Lord Ruin (31 page)

Emily’s chin lifted in quick defense of her sister. “You think I don’t know that?” The dratted child might be spoiled rotten, but she had always been Anne’s fiercest champion. Despite, it seemed, being hopelessly in love with Devon.

“You understand your sister quite well. As for Devon,” he said with a confidence he did not feel, “he’ll not stay in love with a woman who will never return his love.” Not physically, anyway. The notion sparked a twisting sort of panic. “That sort of passion eventually burns itself out. It must. Bide your time, Emily. Do not press him now.”

“I may be a damn fool, as you say, but I’m not a complete fool,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. Few women managed to shed genuine tears and still look beautiful. Emily was one.

“There’s a good girl.”

“Don’t you patronize me.” But she spoke without her earlier edge. He found himself the recipient of a thoughtful gaze. “You poor man. Have you told Anne you love her?”

Jesus Christ. What was it with these Sinclair women? “She did not believe me.”

“I’m not sure I believe it.”

“What you believe is a matter of complete indifference to me.”

“There is hope, you know,” she said, and not without a certain gentleness, though he felt sure any tenderness was for Anne, not him. “Anne admires you. She never speaks of you but to make you a compliment I’m sure you don’t deserve.” Ruan’s heart leaped at that. His entire being grasped at the straw Emily offered. “Why, I cannot comprehend. But she does admire you. You might yet turn it to love.”

“How?”

“It’s simple,” she said archly and with a truly annoying smile. “Lord Ruin must die.”

Exasperated, he returned to the parlor door, dragging Emily with him. “I ought to be horse whipped for listening to you.”

“You might dispatch the Duke of Sin while you’re at it,” she added.

“Quiet.”

“Insincere Cynssyr, too.”

He lengthened his stride and raised his voice. “Anne? Are you here? Ah, just as you said, Emily.” Both Dev and Anne were standing when he came in this time.

“Cynssyr,” said Anne. She wasn’t wearing her spectacles and that made her squint.

Ruan watched Dev, busy straightening the lapels of his coat. The black eyes, when they met his, were unreadable. “Forgive me, Anne. I did not mean to be so late,” Ruan said, holding out his arm as she came near. “However, I’m told I’ve arrived in time for the gift-giving.”

She gave him a look, then she smiled, a little sadly. “Shall we?”

Ruan expected Emily, the poor heartbroken child, to wait for Devon to offer his arm, but she didn’t. Instead, she walked in front of Ruan and Anne, leaving Dev to bring up the rear. A small victory for Emily, for Devon looked aggravated.

Ruan sat silent while Anne opened her gifts. A bolt of shimmering lavender silk from Mary, a delicate ivory fan from Lucy, a cameo brooch from Emily that all the Sinclair sisters agreed looked very much like one that had once belonged to their mother. Thrale’s gift of a sheaf of musical scores by Bach and that young puppy, Beethoven, met with a pleased exclamation. Devon gave her an edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Ruan could see an inscription inside when Anne opened the cover. What tender words had Devon written for her? Though she scanned the sentences, she did not read them aloud. A small silver rattle came from his mother, for the first of many grandchildren, she said, glancing meaningfully at Ruan.

It was with a certain satisfaction that he drew Cowperth’s box from his pocket. A small gift. Inexpensive in the greater scheme of things, but much better than Hickenson’s shawl, however lovely, and a shot across the bows of Anne’s heart. He almost missed her face when she opened the box because he was watching Devon who had a view of Anne and could see each gift. Her eyes went wide. Devon gave away nothing.

Anne didn’t say a word. She couldn’t.

“What is it?” Benjamin asked.

“Anne, do show us,” said Lady Prescott.

With a trembling hand, she slipped off her borrowed wedding band and returned it to the dowager duchess.

“My dear child.”

Ruan reached for the box and the ring inside. One look at Anne’s face, and he forgot everything but her. “I should have seen to this ages ago,” he said, slipping the gold band onto her finger. “It isn’t much, I’m afraid.” Tears spilled from her eyes, and he brushed one away. “Hush,” he said softly. “Hush, my love. ‘Tis but a ring, and a plain one at that.” God save his soul, but he’d known that plain gold band would touch Anne more deeply than the gaudiest diamond in creation.

