The Ravencliff Bride (36 page)

“There is a certain discipline that is by-product of this . . . condition,” said Nicholas, “but I cannot take credit for it. It’s part of the process, and you either stand up to its demands, or succumb. I learned early on that if I were to survive, I had to steel myself against it—form a shell around myself, where some part of me could exist normally, if such a thing could be. I thought it served me well enough . . . until her ladyship. Now, I see how empty that shell was, and I shall never be able to crawl back into it after tasting what I’ve missed of life.”

“I am here to do all in my power to see that you never have to, my lord,” said the doctor.

“Then I must do more to aid you in your efforts,” Nicholas said. “Mills says I lack trust, while I demand it of others. He’s right, of course. He always is. I’ve made a clean breast of it with the baroness, though he faults me for not doing so
at the outset. Now, I should like to try and be more open to your treatments. If I can show her that I can at least control the transformations, it might make a difference. Oh, I don’t know, Doctor, but I shall try harder.”

“Do not try too hard, my lord,” said the physician. “There is no quick solution to controlling your malady. What’s wanted is openness, and a relaxed state.”

Nicholas’s lighthearted laugh replied.

“I know, my lord, it is much to ask under the circumstances, but necessary. Remember, we are charting new waters here, and we have only just begun to plumb the depths, as it were. When you enter here for these sessions with me, leave the world without for this brief time.”

“I shall make every endeavor to do so,” said Nicholas. “But while I am closeted here with you, the baroness is vulnerable, unprotected, and quite frankly, judging from past experience, I cannot trust her not to take matters into her own hands. With such as that weighing on my mind, and the threat of a shapeshifter wolf on the prowl, leaving the world on the doorstep is rather impossible.”

“Does it help to talk about these things? Sometimes voicing them aloud brings relief, and I am a good listener.”

“There are just too many ‘things’ banging about in my brain, Dr. Breeden,” said Nicholas, draining his snifter. “For example, to take just one: As you know, if she should decide to leave me, I offered to use my connections to see our marriage dissolved. I’ve been consulting several legal volumes in the study. That shan’t be as easy a thing to manage as I first thought—if it can be managed at all. An annulment could actually take longer than a divorce, and nonconsummation is not a valid reason to petition for one. Impotence is, but I am
not
impotent—far from it. None of the other ‘valid’ reasons apply. We are not closely related, or secretly married to others, nor did we use the wrong names on a special license, and there were no parents or guardians to dupe. While I’d thought a year’s wait for a Parliamentary decree was a
lengthy period, I’m now beginning to think that it may be the only alternative, since my most useful connections are with Canterbury through my father. I have no impressive Parliamentary favors to call in, and a church divorce is useless. It could be had more quickly, but it amounts to nothing more than a legal separation and neither of us would be able to marry again. That matters not to me, but what of her ladyship? She’s young, and vital. I could not damn her to that, or make a whore of her, because that’s what would be. She would have no choice but to take a lover. My God, what have I done?”

“Let’s not borrow trouble, my lord,” said the doctor. “I should think it’s deposited enough in our account as it is. If worst comes to worst, a way will present itself, and we shall avail ourselves of it . . . even if we have to bend the truth a bit. You are no longer alone in this. Now, loosen your grip on that empty glass, and set it aside before you cut yourself as I did. Close your eyes, my lord. Listen to the armonica. We have much work to do.”

Despite the warm, scented bath Mrs. Bromley had drawn for her, Sara couldn’t sleep. Dressed in her ecru nightdress and wrapper, she paced from room to room, from tapestry to tapestry, like a caged animal, studying the artistry, etching every stitch in her memory, wondering what had become of the new ones Alexander Mallory was supposed to have brought back from London—anything to take her mind off the real issue at hand. It was no use. The subject matter of the beautiful wall hangings brought Nero to mind, and thoughts of Alexander Mallory brought the image of another wolf, and the cold reality that her husband was a shapeshifter. The ramifications of that were beyond imagining, and yet it was a reality.

