Beloved (10 page)

“Never,” she told him. “It will never be enough, not until our lives are over.”

“Mine is over.”

She grew still.

Abruptly, he withdrew from her. There was a flare, and the light within a lamp brightened.

Ella didn’t care that she was naked. He was beautiful. His dark hair fell forward as he adjusted the lamp. The line of his
long spine glistened and muscles rippled with the slightest movement. Her eyes went to the scar at his shoulder. White and
twisted, it traversed in a curve to the center of his back.

So much pain. Her beloved had suffered so much. Where the knots bunched, the point of a blade must have sunk again, and again.

He might have died!

“Saber. Such terrible wounds. So deep. Let me hold you.”

“Hold me?” He turned and caught her by the upper arms. “Hold me? Are you sure?”

“Saber!” Her heel caught the edge of the carpet and she overbalanced. All the room spun before her, the room and Saber’s face,
Saber’s poor, viciously scarred face.

H
e disgusted her.

Saber looked into her dark eyes, at the revulsion stamped there—and he knew that he had not suffered utter desolation until
this moment.

He bowed his head, allowing his hair to cover what terrified her so. Swiftly, he retrieved her clothes and set them on the
heavy, canopied bed at the left of the room.

“Saber?”

She still clung to the side of the chair where she’d all but collapsed at the sight of him.

“Can you dress in the dark, Ella? I would help you.”

“In the dark? Yes. Why—?”

“Because I knew you would be repulsed by me and I couldn’t bear the finality of that. So I stayed away. Go to the bed. I will
deal with the lamp.”

“Repulsed? I asked…I wanted to know why you would put out the lamp. Why should I dress in the dark?”

“I’d like to spare you the horror, Ella. I thought I could be strong. I had decided that I could meet you in this room, deny
my feelings—sever with you forever and be done with it. But then I heard your voice. I felt your presence. I had to touch
you, Ella. Once you were near, I had to know your scent, your tenderness. How wrong I was. How my selfish lack of restraint
has wronged you. I should have done as I planned. You were never to see me as I am.”

He approached the lamp.

“Ooh!” Her angry cry battered him. “Stop it! Stop it now, do you hear me?”

Saber paused but did not turn around.

“All men are cabbage-heads! All men
decide
what women do and do not want or think, without ever bothering to ask. You believe you have the right to pretend to see inside
my mind. You have misused me, Saber!”

This angry female was not the Ella he remembered, but then, he had shocked her—and he had taken advantage of her ignorance
about his condition. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “It isn’t enough, but I regret my behavior.”

“I regret your behavior too.” Her feet beat a path across the carpet. “I shall certainly require your assistance.”

“Yes. A moment while I deal with the lamp.”

“If you touch that lamp I shall …I shall…Well, I will. So don’t. Now look at me.”

She had always been brave. Only a brave young female would share what she considered to be her most shameful secret—her illegitimacy—with
a man who was almost a stranger. Ella had done that, with him, when she’d been less than sixteen and so unsure of her future.

“Saber”—her voice softened—“look at me, please.”

He did as she asked reluctantly. With his fists on his hips, he faced Ella across the elegant room and planted his feet apart.

“You’ve hidden from me because of your wounds, haven’t you? Your scars?”

“I have apologized for my actions tonight. There is no more to be said.”

“Nothing at all
has
been said. Nothing of honesty.”

He drove a hand into his hair. “I tried to stay away from you. Now I shall do so—completely.”

“You didn’t simply try to stay away, Saber. You did so. You are only here tonight because I finally goaded you into revealing
yourself.”

He looked at her then. Not a tall woman, but straight, proud. Her black hair had slipped from its chignon to fall in partially
unraveled braids about her shoulders.

Naked. Completely naked before him and watching him with those great, dark, exotic eyes.

Unashamed.

But then, this was not a virginal girl who had never known a man.

But she was shy in her way—he knew that. And he must never forget that whatever she had once been was not of her own making—and
her extreme youth might well have made the acts she’d performed unreal to her then. Pain. She must have suffered pain at the
hands of the monsters who used her. Pain and fear—and confusion. And now, after she had at least enjoyed a few years of comfort
and protection, he had visited more distress upon the blameless creature he could not stop loving.

“Say something, Saber,” she asked, wrapping her arms about her waist. “Am I displeasing to you?”

“Displeasing?” He averted his eyes. “You are the most lovely creature in the world. I have tried not to allow this to happen.
As I have confessed, I should not have done so. I managed to keep what I have become hidden from you. To change that was madness.
I would never have wished you to remember me as I am.”

“They have hurt your soul,” she told him. “If they had not done so, you would not think a few silly scars could repulse me.”

He gazed upon her fully. “Don’t humor me, Ella. Condescension offends my manhood, and there is nothing amiss with that, I
assure you.”

She dropped her arms and raised her jaw. “There is no need to testify to the condition of your manhood to me, my lord.”

He frowned, and could not stop himself from glancing the length of her slender but intoxicating body.

“I
felt
your manhood, my lord.” Her breasts, round and pointed and pink-tipped, jutted with each angry breath. “It thrust at me.
And it filled my hands. And its weight impressed me, as no doubt you were aware.”

He felt himself redden. “I’m so glad you noted my proportions in such detail,” he said, making sure his words bore sufficient
sarcasm. A man of eight-and-twenty should not blush like a cub at the mention of his rod. “You speak as a connoisseur.”

The words were no sooner spoken than regretted. Her smooth brow furrowed. She lifted her hair from her shoulders and remained
with her elbows raised. “A connoisseur?” Up-thrust breasts and a slender waist. Her hips flared gently and her long legs—in
their provocative stockings—took his breath away. There was nothing about her that did not render him speechless.

