Jo Goodman (30 page)

Chloe's fiancé welcomed them at his aunt's house in the village of Glen Eden. They had luncheon in the garden and spent the afternoon walking leisurely along the cobbled village road to the outlying estate. Mercedes and Sylvia kept Mrs. Fredrick's company, while Colin stayed apace of the twins. Chloe and the likable vicar followed the group more slowly, their hands brushing ever so slightly as they walked.

It was dark by the time they returned home. Sylvia was already missing her sister and retired immediately to her room. The twins yawned deeply, not even raising a protest when Mercedes pointed them up the steps. She watched them sluggishly meet the challenge of the grand staircase then disappear around the corner of the landing. She and Colin were alone at the foot of the stairs when she turned to him.

"Will you be wanting me this evening?" she asked.

He didn't answer immediately. For all the inflection or interest in her tone, she may as well have asked if he wanted sugar with his tea. Colin reached up to brush back a strand of hair that had fallen along her cheek. She shied away.

"Not here," she said. "Never here."

He let his hand fall slowly back to his side. "What goes through your mind, Mercedes?"

"I don't know what you mean."

She probably didn't, he thought. "Yes," he said at last. "I'll want you this evening."

Mercedes was waiting for him when he came up from the library. It was a cool night and she had laid a small fire in the fireplace. She sat curled in a wing chair, facing the flames to absorb their warmth. A black ribbon bound her hair loosely this evening, and her white lawn gown was edged with lace across the bodice.

She started to rise as he entered the room but he motioned her back. Her bare toes peeped out beneath the hem of her gown. He watched her cover them before he unbuttoned his jacket and shrugged out of it. He let it dangle at the end of his hand. His shirt was very white against the dark gray waistcoat. "Have you been waiting long?" he asked.

"Not long, I think." A few minutes or a few hours, it had been an eternity. Her eyes followed him as he crossed the carpet with a soundless tread and dropped his jacket on the back of the chair opposite her.

Colin unfastened the gold studs in his cuffs and laid them in a blue Wedgwood box on the table. He rolled up his sleeves then picked up a poker at the fireplace. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mercedes flinch. He looked down at the poker then back at her. Puzzlement gave way to understanding. "My God," he said softly. "He hit you with this."

Ashamed, Mercedes ducked her head and stared at her hands in her lap.

Colin didn't pursue the topic. He stabbed at the fire instead, shooting sparks up the flue so that embers popped and crackled. When a measure of his anger had subsided, he dropped the poker in its black iron stand. He remained at the fireplace, one arm resting on the mantel. "Look at me, Mercedes."

She raised her face slowly.

"Do you imagine I'm going to beat you?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Or flay your skin with a whip?"

Of its own accord, her hand came up and touched her neck. "No," she said on a thread of sound. "I don't think you'll do that."

Colin wasn't certain he could believe her. She had pressed herself back into the chair sharply the moment he'd raised the poker. "I mean it," he said. "I would never hurt you."

In Mercedes's mind she heard the sentence differently.
I would never hurt you like that.
To her way of thinking, the addition of the last two words made the statement true. He had already said things to her that stung as deeply as if he'd taken a strip off her skin.

Colin watched her closely but in the end he had to be satisfied with her silence. He raked back his hair in a weary gesture. "Go to bed, Mercedes," he said quietly. And when she looked at him, bewildered by this order, he realized she had misunderstood. "My bed."

Confident of her compliance, Colin picked up his coat and disappeared into the adjoining dressing room. He didn't hurry his undressing or his ablutions, giving her ample time to fall asleep. He couldn't know that the waiting was an agony for her. She felt as though she were a single nerve ending by the time he joined her.

Colin felt her stiffen as he slipped into bed beside her. Her uneven, shallow breathing made it impossible for him to even pretend she was sleeping. He raised himself on one elbow and touched her shoulder, turning her gently so that she lay on her back. His body blocked the firelight, casting her face in shadow. Even so, he could sense apprehension in her large gray eyes.

He drew a lock of dark chocolate hair forward. The tension in her slender frame was so great she fairly vibrated with it. Colin leaned into her and kissed her softly on the mouth. "I only want you beside me in bed tonight," he said quietly. "I'm not going to touch you."

Mercedes was afraid to lower her guard. She studied him warily, her eyes darting over his face, searching out the lie.

"I shouldn't have taken you a second time last night." He felt her uncertain glance but before she could frame her question he went on, "I saw you take Mrs. Fredrick's arm this afternoon. It was clear to my eyes at least that her walk was less troubled than yours."

Mercedes turned sharply away from him and pressed her fist against her mouth to keep from crying out. Tears sprang to her eyes and her shoulders heaved. She felt her hand on his arm but she tore away from his touch. Her relief that he did not pursue the contact was so great that it tore a shudder through her.

Not for the world did she want him to know the suppressed sob that wracked her body was laughter.

It was much later, when she heard his steady and even breathing that she trusted herself to turn over. He wouldn't have thanked her for her laughter any more than he would have understood it. Mercedes raised her right hand and lightly touched his temple with her fingertips. His bright hair was as soft as down and beneath the pads of her fingers she could feel his beating pulse.

His assessment of her condition had been so skewed by his manly perceptions, that she found she could not be angry with him. In an odd way, it was endearing. He had seemed very human to her in that moment, apologetic and hesitant, but not without an edge of male conceit. He must have imagined himself to be inordinately proportioned to have been the cause of so much of her discomfort. He wouldn't have thanked her for pointing out it was her blistered feet causing her ungainly walk, not anything he had done to her.

She knuckled her mouth again to stifle a low chuckle. It was true that she had felt an ache there most of the day, but it was never painful. Quite the opposite, and it had driven her to distraction to have the memory imprinted clearly in her mind and stamped indelibly between her thighs.