His mother leaned in to examine Anne’s left hand. “You have your father’s exquisite sense of the appropriate.”

He waited until Anne was looking at him, not her hand. “I love you,” he said.

At that instant, Anne didn’t care if he did or didn’t. She leaned toward him, threw her arms around his shoulders and kissed him on a trembling breath. A moment later, his mouth opened over hers, one large hand cupping the back of her head, and she was complete. When at last they parted it was to find themselves the object of everyone’s fascination.

“I don’t think,” remarked a breathless Lady Prescott to Thrale, patting her upper chest, “that I have ever seen a more touching scene in all my life.”

Ruan reached for Anne’s hand, interlacing their fingers. He told himself it was a statement to Devon that his wife was off-limits, but it didn’t feel like that sort of statement. He felt like a man holding the hand of a woman he’d come slowly to adore. She had him tied in knots, no doubt about it, but he didn’t mind at all.

Back at Cyrwthorn, Ruan stood beside the carriage waiting for Anne to give him her hand. Movement distracted him when she stepped down. He watched the shadows. Every nerve in his body went taut. The coachman took one of the grays by the bridle. With a soft cluck of his tongue, he started them to the mews. Upon the pretense of adjusting the shawl around Anne’s shoulders, he peered into the darkness behind her.

Alarm prickled along his back. There. Something moved. And again. A shadow at the foot of the front stairs deepened, shifted, then coalesced into the shape of a man moving stealthily toward the side of the house.

“Henry,” Ruan called softly. The shadow briefly stepped out of darkness so that Ruan clearly saw the man’s face before he turned the corner toward the mews. “Escort the duchess inside.”

“Your grace.”

“What about you?” Anne said.

“I need a word with the groom.” He chucked her under the chin. “I’ll be along shortly.”

He watched her climb the stairs, then when she reached the door, he walked around the side of the house to find out what the hell Julian Durling thought he was up to.

Ruan grabbed Durling’s upper arm, ostensibly to steady him, but he didn’t want the man disappearing on him either. “What are you doing here?”

“You’re a bloody hard man to find sometimes,” Durling said.

“You smell like the inside of a tavern. Go home and clean yourself up.” Two days worth of beard covered the man’s cheeks, he wore no hat, and he still wore a gambler’s felt sleeves on his coat.

“I just can’t keep away from the hells. Damn shame.” Gleefully, he did a drunken jig. “But this time, I won. Enough to cover a good many of my debts.”

“Splendid.” He leaned back to avoid getting another whiff of stale wine and clothes worn too long.

“Send her away, Cyn.” He swayed and steadied himself by catching Ruan’s coat sleeve. “Before it’s too late, send her away.”

“Too late for what?”

“She’s next.” Durling’s bleary eyes fixed on Ruan then crossed. “Lord, but I’m foxed. I’ve not been this fuddled since university. You’re a good man, you know. Really top notch. Even if you weren’t a bloody duke.” Ruan groaned. He was in for it now. Durling was a sentimental drunk. The man swayed again, tilting his head down as if to lay it on Ruan’s shoulder. “You were a class ahead of me. Lord, how we admired you. All of us wanted to be like you, and then you went off to the war. I rowed because you did, know that?”

Ruan grabbed his shoulders and shook him hard enough to rattle him out of his ridiculous nostalgia. “What do you mean, she’s next?”

“The duchess,” he said in a tender voice. “Lovely, lovely duchess. She’s next, Cyn.” Durling sobbed. “And I don’t think I can stop it.”

Ruan’s blood froze. “Is it you?”

“Who beats those women? No.” He slumped against Ruan’s shoulder. “No taste for that sort of violence. Not yet anyway.”

“Who is it?”

