0425272095 (R) (30 page)

C
aroline could not sleep.

She rose from bed and made her way to the window. Brushing aside the curtains, she rested her elbows on the sill and leaned out into the night—black, still, enormous.

That’s when she heard it. Her name, whispered by a familiar voice.

Henry waited beneath her window, face upturned, his one eye translucent in the darkness. Her heart clenched. He was so handsome.

He was here.

“Can’t sleep?” he whispered.

She shook her head.

He hesitated, but only for a moment.

“I’ve got a few bottles of decent wine back at my brother’s,” he offered. “Let me keep you company tonight, Caroline. I know you’re afraid.”

A warm rush of tears thickened at the back of her throat. She
was
afraid, she was exhausted, and she wanted nothing more than to spend the night with Henry.

It was a stupid choice. A bad choice.

But she made it anyway. She didn’t want to be alone tonight.

*   *   *

N
ot two moments into their ride back to Henry’s, a solid sheet of rain descended upon them, pummeling their heads and shoulders, splashing the ground.

Henry rode like the devil, urging his horse through the streets.

When at last they arrived, Henry lifted her from his horse and together they made a dash for the house, slipping in muddy puddles before they fell into the kitchen, the door closing softly behind them.

A fire crackled merrily in the hearth, lanterns lit the space, thunder rumbled outside.

Henry gave his shirtsleeves a good shake.

Caroline pushed back her cloak. Praise heaven her dress was spared most of the onslaught; so were Henry’s shirt and breeches, which unfortunately did not cling to his person as they had that day at the Botanic Gardens.

Her gaze trailed up from his waist and chest to his face. He was looking at her.

“Henry,” she said. “What are we going to do? If the diamond’s gone—”

“I don’t know.” He ran a hand through his wet hair. “But in the meantime I should like to keep you safe. With me. After what happened with Violet . . .”

A pause.

“Stay,” he said. “For a drink. For anything you want. Stay.”

“I came the first time you asked, didn’t I?”

Was it just her imagination, or was he leaning closer? The space between their bodies was alive, suddenly, twisting with potent possibility. Despite the chill of the rain, Caroline felt warm. Watching a stray drop wind its way down the slope of Henry’s neck, she felt warmer.

He overwhelmed her, surrounded her. She couldn’t have tucked tail and run if she’d wanted. He was keeping her here.

Like she would ever want to leave.

“Your cloak,” he said. She moved to untie the knot at her throat. Henry brushed her hands aside. She looked away when his fingers brushed the skin of her throat. The place between her legs pulsed dully.

She tried not to think about that first night, the night of
Hope’s ball. The wild kiss she and Henry had shared in the dim coolness of that chamber. Even now her lips burned.

Upstairs, the door to his room was open. Henry moved through it easily, tossing aside a pair of breeches hung about the back of a chair as he passed.

“Sorry about the mess,” he said. “Moon’s housekeeping skills have yet to improve.”

“But the candles are lit—he’s not all bad. No luck finding a valet?”

“No time,” he said, and toed a stack of rumpled papers underneath the bed. “Figuring out a way to coax the French Blue from your brother’s grasp—without pulling out his fingernails, of course—has proven a time-consuming task. A task at which I have sadly failed.”

The window was open, and the soft patter of rain floated into the room. Henry pushed the window closed; the air was cooling.

“Here,” he said, and gathered a fistful of newspapers off one of the chairs drawn up before the fireplace. “Sit.”

She sat. Henry went to work on the near-extinguished fire, tossing the papers on top of a fresh wedge of firewood. The flames flickered to life, slowly at first, until a blistering fire burned brightly at Caroline’s feet, lighting the room.

Outside the window, thunder rumbled; rain continued its assault on the pane. It made for the perfect cozy night in.

Except Caroline felt anything but cozy. Just being in this room—the smells, the bed that loomed over her shoulder—made her feel unsettled, and intensely aware, awake. She felt drawn tight, like the string of a bow just before the arrow is released. Perhaps she should have just gone to bed, as Nicks in no uncertain terms had told her.

