Beloved (44 page)

Ella’s heart thumped rapidly. She pushed her hands over the wet hair on his chest, across smooth, damp skin at his sides and
around to his back where she began, as she always did, to rub his scars with loving care.

“I need you,” he said when their lips finally parted. “Now.”

“You have me, Saber. You will always have me.”

“You don’t understand. I—”

“I
do
understand. When you explain yourself, I understand.”

“Very well. I want to make love to you, Ella.”

“Here?” They were all but awash upon a sea of muddy grass.

“Here,” Saber said, and kissed her again. He found a stiffened nipple and pulled it gently. “Is it the rain that makes your
flesh leap?” he asked.

Ella’s reply was to force a way inside his trousers and encircle his most sensitive part. “Is it the rain that makes
your
flesh leap, my lord?” Her breasts ached, swelled.

“We both know what happens whenever we are together, Ella. I have only to look at you and I am lost.”

“I have only to think of you and I am lost.”

“I do not even … No.” He gave a short laugh. “That way lies a long, annoying discussion, and I find I cannot waste time at
the moment.”

Ella tipped up her chin. She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him, a long, lingering, deep kiss. She showed him how
well he had taught her to kiss.

“I once thought you had lain with other men.”

Ella grew still.

“I thought that when you were at that house you were used by men. The thought haunted me.”

“Is that why you did not claim me, even though you had promised you would?”

“In part. I am not proud to speak of it, Ella. But there must be no falsehood between us. At first I was angry, as angry that
you had been used as I was for what I felt I’d lost. I was a fool.”

He hunched his shoulders over her, just touching his chest to hers. The hair on his chest flirted with the tips of her nipples.

“Saber! Oh, Saber.”

“Yes, my sweet.” His hands went around her waist, beneath what was left of her gown and robe, and he turned them to their
sides. Facing her, he stroked her bottom and dipped to take a nipple into his mouth.

“I want you,” Ella said.

“The way I want you?”

“Always.”

He shifted, dealt with his trousers, and pulled her leg over his hips. “Always and in whatever manner we can devise?”

“Yes,” she sighed, amazed at the exquisite friction created by his slow, rain-wet penetration. He pulled her half over him
and rocked his hips upward into hers.

Ella arched against him.

Saber used one hand to hold her bottom while he moved within her, and the other to play with her breasts. “There was never
another woman for me once I’d met you,” he told her.

Ella said, “I choose to forget how we wasted our love.”

“Do you know what I’m telling you?” he asked.

Each thrust brought Ella closer to the sweet release she must have.

“After the night of our first meeting, I never took another woman to my bed. Throughout these years, I have waited for you,
even while I thought we could not be together.”

She searched his face. “I thought …” She trembled with her love for him. “I believed men always, well, that they always did.”

He smiled and, as quickly, grimaced. “You have unleashed the waters that were held back, my lady. From this day forth, this
man always
will
. Aah. In my heart, I married you one night, sitting at your side on a stone bench when you should have been in your bed.
Aah, Ella.”

Ella drew her leg more tightly around him. “So we came together new, my love.”

“Who would believe such a thing,” he murmured, and a great spasm drove his teeth together—and drove words from Ella’s lips.

Saber held her to him. She crooned little, unintelligible words against his neck.

“I am a monster,” he told her. “I should get you inside and dry before this damp is the death of us both.”

“Hold me,” she murmured.

He held her, tightly, and remained buried inside her.

He glanced away, and a spark of light off some object in the grass caught his eyes. Reaching, he pried the thing from the
mud and turned it over in his hand.

A button. One of their buttons.

“No! Oh, God, no, no.”

Ella raised her head to look at his face.

“Where did this come from?” He stared down at her. “You? You brought this here to torture me?” There could be no other explanation.

“I was looking for you—”

“Do not touch things that don’t concern you.” As he struggled to calm his breathing and his thundering heart, his rod quickened
within her. “Don’t! Do you understand me?” He began to lunge upward once more. He could scarcely breathe at all. The button
seemed afire in his hand.

“I didn’t mean … Oh, oh!”

“Don’t!”
He ground his teeth together and squeezed his eyes shut. Here, with her, joined to her, he could drive the memories away.

Voices reached him gradually. Shouting voices.

Ella pounded his shoulder with a fist and said his name over and over, each time more frantically.

“Over there!” a male voice cried. “By God, I’ll kill him for this.”

“Wait, Struan!”

Then they were upon them. A hard forearm snaked around Saber’s neck, caught it in the bend of an elbow, and squeezed.

“Careful,” another voice shouted. “Don’t break his neck.”

The next sound was Ella’s scream.

“The man’s mad.’’ Dimly, Saber recognized Arran’s voice. “Ravishing the girl like this. Poor child.”

It was Calum who said, “Have a care, Struan. It’s all right, Ella, my dear.”

“Papa!” she cried. “Oh, Papa!”

Arran said, “She’s all but naked. Give me a cloak to cover her, Devlin.”

Consciousness faded. Saber clawed at the relentless arm around his neck but could find no purchase.

Devlin?

G
reat-Grandmama pounded the carpet between her feet with her cane. “I will not have my decisions questioned,” she fumed. “This
is an outrage. You have taken a woman from her husband.”

“Your Grace,” Uncle Arran said, standing before the old lady, an elegantly massive man who dwarfed her. “I assure you we have
only done what was best for Ella.”

“Best to take her from her husband?” She shook her head in the beribboned nightcap she still wore, having rushed from her
bed the instant she heard of Ella’s arrival with Struan, Arran, and Calum.