“Do stop shouting. My head’s going to bloody explode.” And that was the last thing Julian Durling was going to say for several hours, at least. Had Ruan not caught him, he’d have hit the ground like a sack of stones. Mostly by dint of brute strength, Ruan got Durling to the stables where he and one of the grooms got him into a carriage. He lay sprawled on the seat, snoring.

“You’re not to leave him. Not even for a moment,” he told the biggest of his grooms. “On second thought, let’s get him on the floor. Then he won’t have far to fall.”

“Your grace.”

He met Anne in the courtyard between Cyrwthorn and the mews. “What are you doing out here?” Anyone could have snatched her where she stood, and he’d have been none the wiser.

“Looking for you.” She sat on a stone bench overlooking the small plot used for the kitchen garden and pointed to a spot where someone had planted some pansies. “Not as pretty now as later in the season. It reminds me of home. Look there. Lavender.”

Ruan frowned. “You’ve never seen Fargate Castle, have you?”

“I meant Bartley Green.”

He gave her a sharp look. “Cyrwthorn is your home now.”

“I called on Mrs. Forrest,” she said.

His insides seized up.

“She remembers the scent of ambergris. It was her impression that rape was never intended, but the men got to drinking and then one of them—”

“Anne.”

“Her husband was not kind to her afterward.”

“No.”

She touched his shoulder. “You say you think you’re dead inside, and I say that’s a lie.” Her hand moved from his shoulder to his mouth, gently touching his lips.

“I adore you, Anne.” But she wasn’t pleased by the declaration. Damn it all, why not? Every other damn woman he’d known would have been. Which answered his question well enough.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why.” He wrapped his arms around her. “It’s everything about you. It’s the way I feel when I am inside you. How you move with me, the feel of your skin, the sweet inside of your thighs, the shape of your mouth. How you moan when I thrust just so. Your bright eyes. Your arms. Your spectacles send me mad with desire. But more, in some strange fashion I fail to understand, I need to give you pleasure. I want you crashing over the edge even more desperately than I want to fall myself. Anything, so long as you understand you are mine. So long as I drive the thought of any other man right out of your head.”

“There aren’t any other men.” She leaned against him, soft and warm.

“I know.” He tightened his arms around her, wanting to claim her as forever his. “Will you kiss me?”

The kiss soon flamed out of control. He wanted to get her where he could undress her and reveal more perfection than he had ever dreamed of finding in one woman. She answered his greed, her arms circled his shoulders. “We need to get inside,” he said into her mouth.

“I know.”

They did not make it off the bench, let alone inside. By the time she was helping him with the buttons of his trousers he was painfully aroused and in a state of wretched longing for her. He dipped his head to take her mouth in a kiss of searing heat, being very free with his hands, too.

“The hell with it,” he growled. “Here. Right here.” He gathered her into his arms and sank to the ground with her nipping his ear. Instead of laying her down, he sat her on his lap, spreading her gown so it billowed around her thighs while he unhooked her gown.

No other woman could do this to him, make him want to worship her like some fool boy. He unbuttoned his trousers and was just about to delve into her when she pushed him onto his back. Right into the middle of Merchant’s lavender. Her hands slid up his arms, bringing them above his head and holding them there on his sufferance, because although she was tall, she was not tall enough to truly pin him. Nor heavy enough, either. He outweighed her by a substantial amount.

“Now,” she said, mock serious. “For once you are at my mercy.”

For once? Hadn’t he always been? “Do what you will, minx.” He drew in a breath of lavender pungent with the bruising they’d given it. Her gown was loose enough at the back that he had a thumping good view of shadowed breasts.

She bent her head to his and kissed him, taking control of his mouth. When he started to bring his arms down so he could hold her and put himself inside her as he longed to do, she tightened her grip on him. Her mouth hovered inches over his.

“I want to touch you,” he said, thinking of his mouth on the peak of her breast and him inside her. She straddled him so he could feel her heat but not touch its source.

“Why?”

“Because I’ll go up in flames if I can’t. Because I adore your body. All your sweet curves and that heat inside that’s ready for me. Because I love you.”