She tried taking a deep breath, but only managed to inhale the scent of Henry’s soap. Citrus, a hint of masculine smoke. Again that tug between her legs.

“Wine?” Henry asked. “I think we both need a nip after this evening’s events. Besides, I’ve taken the liberty of replenishing my brother’s stores with a more palatable selection.”

She looked over her shoulder at Henry, who stood at the bureau with a corkscrew in one hand and a gleaming dark
bottle in the other. The corkscrew appeared laughably tiny in Henry’s square-edged fingers.

“Time to replenish the stores,” she said with a smile, “but none for a valet?”

“A man must keep his priorities in order.”

“Wine first,” she said, “work second, clothes third?”

“Something like that.”

He pulled the cork out of the bottle with a deft snap of his wrist. He poured the inky wine into a pair of elegant, etched-glass cups—they weren’t proper wine coupes, but they were better than the teacups he’d proffered last time—and held one out to Caroline.

“Cheers to Violet’s rescue,” he said, offering his own cup as he settled into the chair across from hers.

She touched her glass to his. “Cheers.”

They drank in silence. Caroline gulped at her wine; it was delicious, tart on her lips, jammy on her tongue. At once she felt the familiar stirring in her blood, the simultaneous release.

She kept drinking.

“That’s good,” she said, rolling her lips between her teeth. “Very good, Henry, thank you.”

The grin he gave her made the backs of her knees tingle. “Better, now that you’re finally calling me Henry.” He looked down at his glass, glinting pleasantly in the light of the fire.

She kept drinking. It helped ease her worry, her fear that they’d lost everything by losing the diamond.

There was nothing more to be done tonight. Nothing to do except wait.

“Shall we play a game, then?” she asked. “Cards, perhaps?”

“Caroline,” he said. His voice was low, a warning. “You’re changing the subject. Quite clumsily, might I add.”

She met his gaze. It was getting dark in the room; the molten light of the fire was reflected in his pale iris, turning it a shade darker than amber.

“Please,” she replied. “I don’t want to talk—not about that, anyway. Let’s play.”

“Fine.” Henry threw back the rest of his wine and set the glass on the floor beside his boots. Rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, he leaned forward, his eye flashing. “A game of truth.”

“Truth?” Caroline chased the droplets of wine that were left in her cup. “But you never tell the truth.”

“You may choose to tell the truth,” he said, “or you may choose to drink.”

Caroline straightened. She liked the sound of that. “Then you’re going to get very drunk.”

“That is the hope,” he replied, rising.

He brought the bottle over from the bureau and refilled their glasses.

Twenty-eight

T
hey were on their third bottle of wine. The rain had stopped; the view outside the window was so dark Caroline could see naught but her reflection in the pane.

What had begun as a test of truth had, in true Henry Lake fashion, devolved into a drinking game.

Who is your favorite brother, Robert or Peter?

Peter, he’d said, and gulped at his wine.

Do you sometimes fantasize about killing your brother? he’d asked.

I know
you
do, she’d said, and gulped at hers.

It went on like this for an hour, and then another, the two of them giggling over their empty cups as they refilled them again, and again, and again.

Henry was leaning forward in his chair, allowing the last of the wine to drip from the bottle into Caroline’s cup. He set the bottle down at his feet, and looked up to meet Caroline’s gaze. His lips were stained red from the wine; his cheeks were rosy pink from the fire; and his hair, dry now, coursed over his shoulders, the pieces at the front tucked behind his ears. His eye patch shone dully in the low light of the fire.

She resisted the impulse to reach out and touch it. It made
her heart clench, to take in all his scarred handsomeness. She longed to touch him. To feel his lips on her skin, and return the favor. Her body ached for it.

The wine had whipped her blood into a frenzy. Her entire being was alive with desire.

