The Trouble With Seduction (14 page)

When the men finally moved on, he motioned to the rickety ladder next to them. Sarah gazed up into the darkness and then back at him. Her brows pulled together mutinously.

“Up,” he breathed.

When they reached the top, a door swung open into a low, windowless attic. The steamy fug of unwashed people filled the air.

Pinpoints of light leaked through holes in the roof and flickered off the wings of circling flies. Barely enough light penetrated to see, but what he could see made his stomach roll. He remembered this place. In the feeble light he saw heaps of rags and knew they contained people. For years after leaving St Giles an occasional nightmare had him stuck in this garret.

His skin itched. The place probably crawled with lice and fleas.

He and Sarah crouched low to avoid the rafters and picked their way around the mounds toward the other side.

Dull eyes watched, unblinking.

He slid his hands over the wallboards where he remembered the catch. Then did it again. Beads of sweat broke out on his brow.

Where was it?

Had he confused this place with another?

He skimmed his hands along the walls, while his heart thumped in his ears. Nearly giving up, he finally found the latch at knee-height. Of course. He’d been a boy the last time he’d explored the rookery, larking with Cory.

It suddenly hit home how much he’d changed. Not only did the filth and squalor disgust him, he no longer fit physically or psychologically into this world. Too much had happened in the intervening years.

He pushed open the small door. His heart sank at what he saw. As a boy he’d called it the circus high wire. It still conjured that image.

A long strip of wood, no wider than a soupspoon, stretched to the adjacent building. An almost vertical roof bordered it on one side. To the other lay a drainage ditch three and a half stories below. Now he remembered why his dreams always ended with him stuck in this garret.

He hated heights.

Sarah peered around his shoulder and gasped.

Damen nodded toward the roof, giving a show of nonchalance, as if it looked worse than it was. Their only other choice was to go back the way they’d come. By the sounds coming from below, the villains weren’t far behind.

Sarah shook her head. “No. I won’t do it.”

He tried to give an encouraging smile, perhaps more for himself than her. His heart had already started the anxious squeeze that heights always summoned.

“It’s suicide,” she muttered.

Behind them, a snicker emerged from one of the rag piles.

He turned back to study the weathered strip of wood. It barely looked sturdy enough for a child, much less a man of nearly fifteen stone and a woman.

Somewhere below, men’s voices echoed around the walls. Now more than ever, he believed the ruffians had been waiting for him, or rather, Cory.

He gazed back at Sarah. She’d compressed her lips and gave him a rebellious glare.

Damen groaned inwardly, took a deep breath and tested the wood with a toe. He slid a foot out. It held. He took another step. That held, too. It seemed stable enough.

He turned and extended his hand to Sarah.

She closed her eyes, prayer-like. Then wrinkled up her face as if this were the stupidest thing she’d ever done. Finally, she took her skirt in one hand and gripped his with the other.

As they inched across the thin strip of wood, a breeze whipped around the roof. He could hear Sarah’s shoes scratch along the plank, and her uneven gasping breaths. The only thing missing was the circus drum roll. They’d nearly reached the other side when the wood suddenly groaned and popped underfoot.

CHAPTER 12

Ravenhill’s arm flew out for balance. His other hand gripped hers – tight. Only a few more steps remained to reach the other roof.

“Quick!” Ravenhill launched across the crumbling strip of wood, towing her behind him.

Sarah’s weak leg wobbled and her foot slipped over the edge.

Suddenly she was falling through open air.

Fear, sharp as a lightning strike, sliced through her sinews. Her legs churned. Her free hand flailed. In that moment, she knew she would die.

“I have you,” Ravenhill rasped above her.

Sarah tore her gaze from the ditch three stories below and dragged it up to see Ravenhill’s stricken expression. He twisted down toward her from a windowsill far too small for his large form.

Her fingers felt like they were slipping out of his crushing grip. Her other arm thrashed.

“Give me your other hand!” he said determinedly.

She swung her arm up toward him and missed.

Her limbs took on a will of their own, pin-wheeling in terror.

Her fingers slipped further out of Ravenhill’s.

