Between the Devil and Ian Eversea (23 page)

“Again?” she teased.

“And again and again,” he ordered.

And so she did.

And as his cock thickened, dragging her lips and mouth and tongue over it, now swiftly, now slowly, she reveled in watching him shift restlessly, his thighs falling open, his body bowing upward, his hands curling into the counterpane, his breath short and harsh. His head thrashed back and he swallowed; the pleasure seemed well nigh unendurable, and it banked her own pleasure.

“Tansy . . . I want you to ride me.”

She straddled his body, flinging her heavy mass of hair over her shoulder wantonly, and gazed down at him. The cords of his neck taut, his chest was burnished by firelight, his eyes burning.

Together they guided him into her.

He bracketed her hips with his hands and urged her to move her body up and then down again, until she understood the rhythm. And at first she moved to watch his eyes darken, to hear him beg her hoarsely with her name. And then she moved to please herself, as she had no choice: instinct drove her blindly toward it.

They rocked together until the two of them, one right after the other, saw shooting stars.

J
UST AS THE
light was going pearly and gray in the sky, and she knew she should return to her room, Tansy sighed and moved out of his arms. She reached for her night rail and drew it on over her head.

She sat for a moment, watching him, Ian’s arms crossed behind his head, his hair tousled, his eyes drowsy and warm, a faint smile playing on his lips as he gazed back at her.

Her heart lurched.

What if . . . what if she woke up every day of her life to this view? Was it really so unthinkable? Surely no man could remain an alleged rogue for the entirety of his life? Surely Ian wouldn’t mind waking up just like this, either?

But there was something on the periphery of her awareness, some little warning voice. It sounded, unsurprisingly, like the Duke of Falconbridge’s. She said nothing.

She just smiled at him.

His smile grew wider, and a little more wicked, and her heart squeezed. She could feel herself blushing. Despite being clothed, and despite every delightfully wicked thing she’d done last night.

And at last Ian rolled over and sat up on the edge of the bed with a little grunt. He straightened to standing somewhat gingerly.

“It goes a bit tight if I don’t stretch every morning,” he said apologetically, gesturing to that scar.

She watched him arch his back and thrust up his arms and bend backward, as he fought a grimace, and she felt her muscles tense along with him.

Not a God, then.

Or a pagan roaring to greet the day.

Just a beautiful, wounded man.

Chapter 24

T
ANSY CLAPPED A HAND
down on her bonnet as Stanhope’s high flyer careened around a bend in the road at reckless speeds. He was a brilliant driver and the horses were beautiful, copper colored and shining like new pennies, and the sun struck sparks off their haunches and manes.

“You’re a brilliant driver!”

“Beg pardon?”

It was impossible to speak over the thunder of their hooves.

“YOU’RE A BRILLIANT DRIVER!”

“YOU LIKE MY HIGH FLYER?” he guessed.

She gave up. “Yes!”

He beamed at her, certain of their accord.

But when they stopped, and the horses tossed their heads and shifted restlessly in their harnesses, and the moment was no longer distractingly terrifying, and they were alone, certain dullness settled into her chest.

He was a relentlessly cheerful presence, talked only of himself but so good-naturedly that she indulged him. He certainly laughed a good deal. Something about his laugh made her feel more alone than if she were standing on a high cliff at the end of the world, shouting her name into the void to hear it echo back at her.

In all likelihood he knew he’d been born fascinating, by default, because he was going to be a duke when his father died, and he considered the ceaseless talk of himself a bit of beneficence on his part.

But better a cheerful sort than a surly sort, she supposed.

He helped her down and beamed with the pleasure of being able to do that for her, and then offered his arm to escort her back to the house.

As she moved, she could feel the night before in the stiffness of her legs. And as Stanhope led her back toward the house, she surreptitiously brushed the back of her hand against her chafed and still kiss-swollen lips, and heat rushed over her skin, just like that. In the mirror this morning she had looked alarmingly, intriguingly, thoroughly wanton, her hair in wild disarray, her eyes brilliant, her cheeks flushed; on her breast was the mark of a vigorous, lingering kiss, and remembering it now made her knees sag a little.

She’d resented the need to dress and bathe so soon, in time for Stanhope to take her out in his high flyer; she wanted to lie still, while the feel of Ian’s hands and the warmth and scent of his body still lingered on her skin. Lie still and savor it until it faded like the very last note in a symphony. Lie still and try to decide what it meant to her.

And now last night had seemed real, and this jarringly cheerful, reckless outing with an heir seemed like a dream.

