By Love Unveiled (15 page)

When she swayed against him, he let out a ragged breath. “Oh God, you could send a man into madness.” Then he lowered his lips to hers again, brushing soft kisses first on her mouth, then her neck, and then down the sensitive flesh above her breasts until he found the crest he sought and seized it in his mouth.

As his tongue flicked over her nipple, she buried her fingers in his wavy hair, holding his head closer to feel more of the exquisite sensations he was provoking. All care for what he might be was temporarily
forgotten. Gone were any maidenly objections, any sense of how a lady should behave. She only knew that his caresses and kisses dazed her. She felt sweet and burning and wild all at once, like the gypsy she was supposed to be.

She should stop this! But as his hand slipped up to caress her other breast and a deep yearning crept through her, forcing her to the brink of oblivion, she could not, or, rather,
would
not stop him. That vague realization brought with it a teasing feeling of anticipation, which overwhelmed any vestiges of her inborn prudery that might have controlled her actions.

His mouth left her breast. His eyes locked with hers as he parted her legs with his thigh, then set his foot on a low shelf behind her in such a way that she ended up astride his knee. She ought to protest, but a strange urge to wrap her legs around his thigh and hold on tight assailed her.

When she gave in to it, he rewarded her with a long, lingering kiss. He worked his knee up and down, rocking her atop it, and the feelings that shot through her were so . . . Oh, heavens, she’d never felt so eager and hot and . . . and excited! What was he doing to her?

Between her legs, she was all damp and aching. And he seemed to know it, too, for he resumed sucking her breast with more urgency, making everything more intense—the heat, the ache . . . the pleasure.

Only after he had her gasping and shimmying atop his thigh like some wanton did he bring his foot to the floor so she slid enticingly down his hard thigh to stand on her own two feet again.

“This way, sweetling,” he said urgently, lacing his fingers through hers and leading her to the thick fur rug that lay by the hearth in the midst of the spacious library. In a state of dazed need, she let him guide her.

He knelt and pulled her down beside him, then began with great impatience to undo the ties of his shirt. She watched spellbound as inch after inch of dark, hairy chest revealed itself. Good Lord, but he was thickly muscled. She wanted to touch him, to run her fingers over every part.

His hands had just moved to his breeches, eliciting a shocked gasp from her, when a knock at the door sounded. He stilled his movements. She blushed and he frowned. Neither said a word. At their continued silence, the knock sounded again.

His frown deepened. “I’ll be with you presently,” he barked out and reached once again for Marianne.

“My lord, it won’t wait,” urged a voice Marianne recognized as William’s.

“If you value your life, it will,” Garett growled, his fingers moving swiftly to the ties of Marianne’s skirt.

But for Marianne, that knock was a sign from God, reminding her that this wasn’t right. “No,” she whispered, pushing Garett’s hands away.

“My lord, I really must speak with you,” William urged beyond the door, though Marianne could tell he spoke with great trepidation.

With an oath, Garett stood. “Don’t move,” he commanded her in a low voice, then strode for the door.

She fumbled with her gown, desperately trying to
cover herself before Garett reached the door. But as he neared it she heard another voice that made her increase her efforts with something akin to panic. Her aunt’s.

“I told you to wait downstairs,” William snapped.

“I wanted to see him now, not a century from now,” Aunt Tamara retorted.

Before Garett could even reach for the door handle, the door burst open and Aunt Tamara marched into the room.

“Milord, I’ve come to protest that—” She stopped short at the sight of Marianne kneeling in the midst of the rug, her scarf lost who knew where, her gown loose about her waist and barely covering her, and one hand held guiltily to her throat.

Shame washed hotly over Marianne. She glanced at Garett to see if he, too, felt embarrassed beyond all countenance, but his face was expressionless, though a muscle worked in his jaw.

“What’s she doing here, Will?” Garett’s gaze coldly assessed Aunt Tamara. The calm in his voice and his unashamed manner told Marianne volumes. He was a nobleman for whom dalliances with maidens of lower class weren’t unusual. For him, their encounter had been a mere trifle, nothing to destroy his self-assurance.

