His Mask of Retribution (15 page)

He released her hair, stroked his hand down to find her other breast, teasing its bud through the layers of her clothes before sliding both hands to her hips. She groaned her dismay when he left her breasts, pressing herself closer to him as if she wanted him to touch her there again. But his hand stroked over her buttocks before lifting her up and perching her on the edge of the wooden tack table.

Her legs opened naturally and he stood within them feeling the graze of her riding boots against the outer edges of his calves. He kissed her harder, finding her breasts once more, closing his hands over them, flicking his thumbs against their peaks until her breathing was hard and her eyes were a dark-midnight black. He nudged her legs wider and pressed himself to her.

She gave a small breathy gasp and stilled before pulling back from his kiss.

‘Marianne,’ he said, never shifting his gaze from hers, his voice a whisper and husky with need. ‘I gave you my word. I will not break it.’

‘But...’ She glanced down to where their bodies touched.

‘We are fully clothed,’ he said. ‘And it will stay that way.’

Her eyes met his once more.

‘Trust me,’ he whispered.

She stared into his eyes as if peering into his very soul. ‘Yes,’ she said.

And he lowered his mouth to hers and began to kiss her all over again, kissing her until he felt the tension ease from her body, kissing her until she was pulling him to her and his hands were on her breasts, teasing and playing. Then he wrapped his arms around her and bowed her, arching her back to mouth at her breasts as he had done on the night of her birthday ball.

He longed to unfasten the thick high-necked riding habit, to peel it from her body. He knew how soft her skin was, had tasted a flavour of what her breasts would be like to suckle.

‘Yes,’ she whispered again, clutching his head tighter to her.

He slid a hand to her hip, then lower, stroking against the wool of her skirt, caressing her thigh, feeling the heat grow in it, sliding his fingers round to stroke the inner edge while his teeth scraped through her bodice to excite her nipples. And when his hand finally touched her core, finding it, feeling it, through all of the layers of clothes, she jerked and gasped, and he raised his eyes to look into hers, watching her as his fingers set up a rhythm between her thighs. Watching her until her breathing became louder and more ragged, until he felt her slight movement against his hand. Then his mouth closed over her breast and he bit her very gently: first one nipple, then the other. She let her head drop back, moaning aloud, glorious gasps and groans of utter pleasure, as she found her orgasm. And it did not matter that he was hard and straining like a green boy. He took her in his arms and he kissed her mouth and her eyelids and the tip of her nose. And he held her close until the frenzied thump of her heart calmed.

And when the daze had gone from her eyes she looked at him and whispered, ‘I don’t understand what just happened. What was it?’

‘It was the beginning, Marianne,’ he said and took her hand in his to lead her from the stables and into the house. And that night when they went to bed he held her in his arms, just held her.

Chapter Eleven

C
allerton sought him out the next day. Rafe left Marianne writing letters at the little desk in the drawing room while he spoke with his friend.

‘Misbourne was out on the town celebrating last night,’ Callerton said. ‘Bought everyone in White’s a glass of champagne and announced to all of London that his daughter was married to Mr Rafe Knight.’

Rafe said nothing. He was related by law to Misbourne. And he was married to Marianne Winslow. It was both his nightmare and his fantasy.

‘What happens now in the Misbourne stakes?’ asked Callerton, a deliberate blank look in his eyes.

‘I do not know. We have to let things settle for a while.’

He thought of Marianne and what it would do to her to learn what her father had done. To see him dragged through the courts; to watch her family fall apart; to watch her father’s execution—and know that it was her husband that had brought them to it. He winced at the thought.

Callerton said nothing, but the look in his eyes was too knowing.

‘I cannot turn back from this,’ Rafe said. ‘I owe it to my father. To my mother too. They deserve justice. What would it make me if I were to turn back now? After all these years. After all that it has taken to get this far. That it was acceptable for Misbourne to kill them?’
Or that he loved his wife?

Callerton poured them both a brandy and they drank it in silence.

* * *

Marianne watched her husband undress and slip beneath the sheets beside her. It was the third night she would sleep next to him in his bed. She felt the brush of his fingers against hers as they lay side by side. She turned her head on the pillow and looked at him in the candlelight. At the man she so loved. At the man who was risking his life to be her husband—the man who held such hatred in his heart for her father.

He smiled and gave her hand a squeeze. Despite everything, she felt something inside her blossom.

‘Does the light disturb you?’ she asked, knowing that many people found it difficult to sleep in the candlelight. And the candles had burned all through the past two nights.

He shook his head.

There was a small comfortable silence before he asked, ‘Have you always been afraid of the dark?’

‘No.’ He didn’t ask the natural next question, but she answered it anyway. ‘Only for the past few years. And I suppose it is not so much the darkness of which I am afraid, but more what it hides. In corners and cupboards. Under beds and...behind curtains.’

‘Monsters,’ he said as if he understood.