“I must say, Miss Danforth, I may always cherish the letter I received from Captain Eversea. I may even have it framed.”

They would have that in common, she thought. They both wanted to frame missives from Captain Eversea.

“You received mail from Captain Eversea? Which Captain Eversea?”

“The one who will be embarking upon an ocean voyage soon? Within the month, I believe. Captain
Ian
Eversea.”

Shock momentarily destroyed her ability to speak.

“An . . . ocean voyage?” She choked on the words. Suddenly, the ribbons of her bonnet seemed too tight.

“Oh, yes, ’round the world he’s going! The sort of voyage to rival Miles Redmond’s travels, from the sounds of things. He could very well be gone for
years
. With luck, a cannibal won’t eat him. He looks a bit stringy to me, ha ha! Not an ounce of fat on the man.”

Tansy couldn’t feel her hands or feet. “Years?” she said faintly.

“One can’t experience Africa and China and India and the like in less time than that,” he said knowledgeably. “So certainly, years.”

“Wh-What did he say in the letter?”

Her teeth were chattering as though someone had dropped an icicle down the back of her dress.

“He suggested I might want to hurry to Sussex to meet the ‘American Paragon,’ as queues to meet you were long and rivals were shooting each other with arrows and the like over you. He’s not given to gushing. So I knew you must be special, indeed. The man is an excellent judge of things, from horseflesh to shooting to women.”

The world seemed to tilt on its axis. She stumbled.

Lord Stanhope flexed his arm and quite capably kept her from falling.

“Slippers are hardly practical for walking,” he said fondly.

A faint ringing started up in her ears. Her voice sounded to her as if it was coming from a far, far off land. Africa or China, even.

“He . . .
summoned
you to Sussex? For me?”

Stanhope looked a bit worried now. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything at all to you. It’s just that it seemed like a wonderful stroke of good fortune, and I felt as though gratitude were in order, since he did encourage me to come.”

“He . . . summoned you to Sussex to meet
me
?”

She sounded like a demented parrot. She didn’t care. The shock was gruesome.

“I do want to thank him, though, for aren’t we having a wonderful time? I don’t think he’d object overmuch.”

“A wonderful time,” she repeated, faintly, after a moment, like a broken cuckoo clock.

H
E’D HAMMERED HIS
final nail into the vicarage roof today, and after they all stood back, hands on hips, and admired their handiwork, he’d taken the crew of workmen along with Adam down to the pub to congratulate and celebrate with them.

He was surprised to see a young man named James who worked in the Eversea stables competently waiting tables.

“Captain Eversea, what can I bring you?”

“James! What a pleasant surprise to see you here. Helping out while Polly’s ankle heals?”

“Aye, and it was your Miss Danforth we have to thank for it, too.”

His heart stopped. He fought to keep his eyes from shifting guiltily.

“Er . . .
my
Miss Danforth?”

“The Miss Danforth who lives with the Everseas,” he said, smiling. “The one who won the Sussex marksmanship cup.”

“Oh, that Miss Danforth. Yes. How kind of her.”

For now, Polly remained behind the bar, the better to flirt with all the customers at once. Ned, Ian decided, was going to have his hands full with her suitors in no time.

As one by one all the vicarage workmen, Seamus and Henry and Adam included, departed the Pig & Thistle for other obligations and destinations, Ian lingered. He called for another ale and nursed it more slowly than he normally would.

As he’d watched her slip out the door of his room this morning, he’d had to stifle a protest. He’d wanted nothing more than to pull her back, curl his arm around her, fold her into his body and lay there quietly on the bed, tracking the hour of the day only by the length of the sunbeam through the slit in the curtains and the color of the shadows in the room. And they would watch the sun go higher and then slowly sink again, while they made love, and slept, and made love, and slept, and talked and laughed and made love and slept.

Possibly with her hand clasped in his.

The world seemed . . . roomier . . . and kinder and more colorful and funnier today. He wasn’t unfamiliar with the effects of excellent sex on a man’s temper. This was like that, and yet different somehow. He felt fundamentally altered. As if he’d been sitting in a dark room for ages, and someone had casually strolled in and lit a lamp.

The only thing that would make the day even better, he thought, was if she were sitting across from him right now.

An alarming thought.

Your Miss Danforth.

My. Mine. He was beginning to understand the appeal of that preposition with regards to women, and why Colin and Chase brandished it as if it were a medal they’d each earned.

