The Passionate One (35 page)

“I got in an hour
ago,” Andy said, his gaze still wandering around the room. “Mr. Merrick saw me
straight off, right there in the kitchen while he made sure me and Stella had
something in our bellies.”

Stella promptly
flopped down and rolled to her back, her great dinner plate-sized paws waggling
in the air in an attempt to elicit a belly scratch.

“He doesn’t look so
good, Mr. Merrick don’t. And his eyes look a great bit of empty. And— Oh I am
thick-headed!”

With a
tch
of self-disgust, Andy fumbled in his pocket and withdrew a folded piece of
paper. He handed it to her. “He sent this to you, miss.” He grinned at Stella.
“And don’t you worry, you great sweet-eyed tart, I gots something for you,
too.”

Once more Andy
shoved a hand in his pocket, this time pulling out a beefs knucklebone. He
tossed it to Stella and her jaws closed on it in midair. “Got that from one of
the scullery maids,” he explained. “Nice girl. Accommodating, if you know what
I mean.”

A considering
expression stole over Andy’s young face. He slapped his thighs suddenly. “Well
then, I... I, ah, I best be off. I... I left something in the scullery. I’ll
stop back afore I leave for Fair Badden to see if you’ve anything you’d like me
to take to Mrs. Fraiser.”

He plunked his
abused cap back on his head and, with a cheeky nod, opened the door. He looked
up and down the deserted hall. “Not much for morning activities round here, are
they?”

He disappeared,
closing the door behind him.

With trembling
hands, Rhiannon unfolded the paper. The words were few, the handwriting angular
and harsh, without any softening or embellishments—much like Ash himself. She
blinked away the sudden moisture in her eyes and read:

Forgive me and
accept this dog by way of my apology.

Please. I didn’t
mean to frighten you. Please.

Merrick

But he’d sent for
Stella long before the scene in that dimly lit room, before they’d even reached
Wanton’s Blush. He’d done what he could to see that Stella’s wounds were
treated and then he’d arranged to have her brought here, so that Rhiannon might
not be alone. Because Ash understood what it was to be alone, without allies or
confidants.

Or love.

But he’d tasted
that emotion in Fair Badden. She was sure of it. He simply hadn’t experience
enough to recognize it.

He may not be the
charming bon vivant who’d first captivated her in Fair Badden. But neither was
he an unfeeling monster who’d seduced her only to discard her. He was a hard
man in desperate need of tenderness, roughly used by fate and father, seeking a
moment’s respite from constant strife.

The realization
burned through her heart like a dry field afire, illuminating the darkest corners,
the cautious frightened places she’d tended and hidden in for over ten years.
The safe places.

But Ash Merrick was
not safe, and loving Ash Merrick would never be safe— She stopped, her hand
stilled in Stella’s thick, smooth coat.

Loving Ash Merrick.

She rose smoothly,
strongly, sure of herself and her destination. At last.

Ash slouched
forward over the writing desk in the corner of his room, staring at a column of
numbers he’d written from memory. If he remembered correctly the numbers from
Carr’s ledger went back seven or eight years. They had no notations associated
with them, only dates.

But what, if
anything, had they to do with Rhiannon Russell? He sighed heavily, rubbing his
palms over his beard-roughened cheeks. By now that lad would have delivered
that useless hound to her. They’d be rolling about her bedroom floor in an
ecstatic reunion. The thought brought a smile to his harsh countenance and he
kept the image there, in his mind’s eye, for a minute, savoring the pure
sweetness of it before straightening and raking his hair back from his
forehead.

He’d more important
things to consider. He’d overheard Fia telling Gunna that King George, not
content merely to exile Carr to the Highlands for his habit of losing wives,
had gone one further, promising to extract retribution if yet another of
England’s daughters succumbed while in his care.

That must have been
what Tunbridge’s letter had alluded to—Carr’s obsession with his “place” in
society. Tunbridge must have been sent to pave the way toward some sort of
reconciliation between the king and Carr.

