Patricia Rice (39 page)

He lifted her and held her against him so he could kiss the
aroused peaks of her breasts. She struggled to free herself from the confines
of the gauzy material of her gown, but Wyatt tugged bodice and chemise down to
her waist. She leaned back against the bed to give him full access to what he
sought.

In the next instant, she shrieked with horror and yanked
Wyatt’s robe from his shoulder to uncover the bandage wrapped across the broad
swath of dark hairs on his chest.

“Wyatt! What is this? You’ve been hurt. They said it was
naught but a scratch! Wyatt, stop that! You’ll hurt yourself. Oh, my word, I
cannot...”

The words were smothered by Wyatt’s kiss, the fears crushed
by his pressuring fingers. “Don’t distract me now, Cass,” he murmured against
her cheek as his hands rode down over her hips and buttocks and filled with the
fabric of her gown. “I’m going to make love to you first. Then you may weep
over my crippled body.”

“Crippled, indeed,” she gasped as he brought her up against
his hardness. Then his kiss found her mouth again, and her next words slipped
into oblivion.

Wyatt cupped her hips in his palms and groaned as she obligingly
rubbed against his maleness. “Let me love you, Cass,” he murmured into her
hair, spreading his kisses downward until the fire of their breaths meshed.

He didn’t have to ask. Cassandra lifted her legs to twine
around his narrow hips, and in the instant that it took to feel vulnerable, he plunged
into her.

The thoroughness of his entry left Cassandra breathless. She
had him now, deep inside her, and she would never let him go again. With
triumph, she gave herself to the staid Earl of Merrick, and knew the gift to be
returned threefold by the hungry man in her arms.

Later, they lay naked, wrapped in each other’s arms, a sheen
of moisture glistening over their bodies as they touched and caressed and
renewed the sensations that they had been so long denied. Cassandra explored
the wide bandage on Wyatt’s chest, and studied his warm gaze in confusion.

“Why did everyone lie to me? I should have been there with
you. But when I saw you swing at Jacob, I thought surely... I could not believe
you had been seriously hurt.”

He brushed a kiss across her brow. “You had quite enough to
deal with in Rupert’s death and Duncan’s cowardice. I’d not add to your
burdens. Besides, it was not the wound that caused my trouble, but the
incompetence of the physician who did his best to murder me. There was nothing
you could have done but fret, and that would have made me feel worse.”

Cassandra kissed the bare expanse of skin above the bandage,
exulting in the warmth and strength of him beneath her fingers. “I could have
murdered the physician for you. I could have brought you flowers and sung to you.
I don’t want you to lie to me, Wyatt. Please, I’ve lived with lies too long. If
you have any feelings for me at all, you will always be truthful with me.”

“Any feelings at all?” Wyatt chuckled and lifted himself up
on one elbow to run his fingers through her hair. “Do you have any idea of the
fantasies a man carries in his mind? The dreams, the wishes, the desires that
can make his every waking moment a delight or a torment? Can you even begin to
imagine the fantasies I have created ever since you leaned over that stairway
and kissed my cheek at Roxbury’s ball? Cassandra, my sweet, you are my dream
come true, and I’ll lie, cheat, steal, and commit murder to hold on to you. I
fear you have a very exalted notion of my character.”

“Me?” Cassandra stared at him in amazement. “You dream about
me? Why ever would you? You could have any woman you want. Just because I have
shamelessly pursued you...”

Wyatt’s laughter rolled up from his chest as he rolled her
into his arms and snuggled her against his chest. “You are an awful innocent,
my love. After what we just did, do you still have doubts about what I see in
my fantasies? I used to think there was something wrong with me when I imagined
taking a beautiful woman as I just did with you now. When I suggested to my
first wife that we make love elsewhere than in the bed, in the dark, with our
nightclothes on, she became hysterical and called me a perverted monster. Is it
any wonder when you kissed me on the cheek in a public room, lured me into your
bedroom and let me do as I willed in daylight, that I began dreaming all sorts
of impossible dreams?”