Embarrassment so deep it rendered Ella speechless made it difficult for her to meet the gaze of any of the men. “There is
a mistake,” she said softly. “A misunderstanding.” It was a fact she had pleaded incessantly, and to no avail, since they’d
taken her away from Saber.

They had waited only long enough for her to dress before leaving Bretforten—and leaving Saber, unconscious, in Devlin’s care.
Throughout the day they had ridden and, when darkness descended, found an inn for the night. Setting off again early this
morning, they’d made it to London and come directly to Pall Mall.

“I did not want to leave Saber,” she told Great-Grand-mama. “They would not listen to me.”

“Headstrong whippersnappers,” Great-Grandmama announced. “What right did you have to take Ella from her husband? I gave the
marriage my blessing. All that was required. They were married in the eyes of the church. And what God has joined, let no
man—”

“This is not God’s work,” Papa said. Ella had never seen him so pale, or so angry. “The man is mad. He married my daughter
to protect himself.”

Ella’s face snapped up.
Protect
. Saber had used that word.

“That’s outrageous,” the dowager said. “He married her because…he loves her, whatever that may mean. Where is he? Where is
Saber? On his way here, no doubt. Should I prepare for a duel in me own boudoir?”

Uncle Calum said, “Devlin North’s with him. Devlin understands the problem. Don’t know what we’d have done without him.”

“How so?” Ella asked, finding her voice at last.

Uncle Arran’s green eyes sought her. “It’s best that you leave these matters to men, Ella.” He was so handsome—and so
overbearing
.

“I have asked a question,” she said, planting her feet firmly apart. “What has Devlin North done that’s so wonderful? Apart
from helping you to separate me from my husband.”

“I don’t know how you can speak so,” Uncle Calum said. His hair and eyes were so like mama’s. Dark hair with flashes of red,
and serious, dark amber-colored eyes. “We will not speak of the condition in which we found you, but it was an ugly thing.”

“Papa,” Ella implored. “Will you, at least, tell me the truth of things? It was Devlin North who secured Bretforten Manor
for us. He has been Saber’s friend, or so we thought.”

Papa touched her arm lightly. “You have always been too beautiful for your own good, my child. But that is not your fault.
Neither is it your fault if men long to possess you. You should be grateful that Devlin came to us in Scot-land—in a great
fright, I might add—to explain what was happening.”

Ella felt as if she were carved from ice. “Would you please share his insights with me? His insights into what was happening?”

“You
know
what was happening. You are loyal to your husband—even though he has abused you, ruined you—and that is admirable. But you
are aware of the circumstances in which we found you. Devlin had been afraid of just such a thing— that, and even more degrading
behavior. He has been a friend to Saber for many years. He seeks to protect him and will do so now.”

Protect again
. “Protect him from what?”

The three powerful men in the room glanced uncomfortably at each other. “From himself,” Uncle Calum told her. “Devlin came
to inform us that Saber had engineered a marriage to you, but that Saber is caught in the web of some madness.”

She made fists. “Saber is not mad!”

“Not always,” Uncle Calum said, scrubbing at his un-shaven jaw. “It comes and goes. But when it comes, he is very dangerous.
And his condition only grows worse. One day Saber will have to be institutionalized. Devlin could scarcely bear to speak of
this to us. He believes you know of Saber’s condition but that you will try to hide that knowledge because you think you love
him.”

“I do love Saber! He has done nothing dreadful to me!”

Uncle Arran swung toward her. “When we found you, you were naked, your clothing torn from your body.”

“Lord Stonehaven,” Great-Grandmama said weakly. “I don’t want to—”

“I am forced to say these things, madam,” Uncle Arran said to Ella. “Your so-called husband attacked you in the middle of
the night, outside, in a storm, no less. If we hadn’t come upon you, God knows what might have happened. I shall always be
grateful to Devlin North for what he did.”

“And I shall always
hate
him,” Ella said. “He is a viper who used a good man’s trust to bring that man down. You do not know this, but Devlin North
offered for me himself—in secret, inappropriately.”

“I know.” Papa slipped an arm around her shoulders. “He told me as much, and he told me the reason. He thought it his duty
to save you from Saber.”

Ella gaped.

“Now, now, don’t think any more ill of Devlin. He was quick to add that he would consider himself a very lucky man to be your
husband. And, in fact, he has offered to take you regardless after all this is resolved.”

“Oh!” Ella whirled away and back. She had never known such frustration, such desperation. “And you believed all this?”

“Certainly,” Uncle Calum said, but his face was deeply troubled. “Not that you should think Struan has any notion of marrying
you off to someone in a hurry just to save your—”

“My
reputation?
Hah! My reputation is intact, thank you all. And you can hardly marry me again when I am already married.”

Papa stood in front of her, blocking any view of the others. He ducked his head and looked seriously into her face. “You have
been through too much, my child. Away to your bed. And do not concern yourself with this. Marriage to a man who is not in
his right mind should be a simple enough thing to void.”

She shrugged away from him. “Saber is in his right mind, I tell you. And the marriage shall not be voided. I love him!”

“I know,” Papa said, clearly embarrassed. “Please trust me to do what’s best for you. What we know shall not leave this room,
except for the necessary official business.”

“And what of Saber? What will you do with my husband?”

“He is not your husband,” Calum said, avoiding her eyes. “Your mama will arrive soon enough, and your aunts. We shall all
help you through this dreadful thing. And we shall help Saber, too. Believe that we will.”

They were immovable. Their minds were completely set on this, and Devlin North had been the one to plant the evil seeds against
Saber.

Ella looked to Great-Grandmama, who shook her head slightly.

So there was to be no help there. “I think I’ll do as you suggest, Papa,” Ella said, making herself smile at him. “I’m very
tired. I shall go to bed. Will one of you send Rose to me?”