Thief of Hearts (19 page)

"I think… " She stopped; she felt the most peculiar mixture of melancholy, surprise, and resignation. "I think you're a very astute man, Mr. Brodie."

His frustration drifted away. She'd never given him a compliment before. He turned the words over in his mind, relishing them. A minute passed. "I wonder if Billy's out there somewhere right now," he mused, gazing across the walled, nearly invisible terrace that dropped away to the east, "watching to see that I don't make a run for it."

"Would you try?" she asked curiously.

He considered making a joke, but then he didn't. "No."

"Why?"

He sent her an odd smile. "Because I've given my promise."

She stared up at him. There were so many questions she longed to ask, but she had no idea how to begin. How curious, it suddenly seemed, that she hardly ever thought about the thing that should have been uppermost in her mind at all times, the terrible crime he'd almost hanged for committing. She thought of Mr. Brodie as many things, but rarely as a murderer. In fact, never. How very curious.

"See how bright Arcturus is tonight," he said, startling her, pointing.

"Where?"

"There. The Hunter and the Hounds. And Spica, the Virgin, under him."

She followed his pointing finger. "Can you steer a ship by the stars?"

"Aye can. Yes."

She studied his upturned face. "You miss the sea, don't you? You love it."

"Love it?" He sent her another quizzical smile. "No, Annie, I'm like all sailors, I hate the sea. It's ships I love."

"I don't understand."

He faced her, but kept his hands on the stone railing. "A sailor goes off to sea when he's not much more than a child. His first voyage might last for three years, and after that he has no home, if he ever had one." His gaze shifted back to the star-flecked sky. "The life suits him. Money doesn't mean anything, and he's his own master. He doesn't own anything except his seabag and his tools. The things you want, the things you take for granted, mean nothing to him. He lives his life apart. His only enemy is the sea, because he knows it can kill him."

"He must be lonely sometimes."

"Sometimes."

"Doesn't he miss his home, his family?"

His voice hardened a fraction. "I told you, he doesn't have a home. His ship is all he has, and it's enough."

Anna shook her head slowly. "I don't understand," she said again. "The life sounds so hard, so… bleak."

"But there's beauty, too, and simplicity." He looked at his hands, and his voice went so soft, she could hardly hear him. "But I don't understand it either, Annie. Because sometimes I hate it, and I don't even know if I'll miss it."

She went perfectly still. The thought she'd successfully avoided for so long collided head-on with her defenses: in a little more than a week, as soon as their business in Naples was finished, Mr. Brodie would have to go back to prison. Of all the things she wanted to say to him now, she chose the safest. "But you love ships."

"Aye, I do."

"So do I."

They fell silent. Anna pondered the fact that they'd just sustained a long, personal conversation without resorting to harshness or insults or cheap innuendo. She valued this new closeness between them, how much she wouldn't let herself think. But common sense told her she was a fool. Nothing except pain could come from fostering a friendship between her and Brodie that would allow him to become real to her, a human being with feelings and needs and hopes just like any other man. But now the back of his wrist was brushing hers where their two hands held onto the railing, and that light, warm touch was becoming the focus of all her senses. She drew away, and felt inside a light, swift stab of regret.

"How did you like my friends?" she asked, needing to break in on this intimate stillness between them.

He stared down at her intently. "I'm glad you're not like them."

"Perhaps I am. Perhaps I'm exactly like them."

"No, you're nothing like them. Was Nick?"

She turned away. "He… " She didn't want to face the question, yet she knew he would not tolerate evasiveness. "Maybe he was, a little. In some ways. But he was ambitious, he wanted to pull himself up. I think that's an admirable quality in a man." She could hear her own defensiveness.

Brodie couldn't hear it. He was thinking that to her mind, he'd shown himself to be the kind of man who did not want to pull himself up. His brother had turned himself into a gentleman, while he'd run away to sea. Nick had gotten this woman to marry him, this woman who loved him so much she still couldn't let go of his memory, even though it was a false one. And Brodie was going to finish out the rest of his days moldering in a prison cell. He threw the half-smoked cigar to the ground and crushed it under his heel.

"I wonder where Alden and Mr. Flowers are," she murmured.

"Are you afraid because we're alone?" His voice came out harsh, surprising her.

She faced him. "No," she answered honestly.

"Why not? Do you think you've 'tamed' me? Do you think you've turned me into a 'gentleman,' like Nick?"

The sneer in his voice bewildered her. She peered at him and didn't speak. When he came nearer she didn't move, not even when he stepped in close, so close she could feel his breath on her face. "Why are you angry?" she whispered.

"I want you to call me by my name," he said roughly.

"What?"

"My Christian name. Say it."

"I... Why?"

"Say it!" He didn't know why.

She swallowed. "I'll say it if you want me to. John."

His lips thinned. He wasn't satisfied. But now he knew what he wanted.

Anna knew, too. What shocked her was that the idea of kissing him didn't repel her. But she knew her duty. She put both hands on his chest and pushed. "Don't you dare," she said boldly, looking him in the eye.

