Pretty Poison (11 page)

Emily sat forward in agitation, anxious to be up and out of the bed. But she couldn’t use her injured arm, and the pillows seemed to suck her down, the blankets to wrap around her legs, pinning her in place. A bubble of hysteria rose in her throat, falling from her lips in a terrible cry that was half laugh, half sob. And one hundred percent painful.

“Help me. I must get out of this bed… I cannot stay… Help me!” Her stammering words ended in a great wail before Margaret wrenched back the covers and carefully grasped her good arm, helping her to slide her legs over the side.

“Breathe,” she murmured, gently pushing her niece’s head down between her legs. “That’s it. Just breathe, slow and easy. You’re all right, Em.”

Emily waited until her breathing slowed, until the weight that seemed to be crushing her heart eased, and raised her head to find her aunt standing over her, tears slowly tracking down her cheeks.

“I’m all right,” Emily whispered.

“We will not force you to marry Nicholas,” Margaret promised quietly. “I will speak with your father.”

Emily leaned her head against her aunt’s warm belly, felt her fingers running delicately over her bent head, easing the vise that had clamped around her skull. And she pushed back the cravings that crawled over her skin, burrowed into her spine and traveled up to her nape, where they would linger. Please, she silently prayed. Please don’t let them linger forever.

Chapter Thirteen

Nick watched Emily from the open window of his bed chamber as she strolled through the garden with her father. It was the first time he’d seen her since they’d taken her unconscious from the wagon bed and carried her upstairs the day before.

He’d thought about sneaking into her room last night when the house grew quiet, just to assure himself that she was truly all right. Well, perhaps that wasn’t the only reason. He’d wanted to look at her, to hold her hand, to tell her how amazing and brave she was.

He still couldn’t quite believe what he’d witnessed in the woods.

He’d noticed the two sets of dog tracks just after Emily had called out to tell him she was going back. They’d been headed in the exact same direction her voice had come from. He’d taken off running, praying he was overreacting, that there was no danger from the dogs. Then he’d heard her scream, heard the terror in her voice. Legs pumping, lungs heaving, he’d broken through the trees in time to see Emily sprint across the clearing.

It had all happened so quickly. He’d sighted down the long barrel of his rifle, knowing in his heart that it was too late, that at least one of those dogs would be on her before he could get off two shots.

He hadn’t seen the branch she was running for, hadn’t realized a plan was already forming in her mind. When she dove through the air he’d thought she’d tripped on the uneven forest floor. Then she’d been swinging through the air, like a high flyer he’d once seen at the circus, higher and higher, twisting and catching the branch with her leg, pulling herself up onto it. All in one seemingly easy fluid motion, as if she’d spent her entire life swinging from branch to branch in the woods and had simply been waiting for the opportunity to show off her skills.

Nick was coming to suspect that Emily Ann Calvert was one of a kind. There couldn’t possibly be another woman like her anywhere. If he searched the globe he’d never find a sassier, wittier, sexier lady. Or one who was stronger. She had a core of strength in her the like of which he’d seen in few men, and never before in a woman.

How different she was from the odd little lady he’d met in London. Lady Margaret said she’d been ill for months without anyone being aware. Veronica Ogilvie chose to believe she’d been with child. And while that could account for her lethargy, it didn’t explain the emptiness he’d seen in her eyes, the slow-witted non-responses she’d gifted him with each time he’d attempted to engage her in conversation, or the near skeletal frailty of her form.

Nick had known, not two minutes after the others had followed Lady Margaret from breakfast, that the servants’ gossip was untrue. It wasn’t that he could not imagine Emily gifting a man with her body. No, he’d tasted her passion himself. But had she found herself with child and abandoned, he could not believe she would have sought the coward’s way out.

She was braver than that, tougher, fiercer.

Then he’d seen the scar that ran from shoulder to sternum and the servant’s gossip had taken on a whole new light. What she must have endured. And any last lingering doubts had disappeared.

His first thought upon seeing Emily and Charles Calvert in the garden was to hurry out to join them. But there was something in the way father and daughter walked quietly together, not touching, barely speaking, that stopped him.

Charles Calvert was a loud, blustering man and his daughter a lively, animated lady. Yet today they were eerily still and serene.

So Nick waited. He waited until Charles Calvert entered the house alone and made his way slowly down the long hall to disappear into Margaret’s study, quietly closing the door behind him.