Cassandra tweaked a hair on his chest. “You have led me
astray, my lord. I thought what we did was perfectly proper, since you aided in
it, and you are never improper. Now I find you only wished to make a lewd woman
of me. What shall you do when I grow as big and round as Christa and you cannot
come near me? Will you find another innocent maid to lead astray?”

The smile fled Wyatt’s lips as he lifted her chin so their
eyes met. “Yes, I have led you astray, and I am not proud of the pain I have
caused you, but believe me, Cass, when I tell you that it is not only what we
do in these chambers that binds me to you. You are the dash of enchantment I
need in my life. I’ll be quite content to do naught but hold you and watch the
child grow, if you will let me.”

Cassandra choked on the words filling her throat as she
stared down into Wyatt’s serious face. A lock of rumpled chestnut hair fell
across his forehead. She traced a finger across the sharp angle of his cheek
down into the hollow beside his lips, caressing the thin and wholly masculine
curve of his lip.

“You will grow bored with me,” she whispered unhappily. “I
am immensely ignorant. I will shame you before your friends. My impulsiveness
will grow to irritate you. We cannot suit in any way but this.”

Wyatt glared up at her. “You did not even read my letters,
did you? Why, Cass? I poured out my damned heart to you in those letters. I all
but got down on my knees and begged. And you didn’t even read them. You have
made my life a misery these last weeks, Cassandra Howard, and you seem
determined to go on doing so. Why could you not at least read what I had to
say? You can read, can’t you?”

Cassandra bit her bottom lip and slid back to the pillow
beside him, where she didn’t have to meet his accusing gaze. She heard the
harshness in his voice and knew she deserved it. Now was the time for all
truths to be known, but she hated to think of what would happen then. Surely he
would not cast her off, but could she live with the knowledge that he despised
her?

Defiantly she replied, “Of course I can read.” Staring at
the canopy overhead, she added in a less certain voice, “I just can’t read your
writing, or almost any other’s.”

Wyatt frowned. “Let me understand you. You can read, but you
cannot read writing. I know my penmanship is not of the best, and perhaps in
haste I did not make myself clear, but surely you could pick out a word or two,
enough to take my meaning.”

Cassandra kicked the sheet away and started to swing from
the bed. “I’d rather hear the words,” she announced mutinously. “Why should I
sit and decipher scribbles when you have a tongue in your head and have never
used it?”

Wyatt jerked her back before she could escape. “Stop talking
in circles, Cass. Either you could not read the words or you refused to read
them. Which is it?”

When he would not let her go, Cassandra crossed her legs on
the bed’s edge, folded her arms across her chest, and glared at him. Red-gold
hair fell in wanton abundance across creamy skin, catching the lamplight and
sparkling with every breath she took. Wyatt took a deep breath and resisted
pulling her back to the bed and making wild love to her again. His gaze
traveled downward to the barely detectable curve of her abdomen, strengthening
his resolve.

Shaking his head at her mute defiance, he tried again. “If
you will bring me the letters, I will read them to you. But first, tell me what
you can read so I’ll know how to address myself to you in the future.”

She eyed him warily, caught the sheet, and pulled it up to
her neck. “My tutors said I was quite impossible and too willful to learn.”
Defiance still tinged her voice.

“They were undoubtedly correct,” Wyatt agreed. “But you are
intelligent, and you can learn. You said you learned to read.”

Cassandra’s lips set in a straight line. “Print. I can read
books with pictures and those nice straight letters. One governess taught me
how to read them from a slate. But too many words give me a headache.”

Wyatt sat up with the sheet covering his lap. He knew
Cassandra had a sharp mind, sharper than most. Few could count cards as well as
she, and her perception of other people’s thoughts and actions was precise and
accurate. The arrangement she had made with her workers to recover the Eddings
estate was nothing short of brilliant for one so young and totally
inexperienced in the field. Willful she might be but not stupid.

Remembering a maiden aunt of his, Wyatt had a glimmer of
understanding. “You can read large block letters but not spidery written words
or the fine print in a book. Can you see the notes on a page of music?”

Cassandra studied him suspiciously. “Of course I can see
them. But they’re just like reading cobwebs. I’m just too dumb to make anything
of them, which is why I never learned to play. I’ve been trying to tell you, I’m
totally unsuitable. I could not even help you keep the household accounts. All
the squiggly writing on the invoices makes my head whirl with fatigue. My
tutors gave up on me long ago. You cannot help where they have failed.”

