Kate Noble (33 page)

“Don’t say that!”

“You stayed,” she replied, her voice louder than his, stronger with its certainty, “because you did care. Because you were worried. You had to leave Longsbowe to survive, I understand that, but you stayed close enough so if he needed you, you’d be there. You loved him.”

All of Max’s arguments died on his tongue. All he could do was watch Gail as she approached him, listen as she gave voice to the tumult of his feelings.

“He loved you, too. Everything he did might have been warped and misguided and foolish…”

“Stop it,” he croaked.

“He was still your father, Max. He was still the man who taught you how to fish, who shared his love of his lands with you. He cared about you. If nothing else, believe that. It’s all right to be sad.” She had reached his side by now and impulsively laid a gloved hand on his tense wrist. He simply stared at it. “If you’re mad, if you want to scream. You’re allowed to miss him.”

“No,” he whispered. “No! No! Stop, right now!” he yelled, shaking off her hand, turning away, pacing furiously.

His face was a portrait of pain and anger, of confusion and grief, as he stalked in long strides the length of the carpet. Suddenly he crossed to her, breathing heavily.

For a moment, Gail thought he might hit her, but she refused to flinch. Then, a decision made, he grabbed her arms and pulled her roughly to him, kissing her fiercely, bruising her lips with his.

She did not move. She refused to let her shaking knees fold into him, but also did she refuse to back away.

He kept kissing her, pushing himself against her soft but unyielding frame, trying desperately to feel something, anything, but this breaking in his chest.

Soon enough, Gail felt something wet fall against her cheek. A tear, but it did not belong to her.

Max was crying, no longer pressing his intentions against her mouth. His grip was still fierce on her arms, and he fell to his knees, unable to stand anymore, such was the violence of his sobs. She pressed his face to her stomach, holding him there, the dam finally broken.

They stayed like that for some while, Max holding firmly to Gail’s waist, she soothing his head and shoulders, as he mourned for the father that had died tonight, and the one he lost so many years ago.

IT
was still pitch dark outside, and Gail was drooling on his chest.

Sometime during the emotional haze of the night, they had transferred to the bed. It was unclear to Max how they managed to end there, wrapped around each other, but it seemed right somehow. Peaceful repose would not have been achieved any other way.

They were both still clothed, of course. Gail’s heavy, voluminous skirts belled out around her, her feet tucked under and lost in the sea of green velvet. It made her seem impossibly small. She seemed so peaceful, so delicate in sleep, Max thought. Considering how she had stood up to him so fiercely such a short time ago, it was another impossibility to add to the ever-growing list.

For instance, it was impossible that he was in love with Gail, and yet, he knew it to be true. While eventually exhaustion had caused Gail’s eyes to flutter into sleep, Max had remained awake. She curled up against his chest, unwilling even in sleep to let go of him, and Max let his attention wander over the course of his life since he had come to know this annoying, nosy, curious, beautiful, intelligent, witty creature at his side. The minute he felt the cold wet patch of her drool hit his chest through his shirt, and he didn’t mind, he knew he was in love.

She challenged him at every turn. He had been floating along, just making do until he met her. For the first time, he wanted more, wanted to be more. For her. He wanted to be the reason for those secret smiles that constantly lit her face.

He smiled just thinking of it, a great sigh leaving his chest. Unfortunately, such motion roused the weight of slumbering female half-situated on said chest. Her eyes fluttered open.

“Hello,” he murmured.

“Hello,” she replied, realizing as she moved her mouth that fluid had escaped. She blushed readily.

“Oh goodness. I’m so sorry.” She wiped her mouth.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, his hand pushing an errant lock of hair behind her ear.

“I don’t usually drool, I swear.” She took a bit of sleeve and dabbed at his shirt, causing him to chuckle.

“Good to know,” he replied dryly. While indeed, Max didn’t mind at all now, he shouldn’t like to be drooled on for the rest of his days.

She stilled in her ministrations. Good lord, had he said that last bit out loud? She raised her lids and met his steady gaze. Or could she simply know his thoughts? A moment of heat passed between them, intense and very real. But then, with a flush of her cheeks, Gail looked away, coughing nervously, and blinked about the room, clearing herself of sleep.

“How long was I dozing?” she asked, attempting to pull herself up to a position resembling respectability, which, on a bed with a gentleman, was of no use.