But damn it, she wasn’t a tavern wench whom he could tumble at will! A lump of anger formed in her throat as she rose from the rug.

Aunt Tamara remained shocked into silence until she recognized the hurt in Marianne’s expression. Then
Aunt Tamara turned on the earl, her entire body quivering with rage.

“Will told me some barbarous story about your suspicions. You claim my niece is a spy for this Tearle creature, is that it? You say that’s why you must keep her here.” She flashed a disparaging glance William’s way. “A pox on that! I see your true intentions. That foolish tale was but a ruse to keep me from her while you took your pleasure!”

Aunt Tamara glared at Garett, daring him to deny her accusations.

Swiftly, William stepped forward, placing his hand on her arm. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Tamara. I didn’t dream—”

She pushed his hand away. “I told you this would come of it. I told you he’d ruin her.”

It was Marianne’s turn to be alarmed. Not for a moment did she wish her aunt to believe she’d given herself completely to Garett. “Nothing happened,” Marianne asserted, moving a few steps toward her aunt. “He didn’t . . . I mean . . .”

“What your niece is so eloquently trying to say,” Garett bit out, “is that you interfered before I could ‘ravish’ her.”

“But something did happen,” Aunt Tamara said, gesturing to the rug.

“Perhaps,” Garett conceded. “Your niece is old enough to choose a lover if she wishes.”

Marianne glared at him. How dare he imply that she would take him for a lover! If he hadn’t been so . . . so . . .
seductive she would never have so much as let him touch her.

She opened her mouth to retort, but he went on, oblivious to her anger. “I warn you, Tamara. What happens between me and Mina is no longer your affair. Until she—or you—tells me who she is and why my uncle knew her and her parents, I intend to keep her here. She’s made her bed and now she must lie in it. And there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.”

Aunt Tamara gaped at him, but her incredulity and outrage were nothing to Marianne’s.

With coldness seeping through her bones, Marianne spoke in the most distant, ladylike voice she could muster. “I didn’t choose you for a lover, my lord, so disabuse yourself of that notion. I certainly didn’t choose to be your prisoner, nor to be accosted and mauled simply because I was here. You are the one who’s made my bed, which is why I won’t lie in it.”

His eyes narrowed on her as she stood there, every limb quivering with anger.

“Mauled you, did he?” Aunt Tamara broke in. “Well, it won’t happen again. Come, Mina.” She turned to the door. “This time we’re leaving Lydgate, and the sooner the better, I say.”

Garett stepped forward to place himself between Aunt Tamara and Marianne. “You may leave whenever you wish, Tamara,” he said with quiet authority, “but your niece stays here.”

Marianne glanced at her aunt, whose fury was palpable.

“You’re a runagate, milord, despite your great title,” she snapped. “But you shan’t have your way. Not this time, by my faith. I’ll go to the constable first. I’ll tell him what you intend to do. I’ll trumpet your crimes about the town until—”

“You won’t do any such thing,” Marianne said sharply. The last thing either of them needed was to involve the constable. If pressed, he wouldn’t dare take their side against the earl. He might even decide it was safer to reveal Marianne’s identity than risk Aunt Tamara’s forcing the issue.

Aunt Tamara looked at her niece in surprise. “Don’t you want him to release you?”

“Of course. But gypsies aren’t generally loved in Lydgate,” she said pointedly, hoping her aunt would realize how dangerous it was to threaten Garett. Although the townspeople had given Marianne safe harbor, they might not be so eager to champion her if it meant incurring the earl’s wrath.

When comprehension showed in her aunt’s eyes, Marianne felt a measure of relief. “The constable won’t listen to a gypsy. He might even expel you if he feels you’re a troublemaker. We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

“No, love, you wouldn’t,” William interjected, obviously alarmed by the turn the conversation was taking.

“Let her go to the constable, Will,” Garett remarked. “Let her see how much good it does. Then again, perhaps I should go—”

“No!” Marianne cried. At Garett’s grim smile, she flashed her aunt a warning glance. “No one’s going to the constable, especially not you, Aunt Tamara.”

Aunt Tamara’s mouth snapped shut, but her expression showed she didn’t like being made to listen to reason. “I can’t permit him to force himself on you.”

