All Through the Night (29 page)

Strand and he had traveled at breakneck speed to Vedder’s mansion. At first the butler had refused them entry, stating that his master was not receiving, but after a short and violent conversation he’d divulged that Vedder had decamped at first light.

The frightened—and slightly bruised—man had sworn he’d never seen his master so frantic to be gone or so adamant that his departure be secret.

Jack’s relief at discovering Vedder wasn’t stalking Anne was short-lived. He and Strand divided their search; Strand had gone looking among the ton and Jack had gone to the Norths’ town house. Not only was she not there, neither were the Norths. They’d left for a house party late in the afternoon and no, Anne had most definitely not been with them.

He’d returned to his address and scoured the streets, asking the vendors and shopkeepers, the street sweepers and the watchman, if they’d seen a slight youngster in a torn coat and hat.

None had. But then their eyes were earthbound, and she, she flew.

Each corner he took was preceded by a moment of dread as he wondered if he would find Anne, broken like an arrow-struck dove, lying crumpled on the wet stone. Each corner he took brought relief and a renewal of his determination to find her. But hour after hour of fruitless searching ground him down with the certainty that she’d fled from him.

His head throbbed and his vision grew bleary and still he kept looking. Looking until he had to admit that Griffin had been right. He’d no direction to follow, no leads to trace. And so he’d come back here.

He mounted the steps, failure and fear his unfamiliar companions, and let himself in. Spawling shuffled forward and took his coat.

“Thank you. Where’s Griffin and Lord Strand?” he asked wearily, expecting no good news. Without vanity he knew himself to be the best tracker and most intuitive hunter in England. If he could not find her, no one could.

“Both come and gone out again twice now, sir. There’s a fire in the study. I’ll have Cook make you something to eat,” she said, bobbing a curtsey and hurrying away.

He walked into the study. A blaze crackled merrily in the hearth mocking his anguish. He stared down into its flames. Light and shadow licked his face.

Dear God, let her be safe.
The prayer rose from the center of his soul, where his heart had always remained constant to itself.
Please God. Please.

He heard the front door open. Griffin or Strand, he thought incuriously. A soft footfall came down the hall and paused.

“Jack.”

He swung around. Anne stood in the open door, staring at him with huge, fervent eyes and—blessed Lord. A tear. “Jack, you’re all right?” she whispered.

“Yes.” His voice was hoarser than usual.
Now I am.

She broke and pitched herself into his arms. He clamped her to him with a sense of relief so intense he would have fallen if he hadn’t been holding her.

“Oh, dear God,” she said with an odd hitch in her voice, her eyes traveling greedily over his face. “I was so worried. I thought you—Oh!” She rained little kisses over his cheeks and eyes and mouth. He closed his eyes.

He’d never experienced anything like it in his life, the pure joy she gave him. He lifted her high in his arms, uncertain whether he could ever let her go when suddenly she began to wiggle.

“Wait!” she said breathlessly. “I forgot for a minute. Wait!” She fought her hand into her pocket and pulled a thick, folded sheet of paper free. A broken red wax seal was still on it.

“Look what I’ve found,” she said.

Slowly Jack let Anne slide down his body, but he wouldn’t let her go too far. He looked at the sheet of paper in her hand and then at her. “Is that what I think it is?”

She nodded eagerly.

“Where did you get it?”

“In Jamison’s house. In his study.”

His expression turned incredulous.

“He came here while you were ...” The desolation that had wrapped around her when she’d seen Jack so still once more closed her throat. She tried again. “I thought you might not live.”

Something of her anguish must have been reflected in her eyes for he stroked her cheeks with the back of his fingers.

“I’m sorry.” He was always apologizing for his pain. “Tell me about Jamison.”

And so she told him about how Jamison had come and what he had said and as she related her story, and therefore necessarily his, Jack studied her face intently, as if to penetrate her heart. Which, she thought bemusedly, he’d already done.

“Jamison told me Vedder was in possession of the letter,” Anne finished. “He offered me a deal if I would steal it for him. I agreed. As soon as he left I nabbed some of the kitchen boy’s clothes and climbed up the drainpipe leading to the roof.”