“Not too long,” he replied, ushering Gail’s head back down to his shoulder, stroking her hair. “’Tis not yet day.”

He could have her long, warm body lay in the crook of his arm forever. She seemed more than content to be there. After some minutes, Gail raised her head to look into his eyes.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

A mix of emotions flashed through him, but anger and hurt were no longer among them.

“I think I will be,” he said after some deliberation. “And that’s to your credit.” For indeed, a sense of peace had come over Max. In the course of his musings, his thoughts turned to his father, his mind clearer. Maybe he hadn’t understood the old man at all. And maybe, even though the Earl had passed, it was time to try to do so.

But not this very moment. This moment was for Gail. That bewitching creature was looking up into his face with shining eyes, searching his face with concern and love. She leaned up and laid a soft kiss on his lips, one that asked nothing, but gave everything.

When she pulled away, it was to see that love reflected on his face.

“Would you like to know how I’m feeling right now?” he asked.

A moment passed before that wisecracking half-grin bloomed.

“A man
offering
to speak his feelings? This must be a first in the course of human history.”

“Minx. You don’t wish to know then?”

Her face softened. “Tell me.”

“I feel like I’ve been thrown into cold water—” he said as she settled back down against his shoulder.

“If this is about the lake…” she warned.

“It’s not about the lake. Although it was cold.” She slapped his chest playfully, but he caught her hand, his fingers drifting over her wrist and opening her hand like a flower petal. Then he edged gently across her palm, lacing her fingers with his.

“I’ve been thrown into cold water, and all I’ve got to hold to is your hand.”

His eyes burned into hers as he said this, the depth of his feeling expressed for the first time. So powerful were those words, that all she could say in that moment was, “Oh.”

He leaned down, kissing her as lightly as she had him.

When he pulled back, it was to see the light of her humor back in her eyes.

“That was awfully poetic,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed wryly.

“Are you sure you haven’t been tucked away here, studying Byron for the past few weeks?”

His eyes crinkled at the corners as he regarded her with faux outrage.

“Are you mocking me? In my great moment of honesty you mock me?” She giggled in reply, the sound lightening his heart. “I am wounded, through the core.”

“Oh, Lord Fontaine,” she replied, stifling a giggle, “I am so very sorry to have bruised your obviously delicate feelings. Had I but known! Had I but seen!”

“And your apology insincere!” he cried, and turned his face away.

“Max!” she laughed, but he refused to look at her. So, mischeviously, she leaned up very close to his ear, whispering his name. At the same time, her free hand began to dance a seductive pattern on his chest.

“Max…”

Her breath blew across his ear, and immediately lust shot through him. He held still as long as he could…which was about two and a half seconds.

Flipping over with lightning speed, Max was suddenly laying on top of his laughing quarry. His face a hair’s breadth from hers, she saw a flicker of roguish humor play over his features before his mouth met hers.

What began playfully soon turned passionate. Hands in her hair forced the long-maligned pins out, hands on his shirt found and undid quarrelsome buttons.

Freeing the full length of her tresses, Max lifted his head long enough to spread her hair out over the pillow. In the past he had seen it wet and tangled, he had mussed it, causing it to fall about her face in charming disarray, but never before, he realized, had he seen its full length. Surprisingly it came past her elbows. A smile of pure greed lifted his lips. Who would have thought that practical, sharp Gail would have something as feminine and beguiling as long, lush hair?

She was the most complex person he was ever likely to meet, he thought as he tenderly traced her eyebrows, her jaw. The quirks that made her strange made her whole.

“What is it?” she asked, confusion, nervousness in her voice.

He smiled, intent upon putting her at ease. “I was just thinking: Is there anything you aren’t? You are witty, strange, superstitious, strong, brave—so many wonderful things to me. So is there anything you aren’t?” he asked softly. “Anything you cannot do? Because quite honestly, you overwhelm me.”

A tremulous blushing smile accompanied a barely audible sigh of relief. When he had pulled away, she was terrified she had done something wrong. Now, she knew there was no wrong here. Only what felt right.

Why shouldn’t you try for happiness?

“Well,” she breathed coyly, “I’m afraid I don’t speak Italian.”

His eyes blazed. His lips curled. “On that, I can instruct you.”

He dove for her—she dove with him.