"Don't dare what?"

"You know."

"What?"

She wouldn't say it; what if she were wrong? But he was laughing at her now, and that made her mad. "I want to go inside."

"Not yet. First I have to do something."

"What?"

He smiled. "You know."

He took her wrists and drew them around his neck as easily as if he were putting on his tie. She found herself held flush against him, tight, wrapped in his hard arms, with his lips nuzzling her hair. "I do not want you to do this." The words were muffled against his shoulder.

"Pretend it's Nick."

She pushed back, infuriated. But his mouth came down, hard and implacable, forcing her lips open. She grunted her unwilling anger through her teeth and pulled fiercely on his hair to make him stop, but he held on. She guessed that the pain she was causing him was only sharpening his determination, and let go.

A mistake. He made a noise in his throat and softened his ruthless hold, gentled his lips, and now he was tasting her. Stroking her lips, which began to tremble, with his tongue and sucking softly, intimately, at her mouth with his. She felt the identical surrender of the flesh she'd felt twice before in his arms, only this time it was worse because it was familiar and she wanted to know what happened after, what came next, how it would feel if he kept on and she didn't make him stop.

"Please, no," she whimpered, but the words were incomprehensible, uttered between the nothingness of her mouth and his. And he was speaking too, saying her name over and over, seducing her with the need she could hear in the blunt, aching sound of it. She forgot that he wasn't her husband, she forgot that he only wanted her because she was his brother's wife, and when his restless hands found her breast she didn't try to stop them.

"Lord God, it's a miracle," she thought he muttered, and guessed that he'd discovered that, for the first time in her adult life, she was without her corset. His fingers were so gentle, almost reverent, she wondered if he knew that no one had ever touched her this way before. "Ahh," she breathed on a long sigh of surprise how intense this was, this pleasure! She swayed into him, eyes closed, hands clenching his shoulders, and let him kiss her and kiss her.

"You're lovely, Annie," he murmured against her lips, even as he wondered where this could possibly be leading. He sank one hand into the thick silkiness of her hair, and used the palm of the other to stroke against the tight little nipple he could feel through her gown. Her trembling acquiescence excited him unbearably and threatened to dispatch the last of his control, for he'd never wanted a woman this badly before. He ought to let her go. But he couldn't, not yet, it was impossible. He moved her backward until he had her against the rough stone pillar. Her eyes were like huge pools shimmering in the glow of the moon. He kissed her again until she moaned, and the helplessness of that sound of surrender buried what was left of his conscience. He understood now that she'd been dead wrong about his motives for wanting her. Nick had nothing to do with this, and spite was an emotion he was very far from feeling. His hands were clumsy with haste as he sought to open all the tiny jet buttons down the front of her dress without stopping the kiss. He felt wetness on his face, his lips, then his fingers. "Annie?" he whispered. "Why are you crying? Why?" He held her face in his hands and murmured to her, kissing her cheeks, her closed eyes.

His sweetness only made it worse. She took a ragged, trembly breath and turned aside, out of his arms. Now she couldn't stop, and she was sobbing. Some thick, insoluble pain inside was dissolving, lessening with each desperate gasp, and she couldn't stop. She felt his arms pressing her lightly back against his chest, stroking her, comforting.

"Don't cry anymore, I can't stand it," he breathed against her hair, absorbing her long, shuddering tremors into his skin, hurting for her. "If you don't stop, I'll cry too. I mean it. I cry really loud; it would embarrass you to death."

She let out a wet snicker, then went back to weeping. He gave her his handkerchief, over her shoulder, and she buried her face in it.

"God, Annie, I'm sorry. Sorry for everything. I don't seem to be able to do anything but hurt you." But at least he understood now why she was crying. She wept for Nick, and because the pretending hadn't worked. And he wondered how, even for one second, he could have expected anything else. He squeezed his eyes shut against his own pain and held her. All he could be to her now was kind.

If Brodie thought he knew, Anna had no idea why she was weeping. It had to do with the death of something inside herself that had kept her safe from him until now. She felt overwhelmed with confusion and terrible, terrible guilt. The only thing she knew clearly was that she had better hide this new weakness in the darkest, deepest part of her heart and pray that he never discovered it. Because his ignorance of it was the only defense she had left.

She felt his hands drop away and heard him take a step back. "I won't do that anymore, so you don't have to worry." She folded her arms around herself, suddenly chilly. His voice was bleak and serious. "I mean it this time. I swear I won't touch you again, not even to tease you."

She stared up at the cold, impersonal stars. "Thank you" came out in a tight-throated, insincere whisper.

"I'll go inside now. Unless you'd rather go first, then I could—"

"No, it's all right, you—"

"I could wait here until you—"

"No, you go in. I'll come in a minute."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Awkward silence.

"Well, then. Good night."

"Good night."

She heard him go past her, and pivoted when he would have come into her line of vision, because she didn't want to see him walk away. But the sound of his footsteps died slowly and then she was alone anyway, as alone as she'd ever been in her life.