Her words pricked a flash of amusement from him. “And . . . ?”

“I knew where Vedder lived and I headed for his house. But as I went something nagged at me.”

A few strands of unruly hair fell across her brow. Jack brushed it from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “Yes?” he prompted.

“I was actually on Vedder’s roof before I realized what it was,” she said. “When Jamison sent me to Vedder’s to steal the letter, I’d protested that I wouldn’t be able to find it among all the correspondence bound to be in his study. Jamison grew impatient and described for me a single folded vellum sheet with a wax seal. But you’d told me that
no one had ever seen the letter!”

“Wise, wonderfully clever little thief.”

“So I knew Jamison had seen it and assumed that having seen it, he would never let it out of his possession. And”—her voice dropped modestly—“since he expected me to be robbing Lord Vedder, he wouldn’t be expecting me to rob him. So I did.”

Admiration filled Jack’s smile. “Where were you when I needed someone at Versailles?” he asked, shaking his head—and then the smile died. A grave expression replaced it.

“What?” she asked. “What is wrong?”

He looked down at her. “You might have been killed. You were
supposed
to have been killed. That’s why Jamison sent you there. I suspect Vedder was to have done it. Happily, while a great ass, Vedder is not a murderer. Which would surprise Jamison,” Jack said with a touch of bitter humor. “He has never understood people’s odd reticence about killing their fellow man.”

“But why would he want me dead if he knew I didn’t have it and never did have it?” she asked in confusion.

He placed his hands on her shoulders. “Because he’s mad, Anne,” he said seriously. “I think he killed Atwood to keep his possession of that letter secret. You were the only one who knew that the letter wasn’t in the jewelry chest you stole. Only you knew Jamison was lying and, too, Jamison wanted the letter to be thought irrecoverable. That’s why as soon as I came close to catching you, Jamison began pressuring me to kill you. He didn’t want anyone questioning you.”

She stared up into his eyes. Killer’s eyes, she originally thought them. Yet she could not find it in her to be afraid.

Gently Jack tipped her chin up with his finger. “I wasn’t going to, Anne. I was never going to kill you. I’m not an assassin, no matter what he told you.” He gazed deeply into her eyes, his expression growing more and more intent.

“What deal did Jamison offer you, Anne?”

She tried to look away, but he was having none of it. He held her chin still. “Anne?”

“Jamison promised that if I stole the letter, he would release his hold on you,” she said gruffly.

“And you believed him?” Amazement lifted Jack’s brows. “But then,” he went on, “you do not know him as I do. He will never willingly relinquish the hold he assumes he has on me.”

“He has to,” she said, frightened. They were so close. Something wondrous and rare and fine seemed just within grasp. She wouldn’t let Jamison destroy it.

“No, he doesn’t.” Jack shook his head. “He doesn’t have to release or hold me. He doesn’t
have
me. I’m not his creature, Anne. I repaid any debt I owed him long ago. But I realized it and he never did. I can walk away at any time.”

“Is that true?” she whispered, wanting desperately to believe him.

“Yes,” he said somberly. “I’m so sorry you put yourself in danger because of Jamison’s delusions. But, God help me, to know that you—” He stopped. Slowly he withdrew his hands from her face, forcing them to his sides.

She cared for him. She risked her life to save him. Once he’d thought he wanted to act as her knight in shining armor. He’d never expected her to take that part, to dare the dragon, in the guise of Jamison, on his behalf.

The world seemed suddenly unfamiliar and alien and far too fragile and far too precious. He’d never wanted to live quite so much as he wanted to at that moment.

Because he wanted every moment, every second heaven would allow him in order to spend them with her.

He looked into her face, so dear and so perplexed. She didn’t even know what she’d given him. She might not even know what she’d admitted.

He needed to be careful, to be patient.

“All for this letter,” he said, hoping to distract himself from the desire to haul her into his arms. He must not frighten her. “I think we deserve to see what’s in it, don’t you?”

“Yes.” She moved to the table that acted as his desk. “It’s too dark in here.”

