.” She tossed her head, defiant now. Certain. “Still I want you.”

His eyes widened, narrowed, and then he tucked her hand securely in his, lifted the candle, and led the way down the winding stone staircase and out into the fragrant night. He pulled her into his arms and spun her round and round on the cobbled drive.

Emma sensed a freeing of Anthony's reserve, as if by breaching his stronghold, his tower lair, she had breached his personal defenses as well, and he had shared something of himself with her this night. He smiled in a carefree manner, and for a moment she glimpsed what he must have been like as a youth.

“I believe this is my dance,” he whispered, his arm a solid strut at her waist.

She had not expected him to be lighthearted. His jaunty mood was contagious, and she responded with an ebullience that obliterated all concerns, all doubts.

The light of the moon poured over them, and the risen wind whipped Emma's skirt about, belling it out like a fancy crinoline beneath an evening dress. Caught in the moment, she could pretend that she was a maiden fair with jewels sparkling at her throat. Her hair, already in disarray from the questing caress of Anthony's fingers, tumbled loose, falling free down her back. She laughed as he twirled her, and kissed her, hard male lips and the delicious thrust of his tongue, leaving her breathless and dizzy.

Emma tipped her head back and watched the stars spin overhead, sparkling bright and clear against the night sky. The crickets were her orchestra, the cobbled drive her dance floor. She laughed, a pure and free sound of joy.

One-two-three. One-two-three. The rhythm of the waltz hummed in her veins, and Emma danced in the arms of her beau, caught in the gossamer web of a dream.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Emma’s heart yet pounded from the exertion of their dance, and from the heady feeling of freedom that had spun through her as they twirled in the rhythm of their waltz.

His warm hand clasped in hers, Anthony led her through the darkened house to a closed door at the far end of the hall. Her own chamber, and Nicky's adjoining one, were at the opposite end of the house in a separate wing.

Anthony opened the door and stepped back to let her precede him. Entering his room, Emma was struck by its size. Her gaze was immediately drawn to the large bed that was the focal point of the chamber. No curtains surrounded it. Instead, the bed stood alone and unveiled, stark in the gleaming moonlight that streamed through the windowpanes. An image of Anthony lying in that bed sprang to the forefront of her thoughts. It was a disturbingly tantalizing image, but an incomplete one that tested the limits of her paltry experience.

She stared at the bed. The dark wood headboard was large and simple, with several pillows resting against it. She could not discern the color of the coverlet in the moonlight, but it was puffed with down and she suspected it would be warm on a cold winter night. Anthony's presence just behind her generated a heat of its own, one that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. Without looking, she sensed that he stood so close that the smallest movement on her part would bring her in contact with his body.

Her palms felt damp and her heart fluttered in her chest. She crossed to the window. There was a certain amount of security in standing with her back to the bed, and to him. At least she could control the nearly irrepressible craving to dissolve in a fit of hysterical laughter.

Oh! This would not do. Could a man make love to a woman who tittered like a schoolgirl?

She hugged herself, wrapping her fingers around her upper arms, and looked through the panes of glass to the darkness beyond.

“Emma.” Her name was a whispered caress.

A creaking sound sliced the silence and she turned from the window to find that he sat on the edge of the bed. That terrible, frightening, enticing bed. The mattress dipped beneath his weight, the perfectly smooth coverlet wrinkling beneath his thighs.

She wanted to skirt past him, to alter her decision, so carefully made. At the same time she wanted to join him on the soft surface of the bed, to sink into the mattress and the warmth of his embrace. Opting for prudence, Emma stayed exactly where she was, frozen in an agony of indecision.

All her life she had been warned against choosing this path. Indecision waged a tormented battle inside her and her fingers curled and clenched, fisting at her sides. To stay. To flee. She had thought the decision made, but faced with the reality of Anthony’s bed, the scent of him light in the air, she was afraid.

Leaning forward, Anthony lit a candle on the bedside table. Emma blinked against the sudden flare of light. Her gaze flicked abruptly to his face, then back to the flame.

“I preferred the darkness,” she said. “The anonymity of it. The ability to make my choice in the shadows.”

His brows rose, but he made no move to snuff the flame. He was a man who would accept nothing less than her heartfelt clear assent.

Emma watched the flame jump and dance, and she knew that, on some level, her choice had been made that very first night when he had startled a laugh from her with his mimicry of her aunts, then left her in the carriage, alone. She had had a choice, then, as now, to scurry back to the life she knew or to leap forward into the unknown.

Anthony rose and closed the space that separated them. Standing before her, he seemed inordinately tall and broad. The top of her head barely reached his chin. He stood close and she felt his breath stir the hair at her crown. Taking her hand, he pried her curled fingers open and brought her palm to his mouth. She felt his soft kiss but could not bring herself to look up and meet his gaze. To do so would be to risk losing herself in the fathomless depths of his soul, risking her own in the process.

 The neck of his shirt was open. Emma stared at the vee of bared skin, the hollow at the base of his throat that was cast in light and shade. Hesitantly she reached out and traced his collarbone with the tip of her index finger. She felt him tense beneath her touch.

“Do you know that when I am with you I cannot breathe?” she asked, surprised by the thick, husky quality of her voice.

He lifted her chin, tilting her head so she was forced to meet his gaze.

“Yes,” he said, and though his expression remained impassive, she could hear the beginnings of a smile in his voice.

“And that my heart races like a runaway cart?”

Now the smile blossomed across his sensual lips, curving the corners upward. “Yes.”

“And that I shake as one ill with the ague?”

The smile grew, a flash of white teeth.

“Yes.”

She opened her mouth to ask how he knew, but he bent forward, joining the firmness of his lips with her own, touching his tongue to hers only long enough to tease her senses. Her finger was still on his collarbone, and his movement flattened her palm against the hard muscles of his chest. She could feel the pounding of his heart, the rhythm keeping time with the rushing of her blood, synchronized.

Beneath her palm his chest rose and fell with each breath. Faster now, and deeper too. It would seem that she was not the only one to experience difficulty drawing air into her body.