“A connoisseur?” she repeated. “What can you mean, Saber? Why, that word suggests—”

“It suggests nothing,” he told her rapidly. “This entire exchange should not have happened. You must return to the party.
By now there will be searchers out looking for you.”

“I’m never going back to the party,” she said flatly. “Do you know Pomeroy Wokingham?”

“The Hon. Pom? A lecher. A debauched… Enough said. He is not the type of man whose name should cross your lips. Get dressed.”

“You dress me,” she said calmly. “You undressed me.” Saber lowered his eyes. “Sweet Ella. You are determined to pretend I
do not disgust you, aren’t you? In the name of an old friendship, you will try to give me back some of what I’ve lost. Thank
you, but I am at peace with my choices.”
Liar.

“My lord, you have recently completed a very thorough examination of my person. Do you deny that?”

Her manner with words was quite singular. “One does not voice such things.”

“One might not. I do. Answer me, if you please.”

“Your person suffered that treatment from me, yes.”

“My person did not suffer at all—unless it was from the most marvelous ecstasy any woman’s body has ever known. I adored every
instant of it, and shall look forward to many more such explorations—from you.”

Saber stared at her.

“Shocked you, have I, my lord? I suppose I should apologize for my forwardness, but since my newly found boldness has been
brought about by your kisses, by your mouth upon my breasts, by your hands all over me—your fingers inside me—”

“Ella!”

“As I was saying. I might apologize for being brazen, but I’m naked because you took off my clothes. And I can scarcely help
it if I’ve discovered I’m glad you did. Or that having your mouth on my breasts and your fingers in my body and stroking that
place until—”

“Ella!”

“Oh, why must you keep shouting my name like that?” She marched toward him. “My mama believes a young woman should know all
about the business of men and women. Men and women together—when they are entirely alone, that is. Alone in their own … well,
their own chambers, or whatever.”

Saber found he could not summon a single word of response.

“She wrote a book on the subject, you know. And it was published.”

It was published, all right. It was published and published and published, and all of the Polite World—and the not so polite
world—had read the damned thing. They continued to read it. Poor Hunsingore, and Stonehaven—and Saber’s own cousin Calum,
Duke of Franchot—had suffered the notoriety of having their names emblazoned in the wretched book. Dear Justine’s innocent
study of a subject almost entirely lacking in that virtue had led to a most provocative book intended to be read by young
women preparing for marriage. And Justine had
dedicated
the volume to her husband and his brother, and to her own brother—with her thanks for their help!

“In Mama’s book,” Ella continued when she must have decided he would not respond. “I have not been allowed to read it yet.
She says I shall do so when I am betrothed. But I’ve been told by others who have read it that it says a woman should learn
to enjoy the man she loves as much as—”

“I know what it says.”

She came to stand before him. “So you’ve read it?” Her perfect skin glowed. Her eyes glistened with sincerity. “How very enlightened
of you. I understand very few men will touch the volume.”

Every man in London hadn’t been able to wait to “touch” the volume. “I’ve read it.”

Ella looked directly up into his face. “And did you consider it to have merit?” If she was repulsed by him, she hid the fact
well.

“I considered it… enlightening.”

“Enlightening how?”

He was growing hard again. No, he was already hard, had been so unceasingly since he’d first touched her. “There is insight
into the female mind, I believe. Interesting from an academic point of view.” Surely her apparent comfort while standing unclothed
before him could not be natural? But then…Yes, but then.

Ella was frowning. “From an academic point of view? How very cool. A young lady who spoke of it said she experienced certain—
sensations
. I can hardly wait to discover its effect upon me. Anyway, I believe you found it more than academically interesting. Did
it make your body feel some sort of longings?”

“Longings?”

Without warning, she stroked the length of his rod through his trousers and tucked her hands beneath to support him. “Like
this, I suppose. I have considered the subject, and I think this swelling takes place because of longing. I’ve noted a similar
reaction in a number of gentlemen—always when they are in the company of females who appear to engage them.”

She amazed him. “Indeed,” he said.

“Oh, yes. And the longings must come from some connection of the mind to the body. Those connections might well be caused
by a certain stimulation that might arise from a discussion of a man and woman together in a condition of love, don’t you
think? As is presented in Mama’s book, I understand?”

He thought he was about to disgrace himself, and to lose control—in either order. “Very likely. It’s inappropriate for you
to, er, handle me as you are, Ella.”

She squeezed, a look of deep concentration filming her features with distraction. “Odd,” she murmured.

Saber gritted his teeth. “Odd?”

Again she squeezed. “Definitely odd.”

“How so?” He knew a moment’s deep uncertainty. He also knew an even deeper need to remove his trousers and enter where his
fingers had already ventured this evening.

Ella squeezed him yet again. “It responds to the touch. I mean, it actually, um,
pops up
whenever it’s been compressed.”

Saber snatched her hand away. “This is an unbelievable conversation. I’m going to assist you into your clothes and you will
then go back to the soiree.”

She turned from him, picked up the lamp, and walked to the bed.

Her straight back narrowed to the waist and her small bottom was round and smooth…. White stockings secured with pink satin,
rose-encrusted garters worked an erotic spell on his senses.

“Obviously nothing can be the same as it was before this evening,” she remarked. “And I, for one, am exceedingly glad.”

How would he manage to assist her into her clothes without losing his head to passion again? He was a bounder, a man with
nothing to offer, yet who had taken liberties with one who was innocent at least of heart.