He picked up the lantern on the sideboard and lifted it high, spreading a circle of illumination over the table-top. Carefully she unfolded the letter, spreading open the luxurious ivory vellum.

The salutation and few dark lines were penned in an elegant, firm hand. Atwood, Jack suspected, had acted as His Majesty’s scribe. But the thin, scrawled initial on the bottom was uniquely and familiarly the king’s own, even if it was just the one initial.

Together they read the few written lines. Anne looked up first.

“Can this be what Lord Atwood died for? What Jamison would have killed me for to keep secret?” she asked in a shocked and confused voice. But then, Anne knew nothing of secret agencies and political intrigue, the power of innuendo and insinuation. “My God. Whatever shall we do with it?”

“We will see that it’s delivered.”

Griffin crept in once, just after midnight, bringing a pitcher of water and a towel. He left silently, perhaps understanding that his misplaced loyalty had very nearly cost Jack the one thing in his life he’d ever truly valued.

Wearily Jack rubbed the back of his neck and rose from his chair. His eyes ached and his mouth was cottony and he smelled rank, he thought with a sniff.

He shed his shirt and tossed it to a chair before filling the basin and dipping his hands into the cool water. Quietly he sluiced his face and upper body with water, scrubbed away dried flakes of blood and dirt, and toweled himself off. His skin pebbled with gooseflesh in the cold, dark room.

He walked stiffly to the window and pulled open the heavy drapes. Sunlight exploded into the small room like visual poetry. It poured through the glass panes, drenching everything in golden light, sweeping away the shadows and brushing each object it touched with color and warmth. The air itself sparkled and danced as tiny dust motes careened crazily in the sun shafts.

Jack lifted his face, relishing the soft radiance cloaking his skin and heating his chilled flesh. He sighed with deep, ineffable pleasure and inhaled deeply. The toasted air smelled clean. He’d spent too much of his life in darkness and in shadows. He craved the light.

He was standing thus, luxuriating in the soporific warmth, when she touched him. His eyelids parted slowly, as if he were afraid her touch was a dream and opening his eyes would dispel it. He remained motionless as her fingertips explored the span of his shoulders, followed the contour of a muscle, and dropped to describe the shallow valley of his spine.

“Anne.” He turned and when he saw her, he couldn’t speak. She took his breath away.

He had, he realized with a sense of wonder, never seen her in full daylight. Always their encounters had occurred during the fringes of the night: in twilight, just before dawn, or in the darkest hour of midnight. But now she stood in sunlight and she was beautiful.

Her hair was not black but sable with rich, plummy strands gleaming against the foil of the white shirt she still wore. Her face, far from being milky white, was suffused with the most delicate flush of pink, like the heart of a seashell. Only her eyes remained the same in darkness or in light, being a deep, rich indigo.

“Anne,” he finally managed to repeat.

“Yes?” Her voice sounded far off, quizzical.

“Touch me, Anne.” He hadn’t meant to say that but it must have been the right thing because her luscious, tender mouth, a mouth he’d always thought misplaced in that stern and handsome face, broke into a brilliant smile.

“Yes.” She lifted both hands and slowly skimmed her palms down over his chest. He sighed with pleasure. She stroked him in one long, luxurious sweep, coming to rest low on his belly, the heels of her hands on the waistband of his trousers.

“Jack?” She sounded tentative, a bit breathless.

“Yes.”

“Make love to me.” She said the words with delicious enjoyment, rolling them across her tongue with sybaritic pleasure. “
Make love to me.”

“Yes.” His arms enfolded her, pulling her into his embrace, his mouth covering hers. His head spun with the richness of her response, the sweet abandon with which she opened her lips. He kissed her as if he would siphon her soul from between her lips.

He did not ask why she wanted this. He did not want to know why. She might leave him tomorrow or within an hour of seeing their plan come to fruition. She might be slaking the undeniable desire she felt for him, hoping to purge it so she
could
leave him. She might try to disclaim her feelings for him. Whatever her reason, he didn’t want to know it.

It might destroy him.