Had he suffered enough? No, not yet. Had she? Oh, yes, there was no question. Could she bear to continue the punishment? Would it do any good? Probably not, but she
wanted Baron Nicholas Walraven to think twice before denying her his trust again . . . if she were going to stay, of course. That still remained to be seen.

Anger had dried her tears: anger that he had let her discover his secret in such a shocking manner, anger at herself for falling so desperately in love with the man. How hard it had been to ignore his pleading glances, to disregard the sadness in those hypnotic obsidian eyes that devoured her, that spoke to her soul and melted her heart. The only way was to avoid his gaze altogether. She did it for his betterment, and for her own, for she would not stay where there was deception, and she could not leave. It was a hard lesson, but her lesson to teach. He had to earn her love with trust, and she needed to be certain he would never deceive her again.

As far as Sara was concerned, their agreement, such as it was, was nullified in the shadowy passageway outside the alcove chamber in the bowels of Ravencliff Manor. It could be all or nothing now, and to her thinking, she’d earned the right to set the ground rules. This had been the longest four days of her life. Was it enough? Had he learned the lesson?

She went to the window. Outside, stars winked down from the indigo vault. There was no moon, at least not one she could see from her vantage, though silver spangles of moonlight danced eerily on the ink-black water, becalmed for the first time since she’d arrived on the coast. Was it an omen—if so, of what? That the crisis was past . . . or was it just another calm before another storm? Either way, looking at that sky, it was a fair assumption that the guards would come in the morning. A ragged sigh brought her shoulders down, and after a moment, she turned away.

Padding through the foyer to the sitting room, she spied the handgun Nicholas had given her on the table beside the door. What if she were to shoot the wrong wolf with it? No. She would take no chances. Picking it up gingerly, she deposited it in the table drawer, out of the way of temptation.

She started on her way again, but a noise in the corridor stopped her in her tracks—footfalls, heavy-sounding and weary, making no attempt at stealth. Tiptoeing to the door, she leaned her ear against the panel listening. They had stopped outside. Sara held her breath, but he did not hold his. On the other side of that door, Nicholas emptied his lungs just as she had done.

Tears welled in her eyes at the sound. She blinked them back. After a moment, the footfalls receded along the corridor. Then there came a soft, metallic click, as the door to the green suite closed across the way, sending shivers down her spine. There was something final in the sound. Something palpable, which struck her with terror. It tied knots in the invisible cord stretched between her and the man she loved more than life itself, despite and because of the nightmare and how he bore it. Something that, if not grasped then with both hands and held tight, would be lost forever.

Bursting from her suite, Sara crossed the span of carpeted hallway between with quick, light steps, and followed him inside.

The unseen moon wove its magic in the green suite as well, throwing shafts of silver light through the mullioned panes, where dust motes danced. Sara moved on bare feet that made no sound through the foyer, and entered the bedchamber. Nicholas didn’t see her at first. His back was turned. He’d stripped off his jacket, neck cloth, waistcoat, and shirt, and stood bare to the waist before the window in his stocking feet, gazing out over the garden.

How broad his shoulders were, how narrow his waist. He seemed like a statue standing there, with the moonlight playing on his bare skin, casting shadows along the indented length of his arrow-straight spine, laying a silvery sheen over the black satin pantaloons that left nothing to the imagination in the area of his taut buttocks and well-turned thighs. No padding girded those limbs. Sara remembered her father availing himself of such devices, as was the way of it amongst men not so endowed trying to adapt their less-than-perfect figures to the fashions of the day. No corset held Nicholas’s well-muscled, washboard-stomached middle in check either. She had lain naked against that hard,
lean body. She had known the silkiness of his lightly furred chest against her breasts. She had felt the strength in him, the thickness of his sex pressed against her, and the discipline of restraint keeping it in control, that made every sinew in him tighten like steel bands, and every muscle contract and flex against her as though it were about to burst.