And there was more.
Last night Ash had managed to corner Carr’s man of business in a bout of
intense drinking, a small triumph in itself since Carr had hired for that post
a man of nearly pathological discretion.

Ash had spent hours
weaving lurid and grossly exaggerated tales about his days in Paris. Under the
influence of drink and bonhomie, the wizened little man had finally begun to
nod sympathetically. Bit by bit he’d disclosed his secrets. After relating the
expense of running the castle, the little fellow had placed his finger
alongside his nose and let one rheumy eye close in a careful wink.

“Carr has income
near enough to make it all work,” he’d whispered. “Information is always worth
gold to some. Plus there’s the gaming. Certain gentlemen, and I’m sure you can
figure out at least one of them, since Lord Carr says you speared his hand, pay
His Lordship for the privilege of being invited to his tables. Then there’s
bonds and banknotes and that property overseas...”

Then, as if
suddenly aware of just how much he’d divulged, the little man had clapped a
hand over his mouth, risen unsteadily to his feet, and fled.

Overseas property?
The Americas? Australia?

Ash rose from
behind the desk and walked to the window. Ever since Rhiannon’s arrival Carr
had grown daily more tense. But in the past few days his irritability had given
way to a certain expectancy. It boded ill for someone and that person mustn’t
be Rhiannon.

Lost in
contemplation, Ash was only vaguely aware of the door opening behind him.
Assuming it was a servant bringing a pot of strong black coffee, Ash gestured
toward the desk without turning. “Put it there, please, and don’t bother to
stay and tidy up. I’ll be gone from here soon enough.”

He stared out at
the sea. The dim, hushed predawn light soothed his burning eyes. It was like
Fair Badden’s pure sweet dawns. He would have liked to have gone for a walk
this morning as he had so many mornings there. He would have liked to have
stridden through the dew-shimmered grass with that fool hound Stella gamboling
behind him and Rhiannon at his side.

With an exhausted
sigh, he rested his forearm on the window above his head and leaned wearily
into it. No such pastoral pleasures for him. He had an image to maintain, a
reputation at stake.

“No. No sunlit
vagaries for me,” he murmured to himself. “Not when an entire night beckons me
with the promise of untold amusements.”

“Ash Merrick, you’re a liar.”

He wheeled around.
She stood in a soft wash of paling light, a cloud of silky lace pooling about
her bared feet, her shoulders rising from the froth of her night garment like
an alabaster Venus rising from the waves.

He swallowed. It
was all he could do. He was too tired and she was too beautiful and he’d tried,
God knows he’d tried, to keep her safe from Watt and Carr and most especially
himself.

But he hadn’t any
reserves left; he’d been wrung out of his last drop of self-restraint and he’d
never owned any good intentions anyway. He’d wanted her, lusted after her,
desired her, and
needed
her and she was here, in his bedchamber with
cloudy dawn molding itself to her skin and a haze of soft slumber muzzying her
soft, rich mouth.

But he tried. He
still tried.

“If you take
another step into this room,” he advised her, “I will not let you leave until
I’ve had you on your back.”

She took a step
into the room.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Ash met her before
she took another step. He reached her and dipped, sweeping her up in his
embrace as easily as if she’d been feather down. Jaw set, he strode across the
room and kicked open the door to the adjoining suite, stopping in the door
frame.

Little light came
through the long, tall windows facing out over the sea. A storm rushed down
from the north, steeping dawn in a clotted blue-gray, making the room twilight.
A great canopied bed, counterpane pristine as a sacrificial altar, stood in the
center.

The windows rattled
with a sudden gust of wind, breaking Ash’s stillness. He carried Rhiannon to
the bed, laid her in its center, and followed her down, imprisoning her between
his arms. Trepidation clouded her exquisite gold-green eyes. Too late. He
braced himself above her on shuddering arms.