Out the corner of her eye she saw the haggard faces of several street urchins crowding the garret’s doorway, following her struggles with ghoulish anticipation.

“Stop moving! On the count of three, I’ll pull you up. Reach for my hand! One. Two. Three!”

Ravenhill tugged hard and pulled her up far enough for her upper body to rest on the steep-sloped roof.

“Give me your other hand!”

She threw her arm toward him and this time he caught it.

The next thing she knew, Ravenhill had hauled her up into his arms and clutched her hard against him.

“Are you all right?” His breath sawed in her ear, and his heart pounded so hard she could feel it through their clothes.

Terror and excitement heightened all her senses. With his arms locked about her, they were practically molded together. She could feel the ridges of muscle lining his body from his chest all the way down to his thighs.

Her pulse skipped and surged.

She’d not died, after all. He’d saved her.

How alive and buoyant she felt against him. Invigorated. She looked about them and clung to him even harder. They balanced like two large birds on a windowsill, three and a half stories in the air. A vast view of the city spread before them.

In the distance, pigeons poured from a bell tower as the hour tolled; a church steeple rose above delicate tendrils of mist and billowing clouds of industrial exhaust. And all around them lay a sea of steep pitched roofs with phalanx after phalanx of chimneys.

“We must go.” His voice came out a hoarse command, yet he didn’t release her.

“I know,” she breathed.

Two urchins ambled down one side of the ditch far below.

Ravenhill jerked at the sound, crouched and jimmied open a dormer window. “This way.”

They wound around a junk-filled attic and descended a ladder to the second floor of a decrepit boarding house. Dirt and filth coated the muggy air.

He turned right. Then turned left, changing his mind. “No, this way.”

Grasping her hand, he drew her around a corner to an odd-shaped half-door no taller than her waist. On opening it, she could see narrow steps leading down into darkness. She gritted her teeth.
Not another dark, rickety set of stairs.

He took her hand and led her down, one step at a time.

She’d put her trust in him, and so far they hadn’t got caught. At times he’d seemed indecisive, but for the most part, it appeared he knew where he was going. Odd, that.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs he took them through another small door. They emerged into an alley the width of a wheelbarrow filled with a thick, unwholesome murk. Dim light flickered in one of the windows where meat dangled from hooks. Small shops bordered either side. Buildings hung over them at odd angles. The place had a sinister quality.

“Hurry. There are eyes everywhere.”

They dashed out of the alley into a larger, sunlit thoroughfare.

Sarah gazed down the block to their right and her heart plummeted. “Look! There in the street.” The villain with the red ribbon around his hat stood with two of his cohorts in the intersection. “After all that…” She gasped for breath “What do they want with us?”

“I believe they’re after me.” Ravenhill clenched her elbow and hurried her down the plank sidewalk away from the villains. A few wagons, street hawkers and pedestrians passed by.

In the distance, strains of accordion music rose above the sounds of industry and street noise. They turned into a road filled with a light mist. Half way down the block, a musician stood on an overturned box in the middle of the sidewalk. He ended the ballad with a flourish, and launched into a waltz.

Impossibly, men and women poured out of shops and businesses forming couples. They twirled across the cobblestones as if they were at an assembly dance. The musician stepped off his box to walk down the street. A growing number of dancers spun and whirled after him.

“He plays very well,” Sarah acknowledged.

Ravenhill glanced over his shoulder. “The villains are coming this way. Let’s join the crowd.” He marched her into the midst of the dancers, took her hand and grasped her around the waist. “Keep your head down.” He pulled her against him and ducked to press his ear against hers. They waltzed in slow revolutions, careful to stay in the center of the troupe following the musician.

In the past, her weak leg had concerned her while dancing. Thankfully, Mr Ravenhill held her so securely she doubted she could stumble. Her breasts, on the other hand, had come alive, aching with sensitivity. While searching for the latch in the first hidey-hole, Ravenhill managed to rub them into a fine hum. Now each jostle against his muscular chest sent tingles streaming to other areas.

She’d never danced so closely with anyone, not even her husbands. Nor had she danced in a more unusual place – in the middle of the afternoon, in a gathering mist, along the streets of St Giles.

