Heir of Danger (22 page)

He looked away, his hand lying upon his thigh, the fingers crooked, the joints swollen. She’d asked about it. Just as she’d sought to discover why he’d run, how he’d lived, what dark memories hugged the edges of his sun-bright eyes. Yet, now as always he pushed her away. Parried her questions like the ablest of fencers.

“I may be
Duinedon
but I’m not a fool, Brendan. And I’m tired of being treated like one.”

His hand flexed and curled in agitation. “Never a fool, Lissa.”

He’d said that to her once before, though she knew it was foolish of her to want more than he could give. To conjure a real marriage out of a few words spoken by a priest.

“None of this is to cause you pain, but to keep you from harm. I do it to protect you,” he said.

“I’m not made of spun glass, Brendan. You should have noticed by now that I don’t shatter easily. In this case what I don’t know just might kill me.”

He flexed his hand, scars standing white on his skin, but remained stubbornly silent.

“Forget I spoke,” she said, annoyance and disappointment warring within her. “Forget this whole marriage. It was a stupid idea anyway. You go your way. I’ll go mine and—”

She stood to leave, but he grabbed her hand. “Now you’re angry.”

She wrestled to free herself. “I’m not.”

A smile twitched a corner of his mouth. “You’re lying.”

“And you’re maddening. If you didn’t want to marry me, why did you agree to it?”

“Your silver tongue and your winning ways?” he wheedled.

It was like boxing at shadows. She reasoned, argued, bullied, and yet he remained unfazed. She might as well be speaking to a wall for all the good that came of it. “Do you know how much I despise you right now?”

“I can guess, but I’ll ignore it. You’re overwrought.”

She marched back toward the house, but he kept pace with her, not allowing her to escape. “If I was overwrought—which I most certainly am not—I’d have every right to be.”

He lowered his head in sheepish submission. “If I apologize, will you forgive me?”

She refused to look at him, refused to be cajoled by his little boy charm. “Why should I?”

“No reason at all except it might make you feel better.”

“It would take a lot more than that to make me feel better.”

She spun around, coming up hard against his chest. When had he stepped so close? When had she forgotten how to breathe? She had but to lift her chin to touch her lips to his. To kiss the dimple at the corner of his mouth. Reach a hand to caress the stubble upon his cheek.

“How about this for starters?” he said, his voice dropping to a mischievous purr.

He did what she could not. Lowered his head to brush a kiss upon her lips. He touched her nowhere else, yet even that slight contact ignited a flame low in her belly. His breath came warm and soft and the flame roared higher, racing outward until every particle in her body simmered.

“You said you didn’t want to marry me,” she murmured.

His gaze traveled over her face as if he memorized her, sending the heat within her soaring before he stepped away, his practiced scoundrel’s smile offering a promise of more if she dared. “One’s got nothing to do with the other.”

“It worked like a charm.” Elisabeth laughed. “By the end of the argument, Cook was fully on the side of Mrs. Landry, our housekeeper. And they were both dead set against me. Neither one answered me in anything but monosyllables for a month, but at least they didn’t kill each other or quit altogether, which would have been far worse.”

Elisabeth kept company with Madame Arana, who sat stitching away at her needlepoint amid the group gathered in the drawing room for the evening. All but for Helena, who’d disappeared after supper and had yet to return.

The ladies’ conversation veered wildly from the price of wax candles and the proper wages for a housemaid who doubled in the kitchen to whether Helena’s grandmother had ever tried the spa at Lucan for her digestion.

Elisabeth’s eyes sparkled as she talked of accounts and economizing and how to stay on top of idle servants. She waxed poetic on sheep and wool profits, the use of turnips
for winter fodder, crop rotation, and the school she’d begun at Dun Eyre for the education of the tenants’ children.

It all sounded so damned domestic. Complete and utter drudgery. But she laughed, gesturing as she spoke, her hair escaping its pins to curl in ringlets against her neck. Her face aglow. Alive and excited and full of ideas. Her enthusiasm infectious.

“If you think Tom Newcomb will ever hear of you planting his fields in anything but potatoes, you’re mad,” Brendan interrupted.

She squared round, keenness still shining in her gaze. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you speak of home like that.”

He shrugged. “Like what?”

“Like you belong there.” She cocked her head in a questioning pose, brows low as if she studied a bug beneath a magnifying glass. She must have found what she looked for. She smiled proudly. “Actually, Tom’s talking round the others to try Mr. Adams’s proposal. We hope to have them all on board by the next planting season.”

Brendan sat back, rubbing his chin, watching her in conversation. At one point he caught Rogan’s eye upon him, the harper giving him a wink and a grin as if he knew where Brendan’s lascivious thoughts were leading him. Right off a cliff edge.

Brendan’s watch said twelve before Madame Arana rose from her seat, exclaiming at the hour, Rogan lingering only long enough to tap out his pipe, take a final glass of whiskey, and wish the pair of them a cheery good night.

And then they were alone.

The night folded in on them, the candlelight softer, voices muffled, even the fire burned low and sultry in the
grate. And yet, neither one made a move to leave. To pull themselves free of the clumsy awkwardness of this new awareness.

“I had no idea you took such interest in estate matters,” he finally ventured when the silence stretched too thin.

Elisabeth played with her empty wineglass, eyes downcast. “I assist Mr. Adams in his office. We discuss his plans and read over the latest articles on husbandry together.” She looked up, a challenge in her gaze. “He listens to what I have to say. Respects my opinions.”

“Yet Shaw wanted to replace him.”

She flushed. “Gordon didn’t understand. He saw Dun Eyre as a stepping-stone to better things. I see it as the only thing. I didn’t understand that before. It took almost losing it to make me see how much I love Dun Eyre.” Sadness colored her once-animated face. “Gordon was suitable in so many ways, I should have been a ninny to have refused his suit.”