Still she made no move. She wasn’t
so
foxed as to think it a wise idea.

“Are you all right?” Henry asked, eying her.

“Yes,” she said, too quickly. “Why?”

“You look flushed. Shall I open the window?”

Caroline shook her head. “No, thank you. It’s just—”

He leaned closer.

She did not pull back.

“Just what?” he murmured.

Caroline looked at him. The words came before she could stop them. “Are you happy?”

She cringed, inwardly, at the awkwardness of her question. Whence had come
that
particular, and particularly intimate, query? And why did it matter to her whether Henry was happy or not?

“Happy?” He grinned. “I’m English. And a ginger. Of course I’m not happy.”

“I’m serious,” she said. “Are you content, doing . . . whatever it is that you do? Has it made you happy?”

The gleam in Henry’s eye hardened. He scoffed, looking down at his empty cup. “Tell me, Caroline, what do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

He met her gaze through the pale fringe of his lashes. “You know me better than that.”

She looked down at her hands.

He drew a breath. The hand cupped about the ball of his knee clenched, fingers curling into the fabric of his breeches.

“No,” he said quietly. Even as he said the word, she was sorry for asking the question. Henry was right. She’d known the answer. Perhaps she just wanted to hear him say it. “I’m not.”

After a beat he asked, “And Osbourne. Did he make you happy?”

Her eyes flashed to meet his. “George was a good man. An honorable husband.”

“Did he make you happy?”

“We were content. I wanted for nothing. I still want for nothing. He was good to me.”

Heated silence settled between Caroline and Henry. She felt her body arching into the pull of his sharp-edged curiosity. Her stays were tight against her labored breathing; she longed to be free of them.

“Did he make you come?” Henry said suddenly, the softness of his confession replaced by a savage calm.

Caroline blinked. Her skin prickled with a flush of uncomfortable desire.

She sipped nervously at her wine.

“He didn’t?” Henry’s eye went wide. “For ten whole years, he didn’t?”

“Henry, please—”

“You’ve never—?”

“I have.” Her eyes burned.

Henry scoffed. “Alone? Really, Caroline, that hardly counts.” He set down his cup. “I’ve never made you come. And I intend to remedy that sad fact right now. Finish your wine.”

“Henry! I can’t just—”

“Finish your wine.”
His voice, his face—everything about him was dark, shimmering with intent.

Caroline looked at him for a long moment. She swallowed what was left in her cup. Henry took it from her and set it beside his on the floor.

He met her eyes. “I’m sorry it’s taken so long,” he said, sliding off the chair onto his knees before her, “but I mean to make up for lost time.”

Even though Henry was kneeling, he still managed to loom over her. She inhaled, sharply, as he pressed his belly to her knees and took her face in his hands and pulled her to him.

He pressed his lips to her jaw, to her chin, to her ear. Her head fell back, eyes fluttering shut at the white-hot desire that streaked through her. Days, weeks, decades of thwarted longing were unleashed, at last, and she felt she might collapse beneath the delicious weight of her relief.

His mouth moved to take hers. She saw stars as his lips pulled and teased at her own, his thumb brushing her eyelashes as he worked to open her to him. The kiss was slow and measured and lovely; he took his time seducing her. He kissed
her carefully, as he always did, though tonight she sensed a humming tension in his touch, as if he was struggling to hold back, struggling not to press for more.

He bit her bottom lip. Shocked, delighted, she drew a breath; Henry dove into her mouth, his tongue stroking, demanding, and she rose to meet him, her hands sliding up his chest, cupping his neck.

He took; she gave. She wanted him to take more.

The wine—or maybe it was his hands, the velvet glide of his mouth—ignited her every sense, and behind her closed lids she lost herself in her desire. The feel of his breath on her skin; his scent, now musky with lust; the calloused pads of his fingers, and the delicious weight of his body pressed against hers; the sound of her heart in her ears—she lost herself in all these things. She’d waited so long to get lost like this.