[Samuel Barbara] The Black Angel(Book4You) (7 page)

Tynan watched it all from his post by the hearth, arms crossed over his chest, a certain restlessness in his shoulders and knees. He didn't know what he was waiting for until Adriana came back into the room, simply dressed in a shepherdess's gown, her hair hidden by a cap. A thin scarf, tucked into the edges of her bodice, hid her breasts.

She saw Tynan at once, but chose not to acknowledge him, going instead to stand between her brothers at the table, one hand on each of their shoulders as if to assure herself they were really here. Tynan found it rather touching, and was again intrigued by her need to ignore her husband. It was the sort of alert inattention that spoke volumes of her deep awareness of him. Perhaps things were not as grim as they'd seemed last night.

Standing between her brothers, Adriana sighed, brushed at her skirts as if wiping something unpleasant from her hands. "Have you eaten?" she asked.

"Phoebe has seen to it."

"Good." Abruptly, she doubled her fist and pulled back, hitting Julian in the shoulder, hard enough to knock him sideways. Then she turned, lightning fast, and aimed for Gabriel, who took the cuff on his back. "Why the bloody hell did you let us think you died?" she cried.

"Adriana!" Phoebe said, shocked.

Gabriel laughed, ducking another blow. "Ask Julian—'twas his doing. Ow! Stop that." He grabbed her wrist, but she wrenched free and hit Julian again. The blond brother, laughing, jumped up, captured her hands and wrapped them around her waist, hugging her from behind, his head against her hair.

"Poor Riana!" he said in a mocking voice, rocking her back and forth. "Safe and comfortable here at Hartwood, mourning her dear lost brothers, while they fought the seas and pirates and slave traders."

She halted, and Tynan saw the quick alarm. "Not slave traders! Not really?"

Gabriel sobered. "Yes, really."

Tynan simply watched them, his eyes narrowed as he absorbed the easy camaraderie between them. Here were deep bonds, invisible but powerful, and in the way of new grief, he suddenly ached for his own brother with a pain that nearly blinded him. Sorrow burned through him, stealing his breath, suffocating him with a fresh sense of loss.

He made to turn away, but somehow Phoebe was beside him, her hand on his arm. "You should have seen them as children. Wild, and Riana often as not the ringleader."

Bleakly, he stared at them, now grouped so Adriana could hear their exploits. "'Tis hard to believe she is the same woman who stood like a widow on those steps yesterday."

Phoebe laughed. "Oh, just wait. My sister has a thousand faces."

"Does she, now? And which is real?"

"All of them."

Grateful for the distraction from the threat of his grief, Tynan looked thoughtfully at his new wife. His gaze caught on the tender sweep of hair at her nape, the grace of a collarbone, the voluptuousness of her breasts, and he was assailed with a sensual memory of her fighting her own body last night, and losing with such violence. He thought of the tight-lipped ghost of yesterday, and the butterfly look of her flying down the steps to fling herself with such heartfelt love into her brothers' arms.

A thousand faces.

All his hopes now lay with this puzzling woman. He needed to win that loyalty she gave her brothers, needed the fierceness he glimpsed below the surface, needed that nearly bitter wit. And he thought, standing there with more heat in his veins that he would have claimed, that he knew exactly how to capture her.

He turned to Phoebe. "Send her to me in the library when she is free."

It was plain that Julian and Gabriel were exhausted, and once they'd eaten, Adriana insisted everyone leave them to go to their rooms and rest. There would be ample time to hear their adventures later. She walked with them to the foot of the stairs, somehow reluctant to part with them, even for a few hours.

Julian took her hand. "Riana, forgive us. We heard too late, and came as quickly as we could. How long have you been married?"

She let go of a soft, bitter laugh. "One day." She wanted to add that she'd felt them coming to her, but didn't. "But do not think on that. I am just so very glad to have you back again."

Gabriel kissed her head, and she felt again his thinness as he leaned close. "Are you ill?" she asked, catching the front of his shirt to halt him so she could look at him closely in the bright light falling through the windows of the hall. The pale eyes were clear, and his color lacked the yellow tones it took on when he sickened, but he was extremely thin.

From behind, Julian touched her shoulder, and she looked around in time to see a silent message pass between the pair. "We encountered some rather… difficult adventures," Julian said. "Unfortunately, Gabriel suffered a bit more than I, but he's hale as ever now."

A ripple of unease touched her, and Riana frowned. "Do you swear?"

Gabriel smiled. "I swear it."

She forced herself to release them, step back. "Rest then, and I'll see you at supper."

"Get word to Cassandra," Julian said.

"Of course." She watched them climb the stairs, feeling an odd sense of loss. It surprised her. What in the world could she have lost? Her brothers were home, at long last.

Then it struck her—these were men. The brothers who had left her had been youths—Julian not quite twenty, Gabriel only a little older. They'd still worn the dewy flesh of the untried, the slim figures of boys.

No more. At twenty-five and twenty-eight, they were full-grown men with broad backs and thick stubble on their chins.

Men who'd seen more than they wished of the world, evidently.

Phoebe came out of the drawing room. "Riana, Lord Glencove asked me to send you to him in the library when you had a moment."

