Priceless (29 page)

With a glance at Gianni’s white face, Judson shrugged. “Oh, very well.” Like a great bat, he hovered over Rachelle.

“Master,” Gianni whispered.

“Shut up,” Judson commanded. The knife lifted once, plunged. Metal scraped against bone. He lifted it again, but Gianni caught his wrist.

“Master, I hear something.”

Judson stopped, listened.

“Come, master, the women have arrived.” Gianni tugged at Judson. “We must go. Now.”

With one longing, lingering glance at Rachelle, Judson followed his valet out the door of his prison toward another, more satisfying revenge.

The barn smelled of horses and hay, wax and leather. A
lantern lit the far end where an elderly stable hand groomed a stallion.

Facing Bronwyn, Adam put his finger to his lips and urged her to the ladder leading to the loft. At the bottom, she kicked off her shoes. Pleased that her panniers had been dispensed with, she gathered her skirts in her arms and put her foot on the first step. Adam steadied her with his hand on her elbow, helping her up the first steps, then he followed. Glowing with desire, with relief and a newfound confidence, she lifted her skirts higher. With each step they rose until Adam groaned quietly, “Have pity, Bronwyn.”

She tossed a saucy glance over her shoulder but sobered immediately. His expressive eyes told the tale of passion repressed and clamoring for release. She missed the step; he caught her thigh and steadied her.

His touch was a balm, a healing agent for her lonely soul, and she wanted more. With care she climbed to the top, reached into the loft to pull herself up, and found his hand placed helpfully on her bare bottom. She squeaked as he boosted her up, and the stable hand called, “Is anyone there?”

She tumbled into the straw and huddled in place. Adam remained on the ladder, silent and still.

The stable hand said nothing else. A pitchfork began its rhythmic sound, and Adam slipped up to sit beside her in the dark. Bronwyn sighed in relief. His hand groped for hers and squeezed it. She came close, laid her head on his shoulder, wondering whether this idea had been so marvelous. True, they had escaped the constant buzz of wedding guests, but what satisfaction could they find with an aging retainer ensconced below?

Her answer came quickly. The stable hand spoke, to the horses, she supposed. “Well, ol’ boy, ’tis time fer me t’ seek me bed. I’ll be seein’ ye in th’ mornin’.” The door creaked open. “G’night, now.”

Bronwyn waited until the door closed behind him, then in a fit of quiet laughter crawled on top of Adam. “He’s an eccentric,” she said.

In praise only a man could appreciate, Adam said, “Kenneth has more horse sense than twenty men put together.”

“Horse sense?” Bronwyn giggled again. “Is that why you let him take care of your horse?”

“Not my horse.” Adam sounded puckishly resigned. “My horse was stolen in London by a small but accomplished thief.”

“Stolen?” she asked, incredulous.

He didn’t explain, and she didn’t ask. Through their silence, the laughter and music from the house party drifted on the breeze. Autumn’s first bite chilled the air, but Adam’s heat warmed her. She edged up to his chin and she covered it with kisses. “Speak to your valet. You need a shave.”

“I’ll shave tomorrow, before—”

He cut it off.
Before the wedding
. That was what he meant.

The last time. This was the last time. The thought drifted through her mind, but she put it away from her. The world might end tonight. Tomorrow might never come.
Ignore everything, and distract Adam before he remembered it was the last time.

“Mm.” She sighed, rubbing her cheek against his. “You’re just lazy. You never wear a wig. You never go anywhere without your walking stick. You never smile.” She arranged his lips with her fingers in a phony grin. “There. You need to practice.”

“I agree I need to practice.” His grin became genuine beneath her hand. “Take off your clothes and I’ll practice.”

“Take off my clothes? Why?” she asked in mock innocence. “It’s dark in here.”

“I have good night vision.”

She jumped when he proved it with one accurately placed hand on her breast. “I have good night vision, too,” she bragged, although she couldn’t see in the thick black of night. She reached for him, fondled him, frowned.

“That’s my knife,” he told her. “Sharp as a razor and made of tempered steel. I doubt if it will harden even in your fire.” Unwillingly she laughed, and he wrestled with her. “Take care,” he warned as she struggled free. “This is a hayloft. No doubt there are mice in here.”

Mice. Mice didn’t scare her, but if he wanted to play, she knew the rules. “Mice?”

Like any naughty boy, he warmed to his subject at the sound of the shiver in her voice. “And rats.”

“Ooh. And cats?”

“Maybe.” He thought. “Yes, if there are mice and rats, there must be cats.”