The garden was empty, a cold breeze ruffling through the bare trees. He turned a circle, wondering where she’d disappeared to so quickly. A blur of movement, a glimpse of burnished red had him setting off toward a break in the tall hedge surrounding the vast garden.

He cleared the hedge in time to see Emily wandering toward an old barn that sat on a small knoll. The gray stone structure had once served as a dairy before the modern barn had been built.

The interior was shadowy and quiet, the tile floor swept clean but for a scattering of leaves that had likely blown in with the lady. Small windows set high in the walls allowed the winter sun to drift about the open space. A narrow set of steep steps led to a loft above and that was where Nick found her.

Emily stood at the open hayloft door with her back to the room, sunlight streaming over and around her, setting the curls piled atop her head ablaze. She’d taken off her coat and thrown it over one of a dozen bales of hay that lined the space. Dressed in a gray wool dress, the full skirt blowing in the wind, whipping around her, teasing him with a glimpse of her lithe shape, she looked out over the fields that spread out like a patchwork quilt in every direction.

“Would you care for some company?” he asked as he hesitated at the top of the stairs.

“I would be honored,” she replied, turning to face him.

She gave him a small smile as he came to stand before her and Nick was taken aback by the poignancy in that smile, by the haunted look in her eyes.

“Is your shoulder paining you?” he asked.

“Oh, not so much today,” she replied. “It’s more of a steady ache now. From past experience I expect it will feel only mildly bruised in a day or two.”

“Past experience?” he asked in surprise.

Emily laughed softly before answering, “This shoulder’s been the bane of my existence for years. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve wrenched it.”

“This has happened to you before?”

“Oddly enough, the first time I was up in a tree also. Or on my way down. I’d scrambled up an old willow tree after Nate and Tate and got entangled in my skirts.”

“Ah, so that’s how you developed your aversion to dresses,” he replied with a lascivious grin.

“To hear Da tell it, I’ve been tearing off my dresses since I was a babe and running about bare assed…” Emily’s voice drifted away as a blush stole over her cheeks.

“Now that I’d dearly love to see,” he murmured.

“Yes, well,” she continued, ignoring his wicked words. “I landed wrong and since then it’s prone to just pop out at the most inopportune moments.”

“Inopportune?” Nick repeated with a shake of his head. “I would have to say that yesterday’s misadventure was a bit more than inopportune.”

“Yes,” she agreed, meeting his eyes directly, studying him. “Thank you for saving me.”

“You saved yourself.”

“No, had you not arrived when you did those dogs would have leapt up and dragged me off that branch.”

Nick shuttered at the image her words evoked.

“You saved my life.” Emily reached out, laid her hand upon his arm and gently squeezed. “Thank you, Nicholas Avery.”

“You’re welcome, Emily Calvert,” he said, laying his hand over hers.

They looked at one another without speaking and Nick watched the play of light drifting over her face, accentuating the green of her eyes and the smattering of freckles across her nose. In that moment she was beautiful—arrestingly, achingly beautiful, and his heart seemed to stop, to cease beating altogether, as he recognized how precious she had become to him. In a matter of days, this bright, witty, irreverent woman had stolen his heart.

“In some cultures, when a man saves a woman’s life, he becomes responsible for her.” Nick lifted his hand and laid it gently on her cheek, his fingers threading though the wispy curls the wind had freed from the knot atop her head. He absorbed the heat of her skin, the silk of her hair, the way she turned oh-so-slightly into his hand.

“You are not responsible for me, Nicholas,” she said softly, almost wistfully.

“I would like to be.”

Emily closed her eyes, her lashes fluttering against her cheeks as she drew an unsteady breath.

Nick knew he would not like the words that trembled on her lips when she parted them to speak. Leaning down he captured her lips, halted the words he would not hear. He kissed her hard, in mingled anger and denial, his lips hungry on hers, his tongue driving into her mouth.

And Emily, his precious, vibrant Emily welcomed him. She welcomed him with lips and tongue and a soft hum that rose from deep in her chest. Then her hands were on him, skimming up his shoulders, locking around his neck, pulling him closer.

“Your shoulder,” he murmured as he trailed open-mouthed kisses across her cheek, down her jaw.

“I’m fine,” she whispered, tilting her head back, gifting him with the supple line of her throat.

Nick dragged his mouth down her neck, his lips and tongue worshipping her flesh, his teeth gently devouring her.

Emily moaned, the sound dark and hungry, and Nick’s control snapped. Wrapping his arms around, he pulled her tight against him as his lips found hers once more. He speared his tongue into her mouth, circled, caressed, parried with hers, drawing another low moan from her. He dragged his hands down her back, over the swell of her luscious bottom, filling his hands with her soft flesh.