“Love.” In the dark, he could just make out the dim gleam of her spectacles. “I cannot stop thinking of all the times you’ve said that before. To so many other women. Did you mean it before? When you said it to the others? Did you mean it when you said it to Katie?” She laughed sadly. “Is it possible you believed it then and only think you believe it now?”

“I knew I didn’t love the others.” He worked one hand free and wriggled it under her skirt. He covered her backside, sliding a finger between until he found her core. He could fight dirty, too, when he had to. She gasped but cut off the sound. “I love you, Anne. You’re the only one.”

“Tell me—Oh, Cynssyr.”

“Show me your breasts, Anne. Yes, that’s it,” he said when she began to pull aside her gown. The two of them were a tangle of clothes and arms and legs. His knees were bent so she could lean her weight against him, his erection, for the moment, conveniently behind her. “There is just no question,” he said when she’d managed to bare herself for him. “No question at all that I would have married you on account of these alone.” Her arousal and the cool air puckered her nipples. He managed a kiss right there.

“Oh, Cynssyr,” she moaned. “Ruan.”

“I do love you, Anne. I am your slave, if you would but have me.”

She groaned on an intake of breath as his fingers stroked. She wasn’t holding herself off him to deny him anymore, but to give him access. “Tell me,” she said with some effort, “why I should believe Lord Ruin when he says he loves me.”

His other hand was free now, and he put that under her skirt, too, gripping her behind. “Lord Ruin never said he loved you.” She moaned again. “It is your husband who loves you. Madly. Truly.” She didn’t believe him yet. Not entirely. Her head went back, she arched into his hand and came. Hard.

He raised her hips and brought her down on him. “I am home,” he said.

Afterward, picking a bit of lavender from her hair, he said, “Forgive me, Anne.”

She lifted her head from his chest. “For what?”

“All of this.” He raised his hands in a helpless gesture, then helped her put her clothes to rights. “I am sorry you had to marry me. I am sorry for everything I’ve done since then. I’m sorry you cannot believe I love you.”

“Cynssyr,” she whispered mournfully.

“You want to know why I love you. You brought light into my formerly gray existence.” He touched her cheek. “Until you, I never knew a woman could be both friend and lover. You saved me from the dark. I love you for what you are; strong and brave and kind. When I walk into a room and you are there, my heart lifts. When I’m away, just thinking of you makes me smile. Being with you makes me happy. No one else has ever done that. When I am with you, I am whole. Better than whole, for on my own, I’m a worthless fool.”

Reverently, she touched his chest. “If I let myself believe you, I would be on air. Transformed. Delirious with joy. And if ever it ended, I could not survive. Do you even know how many woman you have destroyed this way?” She shook her head. “No, I could not bear it.” She curved herself to fit into his arm around her. “I could not.”

She wasn’t dressed for a cold morning and when a shiver took her, he shrugged out of his coat and slipped it over her shoulders. Already, the sky was turning from black to muted gray. He tucked her against his side. “We were very wild after the war, Devon and I,” he said softly. “Our nights were spent in pursuits of no credit to our character. Cards. Drink. Opera dancers, actresses, women of easy virtue. Anything and everything to remind myself I was still alive. That I had cheated death.” Her arm crept around his waist, giving rather than seeking support. “After a night of carousing and whoring, I’d come here to watch the sun rise.”

She shifted enough to look into his face. “Do you feel alive now?”

He smiled warmly, touching the tip of her nose with the pad of his index finger. “At this moment, I have no doubt I am alive. I never do with you.”

The hard edge to her sadness softened. “We are friends, aren’t we, Cynssyr?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “We are.”

“Do you think that’s enough? It must be.”

Not for him. Not enough for him. In the distance, he heard a wagon rumbling by.

“Ruan?”

“Mm.”

“Mrs. Forrest told me she thinks someone’s been following her, and I think she’s right.”

His blood chilled. “Why?”

“From her sitting room, I saw a carriage on the street.”

“Nothing alarming about that.”

“A gig, actually. Rather shabby. And it was there the entire time. We left together. I told Henry to follow us and we drove in her carriage nearly to Bond Street.”

“The gig?”