Wyatt grinned in relief and reached over to capture a thick
lock of her hair. “I will write you love letters in block print and hire a
secretary to keep accounts. And if we cannot find magnifying glasses that will
let you see the music clearly, I’ll have a printer make them large for you. You’re
not dumb, little witch, you are only just half-blind.”

Cassandra glared at him. “I am not blind. I can see you
perfectly well.”

“Even better from a distance, I wager,” he agreed
cheerfully. “And I do not have particularly fine features to confuse you when
you are up close. It’s no wonder that you can look blissfully upon this dull
visage of mine. You do not see it as others do. Ah, Cass, you are a miracle to
behold. Come here and kiss me and tell me you’ll be mine.”

She went to him uncertainly. “You mistake me, Wyatt,” she
murmured against his shoulder. “I am not at all like you. I simply do not have
the patience to study over a book. And I really can see you quite well. You have
lovely thick hair, and dark eyes, and lips that curve up ever so nicely when
you laugh at me, like now.”

“And can you tell me where the freckle is that I hate so
much?”

Cassandra tilted her head up and stared at him with
suspicion. “What freckle? Is this some ploy to make me search you all over? I
shall, if you like.”

Wyatt laughed. “Yes, I should like that. Perhaps you can
find other freckles of which I’m not aware. However, if you have not seen this
one, I doubt that you’ll find more.” He took her hand and placed one finger on
a spot just in front of his ear. “There, my sweet. There is a quite noticeable
brown speckle just there. Shall I fetch a candle for you to see it?”

Cassandra squinted and supposed there was some darker spot
there if one looked closely. But that was scarcely to the point. “Who is to
notice such a thing?” she demanded. “If everyone were to go about looking for
speckles on people’s faces, we’d appear very strange indeed. I do not spend my
time staring at people’s faces to see if they’ve got spots.”

“But you see, Cass, other people don’t have to stare to see
them. They notice them right off. You have a whole different view of the world
from most of us. You can’t see the details, so you concentrate on the whole.
Your lovely bouquets, for instance. You don’t see that the petals of wildflowers
scatter all over the furniture. And it doesn’t occur to you that a flower might
be a weed because you are seeing only this lovely haze of color. You need
spectacles, my love, but I love you just as dearly the way you are.”

Cassandra stared at him in confusion. She didn’t know
whether to argue over her blindness or kiss him for his words of love. He had
never said he loved her before. Gentlemen were supposed to scatter gallant
flattery so she had taken all his words of praise with a grain of salt, but
this was Wyatt, not just any gentleman. Could a man like Wyatt
love
a pathetic creature like herself?

“You are just saying that for fear you have hurt my
feelings,” she murmured. “You needn’t, you know. I have been told often enough
that I’m stubborn, willful, and stupid. Being told I’m blind can scarcely
compare.”

Wyatt caught both her shoulders and pressed her back against
the pillows. Leaning over her, he interspersed his words with kisses. “Stubborn
and willful, I’ll not deny. Impetuous, occasionally wrongheaded, and decidedly
argumentative, of a certainty. But not stupid. Never stupid. You are generous,
lovely, talented, and the solace of my soul.

“And if you cannot love me in return, I will understand, but
I shall never stop trying to make you love me. Isn’t that enough to base a
marriage on? Say you’ll marry me, Cassandra. Tell me you’ll stay and be my
wife. Say you won’t ever leave me again.”

Cassandra was breathless from his kisses and the ardor with
which Wyatt wooed her. It was a most improper marriage proposal, indeed, but
she would not have it any other way.

Wrapping her arms around his shoulders and arching brazenly
against him, she complied with his heated demands.

“I’ll never leave you, I’ll always love you, and we shall
make beautiful music together for the rest of our lives. Now, will you make
love to me?”

Wyatt crowed in happiness and triumph, and Cassandra didn’t
have to ask him twice. With gentle care, he joined their bodies, and in passion
he took her to that world they shared alone, an enchanted kingdom for those who
love.