Mercedes index finger traced his jaw from temple to chin then laid her hand against his neck. She moved closer, careful not to disturb him. Her fingers drifted to where his nightshirt was opened at the throat. He didn't stir when she stroked his skin lightly and she was struck again by the realization that his sleeping pose was not half so arrogant as his waking one. It gave her courage.

Mercedes let her hand slide across his chest and rest on his shoulder. She pressed a kiss at the base of his throat. Her knees drew forward and bumped his, and she made herself go still, holding even her breath while she waited to see if he would move. She was emboldened when the cadence of his sleeping rhythms didn't change.

Gingerly, Mercedes stretched one of her legs out along the length of his. The tails of his nightshirt were raised higher than his knees and his skin was pleasantly warm against hers. She rested just that way for a moment, breathing deeply of his male scent, appreciating the angles and textures that made him different from her, intrigued by the way her body could be tucked so neatly beside his, without discomfort or strain.

Her hand moved from his shoulder to his thigh. She fingered the edge of his shirttail, tracing the hem at first, then the skin just below it. Gradually her fingers moved under the shirt. Her palm grazed his flank and the curve of his buttock. She let her hand fall forward.

Now she felt Colin stir. Not with his whole body, as Mercedes had been anticipating, but only with that part that had been joined to her. Her first instinct was to retract her hand and indeed, she was almost free of the tangle of his nightshirt when curiosity won out over common sense. Mercedes's fingers rose again and this time curled around the thick, hard length of him. The pulse of his body beat strongly here and the flow of blood made the shaft hot and heavy. It angled away from his thighs as if seeking entry between hers.

Mercedes felt a tug deep in her womb. Her body's response caught her off guard. Until this moment she could have said honestly that she was only satisfying a curiosity, not gratifying some carnal pleasure. Now she was conscious of her swollen breasts and the aching tips that would have been soothed by the suck of Colin's mouth. There was a dampness between her thighs that she understood was her body's way of preparing for his entry. Then there was her own breathing. In contrast to the steady rise and fall of his, Mercedes's came rapidly and sounded strained in the quiet bedchamber.

Guilt mingled with the rush of sensation and overwhelmed her. Mercedes withdrew her hand quickly and turned away, curling on her side with a pillow caught close to the chest.

With great effort, Colin remained as he was. He had been sleeping when Mercedes began her first, tentative explorations, but by the time she had pressed her mouth to his throat he was very much awake. At first he had been amused by her actions, then moved, and finally maddened. He doubted she could appreciate the restraint he had shown through his pretense of sleep. Had she been less naive, she would have known that he could have only held himself back by conscious will. Had he really been sleeping she would have found herself flat on her back, her thighs open to him, while he satisfied himself in the netherworld between dream and reality.

He waited until he was certain she was asleep before he slipped his arm around her waist and drew her close. It was only then that Colin could ease into sleep himself.

* * *

Mercedes allowed herself to be persuaded to attend a horse auction at Tattersall's the following day. She suspected Colin knew she wasn't proof against the twins and had put them up to asking her to go. He must have also known she wouldn't have accompanied him to London alone.

Although they had discussed the need to restock Weybourne Park's stable with prime horseflesh, it was decidedly low on Mercedes's list of things to be accomplished. A good stud and healthy mares would be outrageously expensive to purchase as well as maintain. When she wondered aloud if he could afford it at this juncture he shot her a sideways glance and asked if she had other plans for his money.

It was not the most propitious beginning for the trip, but Britton and Brendan cut through the tension with their antics and good spirits. Mercedes began to believe that Sylvia had made the less wise decision by choosing to remain at the manor.

Once they arrived at the horse market, Mercedes elected to stay in the carriage. The twins' pleas were of no consequence now, and when Colin saw she was quite adamant in her decision, he shooed the boys away.

"Shall I have Henry take you elsewhere while I conduct this business?" Colin asked. He stood just outside the carriage, reluctant to leave her unattended. There were few women at the market, and he had not considered what might be made of her presence on his arm, even in the company of her young cousins.

"No," she said. "I'll be fine here where I can watch people coming and going. There's no need for me to be in the thick of it." Mercedes leaned forward on the padded leather bench toward the open window of the carriage. "And I know Henry wants to get down from the driver's box and see the animals as well. You won't be disappointed by listening to his counsel. He knows a great deal about good horseflesh."

Colin nodded. He turned to go, then stepped back again. "I didn't mean for this to be a painful or insulting exercise for you," he said quietly. "I thought if you could be persuaded to stay at my side, you would see you have nothing to fear." Before she could reply, Colin turned on his heel and headed across the yard in the direction of the twins. He called out to them and they came up short, fairly dancing in place until he reached their side and could accompany them safely to the stalls.

Mercedes watched them until they disappeared in the milling crowd. The carriage was jostled as Henry climbed down from the box and hurried off to the stalls. She chastised herself for being so weak-kneed. Wasn't it time she confronted her fear, now when Colin had offered his protection? The thought of that brought a rueful smile to Mercedes's lips, and her fingers wavered uneasily on the handle to the carriage door. He couldn't have known that standing at his side would have raised almost as many unsettling emotions as standing next to the horses.

Even as she thought it, she realized she would have to face it. Mercedes twisted the handle and opened the door. She had stepped onto the foot plate when she was roughly unbalanced by a pair of hands on her waist and thrust back into the carriage.

Marcus Severn followed her in, closed the door, and tapped his walking cane against the roof. The carriage wavered slightly as a driver mounted the box and took up the reins. Mercedes was pitched back against the leather cushions when the horses were whipped smartly and bolted forward.