“He didn’t.” A slow blush suffused Marianne’s face. “You can trust me on that.” She couldn’t let her aunt believe a lie, or Aunt Tamara would challenge the earl until she forced him to act. Marianne didn’t even want to consider what Garett might do then.

Aunt Tamara, never one to submit graciously to circumstances, muttered, “I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I. But if his lordship”—Marianne laced the word with sarcasm as she cast a glance his way—“if his lordship can refrain from his lascivious attentions, I suppose you and I can endure this arrangement until I demonstrate I am no more a lackey of Sir Pitney’s than is William.”

Garett stood there with his arms folded across his half-bared chest, his eyes boring into Marianne’s. His cold half smile made it clear his anger hadn’t entirely waned. “I’m more than willing to do whatever Mina wishes.” He let his eyes rest for a brief moment on her bodice, which hung shamelessly low.

Marianne jerked her gaze from his. Curse the man. He was remembering the wanton way she’d returned his “lascivious attentions.”

“I’d rather you did as
I
wish and not as my niece wishes,” Aunt Tamara said, showing she, too, lacked
confidence that Marianne could resist Garett’s attempts at seduction.

“Your niece can take care of herself,” Marianne snapped. “Don’t worry. His lordship may think confining me will intimidate me into confessing imaginary crimes, but time will prove my innocence. If he insists on keeping me here, I’m willing to give him that time.”

And without losing my virtue,
she told herself firmly. She would prove Aunt Tamara and Garett wrong about her ability to protect it.

Next time he attempted to seduce her, he would find it not nearly so easy. After today, she wouldn’t be so gullible and foolish as to let him touch her.

“Then we’re agreed?” William said tactfully, keeping a cautious eye on both his master and the two women.

The stony silence in the room was his only answer.

Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage.

—Richard Lovelace,
“To Althea from Prison”

T
wo weeks later, Marianne sat shaded by an apple tree in the garden, her slippered feet tucked beneath her and her muslin skirts spread out on the grass. The volume of
Love’s Labors Lost
lay open in her lap. Idly she glanced at the burly man who stood a few feet away, pretending not to guard her. Garett certainly knew how to choose his lackeys. This one had served with the earl in Spain and was completely loyal to his master. She flashed him a smile, but he ignored her.

With a sigh, she closed her book. Reading Shakespeare’s play merely depressed her. Why hadn’t she ever noticed its somber notes before? As a character said morosely in the play’s final scene, “Our wooing doth not end like an old play: Jack hath not Gill.”

That was certainly true. In the time since Garett had
taken her prisoner, she’d expected more attempts at seduction, but he’d become nothing but her jailor since that day in the library.

Meanwhile, the wounded soldier had died despite her attempts to save him. He’d done it without saying another word, which was both a blessing and a curse. Although he hadn’t revealed her identity, he also hadn’t exonerated her of being Sir Pitney’s spy. It made her despair.

His death seemed to have affected Garett, too, who’d become even more distant. At times he ignored her. At other times, his grim manner and intense scrutiny of her disturbed her deeply.

She stared forlornly across the garden. These days Garett was utterly single-minded, obsessed with his purpose. When he did speak to her, it was to tell her, oddly enough, about improvements to the estate or to ask her opinion in some matter of housekeeping. He kept the conversation polite and innocuous. But the ever-present Sir Pitney lay between them.

And every day began with the one question she wouldn’t answer: “Who are you really?” She wanted to retort with the same question, for she truly didn’t know who he was, either. Was he a calculating manipulator who’d betrayed her father and cost him his life? Was he a heartless, debauched Royalist who’d cavorted with the king in France? Or was he the winsome boy of her youthful imagination?

One thing she knew for certain. He turned her body into a raging inferno of emotion whenever he gave her
his dark, penetrating stare. Even now, the memory of his stirring kisses made her tremble all over and an unfamiliar ache start up in her breasts where he’d caressed her. She didn’t understand it. Nothing had prepared her for such a violence of feeling.

Her mother had once tried to describe the pleasures to be found with a man. But she’d spoken in such vague generalities that Marianne hadn’t been able to relate any of the descriptions to her own experience.