He lifted his head and cupped her delicately shaped skull in his hand, holding it to his chest. She whispered little kisses along his collarbone and rubbed her satiny cheek against his throat. Her hair, warmed with the sun’s blandishments, slipped beneath his chin and tangled in his incipient beard.

She tugged at his neck and he looked down. Her face was tilting up toward his, wanting more kisses. He wanted more, too.

Her mouth was carnal bribery. She chewed delicately on his lower lip, touched the tip of her tongue into the corner of his mouth, and when he groaned in response, she lapped into the hot interior. It was all he could do to stand. His whole body quaked with his efforts at self-control. But he’d never known much self-control where she was concerned and he didn’t know much now.

He looped his arm around her waist and pulled her hips against his. She arched back, accentuating the pressure. He bit down in pain-spiked pleasure as his member went rock hard. Instinctively she rubbed her hips across his erection.

He caught her upper arms, staring into her eyes. “I want you,” he said. “I want to be inside you. I want to be so deeply inside you I can feel your pulse, feel every breath you take.”

She answered without words, twisting her arms free and slowly undoing each of the fastenings holding her shirt together. When she’d finished, she looked up shyly. The open shirtfront revealed the deep cleft between her breasts but her nipples were still covered.

He wanted her naked. He flipped back the edges of the shirt, exposing her small round breasts. He rubbed his thumb over one nipple. It was velvety, the skin there a little thicker, a little tougher, made to be suckled.

She caught the hand on her breast and held it still, staring up at him, her expression suddenly uncomfortable.

Did she want him to stop? he wondered. He wouldn’t do anything she didn’t want ... He drew his hand away and pulled her to him. She’d liked kisses. Well, he would kiss her until they both fainted for lack of breath.

She responded eagerly. Her tongue tangled with his in hot intimacy, fierce and demanding. But something was still not right. There was a subtle desperation in her response, her kisses felt like pleas. He lifted his head.

“What do you want?” he asked, staring into her pretty, unfathomable blue eyes. “How can I please you?”

She blushed. Damned if she didn’t blush, a furious rose color that began on the top of her breast and spread with riveting swiftness to her throat and cheeks.

She glanced away, obviously distressed. Tenderness and fierce protectiveness washed through him.

“Your mouth,” she mumbled. She raised a hand and her fingers pattered lightly over his lips. “You kissed me.”

“Yes,” he breathed.

Her gaze was still averted from his, but her hand had drifted down between them. Delicately it brushed across her nipple. “Here.”

Lord.
He heard a sound of arousal rise from deep in his throat.

“Oh, Jack,” she muttered miserably, “it was so much easier as the thief. When I had a mask. She could be bold. She took what she ... I could—”

Jesus. Along with the white-hot desire her words set afire, a vague, unsettling suspicion rose.

“Anne,” he said quietly, studying her intently, “didn’t Matthew ever ask what pleased you?”

She shook her head. He frowned. He knew the upper classes adhered to odd and seemingly masochistic rituals where matrimonial sex was concerned, but to what extent had Matthew carried it?

“Did he”—Jack forced the words to come calmly— “did he make demands on you that you were uncomfortable with?”

“No.”

He contained his relief.

“Did you ever tell him what you liked, what pleased you?” He hesitated. “Did he try to please you?”

“God, yes.” He could barely hear her. “But—”

He didn’t understand. “But what, Anne?” He smoothed the rippling hair from her temple. “What?”

“We didn’t do what you and I ... Sometimes he couldn’t. ...” She let each hint die miserably. She tried again. “He was so gentle and ... I was afraid that I would offend ... I didn’t know what he ... And the one time I tried to please him, he was horrified.” She struggled on. “That wasn’t what he wanted from me. That wasn’t love. It was lust, he said. So I didn’t do anything again.” Her eyes pleaded with him to understand.

He did. He understood too well. No wonder she’d responded so hungrily to his touch. She’d been starved of physical love. Though experienced in the sexual act, she’d never celebrated the pure sensual joy of it.

