A Dangerous Man (26 page)

All day Hart had avoided a single moment alone with her, stymieing her intention of finding out what he’d discovered about Will. Now he lounged against the wall, his arms folded across his chest, his light eyes tracking her slightest movement.

She lifted a buttery canapé from her plate, raising it to her mouth only to see his lids lower and his gaze grow hotly vulpine as he stared at her lips. She dropped the blameless crust as though it scalded her. A lazy smile turned the corners of his wide, sensual mouth.

Heat rose in her cheeks in answer to his leisurely perusal. It wouldn’t do. He could not ignore her one moment and publicly ogle her the next. Already she thought she detected the murmur of speculation among the others present.

A dark thought arose. Perhaps, that was his plan—to provoke so much comment that Lady Acton would ask her to leave. He would be rid of her then, rid of her demands that he find her brother, and rid of her interference with his sister’s courtship. Perhaps, the dark musing uncoiled further, he hadn’t been going to London to look for Will at all. Perhaps he’d been meeting Lady Carr or some other poor besotted woman.

The flush of sexual awareness became the heat of anger. She
would
have her conversation with him, she
would
learn what he’d found out, and she
would
find Will. Then she would leave this place, these people, and him. But until she had, she would stay here, an absolute picture of decorum.

Shortly after the buffet ended, Hart disappeared. As soon as decently possible, she made her own regrets, intent on following him. She knew where he was going. Back to London.

She raced to her room and donned her boy’s clothes, sneaking down through the servants’ entrance and running out to the stables.

Too late. The stable lad smirked at her, cheekily telling her she’d missed Perth by a good hour.

Frustrated, she sneaked back and pulled a chair to the window overlooking the front gate and settled in to wait. When Hart returned, she would confront him. But hour chased hour, and the fire in the hearth died and her eyes grew heavy.

She awoke to a room as cold as it was dark. A few embers glowed fitfully in the fireplace and ice frosted the windows. She bolted upright.

He must have returned by now. Grimly, she wrapped herself in a blanket and crept down the hushed hallway toward his room. She paused outside his door, holding her breath, listening for any sound.

He was awake. She could hear his footsteps crossing and recrossing the floor. She turned the handle and entered. It was black except for the dull illumination of the embers gleaming sullenly in the hearth.

She looked around, had an impression of
movement beyond the fire’s reach, of a shadow prowling the darkness. She saw him then.

He was pacing along the edge of the light on the far side of the room, his strides quick and mechanical, as a caged panther prowls its cage, automatic and sightless, reaching the far wall and pivoting, pacing back.

He was shirtless, bare chested, seemingly impervious to the deep, penetrating coldness of the room. She caught her breath. He heard. He dropped into a crouch, spinning around, his right hand flagging his hip. She stared at him, aghast. His eyes were glowing in the half-light, feral and ferocious. She dropped the blanket, frightened by the lack of recognition in his eyes.

Slowly, he straightened. His gaze, hot and passionate, riveted on her face, consuming her, hunger and anguish inexorably entwined. For one unguarded moment he stood utterly vulnerable, exposed. He was haggard and exhausted and hunted. Shadows scored his lean cheeks, masked his eyes, and she had to go to him.

She took a step forward and he backed away, turning from her, quivering with some nameless emotion. She stepped closer, uncertain of what to do, what to say. She had never seen such pain. Helplessly, she looked around for some clue as to its source.

His few pieces of luggage still sat open on the floor near the bed, their contents still within. He’d not even bothered to unpack. His shirt lay on the smooth counterpane, his boots near the foot of the
bed and on the floor against the far wall—she stared. Blankets were crumpled there. The single pillow still held the imprint of his head.

It suddenly came to her. The Earl of Perth slept on the floor.

Chapter 22

“W
hat happened to you?” she breathed.

He turned and she shuffled back from the violence she saw in his haunted gaze. He stopped, disoriented, and peered at her, as though trying to place her. “Mercy?”

“Yes. It’s me, Hart.”

“God.” He laughed and her heart pitched at the bitter sound. He lifted his hand, groping for the mantel and, once finding it, leaning heavily forward. She stared at his naked back licked by the firelight, so broad and masculine and oddly vulnerable.

“Go away.” His voice was muffled, strained. He made no move to face her.

She couldn’t. Nothing could have made her leave him, could make her abandon him to whatever tormented him.

“Hart, why are those blankets on the floor?”
There were some terrible things associated with those bolts of wool tangled in the shadows.

“Go away!”

“No,” she said, apprehension making her voice quiver. His dangerousness—so vaunted, so valuable, so prized by her father, by everyone who’d used him—had never been more apparent. Some horrible inner tension coiled his body into an unnatural rigidity. His torso was cloaked in a sheath of glistening moisture and dark ribbons of sweat-drenched hair clung to the nape of his neck.

“No.” Her voice gained strength. “Not until you talk to me.” She stepped forward and touched his shoulder. He was hot, on fire.

He flinched away. No. He shuddered—as though her touch were exquisitely painful. But still, he would not turn to face her. He flung his head back, turned it up to the black vaulted ceiling above, his eyes clenched against the sight of her.

“Hart,” she pleaded. “Please.”

She tugged at his arm, trying to turn him, to force him to see her, to talk to her.

“My God. Tell me.
Why do you sleep on the floor?”