And as the sun sank lower, he was aware that he was postponing returning home because he felt almost . . . shy. He recoiled from the word.
Surely
not. Very well, then: he did feel uncertain. And he’d been so very certain about everything not very long ago. There was no longer any reason for him to remain in Sussex, and it was time to return to London to complete preparations for his voyage.

And he just didn’t know what would happen next. For there
would
be a “next,” the awkward, fraught time between now and the moment his ship left shore.

All he knew for certain was that he wanted to see her.

And he wondered what he would read in her face when he did. Welcome? Desire? A firm and yet closed resolve to never be alone with him again, as a result of a sudden onset of regrettable sense? Regret? Would they make love again?

The bands of muscle across his stomach tightened at the thought. Of
course
it wasn’t wise. But the laws of physics had been upended for him; the harder he pulled away from the notion of making love to her, the deeper and more desperate the need for her seemed.

He got up abruptly and went home.

Fittingly enough, he arrived in that neither-day-nor-night in-between hour.

His heart picked up speed the closer he came to his chamber. Once inside, he stared at the now neatly made bed.

And then he inhaled deeply, exhaled at length, and almost tenderly lifted the curtain away from the window. As if he were pushing her hair away from her face in order to kiss her.

Twilight was purpling the horizon.

She was standing on her balcony, holding a perfectly rolled cigarette and trying, in vain, to light it.

He frowned.

He would warrant she’d never actually lit a cigarette in her entire life. Rolled, certainly.

“You don’t smoke,” he called softly.

She froze. But she didn’t turn toward him. It was a moment before she spoke.

“How would you know?”

She said it so bitterly, it shocked him.

She refused to meet his eyes. But her hands were trembling now, he saw, and she nearly dropped the cigarette.

Bloody hell. Something was terribly wrong.

He ducked back into his window, and then went through the door of her room out onto her balcony.

“May I?” he said gently.

She shrugged almost violently with one shoulder.

He took the cigarette from between her fingers.

He lit it with a flint.

A strikingly pungent smoke curled out of it, and he coughed. Her father’s blend.

And she coughed.

She didn’t attempt to smoke it. He handed it back to her, and she just gripped it between her fingers as if it were a spear she’d like to jab into him.

And not once did she look at him directly or say a word to him. She seemed as remote and cold as a locked room.

And then she looked up reflexively at the stars, as if seeking comfort and home, and his heart broke just a very little. Or kicked. It was hard to know for certain, because the pain was sweet.

Little things she did would always break his heart open, he felt. Always. His heart would forever be like a pond frozen over in winter cracking with the thaw.

“When were you going to tell me?” she said finally. Sounding weary.

“Tell you . . . how to light a cigarette?”

“That you’re leaving. For good, essentially. More or less. In a fortnight, isn’t it? Or were you just going to disappear, and hope that I considered you a figment of my imagination? A sort of fever dream?”

Oh. Hell.

“Ah. I thought you knew I was leaving.”

“No.” She said it flatly.

“Yes. I’m sailing soon, Tansy.” He said it gently. “I did say I would be off around the world.”

“You did say.” She said it with faint mockery. “You just didn’t say
when
.”

Silence.

The ash was lengthening at the tip of the cigarette, heading for her fingertips.

“Are you going to smoke that, or . . .”

She suddenly tamped the cigarette out with great violence and whirled on him.

“And you wrote to Stanhope to tell him to hie his way here to Sussex to see me. Solving the problem of me, weren’t you? Neatly disposing of me. Wave the shiny heir in front of Miss Danforth’s eyes to distract her from her ridiculous
tendre
for
you
. Keep her out of the way of Landsdowne. Because she’s just that shallow and just that fickle and anyone and
anything
can distract her, and here, have yourself an heiress, Stanhope, so she doesn’t get in the way of anyone I actually
care
about.”

In the force of her fury and hurt, he found himself becoming very, very calm, and very, very clear. It was what made him a good soldier, and why he never seemed able to stop being one.

“I of course didn’t say that in so many words. And you know it isn’t how I feel.”

His calm seemed to make her angrier.

“Do I? How
do
you feel, then, Ian?”

He was silent. He couldn’t choose from any of the words he knew, because none of them were sufficient. Of course, a single word would do the trick. But he wasn’t going to say that to her now. Because he was about to lose her, and he didn’t think she would believe him, and he would be gone anyway, and what good would it serve either of them?

She snorted softly when he stood there and said nothing.

“What did you do to the Duke of Falconbridge?” Her voice was bitter. “Because I know it was something. He doesn’t like you.”