Just the sight of him standing there thrilled her to arousal, readied her for the consummation of a passion she didn’t even understand. All she knew was that he filled her with strange, forbidden warmth; forbidden, because feelings this shocking had to be. This searing, moist heat that invaded her loins in his presence was a scandalous thing that made her hands go clammy and her whole body shiver, with delec-table cold chills despite the fire inside. Only being wrapped in those strong arms would stop her quaking. Only the feral scent of him, sweetened with herbs, and fresh with the salt of the sea could give her a reason to breathe. Only the pressure of his mouth opening her lips beneath could slake her insatiable need to taste him deeply, and completely.

What other pleasures that body held in store, she couldn’t imagine. Still, despite that she wanted those pleasures until her very bones ached for them, another saner voice inside nearly convinced her to creep out as she had crept in. That was, until he bowed his head and raked both hands through his hair, then dropped them at his sides. It was a gesture of defeat, and all of her defenses plummeted to earth right along with his posture.

“Nicholas . . . ,” she murmured, her hoarse voice scarcely more than a whisper, though it boomed through the quiet like a thunder roll.

Her husband spun so fast to face her that she saw only a blur, like the blur she’d seen in the passageway, when Nero leaped into the air, and Nicholas emerged naked before her. Like a spurt of déjà vu, it riveted her to the spot, but oh what it did to her equilibrium, and to her quivering sex. Her breath caught in a dry throat. She was on fire for him.

For a moment he didn’t move. His obsidian gaze devoured her, glistening with reflected light from the shadows. He didn’t seem real, backlit by the split shaft of illusive moonglow spilling in around him, bouncing off him, like a fractured aura. It almost seemed to shine through him, as if he were a wraith standing there, staring at her, ready to disappear in a puff of ethereal mist should she breathe and break the spell.

The moment seemed to go on forever. Then he sprang again, reaching her in two graceful strides, more animal-like than human. Now she recognized the feral energy in his makeup that had always been there, in the way he moved and prowled and surged and paced. Was it a carryover from his Nero incarnation, or were man and animal one creature, separated only by a hairsbreadth of unearthly distance, or the beat of a palpitating heart?

For a moment, he didn’t speak. His eyes moved over her with the skeptical anticipation of one dying of thirst, fearing that the oasis before him was no more than another mirage, a trick of the eye come to torment him. She could barely stand to look into them. He inhaled her—nostrils flared, almost like a dog . . . like a
wolf
, his straight Celtic nose raised in the air, those mad, staring eyes finally hooded. As if in a trance, he moaned, and his eyes came open, drinking her in.

Trembling hands reached for her—enveloped her—folded her in his strong arms. He groaned again, and she slipped her arms around his waist, drawing him closer still.

“You are real,” he whispered. “I wasn’t sure. I’ve conjured you in my mind so often, I was afraid you were nothing more than another apparition come to haunt me.”

“I’m real enough,” she said, “but for a moment just now, I viewed you the same, like a ghost in the darkness.”

“Does this mean that you’ve decided?” he asked, his voice quavering.

“It means . . . that I love you,” she replied, looking him in the eyes. “That has caved in my common sense, undermined
my scruples, and defeated my resolve.” He drew her closer still, holding her face against the soft hair on his chest. His skin was afire beneath her cheek, his heart thump, thump, thumping its rapid rhythm in her ear. “It means that my need of you is so great, I have no shame,” she murmured through a dry sob.

He tilted her face up until their gazes met. Were those tears in his eyes, glistening in the darkness? Her own eyes misted, looking into them.

“You won’t be afraid?” he said.

“Afraid?”

“If anything . . . untoward should happen. Like what occurred in the passageway,” he whispered, brushing her brow with his lips. They were hot, and dry. “I’ll know in time to distance myself, but still . . .”

“Why would I be afraid?” she said. “I love you both, and I would be loath to think that either of you would harm me.”

The breath left his lungs in a rush of hot, moist whispers against her face, her hair—her arched throat. She couldn’t understand his words, only the meaning behind them, the utter relief in the sound of primeval love binding them to the moment, and to each other.

Seizing her head, he cupped it in his massive hand and took her lips, opening her mouth, deepening the kiss with a teasing tongue that drew hers after it. The swift motion thrilled her, just as it had in the past, and she buried her hand in the soft silkiness of his hair, holding him fast until their trembling lips parted moist, and breathless.