‘Of the worst kind.’ She felt a chill prickle through her at the mere thought.

‘Like highwaymen,’ he said softly, with the strangest look in his eyes.

She shook her head. ‘There are worse things than highwaymen.’

‘Are there?’ he asked. His focus shifted to the distance as if he were thinking, or remembering, before switching back to her. ‘Will you tell me what frightens you, Marianne?’

‘You would not understand,’ she said. ‘You are so strong, so invincible. How can you understand fear when you have known none? Or understand what is like to feel utterly powerless, when you are so powerful? To be dangled at the mercy of another? To feel terror? You know none of these things.’

‘I understand more than you realise, Marianne. I have known all that you name.’

She could not imagine it. He seemed utterly fearless. ‘Yet you are not afraid now.’

He shook his head. ‘I faced my fear. I embraced it.’

‘What was it that you feared?’ she whispered, knowing it must have been something truly terrible.

He paused for so long that she thought he was not going to tell her, then he said, ‘Highwaymen.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘I feared highwaymen. The fear paralysed me. Terrorised me.’

She understood how that felt.

‘But you became a highwayman yourself.’

‘Yes.’

‘You robbed and you stole.’

‘From six men only, Marianne. To conquer fear you must face it.’

She nodded.

‘May I blow out the flame of one candle? There is still light enough from the remaining two.’

‘No,’ she replied.

He did not argue or try to persuade her. He just squeezed her hand in reassurance.

‘Blow them all out,’ she said, her heart beating very fast, the fear sliding through her blood just at the thought.

‘You don’t have to do it all at once,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she replied. ‘But I want to.’

He did as she asked. It seemed the darkness was sudden and complete. She shuddered with the terror of it, and struggled to harness the fear running out of control. Her eyes were wide and staring, but all she saw was the inky blackness. Then Rafe pulled her to him and held her, and she felt the beat of his heart against hers and the strength of his arms encircling her. His breath was steady and calm. She did not count her breaths, only matched them to his. After a while the panic subsided and she grew calm, noticing for the first time that the blackness was no longer black. The curtains were not drawn and faint silver moonlight spilled into their bedchamber. She turned her head to look at it.

‘What do you see in the darkness now?’ he asked.

‘I see moonlight and starlight.’ She returned her face to his. ‘And I see you.’ And she touched her lips to his.

* * *

A ball at the town house of Lord and Lady Chilcotte. It would be their first public occasion as a married couple. Marianne smoothed down the silk skirt of her silver-gauzed white evening dress and tried to calm her nerves. There was bound to be gossip. Over the speed of their marriage following the abandoned wedding to Mr Pickering, over the seeming lack of a courtship. She just hoped that no one had heard the truth of what happened at her birthday ball. A knock sounded on the door of the bedchamber they shared. And then Rafe was standing there.

‘I am ready,’ she said.

‘Not quite,’ he replied and as he approached her she could see that he was holding a black-velvet box. He handed it to her.

‘It is my wedding and birthday gift to you. I am sorry that it is late.’

She opened the box and there inside was a fine string of diamonds that sparkled in the candlelight, with a large single dark sapphire at the centre. It was the most exquisite necklace she had ever seen, beautiful enough to take her breath away.

‘Starlight and moonlight...and darkness,’ he said, taking the necklace from where it lay in the box and holding the sapphire up to the candlelight so she could see that the stone, which had appeared black, now glowed a deep rich blue. Their eyes met and she remembered lying safe and snug in his arms all through the night.

‘Rafe...’ she whispered. ‘Thank you. It is beautiful.’

‘Like you,’ he said. ‘I should have given it to you on the day of our wedding and your birthday.’ He took the necklace from where it lay in the box and draped it around her neck. She felt the cold of the diamonds and the warmth of his fingers where they touched the nape of her neck to secure the catch of the necklace, and her skin tingled and a shiver rippled right through her body. His fingers seemed to stroke and tease and the sensation shimmered all the way down her spine. Her nipples prickled. Her stomach sucked in tight. Her breath caught in her throat at the heady intoxicating sensations tingling through her. She could not move, just stood there transfixed by the depth of desire that the lightest brush of his fingers created.

She looked at herself in the peering glass and did not recognise the dark-eyed woman that looked back at her. Her cheeks were flushed pink. Her lips looked full and ached to be kissed. And her eyes glittered dark with such undisguised passion that even Marianne recognised it. She looked so different from the timid, nervous girl that was Marianne Winslow. The woman reflected in the mirror was beautiful, just as he had said, and confident and unafraid, just as she had always longed to be. And the tall, dark, handsome man standing behind her was looking at her with desire.

She lifted her hand to adjust the necklace, but Rafe was there first. She felt the heaviness of the stone shift to lie just above the cleavage of her bust. His fingers adjusted the sapphire so that it lay perfectly central, but the feel of his touch so close to her breasts, however transient, made her nipples tighten for him. In the peering glass it looked almost as if he were touching her there, and God help her but she wanted him to. Wanted it so much that it shocked her. But Rafe did not shift his fingers from the sapphire or his eyes from their joint reflection in the glass.