“And kitties?”

Clearly he didn’t like diluting the menace. Reluctantly he agreed, “And kittens.”

“Maybe some puppies?”

He bounded upright. “And snakes.”

“That’s it.” She leaped toward him, knocked him over, wrestled with him, tried to contain his wandering hands. “You’re in trouble now.”

“Well, there might be snakes.” His elusive fingers crept up under her petticoats and tickled behind her knee. “Creepy, crawly snakes that slither along your leg.”

“And what will you do if we find snakes?”

He didn’t even take the time to think. “What any normal man would do. I’ll run.”

She shook his neck between her hands, but she seemed unable to vibrate the solidly muscled man who lay beneath her. “Coward.”

“Sagacious,” he corrected.

Unconvinced, she chuckled.

As if he’d just discovered it, he pronounced, “We’re acting like children.”

“We are children.” She rolled him over. “We are, we are, we are.” With each repetition she rolled him again, and he let her, until they bumped against a stack of straw. “We are children,” she repeated, but her voice caught.

Children believe ignoring a dilemma will make it disappear. Children dismiss tomorrow. Children frolic when disaster stares them in the face. Oh, yes, they were children.

Adam caught her around the waist and tossed her. She sank, and he followed her, pressing her down. Above her, his rib cage pressed against hers with each of his breaths. Below her, the straw crackled, releasing the stored smell of long summer days. It jabbed at her wherever the material of her dress proved inadequate, but that was part and parcel of the contentment she experienced here, in the dark, with Adam.

He muttered, “This is the best moment of my life.”

His tribute sounded so grudging, almost shy, that she couldn’t resist prodding him. “What did you say?”

“I said—”

Laughter shook her. Above her, he felt it and lifted himself on his elbows. “You little witch. You’re teasing me.”

“No, I’m not. I just didn’t—”

He stroked the area above her ribs.

“Really, I didn’t hear you.” She squealed as he found the ticklish places, the places he’d found in the nights at Rachelle’s. Struggling with careful uselessness, she gasped, “I have great respect for you. I would never tease you.”

“You’re the only one who dares.” His breath warmed her neck, his lips suckled her earlobe.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said.

“You should be. I’ll hold you down, ravish you until you cry for mercy.”

She froze as she remembered Judson, promising a similar fate in such different tones.

“Love?” Adam’s voice, warm, deep, called her away from the memories. “Bronwyn? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She snuggled close. “Just a ghost.”

“Damn Judson.” With one phrase he revealed how empathetic he had become.

“Don’t damn him.” She drew a deep breath. “He’s in hell already.”

“I sincerely hope so. I only wish I had been the one to put him there.”

“Rachelle believed she had the prior claim,” she said softly.

“He tried to murder you.”

“He would have, too, but pride was his downfall. He wanted to wait until he’d killed not only Walpole, but you, so he could describe it to me.” Adam tugged her head against his chest. Listening to his heartbeat, so reassuring in its steady tempo, she said, “So my claim is greater than yours or Rachelle’s.”

“We’ll let Rachelle take care of it.”

His voice echoed in her ear, and she agreed. “Yes. Rachelle will take care of it.”

How well they understood each other. And with the years that understanding would grow, until like the old folks she’d seen, they would speak without words.

But that couldn’t happen, because this was the last time.

Above her head she saw a square of night through a window. Stars, bits of light, poked through a billowed canopy, commiserated with her until Adam’s shoulders blocked them out.

With tender hands he loosened her clothes. Perhaps, he thought, she still feared him, although she clutched him with a strength akin to desperation. Perhaps he felt responsibility for her fear. Or perhaps he wanted to communicate something. But he wanted his loving to cherish her, invite her, warm her. More than an invitation, it was a stroll down a lane of memories not yet created. Memories they had the potential to create, if not the time.

He wanted to be careful with her, yet how difficult a task he had set himself. As he discarded her clothing to reveal her body, her passion unfolded like a well-rooted flower given all it needed to blossom. His own clothes followed hers randomly. They fell away under the urgings of his hands or hers, depending on whose need proved greatest. His shirt, his breeches, his stockings and shoes, knife and handkerchief, found their way to the pile beneath them. The lovers rested on the great jumble of brocades and linens with no regard to the morrow, using them as a protection against the distracting jabs of straw.

She found the bandage on his leg, explored it. “Are you still in pain?”

Her tender murmur soothed the ache of his wound. “Not really.”

He found her breasts, explored them. “Does that frighten you?”

“No. But they’re very sensitive.”