“I’m not a saint, Anne,” he said. “I’d devour you if I could. I’d like to feast on your body and I’d have you feast on mine. I want to hear you panting in my ear and calling my name. I want you to use my body for your pleasure because that will make my pleasure greater. I’ll take whatever you’ll allow, Anne, and then I’ll probably take more. That’s what I want, Anne. Now what do you want?”

She did not hesitate. “You.”

He scooped her and carried her to the couch. “Sometime,” he said tightly, “we will have to make love in a bed.”

The couch’s back was to the window; the light was too far away. He kicked the end, spinning it around on the hardwood floor, and then shoved it out into the light.

“I want to see you, to feel you, all of you on all of me,” he said roughly. He deposited her in the center of the thick, lumpy cushions and, as she watched, undid his trousers. He lifted his foot and dragged his boot off and repeated the procedure with the other. Then he stripped himself of his trousers and finally came round before her.

The muscles beneath the fine-grained skin flowed and tensed with fluent suppleness. His shoulders were broad and his hips were narrow. He was altogether lovely and powerful and masculine.
He is as fine as a blooded stallion,
Anne thought.
Straight as a lance and tempered like steel.

His body was scarred, he knew. There were bones that had been broken and never knit properly. His skin was too leathery and he wasn’t a young man any longer. But he wanted her. He loved her. He lifted his hands, palms out. “Such as I am, I’m yours.”

“I want you to make love to me,” she said. That is what she wanted. That thing they’d done before, that merging of physical desire and heart’s pleasure. “Let me make love to you.”

He bracketed her face in both his hands, tilted her chin up with his thumbs, and gave her another of those long, heated kisses. She clasped his shoulders and pulled him until he toppled beside her, breaking their kiss.

Slowly he undressed her, peeling the shirt from her shoulders and pushing the baggy breeches from her hips. His hands were everywhere: gliding, skimming, and burnishing. He touched her in a thousand places and with a thousand degrees of sensuality. And when his hands were done, his mouth took over.

He grazed over every inch of exposed flesh, whispering across her belly, polishing the pulse in her inner thigh with his lips, and nibbling on the taut skin beneath her breast. When he finally took her nipple into his mouth and suckled, her body jerked, arching up from the couch.

“Yes,” he whispered as in answer to some request she’d made.

He rolled over, carrying her above him, and set her thighs on either side of his dense, muscled body, spreading her wide. His eyes held hers as he reached between them and positioned the head of his member at her feminine opening. “Take me inside of you. Whatever you want of me,” he commanded in a strained voice.

His words released within her a sense of unimaginable potency. She sank onto his shaft, hissing a little as she adjusted to his breadth and size.

“I want you,” she said. She wiggled, trying to take more of him. His hands clamped on her hips. He trembled beneath her, filling her, thick and strong and hers.

“There’s more,” he said. “Much more.” He began to move, lifting his hips and letting them fall, each little movement sliding her teasingly along his shaft.

“More,” she demanded, surprising herself. He smiled with lazy triumph and complied. His thrusts grew stronger, deeper, harder. She rode the rhythm, bracing her palms against his flat, rippling belly. The tension built inside her. The feeling of being near completion, of incredible pleasure just out of her reach, became almost unbearable.

“God, I can’t . . .”he whispered.

She looked down at him. Sweat cloaked his body. His eyes were closed. His expression was strained, fierce and determined.

“More,” she said.

Jack laughed and his laugh turned into a groan. She looked so adorably insistent, impaled on his cock, her face tensing with each of his thrusts. But she was driving him beyond madness.

So, she wanted more, did she? He rolled over again, capturing her body beneath his. Lacing his fingers with hers, he stretched her arms high over her head and held them there. She panted a little. Her pupils were like onyx stars.

“You want more?” he asked, his voice ragged.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he echoed, and thrust. Hard.

She gave a little gasp. He thrust again. Her gasp turned into a low sound of feline satisfaction.

“Please. I need it,” she muttered, her hips meeting his thrust, her body straining. “Now. Please. It’s too much.”

“No.”

He kept it up a long time, moving over her, pumping in and out of her body, and each time he felt her about to come, he backed off until the moment passed. And then he would start all over again.