In his patched work smock, tattered trousers and broken-down boots, she couldn’t imagine a more dashing, virile partner. A dark knight, who’d saved her from certain death and made everything inside her quiver with excitement.

Round and round they spun over the slippery cobblestones as if it were a polished parquet floor. An intimate dance that wouldn’t pass any measure of propriety. If someone saw them, oh, how the tongues would wag.

On one of their turns she spotted Red Ribbon’s top hat bobbing above the crowd. “Will they never give up?”

So far, she’d managed to keep her feeble leg a secret, but it was tiring. She quailed at the thought of explaining her imperfection to the physically perfect Mr Ravenhill. A riding accident when she was twelve had broken it badly. Emotions or fatigue weakened it.

He glanced around and hurried Sarah into a fog-shrouded doorway where he backed her into the shadows. “Let’s hide,” he whispered. “We can disguise ourselves as lovers.”

She leaned her head against his chest and tried to catch her breath. His strong heart thumped like a base drum under her ear. Her own pounded raucously on the offbeat. The danger, the dancing and, most of all, the heady nearness of him sent little electric charges shimmering along her skin.

He smoothed his hands up and down her back. She’d always enjoyed being held. But Mr Ravenhill’s ridges and sinews flexed and moved, making a simple hug erotic.

His hands came to a rest at her waist. A moment passed before he leaned down to press a soft kiss to her cheek, then brush one across the side of her lips. He paused a moment, lingering an inch away, as if trying to make a decision.

The hesitation was sheer torture. Did he not want to kiss her, after all?

She wanted to bridge the distance, close her mouth over his, and discover if his caresses were as tantalizing as they’d been in her dreams.

Right on cue, her insecurities reared up. A man like Mr Ravenhill wouldn’t truly fancy a woman like her. When his face healed, he could have any of the most beautiful and dowered women. A rational man wouldn’t want to get involved with an eccentric, conservative widow suspected of killing two husbands, would he? Even if she did have a comfortable income.

He raised both hands to cup her face and gazed about her features as if he were seeing her for the first time. The anticipation had her almost quaking with need.

When Ravenhill finally covered her mouth with his, she couldn’t help shuddering. He tasted like a rich dessert, a fleshy plum… coated in cinnamon… spicy and sensual. His plush, mobile lips nimbly explored all the tiny, sensitive places. His kiss was nothing like she’d imagined. The warmth, the intimacy...

The delight.

It had her seeking a closer fit, the perfect unity of heat and sensation.

He coiled his arms tighter, deepening the kiss, teasing, nipping, coaxing her into playful wantonness. And when she did, a lifetime of hunger sent a moan up her throat. This is what she’d longed for. To give and receive an irrepressibly decadent kiss that awakened the woman in her and all her secret places.

Everything around them lost definition except his spicy taste, his impossibly responsive mouth and the sensation of his muscular body molding to hers.

A lock rattled in the door behind them. An old woman stuck her head out.

“Goodness!” She clutched her collar. “None of that in my doorway! Now run along, you two, before I need to send for a vicar.”

Ravenhill released Sarah and stepped out of the recessed entrance in time to flag down a hackney. He helped her up the steps and slid in beside her.

***

Damen sat uncomfortably in the cramped cab, his trousers binding a very sensitive region of his anatomy. Parts of him craved very specific parts of Sarah. He took careful breaths, trying not to draw attention to his predicament.

On their mad dash, he and Sarah crossed more than the physical boundaries existing in the rookery. The rubbing, the pressing against one another and the frantic grasp for her on the rooftop thrust them into a deeper realm of intimacy.

Terror gripped him when she nearly fell to her death. And when her hand started slipping from his, fear of dropping her almost paralyzed him. The whole traumatic ordeal clarified his feelings for her. When he finally held her safe in his arms, relief so overwhelmed him, he practically crushed her to him.

The dance after had been no less dangerous.

Dangerous not only because of the villains, but because it filled his mind with unrealistic notions. He found himself curling around her with such protectiveness he now wondered if she’d felt smothered.