Emily rose up on her toes, pressing her breasts to the wall of his chest and rubbed against him, as sinuous as a cat, and Nick imagined he felt her nipples even through the layers of their clothing. His cock jerked and pulsed as lust roared through his veins.

“Christ, Em,” he growled against her lips before lifting her off her feet.

“What?” she murmured in surprise, her arms tightening around his shoulders.

“Shh,” he soothed before nipping at her bottom lip, pulling it into his mouth, stroking his tongue along the sensitive flesh. He stepped back until his legs bumped the line of hay bales. Holding her tightly to him he lowered himself to sit on the warm hay, his hands gliding down her thighs, gently parting them, until she came to rest straddling him.

“This can’t be proper,” she drawled against his mouth as she shifted about awkwardly, her skirts tangled around her legs.

“Likely not.” Sweeping his hands down her legs and back up, he pulled her skirts up to bunch around her waist and thighs before claiming her mouth once more in a long, luscious kiss that had her sighing and brushing her breasts across his chest again and again, her hands delving into his hair, her fingers tugging, her nails scouring his scalp.

Nick wrapped his arms around her, trailed his fingertips down her spine, over the dip at the small of her back and into the crease of her bottom, his palms filled with her firm round cheeks. He squeezed gently and was rewarded with a soft moan, a slight undulation of her hips that had her brushing against his straining cock.

With a groan, he tightened his grip and tugged her against him, pulled her heat against his pulsing shaft. He rocked against her, set up a tempo that matched the thrust and parry of their tongues until he thought he might go mad with wanting her. Or spend in his trousers like an untried boy.

Nick broke their kiss, smiled grimly when she whimpered her displeasure, and trailed his lips across her jaw to the hollow beneath her ear. He nipped her warm flesh, gently swirled his tongue into the indentation. Emily jerked against him, her hands tugging at his hair.

“Nicholas,” she moaned.

“Like that, do you?” he whispered against her flesh.

“Yes, oh, yes,” she purred as she rubbed against him, pressed hard against his cock.

Nick latched onto her neck, suckled and laved, his mouth open and hot, desire running rampant, threatening his control.

He wedged a hand between them, found her breast and filled his palm with the weight of her. He squeezed softly, then more firmly when she cried out in pleasure. He found her nipple, pebbled and hard beneath her gown, circled it with one finger before adding his thumb to pluck gently.

“Oh, God,” Emily groaned, her hips bucking against him, her heat dragging down the length of his shaft.

With trembling fingers he reached for the buttons at the front of her gown only to fumble with the topmost one. The buttons were tiny, miniscule little round pearls that ran from the base of her throat to her waist. And he could not even get the first one free of its mooring.

“Damn,” he muttered against her neck.

Emily used his hesitation to wrench herself from his embrace, nearly tripping over her skirts as she scrambled off his lap.

“Come back here,” he muttered, raking one hand through his hair.

“Not on your life,” she replied in a voice like rough velvet before turning to pace away from him.

Nick leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands as it dawned on him that he would have no relief from the raging erection pulsing against his breaches. Christ, he was as hard as a pike.

With his eyes closed he followed her movements about the small loft, her boot heels clicking softly on the worn wood. Around and around she paced, occasionally muttering unintelligibly under her breath. He dragged deep breaths into his lungs, concentrating on the sound of her footsteps, while he reclaimed his lost control.

When her movements stopped Nick looked up to find her standing in the wash of sunlight streaming in through the open hayloft door, her hands on her hips. “You must stop doing this.”

Nick smiled at the picture she presented, a fiery fallen angel with a bemused smile on her lush red lips and her coiffure listing to one side. “Why?”

“Why?” she repeated with a huff of amused irritation. “Because you must find a wife and you won’t find one so long as you spend all your time following me about stealing kisses.”

“I’ve found a wife,” he stated and chuckled when her eyes widened.

“I am not going to marry you, Nicholas Avery.”

“You will.”

“Oh,” she cried in exasperation as she spun to grab up her coat and march down the narrow steps, leaving Nick no choice but to follow her from the dairy barn.

Nick fell into step beside her, smiled when she tucked her hand around his arm in what was surely an unconscious gesture.

“You have a duty to your family,” she told him primly.

“I’m fully aware of my duty.”

“I would hate for you to find yourself married to the Nasty Baggage, or one such as her.”