Tynan. Adriana nodded. "Thank you." Might as well be done with it. Smoothing her skirts, tucking a wisp of loose hair into her cap, she went to the door and scratched it. He called out for her to enter.

The room occupied an eastern wall, and was bright with morning. Tynan stood in gold-edged silhouette against one long window, facing the gardens.

"Phoebe said you'd asked for me," she said.

"Aye," he said without turning. "Please close the door."

There was something odd in his tone, and Adriana felt a small quiver of nervousness, but she did as he asked. Then, a queer anticipation leaping in her veins, she moved to the middle of the room, uncertain what to expect. She folded her hands.

For a moment he did not look at her, but kept his face turned toward the view of the bowling green beyond the window. Sunlight touched the crown of his head, kindling red-gold lights from the very dark strands. A rather spectacular effect, Adriana thought, and looked away.

At last he turned toward her and straightened, as if pulling himself from some faraway spot. "So, at last your long lost brothers are home."

"Yes."

"Which puts me in a strangely unbalanced position."

She frowned, puzzled. "I suppose."

He left the window and crossed the room, halting a few feet away, his hands loose at his sides. A flash of the way his belly looked—all gold candlelight and gold flesh, melting to a supple expanse—crossed her vision. She quelled it, took a breath.

"It seems I need you more than you need me," he said, inclining his head. "I find I dislike that imbalance."

"As I disliked it the other way yesterday."

"Indeed." He pursed his lips, frowned, made a little gesture with his hands. "I can think of little that can cause more misery than a man and a woman bound in dislike to a false marriage—"

Hope flared in her. "I agree—"

"But the fact remains, I need this alliance, my lady, and will require you to remain bound."

Hope died. "Oh."

He lifted his head. "However, I have thought of a proposition to ease both our consciences."

A stray finger of light shifted in that instant, and it fell on his face, illuminating the strange, high bridge of his nose, a flaw that gave his face a peculiar interest. He really was a most beautiful thing to look upon, she thought with a sense of resignation. "A proposition?"

"Aye." He took a step toward her. With a challenging expression on his mouth, he boldly lifted one hand and touched her cheek very lightly. "I think you are less unmoved by me than you would admit. And I
admit freely," his finger trailed down her jaw, "that you… intrigue me."

Adriana swallowed, snared against her will by the rolling sound of his vowels, the depth of his resonant voice. And curse him—curse her wanton flesh!—the brush of his fingers kindled small shivers across the back of her neck. "Your proposition?" she said sharply.

He dropped his hand, lifted his chin. "Give me time to woo you, Adriana."

She snorted. "I am not, sir, a wooable female."

"Are you not, then?" A dimple appeared in his lean cheek, wicked and amused punctuation to his devilish smile. "But then you've have not heard my bargain."

She lifted her eyebrows skeptically. "All right. What is it?"

"Give me one hundred kisses, over one hundred days, to prove myself."

"Kisses?" She blinked, thinking she must have misheard. "I dislike kissing."

"All the better." Something glittered in his eyes. "No gamble at all for you."

"No." She stepped back, suddenly imagining herself trying to resist the taste of him, the feel of his breath over her chin, her neck. A sense of genuine panic rose in her chest. "A kiss is too intimate to share so capriciously."

"Ah." He nodded. "Intimate."

Adriana only nodded stupidly, thinking she had convinced him it was a foolish bargain.

"'Tis only mouth-to-mouth kisses that require intimacy. We'll have none of that."

"But where would you kiss me, then?"

A slow, seductive shrug, an even slower, more seductive smile. "Wherever it comes to me."

"No," she repeated breathlessly, "I cannot agree to such a bargain."

"But—" He lifted a finger, and Adriana thought of a faery king, come from the woods to woo her into an unholy life. "—At the end, if I've not been successful in capturing your heart, I would leave you in peace forever. One hundred days of misery, or thousands upon thousands of them?"

In spite of the danger, the idea of being rid of him held allure. "You would leave Hartwood?"

"Aye."

"And what of the financial arrangements we have made? My brothers' return does not solve that."

"Everything will be as we have arranged it—you will have the funds you require. I will—with luck—have gained the political influence I have come to achieve. I'll simply leave you. 'Tis not unusual that a husband and wife do not reside together."

That part was true enough. She narrowed her eyes, considering. If he did not kiss her mouth, she could most likely keep him at arm's length. "Very well. You may have your hundred kisses—though I warn you they'll do you no good." Dryly, she cocked her head. "It isn't as if I am innocent of such things."

A flicker, a darkness—desire?—showed on his face for a moment. In a low voice he said, "Indeed."

And for just a heartbeat longer he held her gaze, and she thought of the brightly embroidered edges of his cloak for no reason she could name. She did not look away.

He stepped forward. "I would like the first kiss now."

Before she even had a chance to panic, he captured her right hand and lifted it to his mouth. He brushed his lips, dry and light, over her fingers, then let her go.

That was all, a single brush of his lips over her hand, but Adriana found herself snared by a thousand details—the light breaking in red-gold arcs over the dark crown of his head, the slight tug of wool over his shoulders making a soft sound, the tip of his ear, almost pointed, like an elf's.

And with a faint sense of despair, she realized she'd been half hoping for more of a kiss than that. Much more.