Her breathlessness worried him. He was only a man; how could he know the scarring produced when a woman survived both physical violence and a mental attack? He touched her lightly, stroked her, skimming the hairs on her belly and lower. “Tell me what you like,” he coaxed.

“I like that.”

Her trembling worried him. Her sighs worried him. In the faint glow of starlight, her eyes glistened with a sheen as she watched him; that worried him. He wrapped himself around her, cradled her with his whole body, touched her with every inch of his skin. He gave comfort when what he wanted, what he longed for, was her passion.

She rubbed against him like an affectionate cat and purred his name.

He kissed her, gracing every bit of her face, neck, collarbones with the ministrations of his mouth.

Her fingernails bit into his shoulder, then scratched a light line down his back. Nerve endings screamed, and he gasped, “Perhaps you
could
harden steel.”

Chuckling, she extended her ministrations in a long, continuous torture that reached from bow to stern, from port to starboard. Shuddering beneath the erotic sting, he chided himself. She couldn’t know how she incited his senses to chaos.

“I’ll always think of you—” She interrupted herself, then tried again. “I think of you when I hear French spoken. Speak French to me.”

Her throaty demand saddened him, maddened him, sent him over the edge. Almost over the edge. So close…He fit them together. “
Tu es magnifique
.”

“So are you.”

He entered her. “This loving is like a first kiss.” He didn’t know if he could find the words in English, much less French. “
Unbaiser
. A kiss.”

“This?” With her tongue she traced the outline of his lips.

“
Mon Dieu
.” Without volition he inched deeper. He sucked in air and whispered, “Like the mating of tongues,
les langues
, this loving is tentative.”

“Too tentative.” With little movements of her lips, she urged him.

Restraining himself forcibly, he dug his elbows into the hay beside her. “It tastes sweet, like candy. Ah…
bonbons
.”

Her hands smoothed his hips, and he lost coherence. Her tongue licked his ear, and he lost control. He sank into her, abandoning himself to the pleasure of her body, abandoning his mind to the madness of her whimpers and sighs. Her hips met his in rapture. Her legs clutched at him. Her calls, incoherent, extolling, told him of her pleasure.

His chest heaved with exertion. The friction of their bodies melted his ice, as surely as the warm ocean current melted an iceberg. It stroked his fire to new heights, brought him sweaty and triumphant to a climax that broke over him like a hurricane over a ship.

She wasn’t done, and he fed her paroxysms with his mouth, with his hands, with his body. Still he continued, accepting her cries as homage, feeling her arms clutch at him and slip on the perspiration that bathed him. Feeling the muscles within her clutch at him and slip on the reality of her delight.

At last he slowed, unwilling to liberate her from heaven but motivated by exhaustion—both hers and his. Balanced on top of her, he listened as she drew one quivering sigh after another, trembled, murmured, “Oh, Adam.”

Now this was a satisfied woman. He recognized the traits. She could scarcely speak, breathe, move. He congratulated himself with rampant arrogance. He had vanquished the specter of fear that haunted her.

Rubbing his cheek against hers, he stiffened. Tears trickled into her hair. “Did I frighten you?” he demanded. She didn’t answer immediately, and he lifted his head in alarm.

“No,” she sighed at last. “I just remembered—”

The last time. The phrase passed from her head to his. This was the last time.

“I just remembered how wonderful a lover you are,” she
finished in a rush, and he knew she lied. That wasn’t the thought making her grasp him with renewed agitation.

Delicately he inquired, “Did I exorcise the memory of Judson from your mind?”

“Who? Judson?” She rubbed his back in ever-widening circles. “You don’t need to worry about Judson. The thought of you and Judson could never exist as one in my mind.”

Hand on pounding heart, he assimilated that. His concern had been for nothing. His control had been for nothing. He needed reassurance now, not Bronwyn, for this was the last time. Settling against her once more, he whispered close against her ear, “Prove it to me.”

“When I was a young girl, I used to dream of the woman I would be. I would be poised and lovely. My tan would fade and my hair would change color and I would say the right thing at the right time to the right people. Men would worship at my feet. Then one day—I must have been about thirteen—I realized there were no fairy-tale changes in store for me. There would be only me, endlessly stuck in a body too short, with hair too white and tan too dark. The only improvements that could be made had to be made by me in the slow, painful process called maturing, and I didn’t see that those improvements could amount to much. So I gave up that childish dream of poise and beauty and became what I knew I could become—a thoroughly improved sort of brain stored in a body best ignored.”