“Did you love him?”

“You asked me that once before. Do you remember?”

The music room at Dun Eyre. “I do. Has the answer changed?”

She took a deep breath as if she had to think about it while he unconsciously held his. “I loved the idea of him. I wanted a husband. Children. A life with someone I could rely on. I thought Gordon could give me those things.”

Brendan crossed to take her hands. His fingers lacing with hers as he drew her up. She smiled, a spray of freckles across her nose, her mouth soft and full and berry red.

A beautiful woman. A quiet night.

So far nothing out of the ordinary.

A thousand times he’d done this and a thousand times he’d walked away.

“You never talk about Belfoyle,” she commented.

“As if I belong there?” he teased, wary of this conversation’s path. Home was a topic off-limits and had been since he’d left. If he didn’t think about it, it didn’t hurt.

She gave a toss of her head. “Ever. Or not as I thought you would after being away for so long.”

“I’m a second son, remember?” he answered caustically. “Pride of ownership belongs to Aidan now.”

Again there was the sense she was searching for something within him. If she wasn’t careful, she’d find more than she bargained for. “It’s not ownership I’m speaking of, but loving a place. Carrying Belfoyle and all that makes it special inside you.”

“What are you trying to do, Elisabeth? Wring a confession from me? Have me tell you that I wept for my family every day I was gone? That every night I closed my eyes and saw the towers of Belfoyle?” He grabbed her by the arms, a slow burn beginning behind his eyes. “Life boiled down to survival. Food. Shelter. Safety. There was no freedom for regrets or tears or maudlin wretchedness.”

She braved his anger. “And now?”

“You’ve seen what I face,” he argued, his grip tightening. “My life is not my own until Máelodor is dead and the stone is secure.”

Anger became arousal. He wanted to punish her and devour her at the same time. His lips found hers in a kiss born solely of the need to shut her up. Stop her mental assault. The slow degradation of all his defenses. He didn’t want to imagine or hope or dream. He didn’t want to see Elisabeth as anything other than a hindrance. “Even if we marry tomorrow, I can’t promise you the future you want.”

Then he tasted the sweet heat of her luscious mouth.
The wine-tart tang of her on his tongue. He palmed the perfect firmness of a generous breast. Inhaled the comforting scents of lemon and lavender. And he could no longer deny his body’s craving.

“Perhaps not,” she murmured, threading her hands into his hair, “but you can offer me the hope of
a
future. That will have to be enough.”

The swooping plunge of her stomach, the roar of blood in her ears, every muscle jumping with excitement. Elisabeth could have been riding neck-or-nothing over the rocky heath and cliff-top meadows of home. The sensations were exactly the same, including the feeling of careening out of control toward a dangerous jump.

Brendan had guided her up the stairs to her bedchamber, the darkness wrapping round them, drawing them close as conspirators. He closed the door behind them, just the snick of the latch raising gooseflesh on her body, spreading heat low across her belly.

He pulled her hair loose of its pins. She was so used to the constant fight to confine its wildness, the heavy curling weight of it against her back felt both unfamiliar and oddly sensual. As if he were seeing a secret part of her. Peeking beneath the tamed sensible woman she’d become to the hoyden tomboy she’d been when he knew her.

He ran his tongue over her bottom lip, nipping and sucking until she opened to him, her tongue darting out in naive exploration. He dipped within, teasing and tasting. Carrying her along on a river of rising need, yet spinning out every touch and every kiss in an infinite dance of discovery.

Her arms lifted to encircle his neck, the fringe of his
hair against her bare skin. His lips moved over her cheek, each eyelid, behind her ear. She threw back her head as he caressed his way down her throat, along her collarbone, before lowering into the valley between her breasts.

Her heart thundered. It pounded against her ribs as his hands skimmed her sides, folding around her to stroke the length of her spine.

She shucked him free of his jacket, her trembling fingers working at the buttons of his waistcoat as he backed her toward the bed. Struggled to free her from the restraints of too many layers of clothing. Ribbons, buttons, laces. Finally, her gown slithered to the floor. Her stays following after.

She should be embarrassed or apprehensive—at the least she should mutter a few maidenly protestations to prove her virginal innocence—but Brendan didn’t make her feel innocent. He made her feel wicked and wanton and reckless and passionate. She couldn’t breathe when he was near. And forget thinking. Her brain turned to mush as soon as he locked that hungry golden gaze on her.

He encircled her waist with his hands, grazing the lines of her ribs, the curves of her torso, taking the chemise with him as he massaged his way up.

She shivered, leaning into his embrace, loving the capable strength in his work-roughened palms. The feel of every stroke upon her sensitized skin. Off went the chemise, tossed to the floor with the rest of her clothes.

He thumbed her nipples, the dark buds hardening beneath his touch. He bent to take one in his mouth, swirling the softness of it with his tongue, sucking it taut while kneading the pliant flesh of the other. No amount of dream-spinning had prepared her for this tantalizing
heart-pounding hunger. Aching between her legs, she moaned, pressing herself against him, needing him closer. Skin on skin.

And then they were on the bed, Brendan above her, leaning upon one elbow, eyes scorching a path over her body, his hand following lazily after.

She’d waited seven years for this. She would memorize it. Imprint it upon her brain where nothing that followed would erase it. The curve of his wrist. The line of his jaw. The dimple at the corner of his mouth and the slash of his brows. The flop of hair over his forehead and the slow bliss of his caress.

She closed her eyes, picturing him as he was right this instant. Knew she’d remember always.

“Forget the silks I promised you. I prefer you just like this,” he murmured.

Her eyes snapped open on a smile. “That’s right. You did promise me, didn’t you? I should have known they were so many empty words.” She lifted her head to nip his chin.