He swung on her so quickly that she stumbled back. He snatched hold of her, keeping her from falling, and glared, furious she was pushing him, so angry he propelled her back against the wall. She stumbled and he grinned, feral and bitter.

“You want to know?”

God, how had she ever thought this man unemotional? His skin was dark with suffused
blood, flushed a hot bronze in the molten light. Golden glints in the stubble of his beard sharpened the angle of his jaw and his eyes were starkly blazing.

“Must you know?” There was an awful victory, an eagerness, in the demand.

“Yes.”

“I have slept there or on a floor like it for eight years.” The words, once started, tumbled out, self-violence rife in the low, choked monologue. “I am
afraid
to sleep in a bed.” He took one deep breath and exhaled, his gaze climbing over her, touching her throat, her hair, her mouth … anything but her eyes. “Amusing, isn’t it? The gunslinger, your daddy’s hired killer, the Earl of Perth, cowers in the shadows each night?”

“My Lord.”

“My Lord, indeed.” Another laugh, brief and corrupt. “No act goes unpaid, Mercy. Retribution comes in myriad guises. Sometimes no guise at all. That may be the worst.”

“But why do you say ‘coward’?”

“Not enough yet? You need everything? All right. I can only sleep with my back against a wall. I’ve been like this”—he lifted his hands in a despondent gesture—“ever since Africa.”

“Africa?”

“Yes, Africa! Those holes in the desert. They were the only safe place,” he said, as though she were being deliberately obtuse.

“But this is England—” she began in stunned confusion.

“I know! Damn you, do you think I haven’t tried to sleep in there?” He pointed at the four-poster, raised like an altar amid luxuriant tapestries. “And in any other bed …”

His voice faded. He could no longer see clearly. The image of his childhood bed was superimposed over this one, and then, suddenly, he saw a lice-ridden blanket, bleached by the African sun. The past twined dizzyingly with the present and he moaned.

He gripped Mercy’s arms more tightly. She was solid and real and supple in his grip and her fragility was a lie. He’d never felt anything more potently alive, more vital, stronger, than she. She was a lifeline tying him to the present and, God, he needed her.

God, don’t let her leave. Not her
.

“I couldn’t. I can’t,” he choked out, hating himself for this recitation but discovering he’d do anything to keep her here, letting him touch her. “If I lie on that bed I can feel a bullet sever my spine, or explode my skull. In the pits, on the ground, they can’t shoot you. Even in your dreams.”

She trembled, her expression pitying and understanding. Impossible. She couldn’t understand. She wouldn’t look like that if she did.

“Don’t you understand? I’m a
coward.”

“Why do you punish yourself like this?” she cried.

“I don’t. God has already seen to that. I have to live with my weakness. Sometimes months will
pass and I think I’ve won. I think maybe I’ve been strong enough to beat this miserable cowardice. But then it happens again.

“I’ve tried, Mercy.” He panted. “God, I’ve tried to tell myself it’s nothing more than a nightmare, a child’s terror of the dark. It doesn’t help. I can’t stop the sensation, no matter what I tell myself. I’m too damn weak to master my own thoughts.”

“Weak?” she repeated in astonishment. “You’re the strongest man I know. I remember how you faced that man in the way station. You didn’t flinch. You were brave. Incredibly so.”

“Killing isn’t hard, Mercy. Dying is even easier. It’s living that offers a unique challenge.” His insouciance was ruined by the hoarse timbre of his voice.

“Why, Hart?” she asked quietly, intently. “What is the challenge?”

“I wake sometimes without knowing where I am.” He wasn’t speaking to her now; the words, held back for nearly a decade came out low, harsh, confused. “My heart pounds so hard, I think it will burst out of my chest. My own breath chokes me. I want to run, but I don’t know from what. I don’t even know what it is I’m afraid of. There’s no image. No face, no memory. Sometimes I think it’s just my soul, afraid of its own blackness.”

“No.” A tear slipped from beneath her lashes. He watched it follow the curve of her cheek, concentrated on its course, clung to it as an anchor
against the internal panic still clamoring for release.

“Yes,” he said tonelessly, staring. “Either that or … or I am nearer madness than sanity.”

“You’re not mad, Hart. You’ve been wounded. In here.” She touched her cool fingertips over his heart. “Who wouldn’t be? Who
couldn’t
be?” Her sorrow was overwhelming.

He wanted to believe as she believed. He could see it in her eyes. That belief nearly wrung a sob from him. He was undone by it.

She lifted her hand and brushed her fingertips against his cheek and all he could do was stare at her, trying desperately to read what was in her mind.

Her fingers drifted near his temple, hesitated and passed over his cheeks again, traced his jaw with gossamer delicacy. He watched intently as a flicker of surprise crept into her gaze; a hint of apprehension, but not fear. Not yet.

She shifted and he became aware of how close she was, how his body hindered her escape. She was supple curves, scented skin, and glossy hair, so utterly feminine and thus so utterly mysterious that he felt suddenly clumsy, too big, too heavy.

She moved and the jut of her hip brushed against the jointure of his thighs. He gasped at the chance contact, immediately becoming aroused. She looked at him, startled by his involuntary hiss of pleasure. Her hands fluttered past his mouth. He snapped his head around, capturing one tardy finger between his teeth, licking the salty tip. He
heard her sharp, indrawn breath, felt her shiver translate itself to her fingers. She tugged her hand back, shocked at this intimacy, and he released her finger. She stared at him, transfixed by whatever it was she read in his expression.