His gaze devoured
her, roving greedily over her shadowed eyes, touching on the mane spread across
the counterpane, and moving lower to the deep, lace-edged vee of her sheer
nightgown. It exposed the creamy column of her throat, the delicate collarbones
spread like wings beneath fragile flesh, and the velvety shadowed valley
between her breasts. She’d grown thinner in the last month.

“Oh, Ash,” she
said, reaching up and delicately touching the bruised flesh beneath his injured
eye.

She ruined him. She
saved him. He turned his face into her palm, branding it with a hot, fervid
kiss.

He didn’t want to
rape her or rut with her... he wanted to make love with her.

He lowered himself,
pressing her body into the thick feather mattress, intent on simply kissing
her. He bent forward; his lips touched hers.

His head spun with
light-headed pleasure. Her lips were as cushioned and warm as he remembered,
but softer now, slightly, shyly, breathlessly opening for him. He sipped in her
breath, tasting the corners of her mouth with his tongue with feigned languor.

“Kiss me,
Rhiannon,” he whispered, hopelessly vulnerable now, wretchedly aware that
petitioning her favors guaranteed his rejection. How could she do anything
else? She’d been someone else’s bride-to-be and he’d seduced her.

“A kiss.” He
brushed his lips over the velvety shell of her ear, hoarding sensations,
pleading with gentleness, begging with restraint. Her fragrance intoxicated
him: warm and clouded floral, the sharp tang of sea and pine, the musk of
arousal...
arousal.

He angled his head,
licking the base of her throat. Her pulse fluttered beneath his tongue.

Carefully, he
slipped one hand beneath her waist, crept his arm up her back between her
shoulder blades, and cradled the back of her head in his palm, lifting her body
up. The thick satin mass of hair fell down over his arm.

“Rhiannon.”

She kissed him. She
lifted her head and molded her lips to his. He shivered with the unexpected
voluptuousness of it, his body growing hard with burgeoning desire. The tip of
her tongue teased just within his mouth, both bold and hesitant, untutored and
wise.

His mind teemed
with gratification, overwhelmed by every exquisite detail: her softness, her
graceful curves, the beat of her heart. A beautiful female body lay beneath
him, vibrant and glowing with slowly awakening appetite. But all this could not
explain his total absorption, because he was involved with so much more than
the body that yearned beneath his hands and lips.

Rhiannon.
Rhiannon’s heart, flesh, and bone. Rhiannon revealed to him, beneath him,
surging up to cling to him. It had been Rhiannon since Beltaine night. He could
no longer fight that knowledge.

She undid him.

He settled his hips
against hers, rocking into her with little irrepressible jerks. Her thighs
relaxed, she tilted her hips. He shivered, fighting for control, fearful of
crushing her. Mouths still melded, hand still cupping her delicate skull, he
shifted away and swept his hand between them, encountering fragile silk and
gossamer lace. He no longer thought, he reacted instinctively. The material
that kept her from him hissed as it tore.

Startled, her eyes
flew wide. Her hands instinctively flew up to brace against his chest.

He cursed himself.
He’d no graces, no art, nothing but this devastating desire growing each
moment, and each moment shredding his tenuous mastery of it.

He released her
mouth, overwhelmed. His heartbeat raced out of control. He closed his eyes,
fighting the imperatives of pure want, forcing his breath to a quieter tempo,
chaining desire to his will.

He had not meant to
frighten her.

“I won’t hurt you,”
he promised thickly. He bracketed her face between his forearms and, with as
much gentleness as he possessed, touched her cheek, her temples, lining one
silky-smooth brow and feathering her eyelashes with the back of his forefinger,
trying to show her what he could not say.

Beautiful. Lovely
and sweet and impossibly desirable. His gaze roved over all the grace notes of
her countenance: the slight dilation of her pupils, the thin white scar on her
cheek, the delicate blue tracery of veins on the whiteness of her breasts.