There was no restraint, nothing holding them back from each other. In this room, in this time, only they two existed. He kissed her eyes, her neck, her jaw, everywhere there was flesh. And when he found his pursuits obstructed, he went about exposing more. The buttons of her habit came free as easily as Max had remembered. The chemise underneath was silk, and when the erotic feel of it was replaced by his lips, Gail cried out in surprise and pleasure.

She could feel his grin against her breast at her outcry, but before she could protest his very male sense of victory, his lips came together again, and he began to suckle.

After that, it was really all she could do to not buck off the bed.

One hand threaded its way through his dark, thick hair, the other held firmly over her mouth.

“Darling, stop biting your hand,” he said, lifting his head. “There’s no one to hear you cry out.”

She shot him a look through her daze of lust. “
You’ll
hear me.”

“I,” he replied with a grin, “want to hear you.”

Before she could come up with a clever retort, which Max liked to think might take a few seconds longer than normal, given her current state, he slipped one hand up under her skirts quickly, cupping her most private of places so intimately, she cried out again.

His eyes grew black with desire, with triumph.

“That’s not fair!” she squeaked, as she felt his thumb do things that surely thumbs didn’t normally do.

He grinned as he said, “Never said anything about ‘fair,’” and lowered his mouth to hers again, feeding her fierce passion with his own, melding her to his body, only their clothes keeping them from each other now.

Then he stilled, withdrawing his hand. A small spasm of pain crossed his face as he watched her small frown.

“Darling. Gail, look at me.” Her clouded eyes met his, ablaze with so much passion that he wanted to slit his wrists for what he was about to do.

“If you want me to stop, tell me now,” he said, as he bit his lip, frustration, fear, and pain all crossing his features at once. “What comes next…I won’t be able to stop.”

For the space of a breath, for the space of an eternity, he thought she might come to her senses and make him end their play. That twisted a knife in his side. No, this was no longer playing. This was everything. And while his honor had warred with his body, honor had won, and left him in the balance as she decided his fate.

Then, a smile. That playful, wicked smile.

“And miss my Italian lesson?” she proclaimed innocently. “Not a chance.”

Pure, unadulterated relief flowed from him in waves. Through a shaky smile, he replied, “I did say I’d instruct you, didn’t I? Very well.” He sat up quickly on his heels, immediately missing the feel of her next to him.

“This,” he said, indicating his shirt that hung open, “is called a
camicia.
”

“Camicia,”
she repeated.

Never letting his eyes stray from hers, he removed the
camicia
and tossed it on the floor.

An eyebrow shot up at seeing his bare chest, hard planes and muscles that played over his shoulders. A spattering of dark curly hair danced its way down his chest, over a hard, lean stomach and into a tiny trail that disappeared into his trousers.

So this was the body of a boring, bookish translator, eh?

He watched the flush rise to her cheeks, as her gaze traveled over his body, and if he thought he had been hard before, he was throbbing with need now.

“Now this,” he said, fingering the open ends of her habit’s jacket, “is a
giacca
.”

She sat up, her eyes never leaving his face, the set of her jaw telling him, daring him to remove the
giacca
. And he was never one to back down from a challenge, especially not one so enticing.

Once that garment was tossed to the floor, Max’s hand traveled to the waistband of her skirts. He found the row of buttons, and undid them each with a flick of his extremely adroit (as Gail was aware) thumb.

“This is a
gonna
.” As he attempted to pull it down her body, Max realized she was also encased in about half a dozen petticoats. “Good Lord, woman, how many
gonna
are you wearing?”

Gail shrugged, a glint of mischief in her eye. “As many
gonna
as are required.”

“Well, they are not required here. In fact, we are firmly against them,” Max replied, as he worked her lushly rounded bottom out of the voluminous garments. “Oof,” he said as he heaved them onto the floor. “That is the heaviest damn outfit I’ve ever seen.”

“Yes, I believe I’ve mentioned that before.” She smirked.

He remembered that first day at the lake, a waterlogged imp so weighted down by sopping wet velvet she couldn’t even stand.

“So you did.” He smiled, and lowered himself down on top of her once more.

Stockings and a chemise.
Calza et biacheria intima.
When they fell to the floor onto the pile, Gail felt wholly exposed, in body and mind. Although that could simply have been an effect of being completely naked. And it felt glorious.