Yes
, she wanted to say.
Please
, she wanted to beg. She had to bite her lip to prevent herself. His eyes had darkened to an intense smoulder. She willed him to touch her, willed it with all her might, never taking her eyes from his.

His fingers slid infinitesimally lower.

Her breath was as ragged as if she had been running. He must have felt the frenzied rise and fall of her chest beneath his fingers, but she did not care.

He moved lower still so that he was touching the tops of her breasts pressed full against the low neckline of the dress.

Her throat was dry with anticipation. She swallowed and wetted her lips. She wanted to groan. She wanted to reach her hand round to his and clasp his fingers tight to her breast, wanted them to slide beneath her bodice.

He traced a delicate teasing pattern over the upper globe of her breast, toying with her as he felt the hard fast thump of her heart and the need that quivered right through her body, yet his every move was light and sensuous and slow.

Yes
, she wanted to scream.

He traced all the way across her other breast and back before dipping his finger into her cleavage. The sensation was so exquisite that she could not prevent the little breathy sigh escaping her. She watched his eyes darken at the sound. His hand slid over her dress to cover the whole of her breast. She gasped again and could not help herself from arching against him, driving herself all the harder into his hand. He moved his other hand so that both were cupping her breasts as he pulled her back flush against his chest and she could feel his warmth against the length of her. She watched their reflection in the peering glass—watched his hands moving over her breasts with a possession that felt so right. Her breasts were so sensitive that, where his fingers stroked and massaged, it was as if his touch passed through the layers of her clothing to brand her naked skin—just as it had done in the stables. And she remembered what he had done with his mouth, with his teeth...with his hand, and her breath shook with anticipation.

His eyes looked as black and glittering as her own. He was as racked with this strange tension as she, a tension that hummed so loud the whole room seemed to vibrate with it. She should have been embarrassed to watch herself behaving so wantonly, but she felt nothing of that emotion, only impatient desire. His touch was a taste of heaven, and her breasts ached for release from the tight strictures of her corset. She arched again, driving herself into his hands, wanting to feel him all the more. And in response the fingers of one hand rubbed gently against the hard nub of her nipple while the other unfastened the upper buttons of her dress. She felt nothing of fear, only of relief that he was doing what she so desperately wanted. And impatience and a thrilling urgency.

The bodice gaped, but did not fall. She watched and could not look away, holding her breath with anticipation. A flash of white skin that strained for release from its imprisonment within the corset.

‘Please, Rafe...’ she gasped, unable to prevent it.

‘Do you want me to stop?’ the man in the peering glass asked, his voice thick with desire and need.

‘No,’ she said and her whisper was husky and breathless. ‘Don’t stop.’

His eyes never left hers in their reflection, watching her as he inched her bodice lower with agonising slowness. Teasing her with such sweet torture until at last her corset was revealed in full. Against the top of it the pale swell of her breasts was taut and longing for his touch. But he did not touch her. His left hand rested lightly against her stomach.

She reached her arms up so that her pale-pink nipples peeped over the edge of her bodice, needing them to be free, and higher still until they erupted over the edge of the corset and its underlying shift. She stared at the woman in the glass—a different woman from the one Marianne had always believed herself to be.

‘Tell me what you want me to do,’ he murmured, his voice deep and gravelly beside her ear, his breath tickling the skin of her neck. She angled her head to allow him greater access and where his breath had scalded he traced a small trail of kisses. ‘I am under your control.’

She was trembling with need for him.

‘Tell me, Marianne,’ he repeated between kisses. ‘Say the words.’

Her head felt dizzy with the force of the desire surging through her body. Her breath was ragged and strained, her breasts almost fully exposed, and all the while the sapphire burned like a blue fire against the pallor of her skin.

‘I want you to touch me,’ she whispered.

In the peering glass Rafe’s gaze was dark and intense, simmering with something she did not understand. He moved his right hand so that it hovered over her right breast, so close that the skin tingled and seemed to burn, so close that it looked as if his hand was already clutching her breast in the glass.

She held her breath and trembled with the strain of the wanting and waiting. And still his eyes held hers, unyielding, unrelenting, binding her to him in this madness that held them both. She swallowed. ‘Touch me, Rafe.’

His hand edged closer so that she could feel the very tip of her nipple brush against his palm. ‘Here?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

And at last he closed the space and at last her naked breast was within his hand. She sighed her relief, feeling the ecstasy of his touch, feeling the magic of
his fingers weaving a sensual pattern against her sensitised globe, feeling them pluck and tease the tight bud.

And when his other hand captured her left breast and played the same teasing pattern upon it she felt she was melting against him in a rich heady sensation of pleasure and need. This man who was her husband, this man whom she loved.